Her Sweetness: Thank you, well-wishers! I think I got some of my ties now. About 20 percent out of 100 but, like I said, don't worry. If all else fails, I'll just make up crap like I usually do…

Hell, I did that with A Tale of Two Idiots and no one seemed to care…

Eh… speaking of "crap", I'll be pushing the limits of science and logic with this fic, so don't be surprised if you see a few things that might make Albert Einstein (and Claire) roll over in his (and her) grave (and chair).

A Tale of Two Bunnies

Chapter 4:

There was a groan amongst the group of sleepers in the belly of the ship. Malik's lavender eyes fluttered open and he whimpered in his still drowsy state. The metal flooring beneath him shifted as the aircraft he was in docked and Malik tipped over, sliding back until he banged his head against the chrome wall. He flipped back over and held his head down by the floor, moaning, "Oh, ow, ow, ow…!"

"Malik?" a voice called to him.

Malik looked up. Bakura was standing in front of him, surrounded by curled up people on the floor, obviously still sleeping. Bakura motioned towards them, "How long have we been out of it?"

"Dunno," he said. "Where… Crap, are we inside that spaceship?"

"I guess. Which means Ryou can't be very far away. Ooh, he's going to get one hell of a talking-to when I see him. He shouldn't be playing with alien crap, it's dangerous."

Malik blinked. "Talking-to, eh?"

Suddenly the door on the east side of the large column in the center of the room unlocked. It slid backwards into the wall and out came a woman in a red dress lined with pink lace. It was less than two seconds later that the woman was proven to be Bakura's hikari gone horribly awry.

"Hey there, 'Kura," Ryou smiled and waved, walking over to the two in the corner.

Bakura stared.

"What's wrong? Aren't you happy to see me?"

"…"

Ryou folded his arms over his chest. "Say something!"

"… Damn."

"What's that mean? Bakura?" Ryou's eyes began to water. "D-Do you hate me now?"

"What? No, it's just that… yeah, um… you're wearing a dress…"

"And?"

Malik spoke up hurriedly from his spot on the floor between the two look-alikes. "It's really pretty, Ryou! Where'd you get that material? I bet you had to special order."

Ryou immediately brightened up and dove down, throwing his arms around his best friend. "Oh, Malik! I'm so glad you like it! I swear, you're the only one who gets me." He turned on his yami. "Bakura, you should be ashamed," he said darkly.

"What? Excuse me for not sissifying myself just to suit your weirdness!"

Ryou ignored him. He looked into Malik's eyes and held him by the shoulders firmly. "Malik, you're my best friend. It saddens me to do this to you."

"… Huh?"

Before Malik had a chance to say anything more, Ryou pulled from behind his back a burlap sack and a piece of rope. He threw the bag over Malik's head and wrapped the rope around his neck, securing it.

"Mmmph! Mmm!" Malik shouted, muffled.

Bakura blinked. "What the hell?"

"Alrighty then!" Ryou smiled and clasped his hands together. "Please come in now," he called towards the open door. A few thuds were heard, obviously people coming down the stairwell inside the pillar. Bakura nearly fainted when a large, blue creature walked out. It's three eyes scanned the room and he pointed a wet, two-fingered claw out towards the people in holding. "Let's hurry this up," it said in a gruff voice. More creatures of different heights, variations and smells filed out of the pillar and each picked up however many humans they could hold which was (in some cases) up to ten.

"W… What the… Ryou, are we in the Shadow Realm or something? 'Cause I've never seen monsters like these before!"

"'Kura! What a terrible thing to say; they are not monsters."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I should be ashamed. Never mind the extra limbs, lack of hair, clothes and genitalia!" he screamed and scrambled out of the way of one who walked by.

Ryou glared. "The only thing sarcasm will get you is a smacked bottom."

"What has gotten into you?"

Malik was on the floor, clawing at Bakura's pant leg. "Air…!" he mumbled but it came out as: "Mar…!"

Bakura pointed towards him. "And why are you suffocating Malik? Not that I care, but Marik won't be at all happy with you when he can't bang Malik while he's sleeping anymore."

Malik's eyes widened inside the bag. "MMPH!"

"… Shit, that was supposed to be a secret."

"Empress, shall we take this one, too?" said the enormous creature which had first walked out of the pillar. He directed that question at Ryou and Ryou in turn nodded. He called after him, "Siff, do be a dear and cut some air holes into that bag on his face. Place him in the holding cell down the hall from my bedroom until I get there and do not take off that bag!"

"Yes," he said and then they were gone, the room finally empty, all but Ryou and Bakura.

"… Did he just call you Empress?"

"Oh, Bakura!" Ryou cried, latching onto his other half. "There's so much to tell you!"

"… Yes, I'm sure there is. But I think—"

"C'mon, 'Kura." Ryou grabbed a hold of Bakura's hand and they went up the staircase, Bakura groaning on the way up.

Meanwhile, a little red car was racing about three feet off the ground, still trying to gain more height. Marik, who had previously had only a small amount of control over the vehicle was now straining not only to drive but to see where he was going. Unfortunately, after he'd gotten the car up to about fifty feet in the air, they hit a bird and came crashing down, picking up a few things.

Marik's vision was blinded by two naked bodies, floundering all over the place. Upon further inspection, the bodies were recognized as Yami and Yugi. Marik growled, "Get the hell off the windshield, you freeloaders!"

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Mokuba, who still resided in the back seat shouted to Marik, "They can't jump! Push the button to your left, Marik!"

Marik only halfway listened and pressed the button to the right of the steering wheel. At that point, the side panels of the car flung off from the body of the car and disappeared in the passing sand. From out of the slender holes on either side of the car, two wings slid out, red like the car that held them and glossy in the glint of the sun. They were about five feet in total wingspan and Marik blinked at them.

"Should've found those earlier…" he mumbled.

"The LEFT button! Marik, push the LEFT!"

"I can hear you, stop screaming in my ear!"

"Hurry up and do it!"

Marik was very inclined not to but, out of curiosity for said button, he pressed it anyway. Immediately the windshield rolled down and Yami and Yugi, fell into the car; Yami tumbled into the backseat on top of Mokuba and Yugi flapped up against Marik, resting on the yami's spiky hair like a limp rag doll.

Yugi looked down, his amethyst eyes meeting Marik's lavender. "… Hi, Marik—"

"Get off me!" Marik shouted, shaking his head wildly resulting in another person being flung on top of poor Mokuba. Marik grimaced. "That's just nasty… What's wrong with you two, huh? Naked in public! You're just like Malik."

"We weren't doing anything wrong, Marik," Yami growled, getting up from the traumatized Mokuba.

"Yeah," Yugi added. "We were at a nude beach!"

"Oh that makes everything better." Marik rolled his eyes.

Yugi and Yami ignored him and looked down at the younger Kaiba brother, waving their hands in his face. "Mokuba? Oh, are you alright? Were we too heavy?"

"Yes, but," he started to rise from the floor of the car, "it wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't been totally naked with your yoo-hoos in my face!"

The teens exchanged glances. "Hey Mokuba… let's not tell your brother about this, alright?" Yugi asked sweetly.

"Humph!"

Marik shifted gears once again. "Alright, alright. You've fulfilled your sick pleasures with a young innocent boy, now get out. We're in the middle of important errands and we don't need extra baggage."

"What kind of important errands?" Yami cocked his head to the side.

"None of your business!"

"Well I think they should stay," Mokuba countered. Marik eyed him through the rearview mirror. "Yeah, because if we're ever going to rescue my brother, Malik and Bakura, we're going to need calm heads! And Marik, let's face it, you're… not at all calm."

Marik sulked. "Well thank you for saying so."

Yugi turned his attention to Mokuba. "So they've been kidnapped? By who?"

"Ryou."

"…"

"…"

Yugi and Yami looked at each other and laughed.

"Seriously," Mokuba insisted. "It's true, something happened to Ryou and now he's gone and kidnapped them along with some of Domino! Marik and I were there when it happened today!"

"We believe you," Yugi assured him. "But Ryou? I mean, he's…"

"A strawberry cupcake," Marik said, rolling his eyes.

"Exactly!"

Mokuba blinked, a little more disturbed by the thought of Marik referring to Ryou as a tasty pastry than Yugi must've been. He shrugged it off. "Strawberry cupcake or no, Ryou has my brother. And there's no telling what he could be doing to him up in space. So you see—"

Marik gasped suddenly, "Alright everyone strap in!"

They all looked up at him. "Wha—OH MY FREAKING RA!" Yami yelled, pointing over Marik's head at the obstacle they were racing towards. An enormous individual rock mass, a sunset red color was getting larger by the second and Marik shifted the lever by his right foot, angling the car higher. (1)

When the boys saw that Marik wasn't making any drastic swerves to dodge the rock, Yugi buried his face into Yami's chest and muffled his own screams and Yami continued to yell at Marik to do something. Mokuba, meanwhile, was snuggled into the left corner of the backseat, his arms folded over his stomach, trying to hold back all the vomit he felt rising.

"M-M-Marik…" he mumbled and Marik was too busy verbally combating Yami to notice.

"MARIK, IF YOU KILL MY HIKARI, I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN!"

"JUST SHUT THE HELL UP AND STRAP IN; WE'RE GOING TO USE THE ROCK AS A RAMP!"

"… YOU'RE INSANE!"

The car's noises changed rapidly from a smooth humming to the angered buzzing of a hornet as Marik's foot pressed all the way down on the gas pedal, forcing the car to its current max of 500 MPH. They were all pushed to the back of their seats and suddenly hit the roof of the car hard as the car hit the first part of the rock with a crash and jumped up, flipping foreword and tossing them all around, except Marik and Mokuba who had sense enough to put on their seatbelts.

Marik veered off the straight path to avoid a large bump on the surface and Yami and Yugi's faces were pressed up against the side window. Mokuba cried out as the seatbelt pinched into his skin and they were then jerked back to the opposite side as Marik swerved again.

"Get ready for the hard part," Marik was heard shouting just above the roar of the engine.

Yami and Yugi gasped. "HARD PART?"

Mokuba sobbed, "SETO!"

As the top of the formation emerged, Marik leaned over and forced down the yellow lever. The car stalled for just a second and as soon as each of the boys in the backseat open their eyes, Marik yanked on the green lever just above it. The speedometer's board flipped again from the range of 150 through 500 MPH to 550 through 1,225 MPH. Marik stepped on the gas pedal and shot the car off the rock and up into the air, rocketing at around nine hundred and fifty miles per hour.

Without much of a problem, they launched themselves through the troposphere and into the stratosphere, going higher and higher. Mokuba's seatbelt released him and the boy went right up against the rear windshield with Yami and Yugi, all three of them screaming inarticulately with their cheeks flapping behind their teeth. Marik's seatbelt left him to fend for himself as well but he kept one foot on the bottom of his seat and held onto the steering wheel for dear life as well as the gas pedal.

The ground was far behind them then and at one point—though no one was sure when—the friction of the car breaking out of the atmosphere caused a bit of a fire under the hood. The windshield washers activated automatically and put most of it out. The speed from the green gear slowed when Marik pushed it down and the regular speed range reemerged on the speedometer.

He sat back and sighed. "… Well that wasn't too bad."

Yami nearly choked. "W-Wasn't too bad? Marik, you're unfit to have a driver's license in even the most lenient of states, I—"

"License? That's sissy stuff."

"…!"

"I-Is everyone okay? Mokuba?" Yugi looked across his dazed yami to see Mokuba on the floor, upside down with his feet dangling above his head. "Oh my gosh, Mokuba!"

"Don't touch me," he said. "I'm in this position because I wanna be."

"Oh…"

As Bakura was led out of the main room of the heart-shaped spacecraft, he was confused as to how he felt about the surroundings outside of the ship. His sneakers clinked onto the long, slender chrome bridge connecting the docking bay to off beyond his sight. He looked down one way and down the other to find that hundreds—thousands—of ships were accompanying the one they'd been in and some were ten times larger.

On the long strip linking the isles of foreign ships together, Bakura shivered to see other creatures walking around—some crawling, slithering or floating—on the docks, holding clipboards or moving boxes.

There were a lot of things he couldn't right off understand. One of them being the reason it was so dark outside with the only sources of light coming from the lanterns on every post of the dock. Bakura could only see about forty yards each way and beyond that—darkness.

He turned around and saw Ryou exiting the ship with the blue, three eyed being he'd seen earlier, Siff. Bakura watched as Ryou turned around, his hands balled into plushy fists.

"Say, 'Kura…" Ryou tilted his head. "You haven't seen Marik on board the ship have you? We checked everywhere and he's not here!"

"I think he and Mokuba got away."

"G-Got away? Got away where?"

"Well last I checked—Hey, wait a minute!" Bakura narrowed his eyes. "I'm not telling you a thing until you tell me what's going on. I want to know where we are, why you're in a dress and what the hell is up with these things!"

Ryou sighed heavily. He then smiled and hooked his arm through his yami's. He led them onto the first pad of the bridge off into oblivion, Siff getting on behind them to Bakura's dismay, and the square began to move. "Well first I guess I better show you our new house," Ryou said and looked at Bakura expectantly.

"New house, huh? Does it have two bathrooms?"

Ryou nodded. "It's good to know you haven't changed, 'Kura."

"… Eh?"

The ride on the metallic square was quiet all except Ryou's humming of "Bicycle Built For Two". The darkness was kept at bay by the lantern that Siff held in his second to left hand. Suddenly, over the horizon was a blue glow that grew and grew as they neared. A neon colored tower rose into the sky, haloed by the cerulean radiance. They soon came to the end of the bridge and the pad stopped just beyond the front door of what Bakura now saw as a tall palace towering up into the gloom above and around.

The castle stretched left and right for as far as Bakura cared to see, all of it illuminated; the windows filled with light and shadows of unknown creatures dwelling inside. Ryou walked ahead and Bakura followed, wide-eyed, walking in after his hikari as the door opened for them and they stepped into a glass elevator, lifting them up.

"So… we live on what floor?"

Ryou giggled. "All the floors, silly. This whole place is ours!"

Bakura blinked. "Wow, did someone rich in your family kick the bucket? Just the electricity bill alone must cost half of what keeps Las Vegas running."

"No, I didn't inherit the place."

Siff pressed one of the many buttons on the back of the elevator and it stopped at floor ten. The doors opened for them and they walked into a large polished area with a rainbow of lights overhead.

Bakura immediately squinted his eyes as Ryou led him on through the room. "What the hell? What's with the whole fairytale motif, Ryou? This isn't The Little Mermaid."

"I think it's pretty! But don't worry, you get to decorate some stuff, too. I didn't forget about my wittle 'Kura!"

"Well… um, good… I think… Hey, what the hell?"

Bakura literally jumped off the ground as a purple hovering thing in the shape of a sippy-cup came up behind the two of them. He raised his one claw to his forehead and stammered out of his spout: "E-Empress Ryou, the m-m-monitors are ready for you in the observatory. C-Channels linked to all stations are r-ready and f-functional."

"Thank you! Let's go, 'Kura, we've got stuffs to do."

"But what about the—"

"Later, we'll handle it later," Ryou hissed.

The next few minutes were a blur to poor Bakura but the next thing he knew, he was in a blue and purple gown and a blue orchid in his hair. He looked down at himself, speechless. All that escaped him were little gasps of shock. Ryou clasped his hands together admirably. "I just knew those colors would suit you, 'Kura. You're such a spring."

"NOW WAIT JUST A COTTON-PICKIN' MINUTE—"

A bright light went off in Bakura's face and he fell backwards in the chair he didn't remember sitting in. Ryou, who happened to be seated in a cushion-coated chair next to the fallen Bakura smiled at a floating screen five feet in front of them. Bakura struggled to his feet and looked dazedly at the monitor, unaware that his face was currently being broadcasted to every VDT on every planet surrounding the sun.

Ryou waved an enthusiastic arm around his head and shouted out, "Hell-o, Milky Way! This is your dearly beloved Empress Ryou, just here to give you a little info on the success of my latest venture… And I am uber happy to present to you your newest Empress Bakura! Say hello, sweetie!"

Bakura's baffled gaze at the screen soon turned from confusion to an emotionless stare.

Her Sweetness: Review, please!

(1) By the way, the rock I was referring to was Uluru. I'm sure some people made the connection and others didn't so… this is for you guys.