Ryou Bakura will be referred to as Ryou, Yami Bakura will be referred to as Bakura, to avoid confusion. Ryou might refer to Bakura as Yami sometimes. Yami Yugi will be referred to as Atemu or the Pharaoh. Malik will be called Malik Ishtal; his yami will be called Mariku, to keep things simple.
The control Bakura and Ryou has over the shadows is not necessarily canon. I'm making most of it up for the sake of the story.
/Bakura to Ryou/ -Thoughts only. In spirit form, he's free to talk "like this," or /like this./
/Ryou to Bakura/ -The actual story will also count as Ryou's thoughts when in Ryou's POV. Bakura can hear everything Ryou thinks, unless Bakura is asleep or blocking Ryou.
When speaking aloud to each other or when one is talking while outside the body, they speak in normal quotations.
Hikari -Light
Yami -Dark, darkness
Yadonushi -Landlord, host
/Dullest. Conversation. Ever./
Ryou sighed after he closed the door to his new apartment. He thought his conversation with the Orihime girl was pleasant. Evidently his dark half thought otherwise. Still, he asked, "How so?"
The Millennium Ring flashed, and a translucent copy of Ryou appeared in the room, lounging on the recliner. The copy had slight differences to separate him from Ryou, namely the copy's red eyes and sharper features.
"It was an interrogation. She fired questions at you, and you, being the boring yadonushi you are, answered them without asking a question in turn. You didn't even let me ask a question."
"It would have been rude."
"You, Yadonushi, make for a boring conversationalist."
Ryou discarded his bag on the table, and flipped open his abandoned suitcase to unpack. He had arrived at the apartment early that morning, and had decided to sleep in to make up for the loss of the night. When he woke up, he headed to the school to fill out the papers and receive his uniform. After, the principal managed to convince Ryou to attend his classes that same day, but as he had slept in, there was only one class before the end of the day.
During that class, the spirit of the Ring had made fun of him because the teacher 'thought he looked like a girl', and insisted on commenting on every little thing said in the class about Egypt.
Ryou paused in his recount of the morning as he lifted a serrated knife and watched the light reflect off of it. Bakura, knowing what he was thinking, chuckled.
"What else did you smuggle in my suitcase?" Ryou sighed.
Ryou found himself shoved into his soul room with all connection to the world outside of his mind cut off. After a few minutes, Bakura returned control of the body to Ryou, who found his suitcase significantly lighter and the spirit smirking at him from the chair.
The innocent host set about hiding the smuggled, probably illegal, blades in various niches in the apartment. He knew Bakura would take control and bring them back if he got rid of them.
In class, Bakura had taken over when the hollow appeared nearby. The hollow hadn't been in sight, so Bakura had to wait to command the shadows to kill it. Before it appeared, a beeping had gone off, and no one but the boy behind him had noticed.
Ryou frowned. "Before that, you told me to be on my guard around him. Why?"
"He gives off a feeling similar to the twisted shadows the hollows do, but it's different somehow. Like it's fighting with something else for dominance."
Ryou nodded and paused in hiding lethal weapons as Bakura sent him the memory of the feeling through the mental connection.
"And that badge thing. It started beeping soon after the shadows told us about the approaching hollow. No one else noticed it and it stopped after the shadows devoured the hollow, so I think it could detect hollows."
"What ticked you off? The fact that it was screaming 'hollow' over and over?"
Bakura grinned. "Ryou, I never knew you could be sarcastic. But that's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"What's a high schooler doing with a hollow detector?"
Ryou answered with a question: "What's a high schooler doing with an Egyptian pendant housing a dead thief king?"
"His father gave it to him," Bakura shot back, both in something of a conclusion to his own question and dislike of Ryou's father.
Ryou glared at Bakura for the insult, but as glaring made him look adorable, he shook his head and said, "I doubt his father would have given him an object that would announce his location to the hollows."
"Maybe he gave it to him because he doesn't spend any time with the boy."
"Maybe his father didn't know what it was!"
Bakura smirked and had the nerve to look smug, like he had won an argument. He hadn't won as much as an argument, but he did succeed in angering his host.
Ryou took a deep breath, and concentrated on his body, which was shaking. Once the trembling had ceased, he felt a pain in his right hand and found he had clenched his fist around the thorny hilt of yet another blade, this one a curved dagger.
Wothout a word, he went to the bathroom to find antibiotics to daub on the punctures.
Bakura laughed, a chilling cackle that shouldn't have sent shivers up his spine, yet did. The laughter intensified at that thought.
"I'll be taking the body out later, Yadonushi."
Note on the serrated knife: In nearly every fanfic I could find that wasn't AU, Ryou hid numerous blades on his person and in his clothes. And he always had some sort of serrated blade.
Short chapter. But still longer than the usual.
I had so much trouble editing this chapter. There are still so many kinks I have to work out for this story to make sense, and there are so many directions I can take the plot it's ridiculous! I'm used to thinking of a conflict that's almost impossible to think of a plot for, and the plots I do come up with are few and the stroke of genius is easy to pick out. But with this story, a million possibilities lay before me! It's annoying!
So... Think it would screw anyone over if I made Ryou and Uryu cousins or something?