I'm very pleased with the amout of reviews I'm getting, but for all the people reading this, I think I should have more. I do accept anonymous reviews, but I have a request on those. Can everyone please leave their email (unless they're a user on here too lazy to sign in lol) so that I can answer any questions you may have? I get a lot of those on my other fics and most of the people, I don't recognize. Anyhoo, please review and let me know what you think. For those of you who didn't notice the genre at the beginning of reading this, the plot is really going to start to thicken, because the plot bunnies have PLANS for things! No event goes without reason! R&R!
Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh, I don't own a patent on the Blackberry or any invention of a high-tech piece of technology, heck I don't even own the eggs from chapter two. So anything in here you recognize from real life, you know I must not own! All I own is the plot. Sad, isn't it?
Warnings: None
CHAPTER FOUR - THE DAY GOES ON
There was only about five minutes left of their first class, so it seemed rather pointless to return, and so they all sat down in the lunch room, Ryou sitting between the two of them, and both Pandora and Seto avoiding any eye contact. Both teens were still very angry and neither one wanted to end up back in Mr. Kuramada's office.
Ryou sighed heavily, just wanting the time to move along a little bit more quickly. Seto pulled out a day planner and looked through his schedule. The little beeps were in Pandora's ears like a dinner bell to a hungry child. She recognized the sound of those beeps. They were from a very high tech, just released version of the Blackberry, and that meant that it was worth a regular person's salary for about a year! She couldn't help but glance over.
The technology was amazing. It was so small, and yet so complex. With its keyboard with tiny little letters, the screen with vivid color and sharp picture and its amazing and redesigned wand for moving over objects on the screen, this was something that any black market dealer would literally drool over and then offer their soul for.
Her sharp eyes managed to catch some of the things that he was scrolling over, and she saw a few of his appointments were almost directly after school. He had two meetings: one at 4 and the other at 5:30. Those two things didn't interest her. He was holding interviews for applicants who wanted a job at his company, but she couldn't see what the interviews were for, and they were to be held at 6:30. There was nothing really interesting to her; no big parties to crash and nothing for her to use to her advantage.
The beeping stopped but Seto still had the beautiful piece of technology in his hand. Pandora looked up. Seto had caught her stare, as had Ryou, and they were both eyeing her.
"What?!" she asked, exhasperated.
"I understand that my life is, without a doubt, more interesting than yours," Seto glared, "but try as hard as you can to stay out of it!"
She just crossed her arms, "Why would I want to have anything to do with your life? You don't even have time to pee, muchless have a life. I may not own my own company or ride around in limos, but at least I have time for fun!"
Seto leaned a little bit closer, trying to intimidate her, "Is that why you sneak off to fancy parties? So you can have fun pretending to be rich?"
She used fire against fire, and pulled him by the collar of his shirt so that she was staring directly down into his eyes, "At least I fit in in your world. You wouldn't last a single day in anyone else's shoes. You're so used to luxury that if you ever lost everything you have, you would be an empty shell with nothing left to live for. I, on the other hand, can dress up and pretend to have everything for an evening and then come home to relax in my house just watching TV all night. I don't have to worry about people watching me every single second, and I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not. And that's what you do. You're just a kid! And yet you pretend that you're some grown up with grown up responsabilities. Sick."
She let him go and sat back down. Ryou just blinked, not sure what to do or say. They had both proven a point, but this could lead to no where good, and it was leading there very quickly. Seto simply smirked.
"So, I may not be who I want to be, but I don't have to go around stealing from the rich to give to myself."
It took a minute, but suddenly, Pandora's face flushed a bit as she realized she'd been caught. Her instincts kicked in and she decided not to let this little Robin Hood complex theory get to her.
"I don't know what you're talking about! You're crazy!" she recoiled.
"It doesn't really matter to me," his smirk grew, "because money like that practically grows on trees for me. But I know you tricked me into leaving it at the house on Saturday morning. I'm no fool, Pandora. I know what you're up to and I know what you're after. Is that why you were expelled from four previous schools? For stealing?" he was trying to get a rise out of her now, even if it meant seeing the principal again.
There was that look again. She had that same expression she had before in Mr. Kuramada's office. She looked like the deer, again, the deer trapped in the headlights with her jaw open and yet no words could come out. Ryou recognized this expression, and immediatly tried to change the subject.
"Okay, guys this is really not funny! You're both going to get into trouble!" he urged them to stop arguing.
'He knows too much about my past. He's going to figure everything out and he's going to ruin me!'
'It's only the first day, just breathe, it'll all be okay. Just remember, he has a weakness too, and he can't hurt you if you don't let him.'
'It'll be okay, he won't suspect a thing, just make up an excuse!'
Pandora's expression suddenly changed and she was smirking at him again, "No, I wasn't kicked out for theft. I was kicked out because at my first school, I hit a student over the back of the head with a desk. At my second school, I tried to burn the gym down. School number three, I brought religion to school with me. School four, I tried to kill a teacher. Are you happy? Now you know. I'm not someone you want to mess around with, Seto."
Now Seto was speechless. Finally, the bell rang. Ryou stood, trying to pull Pandora away, but he noticed Evelyn walking out of a classroom, headed towards them. She gave a dirty look to both Seto and Ryou, and then looked to Pandora.
"How is your first day?" she asked, placing her hand on Pandora's shoulder.
The girls gave each other an odd look, one that sent chills up and down Ryou's spine, and then Pandora replied.
"It's okay. For day number one, that is!"
Evelyn nodded and walked off, leaving the three alone again. Swarms of students filled the hallways and Seto stood. He began to walk off, and Ryou grabbed Pandora's hand.
"I need to ask you something," he said, very seriously, "do you have a Millennium Item?"
She just stared at him, then raised an eyebrow, "A what?"
"Nothing. . ." he replied, placing his hand over the necklace he wore.
She noticed that it looked to be made of pure gold and had seen something similar to it before. It was around Yugi's neck. Yugi's had looked like a weird pyramid that was upside down and had a weird eye on it, and Ryou's had the same eye. They must've been friendship charms from when he and Yugi had been friends.
"One of those things?" she asked, grabbing the jewelry to see it better.
It looked like a donut with a triangle inside of it and an eye inside of the triangle. There were five triangles dangling from the outside of the circle. It looked a bit junky, but somehow, he made the look work.
"No, I've never seen one before. Well, before today. I saw Yugi's too. What are they, friendship necklaces? They both have the same eye shape on them," she pointed out.
"Something like that," Ryou smiled, "just wondering if you'd heard of them before."
"No, not really. What is that, solid gold?" She was very interested now.
Ryou shrugged his shoulders, "Possibly. My father gave this to me, actually. It's from Egypt. Do you know what Duel Monsters is?" he asked her as they walked to their classes.
"Isn't that. . .a card game of some sort? I hear it's popular here, and I think I heard that KaibaCorp is a mass producer of games for it."
Ryou nodded, "Actually it originated in Egypt over 5 millenia ago! They say that Duel Monsters was originally real, you know, with real monsters that almost destroyed the whole world. But there was a Pharaoh who trapped all of them inside of these really big tablets and then the rest of that story is all about magic and everything so it's not that interesting."
"I think I know the story!" Pandora exclaimed, "My mom used to tell me something like that but I was so little I never knew what the story was about! I only remember a little bit but there was supposed to be some games you could play in another dimension or something. I think she called it 'The Shadow Realm'."
"Well, this is my stop, Ryou sighed, you can finish telling me after class, though."
"No way!" she exclaimed again, "You have history too?! I'm in this class!" she showed him her schedule.
"Awsome! Then you can finish telling me now!" he said, walking into class and leading her to some seats in the back.
"Okay, well all I know about this Shadow Realm place is that it's not like here. It's supposed to be filled with pain and torment. So the loser of these games with tablets, called Shadow Games, was stuck there forever. It was really awful. Then, the Shadow Games got really bad too, so the Pharaoh had to stop it all. I don't remember how the story ends, but I remember that he had trapped a bunch of souls inside of. . ."
She looked down at the Millennium Item around Ryou's neck, and he looked down also.
"They call this one the Millennium Ring," he explained, shrugging it off as if it were nothing.
She took in a deep breath, "Do you have an evil spirit living in it?!" she asked, excitedly.
Ryou just laughed at her, mostly out of nervousness, "Of course not! That's silly talk. The stories are creepy and this Ring is really old, but Yugi and I don't have spirits in the Ring or the Puzzle!"
It was time for class to begin and for the students to pay attention. Pandora couldn't help but glance over every few seconds. The gold was almost calling to her, begging her to take it.
Seto sat in the back of his Art class, typing away on his laptop computer. He wanted to know more about this girl before she started to cause more trouble for him. Unlike Joey Wheeler, this Pandora girl was a lot more determined to defend herself and she seemed to be an admiral opponent. If he was going to bring her down before she did the same to him, he would have to work a little bit harder. He tried finding her medical history first. He typed in her name, and a whole list popped up. He stared at the screen, seeing visit after visit to hospital after hospital. He wondered if she had some sort of terminal illness or just stupidity that kept getting her injured.
He found her Domino High School schedule and glanced through it, as he tried to focus on the lesson the teacher was giving about colors.
Her first class was gym which he already knew, and second was a World History class. Ryou would be in that class as well, which meant they were probably sitting together and doing silly teenage things like passing notes or braiding hair. He couldn't help but cringe his nose at the thought. He moved on to her third class. Choir, which was Yugi's class. Yugi Moto and his band of geeks always exited their third hour class, choir, running into Seto, who had physics down the hall. After choir, Pandora shared Seto's next two classes of Theater and Paramedics Biology. They also shared a lunch. It irritated him that Theater and the Biology class were both supposed to be quality Seto/Ryou time, but now apparently that wasn't happening anymore with this new girl sharing their classes. Lunch would also be comprimised. Seto wasn't happy at all!
He focused on the project that the rest of the class was doing, probably for a whole three minutes, and after growing tired of mixing colors to find what made what, he did some quick research, wrote down the correct answers and continued his research. He decided to do some searches on her school records, and after hacking into the school's main files, he finally found a thick record on her.
It was true, she'd been kicked out of four previous schools, but this wasn't the fifth high school she'd ever attended. Aparently, there were six others. She had arrived at each one and then one day had her records transferred to a new one. Most of these schools were scattered across the world, but most of them were in Egypt.
Seto began to stop concerning himself with having Pandora's life destroyed, and was simply interested in understanding her. Her records showed that she'd definitly traveled a lot, and perhaps she was a B.R.A.T. It would explain her temper, as having a parent you rarely see and moving so often you don't make friends can do that to a person, and would also explain why she'd attended schools in the United States, Mexico, Egypt, France, and now Japan.
Learning more became a challenge, and the more Seto tried to find on this girl, the more confused he became. Claims from teachers showed her to be an outsider, most of her friends had been boys and most of them trouble makers. She never talked to anyone and always seemed 'distant' as several of them claimed. That didn't seem at all like the girl who couldn't seem to say enough.
He finally found her records at the four schools she'd been expelled from, when a hand closed the laptop half-way.
"What are you working on?" a busty brunette asked him.
He just glared and swatted away her hand, but she didn't leave. Apparently he'd been so wrapped up in his research that he had wasted the whole class on it. The bell rang, and Seto packed up his things, anxious to escape the brunette who had been bothering him for the last few months, hoping that she could convince him to date her. He was so fed up with her, he almost wanted to pay her just to leave him alone.
It was time for the third class of the day to begin, and that meant that she had Choir. He walked into the hallway and began making his way past the floods of people to his Physics class.
END OF CHAPTER FOUR
Seto: Something about that Pandora person just gives me the creeps! And it's not just because she's your made-up character!
Peggi: Well, I have to admit, she is a tiny bit creepy, but she's also mega cool.
Seto: Cool?! She's horrible! Make her go to another school and leave me alone!
Ryou: Well, I like her!
Seto: You're British. You like everyone.
Ryou:. . .I'm starting to not like you so much. . .
Peggi: Ahem! Thoughts, comments, questions, send them in reviews!