LD: Ummm, hi ya'll! You'll never believe it. My computer got another Trojan and I lost over 20 pages of work and scrambled 40 pages of poetry. That's why this is so late.
Bakura: That's a damned pathetic excuse
LD: Kinda like your damned pathetic excuse for a brain?
Tea: LD does not own anything pertaining to the original YuGiOh!
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"Why does this kind of thing-hic- always-hic happen to me?!!!" wailed Ryou from his new-found home on the floor. With the way his tears were going, it looked like he planned to have a pond installed.
"Due to my-hic accent and inclination to being submissive, I've been bullied-hic ever since I was but a wee littl' lad." He sniffed pathetically.
Bakura raised a skeptical brow. "Since when are you Irish?" Ryou just wailed all the louder.
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Malik knew many things. He knew the chemical equation for cellular respiration: glycolysis, Krebs cycle, and electron transport chain. He could name over a hundred constellations. Malik knew how to hunt, cook, sew, and the basics of healing. Malik knew magic, and he knew the grand beauty of the sun pushing up over the sand dunes of Egypt.
And much more importantly, Malik knew that it was wrong to hit girls. But if that brown haired menace didn't cease and desist that instant, his morals were going to be irreversibly compromised.
"MhhhHmmmmmmmHummmmuumm.." Tea happily hummed as she skipped along, and Malik limped a noteworthy distance behind her, looking for all the world like a kicked dog.
I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the school wasn't so bad afterall, he mentally griped. Tea hit a particularly high note on her humming, and Malik tried to remember if there was any rule against kicking girls instead.
"MimHMmmmmmwmmmm..." Tea continued tonelessly. It was almost worse than being in history class. Without his even realizing it, Malik's pearl white teeth gnashed, producing a sound akin to a dying bullfrog squeezed into a thimble.
"Would you please-"
"Shut up?" Tea finished his request for him. "Sorry. I suppose I 've gotten so used to people expecting that kind of thing from me that it's become automatic."
She walked forward down the slowly stirring street in silence, leaving Malik to try and discern both what she meant by that and why he was feeling so guilty.
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"THIS ONE'S FOR THE PENGUINS!!!!" Yami howled as he dashed a sac of flour over the sputtering Seto Kaiba.
"WELL THIS IS FOR ALL THE KIDS WHO'VE HAD TO WATCH YOUR DAMN UGLY FACE PLASTERED OVER THE TV SCREEN FOR MONTHS IN A ROW!!!!" Seto roared, buffeting his eternal rival with another of the flour sacs.
"Ya' know, he kinda does have a point there," observed Joey. He, along with the rest of the combatants, had retired to the sidelines as the last two obdurately duked it out in solitude. Although, he did make a point of reaching over and smacking the nerdy kid at least once every two minutes. After all, somebody had to teach the kid the way of the world, right?
"Come, My Giant Army OF PENGUINS!!!!" Yami squealed-a few of the bystanders winced at the pitch. Out of nowhere, an enormous congregation of oddly sized penguins sprang up behind him and began advancing on the flabbergasted figure of one Seto Kaiba.
"WHERE THE HELL DID THEY COME FROM???" He screamed, tripping over his ridiculous Kaiba-brand trench coat as he scrambled away.
"THE SHADOW REALM!!!" Yami screamed back, riding him down on a tutu wearing penguin weilding sushi knives.
"HOW MUCH CRAP DO YOU KEEP THERE ANYWAYS!!!"
"IT WAS WHERE I SHOVED ALL MY STUFF WHEN MA YODELED FOR ME TO CLEAN MY ROOM!!"
"YODELED????!!!!"
"SHE WAS JUST WEIRD LIKE THAT!!!!"
"And the penguins and the CEO and the pharaoh go round and round, round and round..." murmured Joey, slugging the nerd again, just because.
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"This always happens to ME!" bawled Ryou. The students around them had to pull up their pants as they went by, for his tears had formed a large puddle that was creeping further and further down the halls.
"I'm the one who gets stuck chased by psychopaths, ridiculed by girls even, and I am the ONLY one who EVER ends up sharing the hospital ward with Yugi's GRANDPA!!!!"
Bakura winced; he too had nightmares about that old man: the way he talked in his sleep, what he talked about in his sleep, and his freaky fetish for thongs. Not to mention, the way he got closer and closer to the person he was conversing with, gazing at them unblinkingly. Luckily, Yugi had always burst in at those....awkward moments, devising ways to divert his grandfather's odd attentions.
Bakura almost kissed him for that. Indeed, that was the first reason he had for tolerating the boy's presence. Over time, he found him rather amusing, aside from his seemimg incapability to shut-the-f***-up, and developed an easy friendship with him.
Needless to say, the pharoah almost had a conniption when he found out. Bakura smiled fondly at the memory, causing whoever saw him to run for their lives.
"Why me?" Ryou sobbed. His tears had risen up in depth, meaning the original puddle had spread through the base of the entire school. "I have no love life, no social life, and I get possessed by a revenge obsessed neurotic!"
Bakura's hand, which had been jerkily patting Ryou's back, twitched, and it was all he could do to keep himself from twining it in his counterpart's beautiful, silky, ethereal hair--
and yanking as hard as he could.
The theif took a deep, stabilizing breath. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers.
"And worst off," the disconsolate Brit groaned. "I have no MUFFINS!!!"
Bakura took another deep, stabilizing breath. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers. Girls-
Ryou's tears had risen to three feet, and Bakura thought he saw something moving in the water. Longingly, his tan hand twitched over the silky strands. Girls pulled hair, not Tomb Robbers.
......How much did a sex change cost?
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Malik sipped at the smoothie Tea had bought for him. Of a delicious strawberry flavor, it sent his tongue into rapture. Although he had tried to decline at first, the obstinate girl had literally forced it into his hands. He kept an eye on her as they walked. After they had delved farther into this mire of a city, her mood had improved, sparking upwards into a giddy excitement that almost frightened him. But her behavior earlier still confused him, and inadvertantly his lavender eyes kept straying back to her form.
Well, he reasoned, no wonder. Tea's face equated to a never ending storybook: her heart shone through her bright blue eyes. Malik shook himself as he realized the gentle smile that had softened his face.
"Good morning Mrs. Roquido!" Tea called to a plump lady airing her laundry from a fourth story apartment. Blowing a gray strand from her face, the woman waved back, smiling merrily.
"Tea!" boomed a hearty voice. Large as a mountain-or Kaiba's ego-a beefy man with a drooping moustache leaned out of a tiny restaurant. "How you doin', girl?"
Tea laughed. "Well enough, Mr. Rosert, and you?"
He flapped his enormous hand in a clear so-so gesture, then departed at the calling of a frustrated customer.
Smiling, Tea strolled ahead, nodding her brunette head to a tune only she could hear. Suddenly she gave a cry, rushing forward. Malik looked around for the cause of alarm, but all he saw was a wriggling heap of garbage. Did garbage heaps in Domino wriggle?
He almost gagged when Tea reached into the mess. Was she dumb? He thought about the humming, the bulb, and her unceasing cheeriness, and decided that the question might be unnecessary.
"Eureka!" Whipping around again, the Egyptian youth gaped as Tea pulled a puppy out of the junk. She tickled its' spotted stomache, laughing. Bemused, Malik ambled to her side.
"Malik, meet Nara. Nara, this is Malik!" Before he could blink, the puppy recieved full access to his face, which it judiciously applied itself to using--with its tongue, of course. Tea extended the furry mass, and he received it, although awkwardly. It constantly squirmed and moved and nibbled- and Malik, for all his worldly experience, had never held a puppy before. After all, Egyptians were more cat-people than dog.
"HEY LOOK! A WEIRD MISTER FOUND NARA!!" And just like that, Malik was tackled to the ground by no less than five grade-schoolers, all screaming at the top of their lungs.
"Surrender Nara, puppy-napper!" A thin voice piped, and Malik found himself staring into the dark blue eyes of a furious kid who looked like she and all hairbrushes were mortal enemies. Even Bakura's hair wasn't that messy!
"Listen kid, I didn't-" An excrutiating pain tore through him as the kid stomped-actually stomped on his shin.
"Ra damn all brats!" he hissed, cradling his leg. A slender hand curled over his shoulder; he heard the brat gasp and he looked up into Tea's concerned eyes.
"Malik here helped me find Nara; he didn't steal her." Tea clarified. "You know how bad she is about running away." This last comment was said with an odd inflection on 'you' and 'running away.' With interest, Malik watched as the kid's face turned red all the way to her forehead. She scuffed a sandal-ed foot against the pavement bashfully. The other kids slowly disentangled themselves from Malik.
The kid who had kicked him held out her arms, and Nara cavorted into them, yipping happily. "Sorry about that," she tossed out awkwardly and nodded for one of the other kids to help him to his feet.
Tea clapped her hands. "Introduction time!" Malik eyed her resignedly. Peppiness that extreme should be illegal. But then again, he mused as she started naming the children off to him, her cheeriness was probably what kept her going in her crazy life. He wondered if things had always been so insane around her, or if life had been calmer in the days before Yugi solved the puzzle.
"And this is Elsa," Tea finished with the smallest of the kids, a timid girl with brown ringlets in pigtails who couldn't be over three. Malik smiled at her; she squeaked and ducked her head, but after a moment, shyly smiled back. Watching the event, Tea felt her own face reflect her cheer. Malik might not know much about dogs, but he appeared well-versed when it came to children.
Or most children, anyways. As the group started to run off, Nara bounding alongside them, the messy haired kid turned back. "If Ra damns all brats," she smirked. "Then I imagine he got you a long time ago. Probably," she said, looking him up and down. "When he gave you your fashion sense." She ran off, leaving hum with his jaw practically touching his knees.
Tea patted him sympathetically on the back. "I guess you can't win them all."
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Once again, I am so sorry for my lateness; I just guess I bombed it, huh? Feedback is appreciated, and I hope to have more up soon. Also, I've decided to put in more pairings. Metaphorical sweets to those who guess right! Here's a hint: there is gonna be yaoi. But I need advice: Joey with Kaiba or Mai?
Thanks for reading!