Yin-Yang:
Theory of Relativity

Authoress Notes: Sorry this was so long coming, guys... things kinda caught up with me, so... at long last, here's chapter three.

Chapter Three

Something was wrong. Very wrong. You know things are wrong when Bakura, in all his spiky haired glory, shows up on your door in the rain, in tears. Malik stared at the white haired man on his front step as the man cried.

"M-Malik... I... I need your help..." Bakura sobbed, glancing through his sopping wet bangs.

"Uh... come... come in," Malik stepped aside, holding the door open.

Grabbing the aggrieved man a towel as he sat on the couch, the Egyptian sighed somewhat. "What's going on, Bakura?" Malik frowned.

"Wh-what did you do to Ryou?" Bakura whispered, choking on a sob.

"Ryou?" Malik blinked. "I didn't do anything to your hika-"

"Don't you dare." There was a whisper of a threat in that, but a very weak one.

There was a moment of silence, broken by Malik's sigh as he scratched his head. "Fine, what happened?"

"...He killed a man."

"WHAT?!"

Irritation was prominent on his mind. Bakura was being annoyingly clingy, and sniveling, teachers were being stupid and petty, and now some idiot was trying to steal his wallet.

"C'mon, pretty boy, hand it over," the smug faced man beckoned.

Ryou frowned. He had two options: blow the guy off and walk away, or beat his ass and teach him how thievery should work.

He soon found himself pressed against a brick wall by the same smug faced man. The man's hands traveled down Ryou's side, searching and feeling through his clothes for a wallet.

As the hands reached his waist, Ryou's expression grew sour, and he brought an elbow up to the man's face, causing him to stumble back in shock. As blood trickled from the man's nose, Ryou watched, something in his chest leaping to his throat, causing a bizarre, almost surreal sensation of hunger.

The man stared up at him in shock, as if he hadn't expected a violent reaction to his actions. With a growl, he stood again, his hands moving to Ryou's throat, only to be casually swept aside, as Ryou's hand moved for his gut.

Groaning, the man fell to his knees, and Ryou watched with contempt. Not waiting for the man to stand again, he kicked the side of the man's head, and watched him collapse to the ground.

Pulling out a switchblade, Ryou knelt beside the man, and rolled him onto his back. His expression carefully blank, he held the blade to the man's throat, moving his fingers to the blood trailing down the side of his face.

The dazed would-be thief watched, terrified, as Ryou licked the blood from his fingers. His mouth curling into a feral smile, Ryou slit the man's throat, and wiped the blood from the knife onto his grimy grey jacket.

Standing, he kicked at the body in disgust, and began to walk back to the entrance of the alley – where Bakura stood, watching in horror.

"What…. What the hell was that?" Bakura asked, eyes wide with alarm.

"That?" Ryou asked casually, glancing over his shoulder at the now deceased man. "That is what happens to stupid little thieves," he said casually, brushing past Bakura without so much as a glance at him, and heading home.

Bakura stood in the ally for what seemed like an eternity, his mind twisting hard around what he had just witnessed, and what Ryou had just said. As he stood there, the rain started, just a trickle at first, then into full on torrential pellets. The blood from the alley ran towards the drain, twisting around Bakura's boots on it's way.

Finally, he turned, and began to sprint towards the home of the cause of all this. There was something very wrong – he knew he himself had been acting strangely, and couldn't understand why. At first it was just a grudging admiration for his partner slowly growing balls, but then things changed. It was as if the very teeter-totter of life had switched sides, and Ryou had become the darker half. The tainted half.

Nursing a cup of tea between shivering hands, Bakura stared at the rug of Malik's living room. Malik paced, agitatedly as Marik watched, thoughtfully.

"I don't see what the problem is," Marik stated, finally, after a period of silence. "If the kid finally learned how to protect himself, good for him. It's not any different than you would do, Bakura."

"And that is exactly the problem!" Malik turned on his darker half, frowning. "It's what Bakura would do. Ryou would never do as Bakura did; he's too sensitive for that. Life matters to him, be it his own, or anyone else's!"

Running a hand through tousled locks, Malik sighed, frustrated, and turned his gaze to the ceiling. "It was supposed to be an experiment – a game! – no one was supposed to get hurt… He just… wanted you to respect him…"

Bakura looked up from the carpet to see Malik's purple eyes focused on him. "…But someone did get hurt… your experiment failed…"

"Not exactly… He proved the theory of relativity correct… I mean, look at yourself, Bakura… you're a whining, simpering, meek little version of yourself. You're worse than Ryou was!" There was a pause as Bakura made an offended noise, and returned his gaze to his tea.

"But someone still got hurt. More than hurt… he's dead."

"I know. I realized that, thank you," Malik sighed. "Alright, lets think this out logically: the theory of relativity, which we followed, says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? So… Bakura… Why don't you go out and do something horrible? Fix the cosmic balance... you know... that sort of thing."

"But won't it all just happen again, anyway?" Marik asked, raising an eyebrow at them both. They both blinked at him in return.

"Well, think about it – Ryou's now a crazy nutball because he wanted to be friends with Bakura, instead of having their whole slave and master thing going on; if Bakura returns to being his crazy nutball self, won't the kid just try again? The penny will flip, and we'll get into a constant cycle of Jekyll and Hyde."

"…How the hell do you know anything about Jekyll and Hyde?" Malik asked, his voice carefully monotone.

"Contrary to popular belief, I read in my spare time," Marik grumbled, adjusting in his chair.

"Anyways… I hate to admit it, but you have a point."

"So, what do we do, then?" Bakura asked, leaning back in his chair and setting the tea aside.

"We need to somehow put you both at the same level… get you to act the same, or have the same sort of grasp on things."

"But then we'll just have…. Two Bakura's," Marik frowned.

"Or two Ryou's," Bakura added.

"Both of you shut it. You both have individual personalities one way or another, different concepts of right and wrong, usually… so we just… need to make things even. No more Yin and Yang, just… a circle of grey."

Both Bakura and Marik stared blankly at Malik. Malik stuck his tongue out at them both, and disappeared up the stairs to work on his plot.

"Your hikari is a weirdo," Bakura stated. Marik snorted.

Chapter End