Author's Note:...Yeah, I have no excuse for how long it took me to finish this chapter. I can only apologize and admit that I basically only finished it and posted it today as a birthday present to myself. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story and waited patiently for the update! Without further ado, here's what's happening with Bakura.

Shadows of Anarchy

'Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.' Ryou Bakura thought wearily, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

He had been walking around in circles for what felt like hours, passing by the exact same hieroglyphs upwards of twenty times (that was the number he'd stopped counting after, at least). He was currently standing in the middle of what was becoming a very familiar corridor and pretty sure it was about time that he just accepted the fact that he was completely and utterly lost.

Of course, knowing that he was lost and figuring out how to find his way back to the lounge were two entirely different things, and he had no idea how to go about the latter, he reflected with a quiet sigh.

The white-haired man sank down into a crouch, his arms propped up on his legs as he hung his head and tried vainly to remember what route he'd taken to get to the spot where he'd first realized that he was lost. Unfortunately he'd been too lost in thought to really pay any attention to his surroundings, he discovered after several minutes of intense thought, and the only thing that really jumped out at him was the vague memory of passing a statue at some point. Which was more than a little unhelpful, but it was all he could remember about his wandering that had gotten him into his current situation so at least it was something.

Ryou reached up and dug his fingers into his hair, trying one more time to think back and see if there was anything besides the vague memory of a statue that could help him find his way back to the lounge (that probably wasn't the technical name for it, but that was what he was calling it until someone corrected him). He gave up after a few moments and sighed morosely, pushing himself up to his feet and looking around carefully just in case he'd missed something the last few times he'd passed through the hallway.

He hadn't missed anything important, as it turned out, because the hieroglyphs weren't anything useful like directions - no, they just told the story of some ancient ruler (unsurprising, considering where he was), and were thus useless. Interesting, but useless.

Still, he made sure to keep a closer eye out as he slowly started down the hallway, just in case the architects had decided it would be funny to sneak in some directions in the midst of stories about wars and conquests. They hadn't, but glancing over the hieroglyphs and doing a quick translation inside his head saved him from getting bored while he walked. The muscles in his legs were burning, and he was really starting to regret having skipped his morning runs for the last three weeks - restructuring his duel deck for a tournament was obviously no excuse for neglecting physical exercise, no matter what Joey Wheeler said (substituting 'physical exercise' with 'homework').

Ryou paused, drawn out of his thoughts when he caught what seemed like faint movement from the corner of his eye, but when he turned to get a better look, there was nothing. He frowned, looking suspiciously at the shadows around him, and was it just him, or did that patch of darkness just move?

The whitette's eyes narrowed as he stared at the suspicious shadow, but after several minutes of watching it flicker in the torchlight and look completely natural, he gave up and started walking again. It was probably just his imagination, he reassured himself, unable to resist flicking one last glance at the shadows behind him. They wavered in the torch light as shadows were wont to do but did nothing else. He sighed as he turned fully back towards the front and kept moving; obviously the Shadow Realm was already starting to make him paranoid - he was jumping at literal shadows for crying out loud.

A good ten minutes of walking later, however, and he was starting to rethink his quick conclusion of just being paranoid. One eye twitched as, once again from the corner of his eye, he saw one of the shadows move in a decidedly unnatural way. He was reasonably sure that shadows weren't supposed to follow someone they weren't connected to, which the one he was keeping an eye on was definitely doing. Thankfully following him seemed to be the only thing it was doing, and while disturbing he could deal with it.

He had shared his body with the spirit of an ancient tomb robber - he had seen, heard, and done things weirder than an independently moving shadow.

In an attempt to distract himself from the following patch of shadow (wait, why did that seem familiar? The sight of a shadow darting along the wall was definitely ringing a few bells...) he checked the hieroglyphs on both walls, still vainly hoping that someone had thought to include directions. Nope, still the same stories about wars and a conquering king, and he heaved a sigh, allowing his head to fall back as he contemplated praying for help...and that was when he saw the ceiling.

Ryou gaped, he honestly did, for almost six whole minutes as he absorbed the fact that there were hieroglyphs on the ceiling. His gape turned into a glare and scowl combination when he mentally translated them and found them detailing a trap of loops and misdirection intended to catch thieves and trespassers that he had apparently stumbled into. His eye twitch was back in full force as he finished reading, both irritated that he'd been wandering around in a ancient magical booby-trap for who knew how long and thankful beyond words that the hieroglyphs also told him how to get out of the aforementioned trap.

The trap was both simple and complicated, as it turned out. It was designed to keep thieves wandering around in circles and away from anything valuable until they either died or a guard, if there were any at the time, came to collect them. To that end, the magic of the trap affected their minds, making them think that they were walking down a straight hallway, when in reality they were going around in circles, always winding up back where they had been the moment they triggered the trap. So really, it wasn't that there weren't any turns in the hallway, it was just that Ryou couldn't see and acknowledge them due to the trap.

Groaning and growling at the same time, the eighteen year-old began the process of escaping the trap, which was really just a matter of turning down a different path than the one the trap had been keeping him on. A simple thing in theory, a more difficult thing to do in reality, but after several false-starts and missteps Ryou managed it, and he sighed in relief when the magic released him. The switch from seeing the same hieroglyphs and hallway he had been to one completely different would have caused him to cheer if he'd had the energy, but as he didn't he instead smiled as he started walking down this new corridor - that was thankfully one that he recognized as being located between the lounge and the bathroom.

With no hesitation the whitette turned and headed straight towards the lounge, strongly repressing the urge to cry in relief when he stepped into the room and saw the lobster-red girl sitting on one of the couches. He honestly couldn't tell if the ice bath had helped or not, but she didn't look nearly as furious as she had the last time he's seen her. That was good news for him at least, he thought with a tired smile, walking over to sit on the couch across from Molly.

Ryou glanced at the table between them, noting that the trash from their short meal was gone, leaving on the partial drink behind, and he honestly couldn't bring himself to be worried about it. After all, there weren't any trash cans around and he was reasonably sure that they wouldn't be able to take the trash with them when they left, so if some monster decided to take care of it that was fine by him.

Sighing in relief as he sank down into the soft cushions and looked across at Molly, but before he could say anything, the blonde girl spoke up, "So I fell through a trapdoor and had to follow a floating ball of light to get out, what about you?"

And there really wasn't anything he could say to that aside from, "Magical trap designed to catch trespassers and thieves." and they exchanged looks of complete understanding before they sighed in unison and let their shoulders slump as they were finally able to relax after their ordeals.

After a minute Molly spoke up again, her voice somewhat subdued, "Hey, I just wanted to say sorry about freaking out earlier...and throwing that stuff at you."

"It's fine," Ryou told the girl, smiling reassuringly as he added, "Now that I think back on it, it was pretty funny, actually."

That startled a giggle out of Molly, and the wizard-in-training said thoughtfully, "The whole thing really was hilarious, wasn't it? The entire misunderstanding, I mean." Now that Molly thought back on it, especially after her experience with the trapdoor, she thought it was really, really funny, and after several minutes of stifling giggles she couldn't take it anymore and burst out laughing.

Ryou joined in a moment later, glad to see the tears of mirth gathered at the corners of Molly's blue eyes, and he himself was glad to release his pent-up tension and frustration. If both their laughter was tinged with just the slightest hint of hysteria, well, they were both too busy laughing to notice, and he laughed even harder at the thought until he was practically doubled over while sitting. High-pitched giggles and outright guffaws filled the room, and the torches on the walls seemed to flicker with interest, but again, neither Molly or Ryou noticed the movement.

Wiping away the spots of moisture from his own brown eyes, Ryou smiled over at Molly as his laughter began to abate, leaving him gasping for breath and his ribs faintly aching. Molly returned his smile with a grin of her own, the expression stretching practically from ear to ear as she scrubbed the wetness from her cheeks and tried to get her giggles under control without much success.

The eighteen year-old duelist was glad to see that the previously tense mood had been thoroughly broken and Molly distracted from her experience, but that didn't mean he didn't have some thoughts on what had happened.

Going by what little Molly had said before they had started laughing, Ryou was pretty sure that a monster had helped her find her way back to the lounge. There were plenty of monster cards that featured 'floating balls of light', never mind the amount of magic cards that sported the same, but Ryou was fairly certain that Molly had encountered the Mystical Shine Ball. He'd faced the creature in practice duels with Tea before, and it certainly fit Molly's description. And then there was what had happened to him - in his experience flickering shadows with no reasonable explanation were rarely good things, but this time the occurrence had been helpful. Again, there were a lot of cards that had something to do with shadows and darkness, but when he thought about it only one monster immediately stood out (and now he remembered why that shadow from before had looked familiar!)...why it would be helping him, he hadn't the faintest idea, but he wasn't about to look a gift monster in the mouth.

Their laughter gradually fading, both young adults sat more comfortably on their respective couches, wordlessly taking small sips of the remaining soda, and eventually Ryou spoke up, "Molly, I think it would be a good idea if we left pretty soon,"

The young blonde was startled since, booby-traps aside, where they were was the safest place they could be at the moment, since there was a working bathroom and running water, and they were safe from the sun. She thought it would be pretty reckless to just leave when they didn't have a guarantee that there was another place to find shelter anywhere around, so she told Bakura exactly that.

"I know, but we're out of food and we can't survive on water alone," Ryou admitted and pointed out, raising a very good reason why they should leave and explore the area.

Molly had to admit that the white-haired man had a good point, but she was loathe to leave the only place that offered any protection in the weird place they were in. She was sure that they were in the NeverNever, but that realm was vast and she had no clue what part of it they were in, so the best option was to stay put and hope that time didn't pass too differently between where they were and the human world so Harry would figure out she was missing and find her and Bakura quickly.

Of course she couldn't possibly present that as an argument for staying where they were, because for all that Bakura had seemed to be taking everything in stride there was still a limit to what vanilla mortals could believe and accept (Miss Murphy was the exception, of course). She also couldn't mention if they went outside they ran the risk of encountering that Diabound creature again, or another monster altogether. Her blasting rod had been destroyed, so there was little to nothing she could do to defend them if something like that happened.

She was brought out of her thoughts when Ryou continued talking, "If we go up to the exit we found earlier and take a look around, maybe we'll get lucky and see some sign of civilization, or at least a clue as to which way we should start walking." Ryou didn't think it was likely, because the Shadow Realm was a gigantic place and the chances of them seeing something like that practically zero...but stranger things had happened, so it wasn't a complete lie.

Ryou was actually hoping that if they wandered around enough they might stumble on a portal back to their world or, failing that, find a friendly monster who might be willing to make them one (it could happen!).

The wizard-in-training mulled over Ryou's words, unable to find a logical argument that she could use with a regular person to convince them to stay put, and so nodded in defeat. When Ryou smiled, she had to say sternly, feeling like she was channeling her parents, "Just to the exit! If we don't see anything around, we come back here and think of a different plan, or if I think of something between now and when we head up there we'll try that first, okay?"

She sighed in relief when Ryou nodded in agreement, and then winced when her sunburn chose then to sting and remind her of its presence. "I am not looking forward to this..." she groaned, gingerly lying down on the low couch to try and get some sleep, giving up on finding a position that didn't aggravate her burn before she even tried.

Ryou could only offer the suffering blonde a sympathetic look and an apologetic shrug.

Author's Note: I might be a little out of practice writing these characters, but I'm hoping that I managed it well enough that their personalities weren't radically different from the previous chapters. :P Also, the votes came in and Molly's eyes are officially blue now! Thanks for everyone who answered that question in their reviews. Please read and review and tell me what you thought! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!