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I do not own YuGiOh
Quite a bit can be accomplished in the span of a week. A world can be made or unmade, love can be won or lost, life gained or destroyed. Of course, that's a very vague estimation of the value of a week, and for the most part, highly inconsequential, and in the pursuit of practicality, it might be more prudent to evaluate a week's worth as created through specific individuals.
Ryou found an apartment for Tea and himself, a nice small place with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. It was located in a fairly nice area of Domino, nowhere near upper class, but decent. Safe enough.
Tea, meanwhile, switched her classes over to online, with the blessing of her instructors, many of whom were sad to see the girl go. Her parents were equally sad to see her go, but after many tears from her mother and stern, worried glances from her father, she managed to convince them to let her move out early. She had more than enough funds from her jobs over the years to cover the expenses, and while they were initially concerned (coughhorrifiedcough) to learn that her roommate would be a boy, after meeting Ryou their fears were alleviated. In fact, Mrs. Gardner all but adopted him, and she demanded that they both come over for dinner at least once a week, to Ryou's cautious delight and Tea's fond amusement.
They moved in quickly and easily. Tea didn't bring much, just the necessities, and Ryou had lost most of his belongings in the fire, so the next day they went shopping for clothes and whatnot for him as well as furniture for the apartment.
Several pawnshops and thrift stores later, they were the proud owners of a simple wooden table, five gloriously mismatched chairs, and the lumpiest sofa in existence. After some debate, they decided that was enough for the time being.
Tristan and Joey did quite a bit in a week as well, running patrols around Domino City in search of Marik and Bakura at night, and attending school during the day(the teachers bemoaned having to deal with the pranksters without the calming impact of Tea to repress their antics). They both insisted on sleeping over several times in Ryou and Tea's new apartment, and although they claimed they only came for Ryou's cooking, Tea knew it was because they were worried about her and Ryou.
Knick knacks of theirs ended up invading the apartment: Joey's jacket thrown over the sofa, Tristan's socks hiding out in a corner. Tea rolled her eyes at their messy habits and bought sleeping bags for them, so they could always come over whenever they wanted. She had missed them more than she had realized, and they her.
It also helped to bring them closer to Ryou, who had always held himself on the fringes of the group, terrified of hurting them. Now the bigger boys were spending more time with him, that reserve melted away. Joey ruffled his hair whenever he saw him; Tristan always gave him a hug, and Ryou smiled far more frequently in their company.
Mokuba visited as well, showing up every other day at precisely four in the afternoon to hang out with Tea, who was overjoyed to still be able to meet with him in spite of all the other craziness. She was less overjoyed about the fact that both the Setos accompanied him on these visits. They mostly just sat in the mismatched chairs and glared over at her and Ryou.
This didn't really bother her, since she had received far worse glares from him in the past. Actually on a scale from soul shriveling to mildly unnerving, his(or she supposed, their) glare was only extremely discomforting.
What was much more unnerving was the day the Setos showed up alone to talk to her, no Mokuba present.
It ended up being a terribly stilted conversation. The Setos sat on one side of the table, she on the other. Ryou was away at school, and she was almost surprised that Seto wasn't as well. Until, of course, she remembered that he probably owned the school system or something equally outrageous and monetarily bizarre.
"You have been spending a lot of time with Mokuba," one of the Setos began. "At first, I was not certain I was going to let this continue."
"What a disgustingly banal way to start off this negotiation," sniffed the other Seto at the first. They sneered disdainfully at each other for a full minute, during which Tea wondered if they maybe wouldn't notice if she left.
Just as she was contemplating making a dash for the door, though, they turned back to her, causing the girl to jump guiltily in her seat, her short brown hair bouncing.
"Um…want some coffee?" she offered timidly.
"As if we would drink any of your swill," scoffed one Seto, and she relaxed, because at least that was familiar.
"What I mean to say," cut in the nicer Seto. "Is that I approve of your-" he winced- "friendship with Mokuba, especially in light of recent events."
"In other words, congratulations on nailing the psychotic Bakura with bleach," finished the other, smiling malevolently. "It's refreshing to have someone apply a logical solution to a …problem, rather than insist on more magic hocus-pocus."
"I will, of course, be monitoring you," added the nice Seto(although nice was really kind of a stretch). "If you do anything that displeases me, I will make you vanish. And also your parents will lose their jobs, and all your friends will fail their classes."
"Your brotherly concern is lovely," Tea told him, and that set off an argument between them about whether they wanted their familial ties to be termed as lovely while Tea watched and mentally tallied points. After a full hour of bickering, they departed, still glowering at each other.
That evening, when Ryou came home, Tea shared with him her very real concern that Kaiba was going to end up in a relationship with himself, then clone little Kaiba babies and eventually repopulate the planet with his genetic replicas. Ryou laughed until he cried.
He was not laughing when Mokuba had a variation of the same talk with him. He had been walking home from school when suddenly a burly man had snatched him off the street and stuffed him into a KaibaCorp limo.
Mokuba stared him down evenly, flanked by two enormous bodyguards. The image was somewhat ruined by the backpack at his feet, and the uncontrollable poof of his hair. But his gaze had all the steel of his older brother, and Ryou, eying the lumps of muscle at his either side, wisely took the younger boy seriously.
"So," Mokuba said. "You're going to be living with Tea from now on."
"Er, yes," Ryou replied, and Mokuba narrowed his eyes at him.
"I'm doing the talking here," he announced imperiously. "Now, I like you, Ryou. We have had some good times together."
Ryou nodded mutely, assuming that he was still not permitted to respond, and wondered whether or not Mokuba had been watching gangster movies lately or if the comparisons were unintentional. He wasn't sure which prospect was better.
"In any case, I feel I can trust you," Mokuba went on, pausing to take a swig of apple juice. "But I want you to know that I'll be watching you. Pull any funny stuff with Tea, and Gregson over here." he jabbed a thumb towards the man sitting to his left. "Will start pulling all sorts of funny stuff out of you. Like your organs."
The muscular man coughed lightly. "Sir," he said hesitantly. "My name is Jeffrey, not Gregson."
Mokuba looked at him, very quietly and condemningly. "I don't care, Johnson," he replied heavily. "I don't care."
He dropped Ryou off outside the apartment, and so then it was Ryou's turn had to go home and tell Tea his worries that Mokuba was going to end up ruling the mafia. Tea replied that Seto had probably already given Mokuba the yakuza for a birthday present. Probably for the tenth, as the double digits were special.
They then ate muffins and concluded that together the Kaiba brothers were probably going to one day rule the universe.
And that was their week, sweet and happy, tiptoeing around the shadows in the corner and the cracks in the walls, relishing in the dwindling light of a setting sun, aware that darkness was encroaching but unwilling to relinquish the last few precious moments of untainted joy to fear.
For others, though, the week transpired in a much less peaceful fashion.
Yami spent the majority of it with the Ishtars, studying under Isis's tutelage to gain better control of his burgeoning powers. His focus was unwavering, almost fanatic in its intensity, and he improved by leaps and bounds.
Shadows danced at his command, roiling and seething across the floor and walls, transcending their two dimensional prison to rise up in shapes of unfathomable darkness. They became increasingly tangible as he practiced, able to lift objects as heavy as tables.
Memories filtered back as well: recollections of golden sand and star filled nights, blurry faces and whispers of voices. The Pharaoh clung to these scraps of remembrance, desperate to learn more of his past. He ran them through his head over and over, hoping to unlock more of his unknown origins, but the memories would not be coaxed into clarity.
Still, he never forgot his primary objective, and as soon as he had remastered the basics, he began to practice some of the spells Isis knew, those preserved from thousands of years ago. Diligently, Yami worked at the magical studies, only pausing for food and sleep, and then only when he was prompted to.
He would find Bakura and Marik, and he would defeat them once and for all.
The terrible irony of it was that his thoughts were unnervingly close to those of his targets.
The Thief King snarled up at the stars from the rooftop of a skyscraper. He would find the Pharaoh and that traitor Marik, and he would defeat them both once and for all. Preferably in a manner that involved blood, and screaming.
He rubbed a hand across his violet eyes, wincing at the raw sensation. While his eyes had healed spectacularly quickly given they had been doused with bleach, they still ached from time to time. He was going to kill that bitch, and possibly his former host. The boy had picked a terrible time to grow a backbone. Bakura fully intended to break him.
But how to go about exacting revenge? Ryou, the little weakling that he was, could wait. The Pharaoh's bitch could wait.
He stretched out on the rooftop, his tan skin rasping against the bare concrete. His eyes fluttered shut as he schemed, and the moonlight dancing over his face would have made seem an almost tranquil sight if not for the vicious smirk twisting his full lips.
The Pharaoh was, as ever, his main competition. As else was inconsequential compared to his unending desire to destroy that wretched fool. Bakura would sacrifice anything in order to be able to hold the Pharaoh's heart in his hand and crush it into a bloody pulp. However, Yami, as he was calling himself now, had never been an easy target, and that would only be doubly true now that he had his own body.
And while the Thief King knew he had his hated opponent beaten in terms of cunning and magical control, he also grudgingly acknowledged that the Pharaoh had more raw strength than he did.
Still, there was more than one way to kill someone(Bakura should know; he'd made up dozens of ways to murder people just for the fun of it), and the Thief King had a good idea of where to start.
Concentrating, he stretched his mind out to probe at the magical barrier of the world. Recently, it had become thin in patches, and he could have sworn he felt something crossing over the barrier several times over the past weeks. There was an unfamiliar magic involved in it, a power he had never encountered before. It had none of the subtle brutality of Shadow magic, that tasted of spice and dreamless nights and lilac. Bakura could not bend it to his will, but that didn't mean he couldn't use it.
For, whatever it was, it was weakening the barrier around this reality, this stupid little dimension with its miserable, fragile humans. And Bakura was going to help it, was going to rip the barrier to shreds, letting the Shadow Realm merge with this world and whatever other magical plane that was pushing in.
After all, the only thing more satisfying than killing the Pharaoh would be killing him after he had the privilege of watching his precious people burn, his beloved planet go up in flames. Deep in his mind, he felt Zorc growl in approval at the notion, all bloodlust and fury and hunger.
A working plan to end the world. He smiled to himself, and the expression was unnervingly gentle. Not bad for the work of a week.
Meanwhile, in a grungy warehouse by the docks, Marik had done pretty much nothing with his week. Just as he had done pretty much nothing with the weeks before. Marik wasn't even really sure what a week was.
He thought he might have known once, but now he knew only fragments of fragments of things, his mind still broken from his exile in the Shadow Realm.
He tapped a long, tan finger against the ground, humming tunelessly to himself. His wild sand colored hair flared around his face in disarray, and his clothes were mostly rags.
What to do? What not to do? He clicked his tongue, then repeated the action, amused with the simple noise it made.
His name was Marik. He knew that.
His name was Marik, and he remembered hate and anger and magic, snatches of distant emotions bleeding through to his unhinged present.
What did he want to do now? Marik didn't know. He didn't feel anything anymore. The hate had gone awayawayaway, and the anger had burnt itself all up into a sad little crisp. The magic was still there, though, crackling under his skin.
Perhaps he should try hating again? He really didn't know anything else(from fear he had been born, in anger raised, and in hate had been set free) and so perhaps there was nothing else.
He clicked his tongue; poked at the dirt. There had been people he had hated. Maybe if he found them again, he could hate them again.
Good. Yes. Tongue click dirt poke.
He needed hate, or anger, or fear. This emptiness was no good, it hurt and ate at him and Marik couldn't bear it.
Click tongue poke dirt.
Marik stood, shaky on undernourished limbs, and he walked slowly out of the ware house.
Such was one week for several people, a span of seven days used in a way unique to every person.
The thing about weeks, though, is that when one ends, another begins, just as filled with potential.
Tea's week ended alone in the kitchen, a single light overhead as she studied for a test. The material was not difficult, but she had a hard time focusing, weary from nights poisoned by bad dreams.
"Let's see," she muttered. "Carry the x, then…..and then that would mean it had no set definition…but wait, that doesn't make sense…"
"You forgot to distribute evenly," a dry voice informed her, and she whirled around to see the pale boy with the black eyes and hair standing behind her, umbrella dangling loosely from his hand.
A myriad of remarks sprang to her mind(oh, it's you; where were you; what are you; are you going to kill me this time?) but the girl settled on: "Hello again. Ryou baked muffins; would you like one?"
The boy wiped away a smear of something shining and red from the corner of his mouth. "Get some shoes on," he ordered, completely disregarding her offer. "And grab something useful, like a knife or an axe. Another monster's passed over, and you're going to kill it."
It was a testament to how Tea's world view had changed that she only nodded, saving her place in her book as she stood. "Muffin for the road, then?" she inquired, and despite the rising fear in her throat, she still giggled at the scathing look he sent her.
"Well, it's been harder to find a chainsaw than I thought," she informed him, ignoring his perplexed look. "But I did prepare a bag for this." She trotted into her room and returned quickly with an enormous bulging purse.
She dropped it on the table and its contents spilled out: a knife, two machetes, a baseball bat with nails hammered into its ends, and a strangely large hammer.
"Huh," said the pale boy. "That'll work."
Tea beamed.
AN And that's a wrap! Check back in next week for monster gore and probably more adorable Ryou, as he is the answer to many of the world's problems.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave suggestions if you want, and I hope you guys have a fantastic week!