The kitchen was quiet. The only sound was a soft hissing, accompanied by a steady stream of steam, flowing from the kettle. Sugoroku wasted no time in pouring the scalding water into a waiting pot, before adding teabags. He glanced up at the clock, finding it to be nearly seven o clock, his visitors would be there in a moment. He filled a lone cup with tea, thinking he might as well have one while he waited for them to arrive.

Stirring cold milk in with a spoon, he wondered if he should have made some kind of proper meal for them. He drew out the spoon, and was leaning over to put it in the sink when it slipped from his gnarled fingers. The spoon struck the floor with a sharp, ringing clash that echoed throughout the room. The sound caused to Sugoroku to stop dead in his tracks, his hand still outstretched. It still resonated for a few moments, then...nothing.

Silence.

The clatter had brought Sugoroku fully back to reality. The process of preparation had distracted him for a few minutes, but now, the silence came crashing down on him once more.

The house was completely devoid of sound. Such quietness was wrong, totally wrong.

He bent down and grasped the spoon in his fingers, but as he was about to rise back up, he found himself instead dropping wearily to the side, slumped against the cabinet. Raising a hand to his forehead, he felt a wave of nausea pass over him, a feeling he was now all too used to. He felt sick and weak whenever he would think about how quiet the house now was.

For so many years, the house was always filled with noise and activity. From the shop, from Yuugi and his friend's fooling about, from just life itself within the house, there had always been noise. Now there was none.

Twenty one days. Three full weeks. Three weeks since he'd last seen his grandson. Yuugi had disappeared into thin air, along with his friends, snatched by some sick, twisted person. Constantly, that night would replay itself in his mind, over and over, refusing to leave him in peace, torturing him.

He'd arrived home at nine o clock, expecting to find the house a mess, and just Yuugi and Yami at home. He had only been thinking of the amount of cleaning he'd probably have to do after so many of Yuugi's friends (and apparently, one of Yami's enemies) had spent hours there unsupervised. Instead, he'd found the house completely silent. He'd opened the kitchen door and, to his surprise, received a blast of flickering clear gas, which quickly dissipated. Once it had cleared fully, he'd entered to find Anzu and Shizuka unconscious on the floor. Despite his utter shock at the situation, he had managed to remain calm, and had wasted no time in calling both the police and an ambulance. The two hadn't woken until the next day in the hospital, and were in very poor condition, on account of being left inside the sealed room with the gas still lingering.

Sugoroku had spent the whole night with the police, trying to find out what had happened to Yuugi and the others. The police had concluded quite quickly from the circumstances, and condition of the room, that someone had abducted them. The full brunt of this did not quite hit Sugoroku until the afternoon, after the two girls had awoken. He had been so busy with the police, and trying to contact the girls' parents, that he had not stopped to consider exactly what had happened. That moment, when he realised his grandson was gone, taken from him, possibly never to be seen again, was probably the single worst moment of his long life. Deaths of loved ones over the years had been devastating, but at least they had gone on. Yuugi was gone, but still alive. Any manner of terrible thing could be happening to him, and he would still be gone, unable to be helped.

Gone with him was Yami, whom he'd begun to love as a grandson of his own, and who had just started a new life with them. He and Yuugi's friends were like family to him. Now they were all gone. This exact moment when this realization hit him, felt like a limitless, crushing force dropping on his mind, to the extent that he nearly collapsed right there in the hospital, feeling utterly overcome with despair. Along with the first night, when they'd been taken, this moment kept replaying in his head, and every time it did, he would feel that vast crushing weight once more, breaking him down further and further. They were all gone. Just gone.

The doorbell of the shop rang, snapping Sugoroku from his memory abruptly. He quickly stood back up, and tossed the spoon into the sink before hurrying out, into the shop. He caught sight of his two now familiar visitors through the glass as he crossed the room to open the door.

Rishid Ishtar stood grimly on the pavement, his thick arm around the shoulders of his stepsister Isis. Sugoroku hastened to let them in, out of the cold.

"Sugoroku"

Rishid extended his hand, and Sugoroku took it, immediately feeling a deep chill run through his body, for Rishid's hand was freezing. Isis could only manage a faint smile, looking weak and quite frail, clinging tightly to Rishid's side.

Sugoroku showed them into the kitchen, before seating them at the table and pouring out cups of tea for both of them. They weren't here for anything in particular; they were just here to support Sugoroku and each other.

They'd arrived from Egypt early on Wednesday morning just under three weeks ago, barely 30 hours after the boys had been taken, and Sugoroku had met with them daily since, to search for their missing family. The presence of Seto Kaiba amongst the group had meant the police had launched a large search party for them, but both Sugoroku and the Ishtars felt they could not simply sit around, hoping the police would find something. Even if it was utterly futile, they still had to do something.

Thus they had spent most of their waking hours in the last three weeks combing the city, looking everywhere for some sign of the boys, anything. Anzu and Shizuka had been kept in the hospital, mainly at the police's insistence. They seemed to want to make sure no one other than themselves and the direct families of the boys were allowed to have access to them.

Unfortunately, the two girls' had been unable to help much, other than describing exactly how the attack had happened. The police had constantly been telling Sugoroku that they were making good progress and that they would find them soon, but they'd shown little evidence that they had made any real advancements in the case over the last few weeks.

On top of that, the longer they continued to search blindly for them, the colder the already scarce trail became. They were fast losing any hope of ever finding where the boys had been taken, and already it was taking a permanent toll on them. Sugoroku was old, and this strain was becoming truly unbearable. His body felt completely battered and broken, almost like it had withered away in these last few weeks. He didn't know how much longer his health could hold up, with not only the physical exhaustion from searching the city, but also the constant emotional weight, wearing him down rapidly. What's more, he had not opened the shop once since this whole tragedy had happened. The store was his only livelihood; he had no pension, no backup, no real life savings to call upon. Sooner or later he would run out of money, and then what? He couldn't operate the shop while Yuugi was gone, he had to look for his grandson, but when his money ran out, what would happen?

Looking at the Ishtars, the effect could be seen quite plainly. Though Sugoroku had not known them before this, only Malik, he knew enough to see it was destroying them utterly. Isis, he knew, had been a truly strong woman, the forceful and direct head of the family. Now, she eternally looked on the verge of collapse. It had been against her wishes that Malik came to stay in Domino for the last while, seeking to make amends to Yami, and no doubt she could only now think that she should have put her foot down. She was already visibly beginning to thin out, after mere weeks, her shoulders were slumped in defeat, and she seemed fragile, as though just one more piece of bad news would shatter her completely.

Rishid's change was more directly physical. He was a strong and powerful man, but even he had limits. He had searched the darkest, seediest areas of the city without rest, and not only was he visibly worn out, he had clearly had more than one run in with the unsavoury types from these areas. Scrapes and cuts were openly evident on his weary face and arms.

Sugoroku understood why it was so especially hard for them. They had nearly lost their brother for good mere months prior, but had pulled through. Now, having just gotten their family back together, safe and ready to begin a new life, Malik was gone, snatched away by some fiend. Without him, their hope at any kind of fresh start in life was gone; there would be no peace for them as long as he was missing.

They had been nearly alone in their desperate search. Honda, the only of Yuugi's friends not to be there when they were abducted, had been with them every step of the way, refusing to go to school and instead searching alongside them. But from the other relatives of the boys, very little help was to be found. Jounouchi's father appeared to certainly be upset at his son's abduction, but rather than helping, he'd consented to barricade himself in his apartment with a great deal of alcohol. His mother was staying with Shizuka in the hospital, along with Anzu's family. Neither Ryou nor Otogi seemed had any living parents interested in their sons, not even when they were kidnapped, and of course, the two Kaiba's had no parents. The illustrious Bakura, to Sugoroku's best knowledge, seemed to have no family whatsoever, Yuugi had never quite fully explained where it was he had come from. As for Yuugi's own parents, Sugoroku did not know if they even knew their son was missing yet. He had been unable to contact them, not being very certain where precisely they were at the moment, and cursing his adversity to having much modern technology in the house.

And so, they were alone in their "citizen's approach", a mere four people looking for a group of eight, from six different families, no less.

Every few days, the Ishtars would come here for a couple of hours. In general the three of them would say very little, they simply sat around the kitchen table, listening to the silence of the house.

The silence. The damn silence was the worst part of this whole ordeal for Sugoroku. So often he felt like somehow breaking it, by letting many people into the shop, or playing loud music, or seizing a metal pipe and beating it relentlessly against every pot he had in his cupboards, anything to end this complete absence of sound. But he stopped himself every time, feeling it would be an insult to Yuugi to attempt to recreate the noise his grandson invited in when he was home.

As usual, the three sat there, absently sipping their tea, hearing nothing, but feeling everything. A constant, hollow numbness at the absence of their loved ones, mixed horribly with a sickening, nauseating feeling stemming from unwanted, but unstoppable thoughts of what might be happening to the boys, wherever they might be. And what else could they do? They all knew searching for them would yield nothing, they were doing it out of a frantic need to do something, anything. In the end, they were all just trying to avoid thinking about the terribly inevitable conclusion that everything was pointing to. This vile conclusion that evidence supported, was they were most likely never going to see Yuugi, Malik and the others ever again, and even worse, that they would never know what happened to them.

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Taro Hatori was a fortunate man, indeed it was something he prided himself on. True, he was a long way from blessed in the looks department, being a mere 5'6 and quite overweight, but that wasn't very important in neither his line of work nor his brand of fortune.

He was fifty three as of two months ago, and he was quite pleased with what he'd accomplished in his half a century on this Earth. Police chief of a large department of Domino for a number of years now, most wealthy due to both his pay and his side dealings, and best of all, able to procure just about anything he wanted thanks to his many connections, many of which he had stumbled on by sheer chance. Life had treated him well.

And so, he was currently very content, after all on top of all that, he'd found a truly ideal toy to play with at the latest of Higuchi's auctions. He'd known Higuchi for a long time now, having been frequenting his business for at least a decade, and he'd had many wonderful samples there, but now, he'd found his perfect match. And although for a moment, a few weeks ago, it had looked like this new match was in jeopardy, fate had smiled on him once more.

Not one of Higuchi's groups in the past received much media attention, until this latest one. Through some mix-up, they'd taken Seto Kaiba of Kaiba Corp as one of the group, and this had not only sparked huge media interest, but a full police investigation too. This could have spelled doom for Higuchi's whole business, if not for Hatori's trademark stroke of luck. The police department assigned to the case was his own, meaning the case wouldn't even get off the ground as long as he had a say. Good fortune had struck again.

And now, Hatori found himself sitting in his office, awaiting a call from some of Higuchi's men. They would be helping him to hinder the case to the best of their abilities. Of course, these two being Higuchi's "strike force", the pair that did the scouting, tracking and kidnapping for each group, meant their abilities were considerable.

He had two jobs for them to do, one of which was effectively clean up they ought to have done themselves, and the other, something he'd been working up to for the last couple of weeks, that he expected would stop the investigation dead in it's tracks.

In the meantime, he had very little to do. It was already late, nearly ten o clock, and he wished they'd call soon, he was eager for the day to be over. He was dreading tomorrow, however, and for good reason. Tomorrow was Tuesday, and he knew already it was going to go ridiculously slowly. Wednesday was going to be the highlight of the week, and smiling fate or not, it would take it's time getting there.

He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a photograph. It had been a special favour from Higuchi to be allowed to take this picture. He'd taken it a week previous, when he'd last been able to go along to one of Higuchi's scheduled "client nights". He suspected he'd be holding onto this photo for many years to come.

In the photo was a bed, the bed from one of the client bedrooms in Higuchi's mansion, to be precise. On it lay a boy. This boy was the same one he'd bid a staggering amount of money on, and won, at Higuchi's auction two weeks prior, and the one he'd be seeing again Wednesday evening.

Stretched out on the bed on his back, naked of course, with his hands twisted underneath him and handcuffed, he looked simply magnificent. He was very thin, with pale skin and a long mane of shockingly white hair. His face was pretty, indeed quite effeminate, with beautiful brown eyes, huge and doe-like. He was even crying, as if just to make the picture that much more perfect.

Remembering the boy's smooth, soft skin, Hatori found himself longing for the time to pass. He desperately wanted to have those huge, terrified and tearful eyes looking up at him as he shoved his cock in the boy's mouth. He craved that wonderful, long screech the boy would let out when Hatori rammed into his little tight entrance. He did love the screams quite particularly. They gave him a very specific kind of pleasure to hear, almost like the boy was saying "job well done!".

Actually, while he'd screwed the boy in the private section for the auction, he'd heard the other members of the group's scream too. Little Mokuba Kaiba certainly had a delicious screech coming from his tiny lungs. Hatori made a mental note to try and book that particular boy for Friday or next Monday, he definitely needed to sample that one. Still, he knew the one he'd be returning to constantly was his doe eyed, white haired friend staring back at him from the photo still clutched in his hand.

The boy seemed to have a twin in the group, also, but he didn't see himself giving that one a go. He seemed far too aggressive and violent. Hatori certainly wouldn't trust putting even a finger in that boy's mouth, let alone his own member. No, he'd stick with the more innocent one, and try out Mokuba Kaiba, and maybe the blonde Arab boy or the tiny one with the multicoloured spiky hair too. They were all his style, in any case, and they weren't exactly going anywhere after all.

At long last, his phone rang, pulling him out of his fantasies. He wrenched it out of his pocket, eager to finish up for the night.

"Hatori speaking"

"You're the police chief?"

"Yes"

"Name's Blain. What do you need done?"

Higuchi's man was clearly not one to beat around the bush, much to Hatori's relief.

"Right, two things, and both must be done tonight, and promptly, understand?"

"Yep"

"First, despite my delays, the teams are preparing to begin searching the building across from the shop you grabbed the boys from. It's my understanding that you two used a room on the fourth floor as your main vantage point?"

"That's right"

"Ok, I want you to go to that room right away, and strip it bare. I've no doubt you left none of your stuff there, but I want you to clear everything else that indicates you were there for a few weeks. Fingerprints are a priority, don't leave any for the team to find. Understood?"

"Sure thing"

"Alright, second, as you know yourself, the gas bomb you use is not exactly commonplace, there are only a few places to get them from. You didn't leave the bomb behind but the team here have still deduced what it was from the description the two girls you left there have said. So now they've narrowed it down to those few places. I've misled them quite a lot over this, until they came up with those places. I want you to go to whichever one it is you get your stuff from, and make very sure they're not going to say anything, or show any evidence that they are the ones. And tonight for both of these tasks, tomorrow is when both operations are starting for the team. Got it?"

"Absolutely"

"Good, that'll be all. Let me know first thing in the morning how both went"

"Will do, you're the boss"

And with a click, he was gone. Glad to be finally free for the night, Hatori stood up, stuffing the phone back into his pocket. Taking a long final glance at the photo of the naked boy before replacing it in his coat pocket, he crossed the room to lock his office and head home.

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It was cold tonight, and even through his body encompassing white robe, Ryou found himself shivering. The pair of arms currently wrapped around his waist felt this, and pulled him in closer to their owner, so that Ryou found himself pressed tightly against Bakura. This closeness both comforted him, and made him quite uneasy.

The men who escorted the two of them here and there had decided to leave them free of chains tonight, and thus they were huddled together on Bakura's mattress. They had found themselves in this position on several occasions over the last two weeks, but Ryou still was slightly uncomfortable to have Bakura hold him like this. Not that he would mention that out loud.

The main reason, truth be told, was that Ryou was in fact, rather frightened of Bakura, at least somewhat.

It was an intensely difficult situation between the two of them. Ryou had, along with Yuugi, vouched for Bakura's return, and he had taken him in, without any hesitation. In return, Bakura had grown extremely attached and affectionate towards Ryou, something he was grateful for, but still unsure about. At this point, he realised he did care deeply for Bakura, and certainly to the extent that he would gladly accept his affection. However, he could not quite let go of a certain amount of fear of what Bakura could do.

He knew it was wrong to have done all this for Bakura, and still be wary of him when his back was turned, but right now, he couldn't help it. For the longest time, Ryou had been alone. His father was the only member of his family still alive, and he played effectively no role in Ryou's life. Thus at sixteen, Ryou was living on his own, in his empty apartment. It was a truly lonely life, no family, no friends, nothing.

Then he went to Domino, and met Yuugi and the others. Having a group of friends for the first time had been strange, but wonderful at the same time. But then, Bakura happened.

He had never looked at the Millennium Ring as anything more than jewellery, even after Bakura had begun emerging to take over his body, and it took a long time for him to realise he had not been as alone as he'd thought. But unlike Yuugi and Yami's relationship, he and Bakura had had effectively no liaison, merely spirit and host, nothing more. There was no interaction, and Ryou had been quite glad for this, for when he finally realised that Bakura was there, quite a while after he had first emerged, he was frightened. Bakura seemed to be nothing less than flat out evil, and Ryou found himself a terrified spectator for the feud between Bakura and Yami. He had been glad when Bakura had lost, freeing him from his constant possession.

But despite it all, when the time came, he had vouched for Bakura, and taken him in. Why, he was not sure, but he simply felt he could help Bakura become better. He knew that with the death of Zorc, any true malice in Bakura was gone, but the former thief still had a violent temper, and he retained a most poor attitude towards people. It was one that was highly dismissive and rude, not at all compatible with someone who needed to reintegrate with society. Ryou wanted to improve this, and it was nice, to not be alone when he went home, and to have something to do. But even if he gained his own affection for this new Bakura, he still felt wary, and uneasy, as though Bakura might suddenly lapse into his old ways and use Ryou as target practice for a knife. It was inevitable that he would have this fear, fundamentally unfounded as it was.

Even here, he was unnerved by Bakura's frightful temper, despite the vastly worse trauma he had suffered here. Bakura constantly fought with the guards who brought them around the place, and Ryou couldn't even imagine what he must be like in the "client nights".

However, Ryou still felt a great deal of comfort from Bakura's tight embrace, almost fully overtaking his innate fear. And in this place, he would take any comfort at all.

These last three weeks had easily been the most horrible of Ryou's life. Not even the deaths of his family members were more awful than this. At least with those, they had just happened, and ended immediately, leaving him with only his mourning. This, on the other hand, was never-ending. He had been touched molested, violated, raped, and so many times that he had lost count. He'd even been forced to lay down on a bed, naked, and have pictures taken of him. The sheer humiliation he would feel when he thought about that day, and really, every other day in this place, was enough to make him regret being alive. If it weren't for Bakura's unique method of comforting him, he expected he wouldn't be alive today. He would have given up on life soon after that first rape, during that disgusting auction.

He had indeed been a virgin when he had been abducted with the others, as had Bakura been of course, and now, his first time was being the prize of some auction winner, raped in a cubicle in a dark room, screaming his lungs out. A far cry from the supposedly special occasion life promised him.

However, on the Saturday after that night, just over a week ago, they had left Bakura and himself out of their chains, as they were at this moment. Bakura had taken the opportunity to say that they were both still virgins, in the real sense of the word. Ryou had not quite realised what Bakura meant, before his companion had kissed him. As Bakura had said, rape was not sex in the traditional "loving" meaning; it was merely an assault, a hate-filled attack. Thus, it had been that night when he'd truly ceased to be a virgin, when Bakura, rather than some faceless man, had sex with him. Not brutally, as he would have expect from someone of Bakura's temperament, but almost gently, softly, and most certainly pleasantly.

It had certainly gone a long way to helping to remove his uneasiness around Bakura, though not fully. He wondered what would have happened had they not been left on their own, if they had a third person in the room, one of the others. He supposed he would still be stuck fully in his irrational fear of Bakura, rather than merely having shades of it as he did now. He ought to be grateful, in the end, because as degrading, painful and scarring as the treatment they were receiving from their captors was, he knew he could survive as long as he had Bakura. He didn't know how the others were dong, but he desperately hoped they could find similarly powerful sources of comfort; he couldn't bear to know that he had caused one of his dear friends to break completely. And he was the cause, he knew it. He was the reason Bakura had been there to have a meeting about, leaving themselves wide open for that trap. If they ever got out of this, all of them, he would spend the rest of his life making amends for each of them. That was a vow, a promise; he would never forgive himself for putting them through this, he could only hope to help them cope.

Suddenly he felt Bakura's hands tighten, and twist around, flipping him over, so that he they faced each other. They merely locked eyes for a moment before Bakura leaned over and caught Ryou in a deep kiss. As he felt the former thief's hands pulling open his clothing, exposing his torso and pelvis, Ryou thought that with Bakura's current course of action, at least he wouldn't be cold anymore.

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This really is a depressing sort of story isn't it? Well, that's me for you.

This chapter is a bit of an oddball, not being centered on the group very much, but since the story is going to begin to shift gears next chapter, and move towards it's climax, I thought I might as well complete the picture of what's happening to everyone at this moment, before that happens. A change of scenery is always nice, after all.

Also, I know Hatori's name isn't written correctly, his first name should be written second, but I've not done that with the names so far in this story (I write Seto Kaiba, not Kaiba Seto for instance), so I didn't think it was right to suddenly start now.

The perspective changes are good for the story, to keep it fresh, I think, and being that this is actually the first story I've written for fan fiction, it's good practice for the different characters.

Violence coming next chapter, just so you're forewarned (not the rape kind either, really physical violence). Feedback is always appreciated, even if it's just a small bit saying if you liked it or not, just so I know I'm not screwing up badly while writing this story. As always, thank you very much for taking the time to read my writings.