Chapter Two: Practice

"For the love of god, Mai, put some emotion into this! You're giving your newborn son over to the Nile in order to save his life from the pharaoh's wrath! Not casually dropping a cereal box in a shopping basket!"

Kanta was fuming. This was showing every sign of becoming another Teen Titans fiasco. She grasped her clipboard tightly, hardly aware that it was biting into her hand to the point of drawing blood, silently counting to ten. It wasn't working.

"Excuse me."

"Yaaaah!" The bespectacled girl jumped a foot into the air as a soft touch met her shoulder. Recovering quickly, she spun around and came face to face...or rather, face to hair...with Yugi. Her startled expression melted quickly into one of irritation as she gave her watch a heated glare. "You're late. You're both late. Why are you both late? If the two main characters do not arrive on time I will simply jump into oncoming traffic right now because I am not going to deal with another disaster."

Yugi looked up at her with wide eyes. "Well, uh, I hope you don't do that. You see, we're only late because Bakura broke into our house this morning and stole all of our left shoes, which was a small problem—"

"Bakura!"

"What?" The thief looked up and found himself under the scrutiny of an enraged and glaring Kanta. He sighed in irritation. "What now?"

"Did you break into the home of the stars of my play, stealing their left shoes and thus making them tardy to this morning's practice?"

He smirked. "Yes."

"Don't do it again." The girl whirled, a quick one-eighty turn that left Bakura staring at the back of her head and placed Yami and Yugi in the uncomfortable position of being targets for her death glare. "And you two…from now on, I don't care if Bakura has stolen your pants, your shirts, and every pair of boxer shorts you own, you will get your asses here on time or I will kill you. And that is not an exaggeration!" She swiveled once more, executing a ninety-degree turn to the stage. "Mai! Emotion, dammit, emotion! Let's try that scene again!"

Mai groaned loudly. "We've done this scene fifty thousand times already! When's a girl get a break around here?" Rebecca and Rex nodded in agreement, a motion that was followed by a long period of silence in which nobody on or offstage moved an inch. Finally, after an eternity, Kanta blinked and conceded. "One more time, then we move on to the burning bush scene."

.oOo.

"Yal-di ha-tov veh ha-rach, al ti-ra veh al tif-chad, my son, I have nothing I can give, but this chance that you may live, I pray we'll meet again, if he will deliver us…" Mai wrapped a blanket around the little child in her arms as she sang, moving towards the door with her older son and daughter. Rex carried a basket in his arms as they rushed through the streets of their village, desperately slipping through the slaughter surrounding them. Mai watched everything despite the overwhelming urge to close her eyes and make it all disappear. Her observance paid off; as she sighted a band of passing soldiers her hand shot out and pulled Rex back before they noticed his presence. A moment passed before the three returned to their dash toward the Nile.

Reaching the banks, they slowed, emotion catching up to Mai as her children looked on. Fighting tears, she somehow found her voice once more. "Hush now, my baby, be still love, don't cry. Sleep as you're rocked by the stream. Sleep and remember my last lullaby, so I'll be with you as you dream…" With a last, longing look at her infant son, the woman placed the lid tightly over him and waded into the river. "River, oh river, flow gently for me. Such precious cargo you bear… Do you know somewhere he can be free? River, deliver him there…" Mai felt herself lose the battle with tears as they broke free of her shining eyes and trickled softly down her face beneath the Egyptian sun. As her mother wept, Rebecca made her way down the banks, silently following the basket's course.

.oOo.

"That's a wrap on the basket scene. Good work everyone, moving on." Kanta's sharp words jerked Mai, Rex, Rebecca, and even Johji out of their stupor. Despite the fact that they were still reading off their scripts, for a moment…it had almost seemed…real…

"Yugi! Bakura! Your scene is up! Let's go, people!" Shaking their heads, the four from the previous scene cleared the stage to make way for Yugi and an unlikely God.

"Okay, Bakura, since this is only the first practice, we obviously don't have the burning bush. Therefore, you will stand in for the bush." Bakura raised an eyebrow at the girl standing before him, taking in her deceptively calm demeanor. "You want me to 'stand in' for a bush?" His skeptical tone made it clear that, while he was perfectly happy to play God, the thief had no desire to become a piece of shrubbery.

Kanta's grip on her clipboard tightened once more. "You will simply stand where the bush would normally be and read your lines. If you refuse to go along with the way I run my practice, I will personally removeany chance you have of producing children in the future. Do I make myself clear?" Somewhere offstage, Ryou snorted slightly in a failed attempt to hide his laughter. Bakura nodded in mock-respect, grumbling threats to himself as Kanta grinned tightly. "Great. Now then, if 'God' here has no further problems, could we start the scene?"

Bakura sighed. "Moses, Moses, Moses."

"With feeling, Bakura! You're the god of your people, not Jan Brady! Try a mysterious whisper instead of the pout."

The white hair spiked out slightly as he gritted his teeth. "Moses. Moses. Mosessss."

"You're not a snake, either!"

"MOSES, MOSES, I'M-GOING-TO-SEND-YOU-ALL-TO-THE-SHADOWS-MOSES!"

"God doesn't threaten to send people to the shadows. I've had it with you for now; Yugi, just read your line."

Yugi gulped and fidgeted a little, glancing down at the highlighted line on the script in his hands. "Here I am," he whispered, sounding appropriately fearful and cautious due to the threat of an already-pissed Kanta. She said nothing, merely smiled the tiniest of smiles at him and waved at Bakura to continue.

"Take the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground," he commanded softly with a trivial glare, sounding a little less like an ancient evil and a little more like a holy being. But only a little. Sharp brown eyes narrowed at him over the clipboard, but nothing was said and the scene continued uninterrupted. Yugi glanced at his line, then inquired frightfully, "Who are you?"

"I am a thief and a stealer of souls."

"Dammit, Bakura!"

Kanta lost all patience and hurled her clipboard at him; he dodged skillfully and smirked, "Force of habit."

She intensified her glare, magnifying it through her lenses like a ray of summer sun. "I don't care if your habits include drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and an unusual fetish for underwater sword fighting, if they interfere with my play I will follow through on that threat! Don't push me! And Yugi!"

Yami tensed on behalf of his hikari as the boy shrank back from her vicious snarl, shaking. "Y-yes?…"

"You're good. I like you." He sighed in relief as she turned away from him to retrieve her clipboard from the edge of the stage. "Continue scene!"

Everyone executed a collective jump at the shouted demand, breathing deeply before returning to whispered line readings and scattered backstage organization. Yugi repeated his previous line, hoping for Bakura's sake that he would respond correctly. "Who are you?"

"I am…that I am."

Kanta grinned to herself with a silent sigh. "Now we're getting somewhere…"

Author Note: Well, that's chapter two! Thanks much for the reviews. I love reviews. - I know the story starts out rather slowly, but it gets more developed a few chapters on. Anyway, hope you liked it; keep reading!