Hello everyone! I'm very unreliable when it comes to updates, huh? Well, sorry for the wait. But I think you will like this chapter. At least, I hope you will. ;) Being the coward that I am, I avoided confrontation between Anzu and Yami. For now. That'll change later on. I think. Anyways, I should probably tell you that Karasu is Japanese for Raven. So if you ever see a Raven reference, then I'm really just talking about Karasu. Who is Karasu? Why, he's Yami's cute little OC brother. Now, I'd like to thank Begecko-chan for following this story. Thanks a whole lot, and I will try to update faster from now on.
Yami started out having a fairly peaceful dream, considering the usual nightmares that plagued him. Karasu was laughing next to him as they ran from room to room in their old house, his long red-tipped black hair grazing his chin. His coal black eyes were happy and his skin had a healthy glow. "Catch me you can, Yami!" he cried, speeding up and pulling away from his older brother.
"Wait, don't run so fast, Karasu!" He didn't want his little brother to leave him again. He just wanted to hold onto the skinny little boy and never let him go again. Soft giggles echoed through the darkened house and Yami couldn't see Karasu anymore. But he wasn't worried yet. Karasu always liked to play hide-and-go seek. All Yami had to do was find him, and then they'd be together.
He searched all the rooms in the house, but there was no sign of little Raven anywhere. Eventually, there was only one room left to search.
Yami paused before reaching for the door to Karasu's room. The last time he had been in there was just before Karasu had died all of those years ago. For some reason, Yami really dreaded seeing what was on the other side of that solid oak door. Despite his many misgivings, he forced his shaking hand to grip the doorknob. The old wooden door swung towards him with a groan of reluctance, and behind it stood Karasu, completely overjoyed to see Yami.
"Yami, you found me!" he cried, practically tackling Yami in a hug. Karasu was alright, of course he was. They were just playing hide-and-seek, after all. But why did Yami still feel so uneasy?
"You found me, but you found me too late, big brother," Karasu whispered. His grip on Yami loosened a bit, and Yami looked down at him, alarmed.
"You let them kill me Yami! You promised you'd save me, but you didn't! Why Yami? You let me die! YOU LET ME DIE!" Karasu screamed, pushing Yami away.
Suddenly, Yami was in a familiar earthen tunnel. Murmured chants filled the whole cave, and Karasu was laying in the middle of a crowd of bastards in black robes, unconscious. Yami felt a flash of panic and hope. He still had time to save Karasu from those bastards before they killed him, but how was he going to do it? There was no time to come up with a plan, so Yami just ran forward and tried to shove the Jackals out of the way.
It was too little, too late. An ugly light punched a hole in the ceiling of the cave. A horrible scream rose from the woken Karasu as his skin was burned away, slowly and painfully. It was all he could manage, but Yami could've sworn that Karasu reached for him, pleading with bloodshot eyes just before he crumbled to ash.
Yami shot awake, panting and sweating. A headache was forming, and Yami pinched the bridge of his nose before reaching for his cellphone to check the time. It was two in the morning.
As if on cue, the small device rang. Yami thought about ignoring it, especially since he already had a headache. He didn't need another one nagging into his ear over the phone at two a.m. Still, it was probably important, so Yami picked up.
"I'm surprised you woke up," was the snide remark that greeted him.
"Go piss up a pole, Kaiba," he replied. "What do you want?"
"You have to ditch school for a week."
"Not that I'm complaining, but why?"
"Because you have something more important to do," Kaiba said, but didn't elaborate. He did it just to piss Yami off, and it worked.
"Just spit out the damn instructions."
"We found some places where those missing kids might be held. I'll email you all of the locations and a complete list of the victims. The problem is, they're all with an hour to two hour drive from Demotte, but in opposite directions. So it'll take you a long time to search them all, considering there's twelve of them. Most of them are also complex storehouses, so it'll take you forever just to look in all of the rooms."
"Joy."
"But there's a chance that those kids might be found. And they are the key to locking down the bastards that kidnapped them. Besides, maybe they could tell us what happened to the three missing gods of the underground society."
"You're being surprisingly polite," Yami noted, apparently uninterested in what he was just told.
"It's two in the morning," Kaiba said, as if that explained everything.
"Whatever, just get the hell off of the phone and send me the locations, Kaiba."
Yami hung up before Kaiba could reply and got up to get some aspirin.
Anzu grew a good-sized vein when she saw Yuugi's empty seat in Theater Arts. First the little jerk refused to help her, but now he just wasn't there at all. Anzu had the feeling that he was ditching out of class just to tick her off.
She sighed and forced herself to calm down. Fine, she would just have to work without him. Still, Anzu wasn't much of an author/play write and all of the other groups were close to done with their first scenes.
Her gaze fell on the black notebook on the floor. It was so tempting just to use the story in the notebook to write the script.
Eventually, Anzu got a solution. She would write a script that was very similar to Yuugi's story, but with different names, places, and a little romance thrown in. It was perfect! That way, Anzu wouldn't feel so bad. Besides, it was Yuugi's fault for not being in school! That's what Anzu assured herself as she began to scrawl down the opening lines on a sheet of paper.
It didn't occur to her until later that the story in Yuugi's notebook was written in English instead of Japanese like it normally should've been.