Author's Note: Well hi again folks! It seems that chapter 7 was the most popular chapter yet! Well there is more of that stuff yet! I've just finished writing chapter 12 and I think you guys are going to love it! Oh, something else as well. Does anyone know why is constantly deleting punctuation marks! It is driving me crazy! Anywho, onto the fic! Lets call it 65 reviews huh? That's 10 reviews for this chapter! I've put up the number a bit because I need some time to get ahead on the writting. Hope you enjoy this chapter guys!

Chapter 8

-:Pass:-

In which a player declines to take action in their turn and instead waits for their opponent's next move.

Sun peeked through the curtains of the bedroom, casting thin bands of light on the carpeted floor. Normally, the arrival of the morning sun would awaken the resident of the bedroom, one Yugi Moto, but today this was not the case. There was no one in the bed to be woken. There was no one at all in the room. Where the small form of Yugi could normally be found dozing peacefully amid tangled covers, the bed showed all the signs of not having been slept in, and the sheets were conspicuously straight and clean. At nine O'clock the door to the bedroom opened and a figure stepped in, closing the door gently behind them. Yami sighed. It was a deep, meaningful sigh. The sound of heartache and guilt. He had hardly slept at all that night, knowing that Yugi was trapped inside his own mind somewhere in the city. Anger boiled up inside of the spirit. How had he not noticed? Now that he knew what was going on, everything dropped into place, the hand, the looking at the cards all the time, the initial weakness. This was why Yugi hadn't noticed he was gone in the first place, because as far as Yugi had been concerned he was still there, or at least something was living in his mind, even if it wasn't the Pharaoh.

His blood simmered angrily at the thought that Yugi had spent all night out in the dark on his own. Sure it wasn't actually Yugi, but the real Yugi was scared of the dark and had probably been terrified the whole night. Then the big question was where had Ieb taken his host to sleep? Had they slept at all? If Ieb had made the mistake of sleeping rough he might not have woken up that next morning, Yugi wasn't a built as a fighter and would never be able to keep off anyone who might give him trouble, he was only small after all. Yami's heart clenched in his chest as he walked over to the desk next to the bed.

"It's all my fault." He groaned to himself, dropping his head to his chest. "If only I'd asked him about it, if only I'd watched him more closely, and now I don't know what kind of danger he's in." Yami sunk into the chair, suppressing his urge to break something, as everything in the room belonged to Yugi. "I might never even be able to get him back. Ishizu said she'd look into it, but she thought we were just separated, she didn't know someone else had taken my place." The anger in Yami rose at those words, someone had taken his place. Yugi might not even want him back after this experience. Somehow the Pharaoh couldn't help but think that Yugi probably wouldn't want anyone else sharing his body after Ieb had abused the privilege so badly.

Yami slammed his fist down on the desk, causing the pile of cards on it to slip and fall to the floor. "I may as well take these though," Yami bent and collected the duel monsters deck slowly. This was his and Yugi's deck. Both of them had a part of their souls invested in these cards and as Yami collected them reverently he could almost feel Yugi in the room telling him it would all be ok. "But it won't." The Pharaoh said to no one in particular, his voice shaking a little. "How could you ever bring yourself to trust me again?" A tear slipped from Yami's eye and he brushed it away angrily. "I failed you." Somewhere in the back of Yami's mind a small voice whispered something to him, and Yami's heart rose, the threat of tears gone in an instant. It sounded like Yugi. He knew it couldn't be as their connection was dead, but it sounded like something Yugi would say. 'This isn't your fault' Yami's mind Yugi smiled, 'Even if you had asked me about this, what would you have been able to do hmm? Neither of us know how to extract a soul without harming the host. There was nothing you could have done, and the best thing you can do now is come up with a strategy to sort this mess out.' Yami nodded at this, the best course of action would be to work out what to do and how to save Yugi. Collecting up the last few cards Yami stood up, a new sense of purpose in his heart. "I'll figure out how to save you Yugi." He said to thin air, clutching the deck tightly. "And I'll do it in the only way I know how."

----

A few minutes away, in central Domino someone was causing a racket. Soshimoro was an area known for rough sleepers. The police had a unit that practically lived down there, but there always seemed to be too many homeless people to cope with. The police would move them on, the homeless would move into the next alley, the police would follow and the whole thing would start all over again. Arguments were not uncommon, fights were fairly frequent though only between one or two people at a time. Killings were rare but not unheard of. Yugi Moto was the last sort of person that you would expect to see hanging around in Soshimoro, but as it happened that was exactly where he had been for the entire night.

It was nine in the morning, traffic could be heard rushing past and the sound of people arguing rang out in the alley from a flat to the left. A father and son as it happened. The son had beaten up a teacher at school and his father was very definitely going to make him pay for it. Across the road two kids were skipping, but after a few moments their mother came out and hurried them back indoors again. The city was just starting to spring into action, the day had hardly begun, and already Yugi was attracting the wrong kind of attention.

"Hey, Kazuomi!" A tall, broad teenage boy called his friend, who was busy stuffing his blankets into a tattered looking rucksack. "Kazuomi!" The boy called again. Kazuomi finally responded by heaving his rucksack over one shoulder and nodding his head to two other boys to follow him. Kazuomi could only have been nineteen at the most and although he wasn't tall, compared to Yugi he was a giant. The boy had long shaggy black hair, several bruises about his person and an almost constant sneer on his face. The other boy, Naotatsu, was taller and very certainly dumber than his older counterpart. Naotatsu was considerably more muscular than Kazuomi and radiated an air of danger about him; in the case that that wasn't an obvious enough sign about the sort of person that he was, the bloodied knuckles were sure to be a dead give-away. The other half of the gang, Michiyuki and Motosuga were borrowed muscle, recently Kazuomi was doing a roaring business in pick-pocketing and muggings. A few weeks ago he'd managed to get hired by one of the smaller crime lords, consequently he'd received the two rugby-player brothers on loan.

"What is it Tatsu?" The elder of the two asked irritably as he strode over. But he stopped when he saw what it was that Naotatsu was towering over. Below the brick wall of a teen was a smaller boy curled up tightly, his skin pale and his eyelids twitching with an unreadable dream. "Well, well, well." Kazuomi smiled coldly, but the expression was distorted by his twisted lip. "What have we here? Some rich kid who decided that he wasn't happy having everything he ever wanted so he ran away hmm?" The three muscular boys laughed at their boss's joke, but Kazuomi remained steely faced. Smiling he bent down over the sleeping form of Yugi, eyeing the golden pyramid around his neck. "Well done Tatsu, we're onto a winner with this one, too small to attack us or defend himself." Unbelievably gently the mastermind of the gang leant forward, wrapped his index finger around the chain supporting the millennium puzzle and slipped it off over the sleeping boy's head. With that done, Kazuomi turned around so his back was to Yugi. "Lets show him what we do to rich boys around here hmm?" Naotatsu, Michiyuki and Motosuga grinned and laughed stupidly, cracking their knuckles and rolling their necks. So what if it was broad daylight, in Soshimoro nobody cared as long as it wasn't them being beaten to a pulp. "Oh," Kazuomi turned, his eyes flashing with blood lust and greed. "And if you do kill him, you know where to stash the body."

Reviewer's Section:

Pyscho Kage Suma: Worry not! I shall take care of Yugi! Though unfortunately things are only about to get worse before they get better... ;

Coco Gash Niccals: Watches Ieb get torched, sneakily nabbing some of Yami's popcorn. Poor guy...but hang on a minute! Hey! I need him for the next few chapters! You haven't caused Yugi and Yami anywhere near enough grief to die yet! Chases Gash and Ieb

Masami Mistress of Fire: Aw kitty! Huggles Masami Anyways, here is a rapid update for you! Yay for chapter buffering! If I didn't have a few chapters already written I'd never be able to update this fast! Anywho, don't worry about Yugi he'll be just fi...reads next few chapters no...scratch that...fine probably isn't the word I would use...

gowb: Lol, yay for cliffies! As for what Yugi was about to say I've actually already kind of given it away. But maybe Yugi is more onto Ieb that he originally thought...And as for easing your suffering...gestures to update TA DA!

Yami Yuugi: Glad you liked the update, and I was hoping to kill some questions. Don't worry, they'll be more hanging around sooner or later! And what I said about Yu-Gi-Oh stuff in the UK, the manga novels have only just come out here! The only way that I can watch episodes is on the net, so I've never seen some of the most important ones like Yugi's duel with Pegasus, the orichalcoas episodes and loads of others...I'm so deprived lol! Alos my lack of YGO exposure means I'm kinda writting 'blind' so to speak ;

frogger666: LMAO! I laughed out loud when I read your comment! Yes, Ieb isn't quite all there, but don't we all love well spoken, polite and slightly unhinged villans!

Cactus Bob: Yes Ieb and Yami will duel eventually...kind of...you'll see! Now, to the important thing. Food! I loooove seafood. Yum...prawns, smoked salmon, shrimps, lobster, muscles, cod...in the case that hadn't worked it out, I've yet to have lunch yet and I'm hungry lol !