A/N:

Welcome to chapter two, ladies and gents! Since this whim of mine has turned into a personal challenge of sorts, it is up to you, dear readers, to be on CLICHÉ ALERT. That's right, people, you heard me. If this story takes a turn for the stereotypical, it is now your sworn duty to call me out on it. Oh, but if you do find something, make sure to leave a suggestion on how to fix it.

Nevertheless, do enjoy yourselves!

The bright fluorescent lights of the convenience store dimmed for a split second as a crack of lightning flashed in the sky outside one of the many large windows. Ryou jumped slightly, pausing as he slid a box of crackers into a thin, plastic bag. He shifted nervously in his uniform of a white, button-down dress shirt, a pair of black slacks, and a forest green apron before picking up the next item. "Sure is a nasty storm," he commented.

The customer only glanced at him before returning his gaze to his cell phone.

Ryou smiled kindly at the unresponsive man as he passed a pack of gum over the scanner, dropping the item into the plastic bag. The next item to get scanned was an anniversary card, and he chuckled as he placed it in the bag along with the gum and the crackers. "Happy anniversary, sir," he congratulated the man lightly as he continued to pass items over the counter.

"Could you just finish checking my stuff out so I can get home already?" the man snapped, eyes narrowed.

Swallowing thickly, Ryou continued in silence. "Your total comes to fourteen ninety-five," he stated quietly, pressing buttons on the cash register and holding out his hand to accept the payment. Putting the bills quickly into the machine, he picked out a nickel and handed it back to the irritated customer. "Five cents is your change. Have a nice evening, sir."

As the man snatched the bag from the countertop and hustled out, Ryou pulled at his ponytail with a quiet sigh, accidentally freeing a few strands of his snow white hair. He mumbled quietly to himself about rudeness, looking out at the store with mixed emotions in his odd, red eyes.

Smart Mart wasn't exactly an ideal place to work, but Ryou was grateful for the job nonetheless. Even if he had a better education, he wouldn't want to leave the little suburb where he lived. No, he was perfectly content to stay there, but sometimes he wondered about what it would be like to live somewhere else; more often than that, he wondered what it would like to be someone else. The little glimpses of people's lives he got while working for a small town convenience store made him think about what it would like to have a family, childhood friends, roots, or, hell, even an origin.

~flashback~

He groaned quietly, shifting as he felt little pinpricks of pain in his back. Thick covers slid over his chest, exposing him to cold air that immediately woke him. Sitting up, he glanced fearfully around the dark room. It looked to be very small with sparse furniture. A long, cushiony looking thing was pressed up against a wall opposite a small, black box sitting on a little table with drawers. There were two doors; one had a little slot in the bottom and a tiny hole in the middle of it while the other was plain. Across from the long, springy thing he was laying on was a counter with odd markings on it and a big, white box with handles. The man tried to see what else was around him, but it was far too dark.

The plain door opened, and he stared curiously as a tiny person carrying a paperback book shuffled in. The stranger lifted his head towards him and their eyes met. He yelped loudly, putting a hand to his chest. "You're awake!" he exclaimed, hurrying over.

"Yeah, I guess I am," he replied for lack of anything better to say. He stared at the approaching man. He had a slim build and wild spikes of black and blond hair. Upon closer inspection, the very tips of these spikes were a crimson shade. "Your hair is an odd color," he remarked without thinking.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Well, your eyes are an odd color." He shook his head a little before smiling gently at his guest. "Where are my manners? My name is Yuugi Mutou."

"It's nice to meet you, Yuugi. I'm… I'm…," he trailed off, eyes going wide. Who was he? He knew he had a name. He had to have a name. Furthermore, how did he get here? Where was here? What in Heaven was going on? Wait, Heaven? "What…?"

"Is something wrong?" Yuugi asked, sitting down on the bed next to him.

"I… I don't know. Tell me what's going on," he said quietly, folding his hands in his lap, "Please."

"Well," Yuugi began, rubbing his forehead, "Let's see… I found you this morning while I was out for a walk in the woods with my dog. She caught the scent of something and ran away from me. When I finally found her, we were pretty deep in the woods, and she was sniffing around for something. I guess she must have somehow sensed you were in danger, and it's a good thing she did! It was snowing, and if you'd been out there any longer you would have been a goner!" he explained.

"Wait," he interrupted, putting his hand up, "I was in danger?"

Yuugi frowned lightly, moving his hand up to brush against his guest's back. "There were two gaping wounds in your back, just under your shoulder blades. You mean to tell me that you don't remember how you got them?"

"Oh," he replied, "That's what those are." Shaking his head, he moved his arm back in an attempt to touch his heavily bandaged wounds. "I can't remember."

"Is there anything you can remember?" Yuugi asked carefully, as if he was afraid of hurting the other man, "Do you know what country we're in, what year it is, or anything like that?"

He wracked his brains, searching for even a little bit of information. "I remember," he paused, as if studying Yuugi very closely, "I remember that you are a human."

"You're a human, too, though," Yuugi replied with a chuckle, "At least, you definitely look like one to me."

"Huh," he hummed quietly, processing this information, "I guess I am."

~end flashback~

Yuugi had to teach him everything from what food was to how to use a crosswalk. He was constantly baffled by how little his new roommate actually knew. The first thing to get sorted out was his name. One day, he had brought home a book of names from the store, and they had sorted through it together. Only two names had stood out to the amnesiac: Bakura and Ryou. Since he couldn't decide which he wanted as his name, Yuugi had told him to use both. Thus the man known as Ryou Bakura came to have a new first and last name.

"Akefia," a deep voice called, "Come in."

A wild looking man swept through the entryway, scanning the room quickly with his crimson eyes for any potential threats. The only pieces of furniture in the dimly lit room were a few crates stacked against the walls and three folding chairs seated in front of a big, iron desk. Behind the desk was an enormous, leather chair where a man was seated. He had a dark skin color that Akefia knew was from his ethnicity and not from sunlight and eyes that were such a dark shade of blue that they seemed almost purple.

"Atem," Akefia responded as he perched on the edge of one of the folding chairs. He flipped the hood back on his worn, black leather duster to reveal long, spiky, white hair and ghostly pale skin. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang limp.

"I've got another job for you and Marik," Atem began, "Nothing too big, but it's something I can't entrust to anyone else due to its delicate nature. One of Kaiba's business rivals is in town, and he's been talking about starting a branch of his company here."

"So you want me and Marik to shake him up?" he finished with a feral grin, "My favorite."

"Only a little bit," Atem amended, narrowing his eyes, "I did say it was a fragile situation. We can't make it too elaborate, or he'll suspect Kaiba of sabotage. Something generic, if you would."

Akefia clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Now, now, Atem, you know me. Subtlety is my specialty."

"… Right," Atem agreed sarcastically.

"Speaking of Kaiba, has he found anything lately?" Akefia asked curiously, flicking a stray piece of hair out of his face.

There was a pause.

"No, Akefia," he replied gently, "I'm sorry."

Akefia's face fell. "Oh. Well, if that's all that I'm needed for, I'll be going then." Without waiting for a dismissal from his boss, he stood up and exited the room as silently as a ghost. His heavy boots didn't even make their usual thumping noise on the concrete floor as he stalked down the hallway. All he could think about was how Kaiba hadn't found anything.

Kaiba was an extremely wealthy CEO who controlled nearly all of Domino City's business district. He also happened to be Atem's cousin and an extremely close friend to the powerful leader. Together they held the reigns to all of Domino; Kaiba controlling the world of light and Atem running the world in the shadows. They were an unstoppable force when paired together, and that meant only one thing to Akefia. It meant that Kaiba was able to track down any kind of information in regards to him. Due to the amnesia that hung over him like a fog, Akefia only had memories of the past two years.

~flashback~

It was cold. Every exhale from his battered lungs was visible in the frigid air. As he huddled in the dark alley way with white flakes falling all around him, his thoughts were a jumbled swirl of unease and panic. He didn't know where he was; he didn't know how he had gotten there. All he did know was that he was in excruciating pain, and he was as good as dead if he didn't get help soon.

Suddenly, he heard light footfalls coming his way. A few seconds later there was a sharp intake of breath and someone was on their knees next to him. "Holy shit," a stranger breathed, grabbing onto the man's face and pulling it upwards. Their eyes locked. "Oh my…," he trailed off, snaking an arm around the battered man's broad shoulders.

'What?' the man wanted to ask, but he was too numb to speak.

"Who are you? How did you get like this?" the stranger demanded harshly.

He parted his lips to respond, but the words died on his tongue as he realized that he couldn't answer; he didn't know how to answer. With that horrifying thought in mind, he passed out, falling limp in the stranger's arms.

When he awoke again, it was to a warm room and a mountain of blankets piled on top of him. He was positioned on his chest with his face buried in a pillow that smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol. Turning his head, he could see that there was a single chair and a desk in the room. The floors were of a dark metal that was the same as the walls, and there was a blinding light coming from a long, narrow box attached to the ceiling.

"Good. You're awake," the same stranger from before said, stepping out of a shadow in the corner of the room. His steel-toed boots clanked loudly on the floor as he approached the bed. "I was hoping they hadn't killed you during the surgery."

"What?" he asked, feeling his temper rise. Bracing his hands on either side of the bed, he pushed himself up, but a sudden sharp pain in his back caused him to stiffen before gingerly lowering himself back down. Groaning, he turned his eyes back on the stranger. "Who are you?"

"I should be asking that of you," he replied, making his way over to the bed, "My name is Atem."

"I'm…," he stopped.

"You're…," Atem coaxed.

"I don't know," he finished quietly.

"You don't know?" Atem asked in disbelief. When he received no reply, he continued. "No matter. That can be sorted out later."

"Where am I?" he asked, fixing Atem with a dull stare, "And what did you mean by surgery?"

"You mean to tell me that you don't remember how you received two nasty gashes in your back or how you came to be lying in an alley way at midnight?" Atem asked incredulously, shaking his head. When he received no reply, he continued with a sigh, "As I said before, there were two wounds on your back that were bleeding badly when I found you, so I brought you back here for my medics to sew you back up. The stitches might pain you at times, but I'm sure you'll manage."

"Where exactly is here?" he asked, glancing around the room again.

"This is just a spare room that I suppose is yours now. As for this building in general, it is an old, abandoned warehouse deep within inner city Domino," Atem explained, eyes sparkling with something akin to pride, "It was built long before this section of the city turned into the slum it is today. This is where the legendary street gang Millennium is headquartered."

"And," the man in the bed guessed, "You would be their leader, I assume?"

"That's right," Atem confirmed with a smirk, "I like you. You've got intuition. What do you say to joining us?"

"Sounds like fun," he replied, matching Atem's smirk.

~flashback~

When it came to the matter of his name, Atem had finally decided to call him Akefia. His reasoning behind it was, though he wasn't an Egyptian by blood, he was such a natural thief that he could have been a tomb robber, thus the Egyptian name. Akefia himself was pleased with the name. He liked the strong yet sly sound of it.

He rose in the ranks of Millennium faster than even Atem himself had predicted, and after a few months, he and another member named Marik became their boss's new right hand men. Atem's previous right hand men were enraged when they found out about the replacement, but they hardly stood a chance when Atem decided that, to settle the dispute, they would fight for their positions.

Akefia fit in well with the other members, but not at first. He was a newcomer with no previous life to speak of, so they perceived him as a dangerous threat. However, it didn't take them long to realize that he was both a perfect criminal and a valuable comrade. Akefia was unwaveringly loyal to Atem, and it seemed as if he had no ambition of his own. The reckless way he threw himself into a fight whenever the command was given had originally unnerved Atem, but he proved himself to be a precise thief who handled thorny situations with the utmost care.

Akefia had everything he could possibly want: rank, valuable possessions, skills, and underlings. Yet, there was still something inside him that seemed to be tugging at his very soul, telling him that his life was very much empty indeed.