Sooooooo…..hiiiiiiii! Okay, so I know I was gone like forever, but first my computer stopped connecting to the internet and then I couldn't transfer stuff to my new computer because I is the stupid with circuits and then I started college and guys? College is hard. So, in conclusion, I'm back, I'm sorry, and I won't be updating as regularly from now on. I hope you'll all stick with me, because I really do intend to finish this off!
Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited ! You guys are amazing, and I hope you've all been well this past month!
I do not own YuGiOh(but I do own the pale boy and the plot so hahaha. Or something.)
Tea crouched by the side of her bed, staring dully at the man sleeping under her bed. She had woken refreshed, and for a moment had thought the events of the night prior to be a bizarre dream. But then her body had cried out in pain as she sat up, bruises and aches making themselves known.
Then she had realized that the bizarre dream she had was actually what had happened, right down to Duke's obscene eyebrow waggling, and the girl said several bad words in quick succession.
To her relief, Marik had not roused while she rose and went to the bathroom to wash and change. Newly attired in tank top and capris, the girl sat down on her floor and considered her new roommate.
He looked much as she had seen him last in Battle City: wild hair spiking every which way as though launching a full fledged assault at the world, deep tan skin that was smudged with dirt and grime, wild and exotic purple eyes that were currently hidden beneath thick dark lashes.
None of this really registered with Tea, however, because she was more concerned with auditory observations than visual ones.
"Who clicks in their sleep?" she asked the room at large. For indeed, rather than snoring, a strange clicking noise emerged from the slightly open mouth of Marik as he breathed.
It really kind of freaked Tea out, if she was being honest. However, it was still less troublesome than snoring, which, as Joey and Tristan proved, was much louder.
As though summoned by her thinking of them, the two boys poked their heads into the room, ambling over when she motioned them on in. They were both exhausted looking, and their clothes from yesterday, which they had slept in and were still wearing, were wrinkled in strange patterns.
"Is he clickin'?" Joey asked, crouching down beside Tea to stare dubiously at Marik.
"Yup." The girl automatically leaned over and started straightening out his hair, which he endured with a resigned sigh and a grin.
"That's weird," noted Tristan, who knew better than to venture within the range of Tea's hands when his hair was tangled.
"Yup," Tea answered again, now satisfied with the set of Joey's hair. Together, all three of them sat and regarded the sleeping psychopath.
"This is pretty freaky," Tristan said uncomfortably. "I just can't believe he's under your bed."
"I find it difficult to believe that Marik is under Gardner's bed," Light Seto said with distaste viewing the footage Dark Seto brought back from Ryou's and Tea's apartment. He had had a camera on his lapel the entire time, and used it to record the events.
"Yes, one can only imagine how infrequently she vacuums," Dark Seto replied with a sniff.
"That is not what I was referring to," the other Seto drawled, but a smirk pulled at his lips anyways.
They were sitting in the back of an obscenely long limo outside Mokuba's highly exclusive private school, earning dirty looks from the other guardians in the car pick up line and enjoying every second of it. Besides, the car had tinted windows, impervious even to bullets, so what was a glare or two? Or fifty?
Both Setos smiled a bit as a familiar spiky head popped through the door, and both Setos quickly wiped the expression from their face as their younger brother clambered into the car, swinging his book bag down to the floor with a thump that told of its heavy contents.
"Hey bro!" the cheerful boy grinned as he buckled himself in. "And hey to you too, bro!"
"That's just as funny as it was the second time, Mokuba," Light Seto assured the boy dryly.
Mokuba just grinned wider, tickled by the way his two older brothers interacted. As trying as it could be to put up with two Setos, it also had its winning moments, like now, when Dark Seto was trying to look at the laptop on Light Seto's lap, and getting more and more irritated as the latter subtly moved it farther and farther away.
"So, what were you guys talking about?" the boy asked, heading off a potential fight.
"Gardner attacked Marik with a chainsaw when he invaded her apartment last night," Dark Seto promptly revealed, earning a chiding look from his counterpart.
Mokuba gaped, thrown by the amount of information in that one sentence. "Wait what? Marik went after Ryou and her? Are they alright?"
"They're fine," soothed Light Seto. "Resilient as cockroaches, the two of them."
Thusly reassured, Mokuba continued onto the next logical point of interest, with all the appropriate enthusiasm of a young boy. "Tea seriously attacked him with a chainsaw?" he asked, eyes lighting up in glee.
Upon receiving an affirmative nod, he whistled, sitting back in the seat. "She's so cool!" he enthused. "I wish I could have seen that! I'm going to make her some congratulatory cookies. And then," he added, suddenly sulky. "I guess I'll have to send them to her, because I'm still not allowed anywhere other than the house, the car, and school."
He pouted, crossing his arms and adopting the countenance of the world's saddest puppy. Light Seto looked a bit miserable at this; Dark Seto just sneered.
Seeing that his tactic had been ineffective, Mokuba employed another time-honored technique of younger siblings: persistence.
"Am I allowed out of the house now?" he asked as they paused at a stoplight on the way home(Dark Seto stole the laptop and hacked the city mainframe in order to change the light to green more quickly).
"No," Light Seto replied, wrestling the laptop back and shooting a dour look at his other half.
"How about now?" Mokuba wheedled as the limo rolled to a halt outside their sprawling home.
"No," Dark Seto snapped, flicking him in the forehead as they trooped up the stairs to the front door.
"What about now?" Mokuba asked over dinner, widening his eyes and drawing out the words for dramatic effect. "Am I allowed out of the house now?"
"No," chided Light Seto. "And eat your vegetables. I can see you hiding them behind your napkin."
"And if you really don't want to eat them that badly," Dark Seto added. "Then come up with a better way of hiding them. Honestly."
This resulted in a glaring match between the two Setos, one which Mokuba ended by throwing his vegetables up on the chandelier.
"Better hiding place?" he asked innocently. Light Seto twitched minutely, and Dark Seto buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
"Can I leave the house now?" Mokuba yawned as the clock struck midnight. He was crouched over an enormous book written in French, and his older brothers were both huddled around their laptops.
"No," both Setos chorused. The Light Seto stood, walking over to the younger boy and unburdening him of the massive text. "You may however," the brunette smiled, an oh so slight curvature of his lips. "Go to your bed."
Mokuba grumbled, but gave a quick hug to both of his brothers and then trooped off to his bedroom. The Setos stayed up much longer, both their faces glowing in the light of their respective computers.
The clock was the only sound in the massive room as the two halves of one fractured whole worked away, fingers moving silently over keys, brilliant minds analyzing and scheming.
"It's beginning to wear on him," One Seto said abruptly, never looking up from the graphs he was scrutinizing. Without anyone else around, they sometimes forgot which was which, light and dark and kind and harsh. In solitude, their defining edges were rubbed away, and perhaps it was more unnerving for them then, looking across to the other who bore their face and having no way to differentiate from them. "Having two of us," the Seto clarified needlessly, and in its needlessness it was mocking.
The other Seto bared his teeth. "Really?" he inquired, and that too was needless and mocking, and their similar approach to the conversation made both bitter. "I thought he was rather becoming used to us."
"Yes, for a while, and then it wears on him worse since he isn't sure whether we'll both remain," the first retorted, but the malice had been robbed from his voice, and it faded from the other's face as well as they both contemplated the well-being of the only person they had ever loved.
"What do you suggest?" the second asked wearily, an uncharacteristic display of vulnerability for either of them. "We have tried to rejoin as the others did. Something in us is preventing the reconnection."
And they both knew what it was, a silent, seething barrier between them that held their half-lives apart. Not disbelief in magic, no, for despite being stubborn there was only so far denial could drive you, and they had long since run out of fuel.
No, the thing that held them apart was much more sinister, and much more sad.
Seto Kaiba just did not like himself. Oh sure, he hated everybody else(sans Mokuba) far more, but he didn't care much for himself either. And so some part of him had embraced the magic that was holding his two sides apart, light from dark, and fed it still, long after the Scale Master's defeat.
The two Setos stared bleakly at each other, and the clock ticked on and on and on.
"How do you propose we help Mokuba with this whole mess then?" one asked.
The other frowned. "As distasteful as it is," he grimaced. "Perhaps we should foster his, ah, friendship with the Gardner girl. She has proven to be far less annoying than we first assumed, and certainly preferable to the rest of her friends." They both curled their lips at the same time, thinking about a particular loud-mouthed blonde. Evolution had definitely failed on that one.
"We could," suggested the first hesitantly. "Look into seeing if she might have a future at KaibaCorp. She is not qualified for any of the more technical jobs, of course, but we could obviously find some position for her."
"She might make a decent guard," the other mused, sounding astounded at his own thought process. "Obviously she has a good fighting instinct, and with how ridiculously loyal she is, we wouldn't have to worry about her betraying us, the way a large portion of our guards seem to," he added sourly.
The other Seto snickered suddenly. "Think of Motou's face if he saw her standing guard for KaibaCorp," he explained, and a rare twinkle of delight ignited in both of their faces.
"That would be something to see," concurred the other Seto, his thin lips twisting upwards in a smirk. "Although first we'd have to get rid of her…bed bug problem."
Malik gaped in utter dismay at his sister. He had woken up this morning, expecting his sister and Rishid to tell him how their late night studying with the Pharaoh had gone. Instead, he had roused to hear something quite different.
"He's where?" he asked, hoping against hope that the words he had heard would somehow magically change as they re-emerged from his sister's mouth.
"Under Tea Gardner's bed," Isis replied calmly. She nodded her thanks to Rishid as he handed her a plate of breakfast.
Malik stood, shoving back from the table. His limbs failed him though, and he would have fallen if not for Rishid.
"We have to save her!" he shouted, scrambling back to his own feet. His mind thundered along at a million miles per minute, visions of the girl's mangled body plaguing him.
Out of everyone involved in Battle City, Malik had fared the worst, because he was both victim and perpetrator, both martyr and villain. Never mind that in the end, he hadn't been the one to commit most of the crimes; what he had done had been terrible enough. And so he suffered from the memories of not only how Marik had tormented him, but also how Marik had tormented others, and how he himself had tormented the people who were now precious to him.
But at least, plagued as he had been by the past, he had until recently believed the horrors he had both experience and instigated to be confined to that then, sealed away by time.
Until the Scales Master had come along and ruined everything. Since he had revived Marik, Malik had feverishly been searching for a way to send the monstrous man back to the Shadow Realm without forcing anyone to duel him, and thereby risk being sent there themselves. But his research had turned up nothing, and so he had settled for the next best thing: preparing to duel Marik himself.
He set his jaw. "Let me get my deck," he said quietly, a vast reversal in volume from his earlier yelling. "Then let's go."
"Ah," Isis said, a bit of concern settling onto her brow as she carefully watched her volatile younger brother. "That…will not be necessary. Ms. Gardner took the situation…by the hair as it were."
Rishid stifled a snort, and Malik stared at them both with confusion. He was beginning to understand that more was going on than they had told him, and he knew it was because they were worried about how he would take whatever news they had.
So, carefully, he pushed away his own tangle of emotions. If Rishid and Isis were not worried, then he need not be worried either. He trusted them, and they trusted him, and he would never, ever betray that trust again.
Taking in a deep breath, the young man carefully picked up his chair, and he sat himself back down, forcing back the adrenaline thrumming in his dilated veins.
Isis gave a hum of approval that made everything bearable, and Rishid clapped him on the shoulder.
"Tell me, brother," the older woman said, after taking a dainty bite of her food. "What do you know of chainsaws?"
Malik blinked. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Rishid snorted again, and Isis bit back a smile of her own. "Do you know," she said lightly. "I think this way is best after all. It shall indeed be interesting to see what happens next."
"Sister, please," Malik entreated. "Enough of your riddles. Explain what happened."
And so Isis obliged, and Malik's eyes grew wider and wider as she did.
"I just don't know how to explain to Yugi what's happened," Yami sighed, accepting a dirty bowl from Grandpa Motou.
The two were standing in the kitchen, cleaning up after a quick breakfast. Yami still hadn't quite gotten the hang of modern appliances yet, so Grandpa used every occasion he could to instruct him. As such, breakfast often consisted of things that required either the toaster or the stove or the oven. Yami had progressed quickly in his lessons of technology; he only wished he could be so expedient in the pursuit of Bakura and Marik.
Although, of course, he didn't need to wonder about where Marik was anymore. He glowered, scrubbing furiously at the dish he was holding. Grandpa Motou glanced at the pile of bubbles his scouring had produced with raised eyebrows.
"Yami, my boy," the old man laughed. "Someone as short as me will get lost in all that foam if you keep it up!"
The Pharaoh blinked, realizing that he had created a mess of frothy bubbles pouring over the edges of the sink and down to the floor. Muttering an Egyptian curse that made Grandpa's eyes crinkle in amusement, the tall boy snapped his fingers, banishing the mess with a flare of power.
"I don't see why you won't let me attend to the rest of our chores this way, Granpa. It would be much quicker this way, and would free up your time for other things," Yami pointed out, nonetheless resuming his washing of the plates.
"Ah, but sometimes it is good to do a menial task or too, and to take things a bit slower," Grandpa answered, beginning to dry the dishes. "It gives us time to think, and then maybe to talk a bit about what we think. Speaking of which, why are you so worried about talking to young Yugi, hmm?"
Pausing in his ministrations of the latest occupants of the soapy sink, Yami frowned down into the bubbles. "I don't," he started painfully. "I don't know how to tell him how I've let Tea and Ryou down. I don't know how to tell him how I failed."
Grandpa stared at the troubled young man long enough for it to be awkward. Then, unexpectedly, he threw back his head and laughed.
"Failed?" he chortled. "Oh, you think you've failed? Boy, you sure have a different definition of failure than I did at your age!" He slapped his knee in merriment, and despite his confusion and guilt, Yami could not help but smile at the lively old man.
"You mean when you were only a century or two over five thousand years old?" he asked dryly.
Solomon Motou flicked a bubble at him. "Now, now, lad," he grinned. "Are you five thousand, or are you only a few months old? Or are you maybe still a teenager, just like your friends, all of whom do not blame you in the slightest for anything that's happened?"
Yami didn't really know, and so he had no answer to give. Sensing his dilemma, Grandpa gently pulled the dishcloth from the boy's hands.
"I'll finish up here," he ordered. "Go talk to Yugi."
Yugi sat in the living room, poring over the schoolwork he had missed. The sweet boy's mind had mostly returned, but the effects of what he had experienced stayed with him, and he was both far more pensive than before and prone to accidental bursts of white magic. Fortunately, Yami had been able to turn the TV back into its original form before the silver stork Yugi had turned it into flew away. He had also been able to catch Grandpa before the five sets of wings that grew from his back flew him away, and to get the silverware to stop singing.
To another, these interludes of having to fix additional problems might have been annoying, especially given the context of what was also going on at the same time. But to Yami, Yugi's magical messes were a welcome reprieve from the stress he was under. Knowing that his dearest friend had magic now, a way for him to defend himself!-brought the youth much joy, and being able to help Yugi as he explored this new facet of his abilities provided him with a happier and simpler responsibility, as opposed to trying, yet again, to save the world.
But now, the boy had no birds springing from his fingers, no golden lights dancing about his head and ringing like bells. No, now he just sat quietly, pale face bent over textbooks and notes Tea and Ryou supplied(Joey and Tristan tried, bless them, but their notes were either too garbled or too smeared with mysterious stains from the mysterious foods supplied by the cafeteria.)
Yami almost left him to his work, loathe to distract him. But his guilt impelled him forward, one reluctant foot after the other, and he sat heavily beside Yugi on the couch.
Smiling, the smaller boy turned to face him, and Yami could not bring himself to meet those eyes, so knowing and yet so innocent still.
"I am sorry to interrupt you," he started, nervously clenching his hands. Once more, he felt keenly the difference in their new relationship; the distance between their minds, the separation between the beating of their once-shared heart and his new, currently pounding organ. But despite the changes, Yugi was still the person closest to him in all the world and always would be. And it was a relief, in some ways, to be able to sit beside him now, in his own body, to share, if not a mind and a heart, then the warmth of being both in the same place on the level of living, in flesh, with all its vulnerability, and in bone, with all its strength.
"Please don't be," Yugi smiled, placing the book down on the table. "My brain could use a break anyways. What is it, Yami?"
"Well," Yami replied. "It is about Marik." And he saw how Yugi's eyes widened slightly, how his focus switched entirely to him, and, with remorse constricting his throat, he revealed the events of last night to his friend.
Yugi's face moved slightly as the tale unfolded, reflecting the workings of his mind. And when the story had ended, and Yami fell silent the way a stone fell through water, the boy closed his eyes briefly.
"Well," he said. "Well." And then he proved he was his grandfather's grandson by throwing back his head and laughing, sweet and rich and with just a touch of a stumble.
"Oh my friend," he sighed, reaching out and placing a pale hand on top of Yami's larger and tanner ones where they lay snarled on his knees. "You do take too much upon yourself."
"No, I do not," Yami objected, but he did not move his hands. "I am supposed to protect you, and all of our friends."
"And the world?" Yugi questioned, gently teasing.
"And the world," Yami averred. "That has been my duty since my first life; I am sworn to it."
Yugi regarded him, those eyes so sagacious and kind. "One life of sacrifice is more than enough, I think," he stated. "What you have to understand is that your goal is a shared one, and one you can share-one we want you to share."
He tapped the side of his head, eyes acquiring a bit of a rainbow sheen. "This can all still have a happy ending," he said, and his words held an echo of prophecy.
"But I need to protect you," Yami returned, reverting to his earlier point. "I want to keep all of you safe and happy."
"As you want to protect me, and our friends, we want to protect you, and you must let us, to a certain extent, or be entirely unfair," Yugi answered, a small curl of laughter in his voice. "And I know it is hard, but you must let us take some responsibility, hmm? Because we will grow better then, and more able to stand beside you."
And Yami knew he spoke the truth, for Yugi was never one to lie, and especially not to him. "I don't know how to stop feeling guilty, or responsible though," he confessed, and his voice cracked a bit as it staggered over the admittance like a man over his threshold in from a storm. He would never be able to completely rid himself of the notion of self-sacrifice, no, that had been burned too deeply into him from his time as Pharaoh, but perhaps, as Yugi said, if he let the others help more, such sacrifice might not be needed.
He could live here, now, in this time period with all his beloved friends, with Yugi, and he could be what he wanted this time around.
"How do you suggest I start?" he asked, and his voice was steadier this time, and Yugi's smile brighter.
"By believing in us," he responded, and his eyes twinkled like a thousand stars(and his homework began to fold into origami all by itself, but both of them ignored that for the moment). "And, when someone else does something for you and us, learning how to say thank you, instead of apologizing."
Yugi picked up the origami swan that used to be his essay, and sent it fluttering into the air with a breath and a soft glow from his hand. It flew gracefully around the room, coming to rest on top of Yami's wild spikes.
"I think," Yugi said, hiding a grin at Yami's cross-eyed attempt to look at the new occupant of his hair. "That you might have some idea as to whom I'm speaking of."
To Tea's wary gladness, for the first day, Marik never ventured from beneath her bed. He just stayed there, poking at the bottom of her mattress and cackling to himself. If anyone came close enough, he would shoot a long arm at them, trying to snag their ankles. This won him a curse from Joey, a surprisingly high-pitched squeal from Tristan, and a bruised wrist from Tea, who used her other foot to stomp on his arm. Ryou never came close enough, just sat in the doorway sipping tea and frowning with immense disapproval upon the fiend who had taken up residence beneath his friend's bed. How completely indecorous.
On the second day, Joey and Tristan bid them a reluctant farewell, insisting multiple times that Ryou and Tea call them immediately if 'that spiky-headed buttwad try anything fishy.' However, he just laid there placidly, all twinkling lilac eyes and crooked grin.
"Do you think he needs to eat?" Tea asked Ryou in a whisper from where they worked in the living room to finish cleaning up the damage from the fight. Thankfully, most was superficial. Some furniture would need to be repaired or replaced; a few walls needed paint on some scratches, and all the light bulbs had to be switched out, but aside from that, one would never know an epic battle involving dark magic and a chainsaw had taken place in the small apartment.
"I'd rather not think of whether he eats, for fear of the implications," Ryou replied delicately, setting aside his dustpan to stretch.
"Oh," Tea realized. "Ooooh. You mean if he needs to use the rest room. Eugh."
"Precisely," Ryou nodded, wrinkling his nose. They both shuddered at the thought.
"Still," Tea persisted bravely. "If he did need to use the bathroom, do you think he knows how? I mean, I don't think they had plumbing in the tombs he grew up in."
Ryou frowned thoughtfully. "Yes, but there was plumbing on the airship at Battle City," he pointed out, feeling a sense of relief that he would not need to explain the intricacies of the modern bathroom to a psychopath hiding under his friend's bed.
Tea experienced a similar rush of relief, and progressed about her task with a lightened heart. At least, she did so until another question troubled her. "Why was there plumbing on the airship, come to think of it?" she asked. "I mean, that seems really odd."
"Well, they do have bathrooms on airplanes too," Ryou answered. "It's probably something of the same principle."
"Huh," Tea said. "Makes sense." She painstakingly began to pick shards of glass up off the floor, only to slip and cut herself as a loud banging sound came from her room.
The racket lasted for several long seconds, wherein Ryou blinked uncertainly, and Tea closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Depositing the bloody glass shards in the bin with an aggressive flick of her fingers, the girl stood and marched grimly towards her bedroom. Holding onto the broom, Ryou trailed after.
Her room looked suspiciously normal at first: bed in its place, bedside table sitting beside it, vanity clean and clear. However, there was a noticeable lack of crazy person under her deceptively normal looking bed.
"Where'd he go?" inquired Ryou, brandishing the broom with a startling amount of authority.
Tea pointed silently to her closet. Several spikes of blonde hair were poking out from behind her tank tops.
A purple eye stared at them from a gap between her jeans and jackets.
And oddly enough, Tea almost wanted to laugh. She didn't, obviously, because this was weird and dangerous and oh gawd, she hoped he didn't try on any of her clothes because he'd stretch them all out. But she still kind of wanted to laugh, so she dragged Ryou back out of the room with her in hopes he would help her find her sanity again.
Unfortunately, her sanity was not to be found in the living room either, as while her desire to laugh faded, a new notion took over her clearly degenerating brain.
"It's a little like having a cat," she opined, wiping at the wall-Marik's shadows had left rather odd stains where they had come into contact with paint. "A large, untrained cat."
"I suppose," Ryou agreed politely, joining her in attacking the stains. "Although generally speaking, if we were going for a pet, I would have preferred a hamster."
"Well, at least this way we don't have to clean a cage," Tea opined. "Although to be honest, a hamster would have been cute. We could've named him Squiggles."
"Or Dorian."
"Or Fluffmonster."
"Or Lancelot."
"Puffball."
"Earnest."
"Fizzles."
"Winston."
"Mister Face."
"That is marvelously terrible, Tea," Ryou informed her cheerfully, swatting her with his rag.
"I know," Tea played along, affecting solemnity. "I fear for any children I may have. They're all going to end up named Sparkles and Boofer or something."
"Boofer?" Ryou laughed aloud. "That's not even a word."
"Which is why I fear deeply for my hypothetical children," Tea giggled, and they both laughed, and the room seemed a bit brighter for their merriment. The rest of the day passed by more easily: Tea and Ryou finishing cleaning and repairing while laughing with each other; Marik lingering in the back of her closet, his hair and the gleam of his eyes the only clues to his presence.
He ended up making his existence much better known at night, however. Tea was just drifting off to sleep when he barrel rolled out of her closet and back under her bed. Unfortunately, his aim was a bit off, so his head ran into one of the four bedposts with an ominous sounding crack. The whole bed jolted, and Tea sat up and stared down at Marik, who very quickly regained himself and scuttled under her bed.
"Eh," said Tea, and wondered if she should look into buying some psychology textbooks. "Are you alright down there?"
As answer, he reached up and stole her blankets, yanking sheet and quilt into the dark abyss he had claimed before Tea could so much as blink.
And then she did blink as her brain gradually wrapped around the fact that Marik was hoarding her marvelous blanket all to his stupid crazy self.
"So help me I will come down there!" she snarled in a whisper, unwilling to wake up Ryou.
He just giggled, and Tea felt herself fly off of the handle. Rolling out of bed, she grabbed at one corner of the quilt and yanked. Marik yanked back, and they both waged a furious battle of strength.
The blanket lost the battle, ripping with a plaintive cry. Tea gaped at the poor shreds of her once beautifully fluffy blanket, and felt a very strong urge to weep.
"Forget this," she hissed, and stomped out into the hall, retrieving Joey's sleeping bag from its corner. She spread it out on the floor in the hall, and laid down to rest with an angry whuffle of breath.
Once more, the girl slowly drifted off towards dreamland. And once more, her unwelcome roommate interrupted it.
It started softly, and she played it off as a trick of her imagination at first. But then the noise grew in volume, a long, undulating, piteous wail.
Growling, the girl stomped (lightly, thinking of Ryou) back into her room.
"Be quiet!" she snarled. "You're going to wake up Ryou!"
Purple eyes blinked indolently up at her. He ran his hands like spiders across the floor, and a shudder rustled down the length of her spine.
"Be quiet," she reiterated sullenly, retreating to the relative safety of the sleeping bag
She had barely laid down when the wailing began, just as insistent and miserable as the first time. Gritting her teeth, Tea resolved to wait him out. Surely his breath couldn't last that long. Surely.
Except that it could, because obviously shadow magic increased lung capacity or something stupid like that, or maybe the universe was just against her ever getting a full week of sleep.
With great reluctance and many snipes at the man under her bed, Tea capitulated, returning to her bed with the sleeping bag as her new comforter.
"Next time just ask for a blanket," she snarled down at the floor. "Because if you ever, ever rip another of my blankets, so help me I will set this entire bed on fire. On. Fire." She paused to fluff her pillow. "Sweet dreams."
And thusly, the next day she was obliged to go out and purchase a new comforter. Several, just to be safe. She bought a massively fluffy blue one for herself, and a dark purple one for Marik. She had considered buying a black one for him, just so no strange magic stains he might put on it would show, but then opted against it for fear of him using it to better camouflage with the shadows. It was bad enough having him in the apartment when she could see him; not knowing where he was would turn her into a nervous wreck.
Although the blankets weren't heavy, they were terribly bulky, and Tea was quite relieved to turn onto her street. She espied the door in the near distance, and she could not help but give a sigh of happiness-she was quite tired from the antics of her resident crazy last night.
"Rough day?" inquired an entirely too amused voice, and it was not as surprising as it should have been to look up and find the pale boy off to the side, lurking in the shade of a nearby building and regarding her with far too mush joy on his thin face.
"You could say that," Tea replied, giving him a brief smile of greeting(grumpy he might be, but he was still something of a friend.). "How have you been?"
"I'm not having this conversation with you," he replied haughtily, and Tea couldn't help but giggle at the way his nose had wrinkled in disgust.
"Are you done yet?" he asked, exasperated by her tinkling laughter.
"Sorry, sorry," the girl smiled, walking over to him with her bundles of purchases. "But it is nice to see you, outside of., um, the whole killing monsters business."
The boy looked a bit ruffled at that, and the girl began to notice other odd features about him: the weariness of his eyes, a rip on his jacket, a bruise covering his left wrist.
"About that whole monster killing deal.." he said slowly. "I'm afraid they pushed another one through already."
Tea felt her heart skip a beat. "You have to be kidding," she said numbly. "You have to be. It was supposed to be a month at least; you said so!"
His mouth tightened, and his eyes grew grim. "I know what I said," he snarled, but the sound choked off, and he began to cough furiously, his whole body shaking with the motion. Tea rushed over to him, but he flinched away when she attempted to pat his back. Eventually, his hacking subsided, and he straightened with a grimace. Tea didn't have the heart to mention the speckles of blood on his hands when he so obviously didn't want her to see them, wiping them off on the black of his jacket as discreetly as possible.
"Right," she muttered, terrified for a whole new reason as she watched him desperately pretend he hadn't just spat out a mouthful of blood. "Monster. Right. Lemme just go and drop off my stuff; I already have my weapons backpack with me." She jerked her head at her back, and the innocuous pink bookbag there holding her glorious assortment of weaponry. She had taken to keeping it with her at all times in order to prevent Marik from getting at it. She couldn't go anywhere near a metal detector, but that didn't restrict her movements too terribly.
"I thought you had a purse," the boy commented casually, falling into step beside her as she moved towards her apartment.
"Purse didn't hold the chainsaw," the girl replied, unlocking her door. "Um, want to come inside? I should warn you, I have a new roommate."
"The boy half made of shadows, yes." He waved a dismissive hand. "And no, thank you, I shall wait out here. Your newest stray poses no challenge to me, but I find his dichotomy of humanity and magic grating. Also, his hair is stupid."
Tea snorted out a laugh, and the boy looked momentarily pleased with himself.
"I'll be right back out," she promised, traces of her laugh still swirling in the warmth of her voice. She slid through the open door, closing it quietly behind her. Ryou still wasn't home from an errand he had left on earlier, so she wrote him a quick note and stuck in the bread box, where Marik was unlikely (hopefully) to pry.
Then she placed her new comforters on the table and sought out the crazy Egyptian himself. First she looked under her bed, and then in her closet, and finally in the bathroom, where she found him once again setting fire to the roll of toilet paper.
Grabbing the plunger, she whacked him on the head several times. He glared at her, not moving from where he was crouched by the toilet over his small flame.
"Again?" she asked wearily. "If you really must set fire to something, why not dust mounds or something?"
He slitted his eyes at her, and she sighed, putting the plunger down. "Anyways," Tea continued. "I'm going out again for a bit, so please don't set anything…significant….on fire. It's a good thing Ryou disabled the smoke detectors, or else we'd be in real trouble."
"Where are you going?" he inquired, hands snatching at the flames absently. His fingers deftly twirled the orange and yellow tongues up and around his fingers, not even blistering as he, literally, played with fire.
"To visit Mokuba," Tea lied, wishing her fib was reality. "Um, do you need me to pick up anything for you while I'm out?"
The look he gave her was wholly amused and far too condescending, and the girl flushed in anger. "Never mind then!" she snapped, and stormed back out of the bathroom, and right on out of the apartment.
"Ready?" the boy asked, smirking at her obvious anger.
She grumbled darkly at him in reply, but found it hard to hold onto her rage when reminded of the immediacy of her fight. The boy nodded once, apparently reading her change in mood, and turned away to lead her back out into the city.
"So, what exactly came through this time?" Tea asked, jogging to keep up with the boy's quick pace.
"Trouble," he answered, uncharacteristically serious. "They must have really worked to get this one through. I don't know-" he cut himself off there, black eyes snapping, and Tea could not bring herself to ask what it was he had been going to say. He looked too young then, and too old as well, a child who had lived through a hundred years without aging a day, but growing weary none the less.
"What is it?" she asked again, hoping to distract him. Her efforts worked, for he calmed slightly.
"He," the boy said. "It's a he. And, well, he's….big."
"How big?" Tea asked, mind already strategizing.
The boy actually scratched at the back of his head sheepishly, and that was how Tea knew it was bad. "He's a giant," he answered at last, and Tea's stomach flipped.
"Like-giant?" she squeaked. "Like, a giant-giant?" Oh gawd oh gawd, she should've gotten a rocket launcher instead of a chainsaw, why did she never think her purchases through?
AN: And this is where we'll leave our unfortunate heroine this time. As I wrote in the beginning, I'm not sure when I'll next update, sooner though than this, jeez.
Expect a rumble next time, as Tea learns why she should always think before buying things to kill monsters with. Honestly, Tea, did nobody tell you that?