I have to say last chapter will probably be the one with the biggest changes. If anything else changes so much, I'll say so.
Note: I'm going to try to space out Malik's explanations so there isn't a bulk of information in one chapter. Also, the language at the one point is Japanese because Ryou and Malik have been talking in English since it is Ryou's native tongue. He is from England after all.
Disclaimer: I don't own YGO.
Chapter 3
The Shadow's Breath
Ryou's heart skipped a beat when Malik suddenly flinched. After being still for so long, any movement would've startled him. He felt quite alone with Malik in a meditative and unresponsive state, and being alone in such a dark place his mind and eyes started to wander. Twice he saw a Duel Monster pass by. The first time, he didn't know what to make of it. Yugi once brought up that Duel Monsters were more than just cards. He—more like his yami—talked about the Dark Magician as if he was a living, breathing soul. He couldn't remember when, but he heard the term "Duel Spirit" used to describe them. At one point, an Alligator Sword Duel Spirit spotted him and lifted that sharp, gleaming sword of his, ready to strike his prey. Luck, for once, was on Ryou's side, and in a ripple of shadows his Lady of Faith was suddenly standing in front of him, chanting a spell in some odd language. The gator's eyes dropped sleepily and he fell down on the ground heavily as sleep consumed him. The ground drank him up and he sank through the fog. The Lady of Faith turned and winked at Ryou before returning to her place in his deck, leaving Ryou relieved, stunned, and utterly confused. He was too deep in a stupor to notice when the pulsing eye on Malik's forehead faded.
Malik had barely enough energy to move his head and look up at Ryou. "How long was I gone?" he asked weakly.
Ryou checked his internal clock. "Almost two hours." His hand didn't leave his chest as he spoke.
Malik hissed at his stupidity. "I was cutting it close. Otherwise the shadows get my soul." He thought about what he said for a moment before adding, "Well they get to keep it."
Ryou's perplexed look slowly softened as it clicked together. "I take it we are not waiting like damsels in distress for the pharaoh." He chuckled quietly.
Malik's eyes had a sudden hardness in the lavender depths. "Damn straight."
Before Ryou could say anything else, a shadow slithered around Malik and gave him a small bit of strength so he could get up and stay on his feet. It was a sign: something was coming.
Ryou felt a sudden change in the shadows as well, a presence of some sort materialized far ahead. A figure appeared in the misty haze, slowly ascending forward in jagged movements. Malik took a step forward and stood next to Ryou.
"You have your deck?" he asked.
"Yes…" Ryou's hand went to the deck holster that clipped to his belt. "Why?"
"You may need it."
Ryou opened his mouth to speak but never got a chance to talk when a blood curling, ear-piercing screech came from the direction of the approaching figure. The shriek softened to heart-broken moans.
"Oh… oh… wh-where am I?" It cried in Japanese, its voice cracked. "H-how did I get here? Hello? Anyone he-here? Can someo-one help m-me?"
Malik's eyes flashed with the tiniest bit of pity before quietly telling Ryou, "Follow my lead." He said something aloud in Arabic.
"Wow, you speak funny!" The stranger's warped voice cried out. His laugh was off, no humor or feeling behind it. "I don't know what 'Apples in fish kitchen Bella' means!"
Ryou glanced at Malik, hoping his face would give away what he was doing and why, but he kept it guarded. Follow my lead…
Ryou chirped something in Spanish, remembering a bit he learned in school when he lived in Spain for a year.
The figure's form was finally clear, the fog evaporating as he neared the two teens. He was a tall man—almost as tall as Kaiba—dressed in a tattered, moth-eaten pinstriped suit. He looked like he had been to Hell and back in Ryou's opinion. The man stopped ten feet away from the two boys and both of them felt like throwing up. The man's face was sunken in, his cheeks shallow and leathery. His right eye was half-lidded; he gave the impression of lazy eye. His left eye, in contrast, was wider than humanly possible and bloodshot to the point it looked like it hurt. The iris kept changing color from deep almost-black-but-not-quite grey to stark white. His smile was agonizingly forced and looked almost as wide and fake as one of Marik's. He opened it and barked out a laugh, blood dripping from the corners of his lips.
"It's people!" He jumped up and down like a little child. "How be do?"
Malik switched languages, calmly saying something in Ancient Egyptian.
"'Coconuts gecko talk French aqua Z.'" The man nodded his head. "I see." His eye shot over to Ryou, his smile faltering. "Amane?"
Ryou blinked, his mouth falling open. "Wh-what?"
"Dad! Mom! I found her!" The man shouted, his voice sounding eerily like a younger Ryou. "She was hiding in the dryer!"
Ryou couldn't believe what he was hearing. This was not possible. This wasn't happening. He remembered that day so clearly even though he was so little. Those were the exact words he said eleven years ago when he and his sister were playing hide and seek. Amane was missing for over an hour before Ryou and his family found his white-haired three-year-old sister asleep amongst the freshly dried clothes.
"Ryou Bakura."
He jumped at the sound of his name, the sickeningly familiar voice pulling him from his thoughts. No. He cannot be back. He just can't. The brown eyes looked up to meet a dark grey one, dark maroon seeping into the iris. The man's smile looked almost exactly like his, but it didn't have the same feeling behind it. It was flat, fake, a replica, a poser. Nevertheless, he had the Voice down pat.
"Your blood is going to be the water in my bathtub."
His body froze. He was cold, alone, helpless, no light to ever penetrate the darkness ever again. No one could save him. No one could help him. He was alone in his eternal hell of shadows, nightmares, and ice cold. The eye held him. His future played in the white iris. A dead world. A throne made of shadows. A large, dark power emanating pure evil. A sick smile across his face. The world was conquered, and he couldn't stop him. A vessel. A landlord. A host. Nothing more. Just a tool.
Malik's face scrunched up with worry as he yelled and yelled in every language that he could think of. Spanish, Arabic, English, Ancient Egyptian, French… nothing worked. As Ryou's already pale face drained of his color, Malik finally went to his last resort.
"Hey asshole! I'm over here!" The man's smile faded and his eye moved to Malik's tanned face. He quickly said something in a different array of languages and the man's original plastic smile returned.
"Of course! Why didn't I think of that? 'Moose hits directions five north Little Kuriboh!' Thanks you!" He bowed politely and stumbled past them, moaning and crying, asking for help and rambling on random sentences that didn't make an inkling of sense. His cries soon escalated to screams again before the shadows shifted and ate him up, a scream hanging in the dead air.
Ryou, who was still stuck in his shocked state, collapsed on the ground, coughing and breathing heavily. The sliver of shadow that started to split the skin on his hand slid away. Ryou noisily emptied his stomach, the sick melting into the ground. He breathed in a few more gasps of air before turning his frantic brown eyes to Malik who wore an expression of concern.
"What… was that?" Ryou finally had enough energy to talk.
Malik turned his eyes away from the Brit, his concerned face changing to one of sorrow and pain. "That is the effect of the Shadow Realm on a mortal."
"We are mortals."
His lavender eyes looked sharply at Ryou's chocolate brown ones. "Mortals who are used to Shadow Magic." His gaze turned back to the restless shadows. "The Shadow Realm has existed as long as anyone can remember. Almost every ancient civilization used it as punishment for severe crimes and offenses. These crimes were all recorded once and the scrolls hidden. That's why you don't see it in today's history textbooks.
"There is more than just one way to enter the Shadow Realm. One, as Mai experienced," he stopped a minute and clenched his fists, sending a silent plea of forgiveness to the blonde woman before continuing, "is your soul is banished here, dwelling in the shadowy abyss while your body is in a comatose state unless someone is able to bring it back. If not, eventually your body will die off and you will forever remain here. Another, as today's Shadow Game illustrated—" Malik muttered something too low for Ryou to hear, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with the Spirit and his other half "—your body is sent here. If you are use to the magic, lucky you. You have a good chance of survival. If not… you end up like that man. A majority of the time, it is the soul that is sent here—like in my case—not a body—like in yours—and usually when a regular mortal is here, it's by accident.
"Portals all around the world lead to here. The missing nose in the Sphinx? Shadow Realm portal. Some spots on the Great Wall of China send you here if you just get within five feet. Anything that has a sort of… dark air to it probably is a portal."
"Warwick Castle in Warwickshire?" Ryou asked as the two teens started walking forward again. "It always had a gloomy feel to it when I used to visit it when I was younger."
Malik nodded. "Another portal. The most popular and largest portal is the Bermuda Triangle. Even a few spots in the Great Lakes in the United States are gateways. That's why you used to hear about ships disappearing. They fell through. However, very few portals are constant. Most of them are random. That man perhaps stumbled across one and fell in. Countless people accidentally cross into the Shadow Realm. Since they are just mortals, the shadows eat at the mind and soul, causing them to go insane." He frowned slightly at his word choice, but continued. "Eventually this becomes too much, and the Shadow Realm consumes them."
Malik paused to let the information sink in. After a minute, Ryou nodded, his eyes no longer clouded in confusion. "Why did I need to speak in a different tongue?"
A slight smile crossed the Egyptian teen's face. "While the poor victims are losing their minds, they develop an unexplained empathy link that connects to people who speak the same language as they do. Sense is not relevant here, so a simple phrase in Arabic could be something out of the blue in Swahili. However, if said person hears one word in their native speech, the link automatically connects with the speaker. The lost soul is trying to find itself, so it searches through and tries to find three kinds of memories: a childhood memory, the saddest memory, and the happiest memory. Once it has caught whiff of one of those memories… you're trapped. The childhood memory catches the speaker's attention. Usually the memory plays with emotions, stirring up forgotten ones or building up passions lost in the past. Next, probably the worst of all, though some philosophers argue that the third one is," Malik thought for an instant but shook his head. "But the second one finds the saddest memory, the one with the most pain and fear and builds it up. It shows you bits of the memory and then shows future events if this sad memory was extended or not solved."
Shivers ran up and down Ryou's spine as Malik spoke. It was like he was in his mind when that… thing penetrated his soul.
"I have a damn good guess what your sad memory was, don't I?" Malik's smile turned bitter. "The Spirit. Bak—"
"Please don't say his name." Ryou said with such a dangerous force that Malik didn't think such a boy could have. Then again, he didn't know Ryou that well.
"What is the third one?" the Brit asked.
Malik swallowed thickly. "The third one stirs up the greatest joy in your life and then kills everyone and everything in that memory, leaving you utterly alone."
Ryou inhaled sharply. "Oh." He said in a small voice.
"As it finds these memories," Malik continued, "it is trying to find itself before it came here. The goal is to return back home and by finding other humans with memories, it tries to remember it's past. When each memory is being eaten, you become more and more like it. With the childhood memory, you lose your looks, looking more like a zombie ghost. With the sad memory, you lose all sense. With the happy memory, you lose who you formerly were and wander screaming and crying and wondering where the hell you are."
"That's terrible," Ryou stumbled to find the words that described his feelings. "I've never heard anything that sad." The look Malik gave him made his stomach plummet. "But that is not the worst part, is it?"
Malik shook his head. "The memories are not lost. You have every single memory, bright and vibrant as the sun. But you don't remember them. You don't understand them, because each memory is warped."
He paused and Ryou nodded his head slowly as he wrapped his head around all the information Malik was throwing at him. Complex? Very much so. But it was so easy to accept that all of this happened, even if he was still a bit lost. This reminded him…
"Why did that… thing start doing that whole sequence to me?" Ryou asked.
Malik's serious face broke, a small smile crossing his lips. "You didn't realize it at the time, but when he was talking about coconuts or whatever, you said the Japanese equivalent of 'golly'," Malik sniggered at the word choice as a light shade of pink colored Ryou's cheeks.
"Sorry," he said.
Malik waved his hand. "It's fine. If I hadn't intervened, by the time he would have been done you would've become one of them."
"One of what?"
"They have several names according to different sightings, different times, and different cultures. An old name is the Night Ghoul. A more common name of today is Midnight Screamer, but the one most people use is Shadow Breather."
Ryou gulped. "You sure do know a lot about the Shadow Realm," was all he could say.
Malik's dry laugh was humorless. "The pharaoh's history wasn't the only thing I studied when I was living underground." He ran a hand through his ashy blond hair. "We need to find a way out. Where there are portals in, there are portals out."
/…\
"I-I'm sorry. I-I tried."
A hand stroked the hair of the crying Shadow Breather. The figure holding and comforting the creature seemed to be levitating, sitting cross-legged five feet in the air.
"Shh, Norio-chan, you did just fine," it said as the shadow-consumed man continued to cry into its torso. "These guests are just hard to crack, that's all."
The Shadow Breather lifted his head, his left eye changing from white to dark grey in a matter of milliseconds. "Really?"
The figure smiled wide. "Really."
The Shadow Breather screamed a sound of joy and grief mixed in one. "Yuki! Our destination wedding is going right on schedule! Oh, happy day!" He shrieked again and the figure smiled.
"Go on, my child," the figure said. "Go play with you siblings."
Like a happy child, the Shadow Breather ran off, stumbling over his feet and screaming in ecstasy about weddings and guests.
The figure smiled fondly as it watched the Shadow Breather disappear in the dark. "They grow up so fast." It slowly descended from its floating position and lightly landed on its feet. The figure rubbed its hands together in excitement. "Now there is work to be done and an old friend to visit."
/…\
Bakura's smile was long gone, a contempt snarl taking its place. According to his internal clock, he had been wandering the Millennium Puzzle for over three days in Shadow Realm time. Lady Luck must have been against him this time. He had been travelling in circles, passing the same upside down staircase, hallway that slanted downward and same peculiar door. Unlike all the other golden doors, this one was white with a flowery welcome sign hanging from a hook in front of the window. A few cars passed on the street, but mostly the neighborhood was quiet. Bakura almost considered opening the door, but something held him back. Instead, he kicked it, the door's form shimmering and fading, becoming just another gold door… with the Eye of Horus on it. His trademark smirk returned as he opened the door, wondering where it would lead.
/…\
"Who is Amanda?" Malik asked, breaking the silence that had been between the two teens for almost two hours as they wandered the shadowy mist.
"Amane," Ryou corrected, biting his lip. "She… was my sister."
Malik knew that he shouldn't pry, but curiosity got the best of him. "What happened to her?"
"She… and… my mother… died ten years ago in a horrible car accident caused by a drunk driver." Ryou said slowly, his gaze forward, trying his best to keep his face straight.
"I'm so sorry," Malik said sincerely, placing a hand on Ryou's shoulder.
He smiled sadly at his comrade. "Thanks. That… Shadow Breather touched a nerve when he said her name. I was only five, so you can guess how frightening it was for me when I couldn't find my baby sister. Ah, we were playing hide and seek," he explained after seeing Malik's confused expression.
Malik grinned slightly at the mention of the game. Odion, Ishizu, and he used to play it all the time when he was younger. Now he can barely remember a fond memory they shared recently.
"What of your dad?" he asked suddenly.
"Oh," Ryou's smile turned into a grimace. "He's alright. I'm usually alone in my apartment because he is in Egypt a majority of the time. He's one of the head Egyptologists for the Domino Ancient History Museum. They have one of the best Ancient Egyptian sections in the world, so naturally an Egyptologist and his son moved to Domino. Plus… the Ring had already given me enough trouble."
Malik rubbed the back of his head. "Trust me. I know what you mean."
Ryou stopped walking and looked curiously at Malik. "You do, don't you." He chuckled uneasily. "You know, we're sort of in the same boat."
A puzzled look. "What do you mean?"
"Well, for one, we both have evil manifestations of ourselves controlling us."
"Well, mine is," Malik said slowly, "but with my dealings with the Spirit, he seems to be his own person entirely."
"I guess," Ryou sighed. "Do you and your darker half have separate soul rooms?"
The usually vibrant and bright lavender eyes hardened. "No. We shared the same mind, so we knew what the other was thinking all of the time. Nothing was ever private."
"Oh my," Ryou gasped. "My deepest apologizes."
"Forget it," Malik waved him off.
"I envy you." Ryou said unexpectedly.
Malik looked at him slowly. "Why?"
"You know his every thought. I don't. Everything the Spirit does is a mystery to me. All he does is…" Ryou hiccupped as he tried to keep his tears under control. He slid to the ground, trying to keep his composure. He felt silly and humiliated for crying in front of someone he literally met almost a day ago, but he was so angry and hurt and betrayed he couldn't help it.
Malik really didn't know what to do. Yes, he was totally used to crying and tears for mercy, but someone crying for another reason altogether was something else. Up to this point, he had been unsympathetic with all the crimes and whatnot he's committed. All his brain would allow him to do was stare and say, "Is?" in a calm voice.
Ryou choked back a sob and looked up at Malik. "Lock m-me up in my soul room. All th-the time. I'm locked in the d-dark and there is n-nothing I c-can do about it."
Malik's heart reached out to the poor white-haired boy. He bent down and put his hands on his shoulders. From his short experience with the Spirit, Ryou was constantly tormented and put down. The Spirit was relentless, phlegmatic, and cruel, enjoying the pain and isolation of his host. He quarantined Ryou from the rest of his friends, and kept him locked away.
Ryou was a really lonely person.
"I-I've tried to fight him but all he d-does is laugh." Ryou's sobs caused him to stutter, his thin frame shuddering uncontrollably. "I'm s-sick of being in the dark and not fighting." He frowned hard and pounded his fist on the ground. "I'm not going to put up with it anymore." He said with force and hatred. "I will get control of my life. I am not him and I won't let him c-control me."
Malik gave Ryou a lot of credit. Not only did he survive being tortured by the bastard, he had courage. So much. And he was right. Ryou would never be like the Spirit.
Unlike yourself, a voice in the back of Malik's mind whispered. Marik will forever be a part of you, Malik, whether you want him or not.
Malik cursed the fact this was true.
I realized that Ryou wouldn't know that he was a reincarnation of Akefia. Bakura is secretive and wouldn't let Ryou have a slip-up and go into his soul room. He's not that careless. Ryou would probably be enjoying this freedom he has and realizing that he's been trapped would make him upset and angry. That way my angle. I hope I hit it!
Review?
Over and out,
Mahersal
