Ono: Weeeeee are the champions, my friendssss! 'Cause weeeee will write more stuff, 'til the enddddd~
Christina: … I prefer Bohemian Rhapsody myself.
Ono: I adore Another One Bites the Dust, but hey, this is more cheery. :D In any case, NEW CHAPTER.
Christina: Merry Frigging Easter, everybody.
Ono: You're just mad 'cause you only got one Easter egg.
Christina: *sobs silently*
Ono: I think our reviewers deserve virtual Easter eggs, though.
Christina: Yeah, so Easter eggs for LittleBrokenWings and CryingMarionette; you guys are awesome. ^_^
Ono: We hereby promise not to eat your souls.
Christina: Hey, I'm not making any promises...
Ono: *eyebrow raise* And here I thought I was the psychotic one...
Christina: Well, you thought wrong! *cackles evilly*
Ono: While we sort out who's yami and who's hikari in this relationship, here's the next installment of the fic.
Vitiate
Chapter Three: In Which the Ritual Fails... Miserably.
Upon completing the ritual Ryou was somewhat disappointed to find that he could detect no visible difference in the Ring. Or anything else, really. Glancing around shiftily he noted with an odd mixture of frustration and relief that none of his furniture came to life to swallow the Ring whole or any other such thing. (God, did he really believe that would happen? He was more sleep deprived than he initially thought.)
Ryou didn't know exactly what he expected... the Voice wouldn't be pleased about being evicted from the item that housed his soul, he imagined, so at the very least it would make sense for him to put up a bit of a fight. Screaming as he was dragged to the bowels of hell, for example, or attempting to drag his backstabbing 'host' along with him.
Instead, the Ring lay silently glinting amongst the scattered faux ritualistic objects, one of the pendulums dipped halfway in the puddle of Ryou's blood. Unintentionally, Ryou found himself reaching up to place his hand over the scars on his torso, fingers dipping into a couple of the indents beneath his shirt that had never completely healed up.
He shivered a bit before shaking it off. There was nothing for it. Putting the Ring back on to test whether or not the spirit was still inside was out of the question.
Ryou had been half-surprised upon retrieving the Ring from the refrigerator - holding it by the cord, of course, so it was less likely the pendulums would flail around and maim his injured hand any more than it already was - that the spirit stayed silent. Even when he wasn't wearing the item during Duelist Kingdom the Voice still spoke to him, force feeding lies into his head, and crept like a stalking animal through his soul room. But at the moment there wasn't even the faintest whisper, nor the quietest footstep.
He came to the conclusion that the spirit was resting, no doubt as exhausted, if not more, than Ryou himself. While he liked the idea that the Voice suffered just as much as him through the ordeal, the thought that the cursed thing was currently curled up in bed understandably irked him. Not to mention that killing the spirit in his sleep seemed too... easy.
In the end none of this really mattered. All that Ryou had to show for his mad scheme was a trashed apartment and a dismembered finger. Oh, and an angry spirit. When the Voice woke up, Ryou knew he would be given hell for severing his finger.
He could already hear it: Now all of your idiot friends will be suspicious, you useless excuse for a vessel.
And not just his friends, Ryou realized with a sinking feeling in his gut, but teachers, strangers, anyone he happened to run into. His father, too, if the man kept his promise to come home for Christmas that year (not likely, but it was possible). Ryou wouldn't feel particularly troubled if it hadn't been for the fact that losing one's little finger wasn't a common occurrence. Not something that could be explained away easily, at least.
Suddenly his spontaneous decisions looked even more moronic than they had before. Glancing around, in a half-hearted attempt to distract himself from his abused appendage, Ryou took stock of his small home. His eyes came back to the table that the remains of the diorama stood on, looking as though it'd gone through World War II. Ryou's mouth went dry as the image of the near-demolished thing registered in his mind.
Shit.
Forget his finger, the spirit would be absolutely livid that he'd more or less destroyed three days of his work.
Running, hiding or any attempt to escape the spirit's wrath would prove futile; he'd discovered that enough times before to know that the ever-present, ever-tormenting Voice would always find him again, seek him out, lure him back; nothing but a vicious cycle, and Ryou powerless to escape...
That uncharacteristic yet familiar anger began to surge through him, full-force and stronger than before. Why should he live in fear of a voice? Why should he allow this parasitic fiend to use and abuse his body as he pleased? Why should he?
…of course, he reminded himself somewhat bitterly, the Voice held all the power, the Voice knew how to utilise the energy of the Shadows (without the need for self-mutilation, too), and the Voice controlled him through the Ring, like a slave master, or a puppeteer, or a wicked, self-proclaimed deity.
The only thing keeping him from pulverising Ryou, from tearing him apart limb-from-limb, or decapitating him - as he'd often done with the bullies unfortunate enough to target his host - was the fact that the spirit needed his body.
The body which Ryou had now defiled. He knew there would be consequences for this... a punishment befitting the crime. He shuddered involuntarily, but caught himself. No. He would not be afraid of the Spirit. Not anymore.
This is my body. My body, not the spirit's body, not anyone's body except mine. I'll do what I like with it.
To hell with the Voice - both literally, and metaphorically.
That's right, Spirit. You heard me. Fuck you.
Shortly after he let his thoughts be heard, loud and clear, to the room, he braced himself for the inevitable mental onslaught.
...No response. How disappointing. Unless...
Unless the spirit is gone?
Hope, foolish, desperate hope, instantly began to bubble up in Ryou's chest. He licked his lips and stared at the now possibly vacant Millennium Ring.
Did he dare..?
Fingers shaking from either exhaustion or trepidation - or, quite possibly, both - reached out to tentatively touch the item.
Ouch.
A strange, tingling sort of sensation. As though the Millennium Ring simmered with dark power, vengeful after Ryou's crazed ministrations. He drew his hand back as if burned, staring wide-eyed at the item began to glow dully. The yellow-gold haze grew more pronounced as it did when the spirit revealed himself with flourish.
It threw him off-guard, and he felt himself losing his balance, tripping forward and stumbling over his own feet, head smashing against the unyielding surface of the table. A moan escaped his lips as he crumpled, black seeping into the edges of his vision.
Amongst the pieces of shattered diorama, the large globules of old, semi-dried blood, and the fresher liquid now pooling around a vicious-looking head wound, Ryou Bakura's body lay dormant.
Oddly enough, the first thing that Ryou noticed upon regaining consciousness (in his mind, at least) consisted of the temperature of his soul room.
Said temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees since his last visit. Frigid air wormed its way through his clothes as though he wore nothing at all. The feeling of goosebumps welling up and the exposed hair on his arms standing on end irked him into opening his eyes.
Ryou blinked, as it seemed there were black blobs in his vision. Had he really hit his head that hard..? His eyesight grew less fuzzy after a few moments, but the blobs only became more pronounced.
There appeared to be a thick, tar-black substance on the far wall, just around the door. As Ryou watched the stuff pulsated and wriggled, stretching its gooey tentacles further across the cream-coloured wall.
He stared at it, wondering if hallucinating was possible in his soul room, though he knew the more likely answer had something to do with the Voice. Had he figured out what Ryou had done and incorporated these black tendrils into some form of punishment? A - what did he call them? - "penalty game"?
Spirit. What is this?
His question remained unanswered, the Voice remained unresponsive; it figured. The spirit only spoke to him when he saw fit, most often when the result of speaking directly benefited the vile entity.
The only sound to fill the silence was that of the dark goo's odd pulsations, slowly but steadily moving outwards across the walls. His soul room was frigid and unyielding on the best of days, but this new addition... it added an entirely new level to 'creepy'.
The pungent odour that the goop seemed to emanate mingled with the usual musty stench of dust and ancient stone. The dense cloud of noxious-looking purple gases wafted around, shrouding the already badly illuminated room in a curtain of darkness. He shivered, the action a mixture of fear and the sub-zero temperature.
Surely this couldn't be the doing of the spirit? He'd seen fit to punish Ryou plenty of times before this rather uncharacteristic incident, but he'd never unleashed anything reminiscent of this strange concoction... Could it be harmful?
If this isn't the spirit's doing then... where exactly did it come from? Surely I couldn't have..?
Ryou realised that fooling around with Shadow magic probably ranked in the top three most idiotic things that a mortal being could possibly do; especially when one didn't use the right ingredients. Was this a repercussion of his little experiment? He reached out, fingers brushing lightly against the glutinous substance oozing across the wall...
What the..?
Before he could form any sort of reaction, the goop retracted back into a long, malformed tentacle, waving around in the air for a split second before wrapping itself around Ryou's waist. The same repugnant ooze that he'd tentatively touched before seeped through his cotton t-shirt more quickly than water. The liquid, he discovered quickly, was incredibly sticky and equally cold.
His main concern changed from the mere discomfort said liquid caused in favour of paying attention to the crushing grip. All too quickly his organs were squashed against both his rib cage and each other, leaving little room to breathe.
Suspended three feet in the air, near-on asphyxiated and with off-violet sludge trailing languidly down his leg, Ryou remained frozen stiff, and absolutely terrified. In return, the malleable limb only moved again, twining around his body more fully, like an enormous serpent. He kicked and wriggled a bit, grabbing handfuls in an attempt to harm it, to no avail.
Whatever confidence he'd built up before - in preparation for his confrontation with the Voice - completely drowned in his terror. Fuck pride; he was being crushed to death by a giant slimy tentacle.
Inhaling with quite some difficulty as the thing tickled almost playfully at his throat, he somehow managed to regain the use of his vocal chords.
"Spirit!" Ryou screamed, writhing around in the unrelenting grasp of the slimy appendage, "This isn't funny. Please, make it stop. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please. Make it stop. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm-"
Hush, mortal.
An intrusion; another entity tapping into the link between the spirit and his 'host'. Deep, grinding, nails-against-chalkboard, shocking Ryou enough to make him cease his wailing and go limp. His expression halted similarly, eyes bulging and mouth hanging partially open in a way that he might have had the self-consciousness to care about had he not been so horrified
Excellent. I see that my servant has trained you well.
...Servant? This situation grew gradually more confusing by the second.
"Who are you?"
The tentacle squeezed him more tightly, the action accompanied by an ominous cackle, echoing against the bare walls of the corridor - clearly where the rest of this slimy creature remained hidden.
It appears my servant has not seen fit to inform you of my existence. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
… If this monster referred to the spirit as his 'servant', this situation could only get much, much worse. The idea of something so malevolent, so evil, being just a pawn in another's game, just a marionette while another controlled the strings, absolutely terrified Ryou.
Gagging slightly at the repugnant odour of the repressive slime, he squirmed around and tried to free one of his arms, but to no avail.
"Who are you?" he repeated, albeit this time the words were choked and mangled, as his oxygen supply gradually depleted.
You'll learn soon enough, mortal.
Thrust unceremoniously back into his physical body, Ryou breathed deeply and - once he'd gathered the strength to do so - rolled out of the puddle of alarming-large blood plasma pooling around him.
He let out a strange, strangled sound - half sob, half hysterical giggle - and realised that he'd hit his head pretty hard and probably given himself concussion...
Which had, of course, only naturally led to the strange dream he'd just experienced. Only a dream, a figment of his imagination, a by-product of his worries about facing up to the Spirit.
...So why exactly were his arms and torso covered in a thick, purple slime?
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.
Ryou leapt up, momentarily forgetting his throbbing headache and obscene amount of blood loss; a whitish haze shrouded his vision and he staggered forwards, blinded. He could, however, feel the coating of glutinous liquid oozing slowly downwards, dragged by gravity but seemingly out of cruel spite, a vicious reminder...
Miraculously, he located the bathroom and tore his soiled clothes from his body. Unceremoniously dropping them to the floor, his vision now significantly less clouded, he stumbled towards the shower unit.
He reached in and set the dial to the hottest setting available, intent on scalding and scrubbing his body so vigorously he'd somehow wash away all traces of the creature's slime... and perhaps all memory of the tentacled beast in the process.
Selecting the strongest scented gel from his collection - which happened to be coconut fragranced - he inhaled deeply from the container and attempted to rid his nostrils of that lingering, repulsive odour. He shuddered. Goosebumps began to form across his exposed, naked skin, as he waited for the cascade of water to heat.
Since when did the temperature drop several degrees?
Climbing into the shower unit, the tepid water warmed his skin slightly, but overall did little to distract him from the feeling that someone - or something - was watching him. He shivered involuntarily.
Oh god. Don't turn around, Ryou. Don't turn. Don't...
He turned.
Beyond the shower door that he'd somehow managed to habitually close there was an indistinct shape. Once or twice when he'd bathed before he swore he saw someone standing there before, but chalked it up to his paranoia. While that figure was clearly a pale, slim humanoid shape, barely visible amongst the accumulated steam, this one was decidedly different.
While the other hallucination - that's what Ryou told himself it was, just a hallucination, in spite of knowing better - hadn't moved, this one clearly was clearly getting closer and closer. Ryou stayed stock still as the looming dark mass came soundlessly forward. He couldn't make out the outline of it in spite of the sudden closeness. The thing seemed to have no distinct shape aside from sporadically moving blackness, first twisted into one form, then another. For a few moments it actually managed to turn into a humanlike figure, a hulking silhouette nearly double Ryou's size.
Ryou had instinctively backed up at some point without realising it. The goose-flesh prickled as he attempted to squeeze himself further into a corner.
Even as he pressed impossibly further back, the creature standing outside of the shower (because that's what it was, a creature, a monster, as much as Ryou wished it was just goddamned hallucination) pressed itself against the glass.
Ryou's breath caught in his throat as he made out eyes the colour of freshly spilled blood, the only unchanging factor in its appearance. Tiny slit pupils stared at him through the fragile barrier, and he only managed to tear his gaze away to look down at the diluted purple liquid seeping into the shower from beyond the glass. The ungodly stench from before had returned full-force, overpowering all other senses.
"Oh, god..." A strangled sound made its way out of Ryou's throat as he looked back up, his meager meal from what seemed like hours ago welling up in his throat.
He covered his mouth with his hand and shut his eyes as tightly as he could. Somehow the water had turned icy cold in the space of the past minute, searing the half of his body that was in it with its chill. As a result every muscle in his exhausted body had tensed, shaking horribly from a combination of the cold water and pure, unadulterated fear.
Spirit..? Ryou mentally reached out for the presence that he'd grown to hate, searching if only to feel the tinge of something Voice was horrid, but he'd helped Ryou before...
All he found in the back of his mind was frigid darkness, pulsating against his consciousness along with the deep, grating voice:
Hello, mortal.
Christina: And so, Zorc finally shows his ugly mug! About time!
Ono: He... sort of shows his ugly mug... kind of... mostly he rapes Ryou mentally. :D
Christina: Gosh, what a lovely guy. :')
Ono: You all know you're totally into him.
Christina: And you also know that you totally want to leave us a review, to motivate us... (:
Ono: All shall be revealed in time.