Yu-Gi-Oh: A Past and Future Pharaoh

Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

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Bakura turned his head in a sulk, sipping on the lemon soda as it was getting late and he was starting to actually get hungry. Maybe it was from the smell of food all around him, he probably should have gone for the meat lovers like Jounouchi had. But that was something that the Spirit in the Ring would pick... Well he would have gone for the first meat house he found. Adding vegetables to the pizza slice was going to have to put a wall, between how he ate to keep his energy up and how the Spirit did.

Though the Meat Lovers 'did' look good... maybe if he had room for another slice...

As he moved his head he noticed how his neck didn't feel the poke of any of the pins he wove in? Ignoring the others, he put the cup down and raked his fingers through the base of his hair. He closed his fingers catching his hair between them, a frown crossing his lips. A frown that caught Jounouchi's eyes, distracting him from his conversation with Malik.

"Hey? Something wrong Bakura?"

Bakura blinked as he turned to look at the pair with him, before bringing his hands out of his hair, and dropped his left hand to check what he could. "The pins I put in my hair have all gone missing... Now I'm worried about the rest of my tools and where it might have ended up," Bakura replied, reaching down, his fingers grazed the hard shape under his pants leg, the hilt of a sharp knife.

Was it only the pins?

"Maybe John wanted us to know he was there as well?" Malik suggested offhand as he leaned back in his seat. "We 'were' in the graveyard and it would be proof for us that he's there. Though I admit its not like it can be used for the twins."

"What pins? And why?" Jounouchi asked as he looked between the two, arms crossed and leaning back. Addressing each with their own question to answer, as he was reminded, almost forcefully, that he was traveling with two would be killers. Or both killers, he didn't really know what the pair's kill count was pre Yugi, and he didn't really want to know. Having his soul stuffed into figurines and cards from one and mind controlled from the other was enough thank you very much.

Around them the hour was starting to tell, as diners began to transition out, having finished their dinner and off to enjoy the evening at the clubs or established bars. Noise began to lower into a quiet murmur, pleasant and calming. If not for the whole issue with the Book and now with John, this would have been nice. While Ryou was more prone to solitude and quiet for himself, the thought of all of them together, out enjoying pizza PROPER, tea, and each others' company sounded grand.

"I was wearing pins on my person in case someone tried to grab me, only they're gone... Which should be impossible by normal, living standards, given no one has been around me to take them." Bakura explained.

"Given that John has dealt with people going in and out of the cemetery since his death and no one has noticed him. Maybe he wanted to give us a confirmation, thinking that we might not believe it ourselves and he wanted us to know. 'Hey, I am here, help me'," Malik explained before he elbowed Bakura's hand still. "Annnd they arrive!"

Bakura's eyes had been turning to Malik when he heard what Malik said and reshifted his gaze to the front of the pizza parlor. Where, indeed, the twins were walking into the place before Bakura was spotted from a distance. Both Bakura and Malik gave the pair a cheery wave, causing Jounouchi to twist in his seat so he could look over the chair.

"I can have the dessert pizza for dinner right?" Malik spoke more for himself than for Bakura or Jounouchi. A pity they listened.

"No, Malik, you're having a supreme," Bakura countered. "Learn the basics before you throw madness on your pizza."

"How is pizza 'madness'," Malik countered as Bakura got up to greet the twins, leaving the pair at the table.

"Well, you've never had it before, so I guess he's concerned that you might not like a supreme, or maybe the whole thing just won't sit well with you. Not like American's make food like we do, it might upset your stomach and that's distracting for what we're doing." Jounouchi pointed out as he recalled the time at the police station. Canadian food was good, but overindulging on a variety was clearly his dumb moment. "Speaking only Japanese, while trapped in a Canadian police station men's room trying to figure out how their toilets work... And they go get Money Bags to 'help' translate your issue... Because he speaks French... Because why not..."

Jounouchi's recounting descended from recalling the past, to objecting to the events of the past, his tone more teeth clenched and embarrassed. Then again having to depend on 'Kaiba' given how antagonistic those two were was understandable. Also, hilarious. Something they would have needed because they would have found out about the bombing by that point probably.

"Frank! How you been?" Fred called out while George waved in greeting to Ryou.

"Great! Business and the family doing great! My boys saw the performance you two did yesterday even!" The owner, Frank, called out as did several other voices from behind the counter joined in.

The rousing cries reaffirmed the popularity of the pair, and Frank went about plating the pizzas Bakura and company picked. Bakura caught the blink of surprise from the twins as they noticed the pizza's being plated.

"Frank?" George asked, they didn't have a staple 'must have' pizza, it was odd for Frank to just start plating.

"Oh, your guests wanted these, they've been waiting for quite a while," Frank explained as he passed down the plates.

'For a while'? The words reaffirming that these guys...actually used 'magic' to get here?! Fred blinked, and only his training as a magician kept him from going slack jaw. He just walked along the counter not really thinking of what type of pizza he was in the mood for.

"I could use a veggie pizza tonight, which means Fred wants meat lovers," George ordered while Bakura went to pick up the tray carrying the food he and his group ordered. "You'll love the pizza here, Frank makes everything in house. His wife Sammi picks up all the ingredients from local vendors, so you get a real good taste of California."

Bakura blinked in surprise at the warm tone of George's voice, smiling in gratitude as the thief in the back of his mind whispered. 'Got'em!' Whatever happened now, they had won over one of the twins. That would increase their influence over Fred, whatever resistance would be from Fred and the less resistance the faster they could get things done.

"We got a booth in the back, I hope you don't mind," Bakura replied, as he reasoned out the time they were starting to push into late hours. It was possible that the twins would be more loose tongued at this hour, but also more forgetful about the things they experienced. Though they had a reason to be focused and awake for this conversation. The tray was laden with pizzas and the smell was certainly enticing with Malik leaning over to watch as Bakura approached.

"Oh that's fine, its nice to eat in peace," George agreed before Ryou was out of ear shot.

"Say, I hate to think we kept them waiting, how long have they been here?" Fred asked Frank as the older man went about cutting a slice of pizza for George.

"Oh the boys have been here for about maybe bout an hour, saw them loitering outside for some time before they came in. Hard to miss them, but given the Brit was the only one speaking English, I'd say he's the only one able to navigate for them." Frank admitted as he plated the pizza and went to work on Freds'.

An hour was impossible, it was almost an hour just driving 'to' town from the cemetery and driving through the town, with all its lights, was even longer. Unless you knew all the back roads and even then the 'been here an hour' was far too tight. So while George was willing to throw caution to the wind for the sake of learning a possible truth. Fred still felt a bit of concern, but even if the trio 'did' drive, he couldn't deny that he still wanted answers for what happened that day. Even half a truth was still part 'of' a truth, right?

The group settled into their seats, and the twins were a bit surprised to see Malik without his hood up. The blond's eyes were rather wide as he studied his pizza slice giving George a distant glance at the surprisingly pale eyes. Bakura passed over the slices of pizza to Jounouchi and Malik while George got their drinks.

"Uh, how do you eat this?" Malik asked as George approached with filled cups, his brother taking up the rear with the plated pizza slices. He kept looking from one end to the other, noticing that there was no utensil given for the food, but it 'did' smell interesting and good.

"You pick it up and just start biting in, but probably should wait for the twins, what with all the talking bout to happen." Jounouchi explained even as he demonstrated how to lift up the pizza, his own hands dwarfed by the size of the slice.

'Is my stomach big enough for all this?' Malik pondered while the twins slid into the booth next to Jounouchi.

Everyone was quiet at first, taking in the first warm bites of pizza, allowing Malik and Jounouchi to get to experience American style pizza for the first time. For Jounouchi there wasn't much to his experience, he knew what to expect. Though he did enjoy the lavish amount of meats and cheeses, Japan just didn't believe in doing this!

Malik was even more surprised and delighted, it was as though he was eating a sample of everything! He could taste the onions and peppers, the various types of meat, there was a thick sauce that surprised him and the cheese. It was hot, but it was fresh off the counter so that was a given, and he really didn't think his stomach could handle all this food. Not when bits of the topping kept falling off due to the immense amount of them.

"So maybe we need to talk about Monte... Pandora," Bakura suggested finally after they had managed to get some warm food into their stomachs. "Seeing that we met Catherine due to her being kidnapped by Monte, this year."

The twins winced as well, before exchanging brief glances and shifted those glances into looks at Bakura. "Monte wasn't like this originally... We'd love to tell you there's something about him not 'right' but..." George began, his voice apologetic for his friend.

"Monte is almost chronically shy, but its more because of their upbringing. Traveling between countries, moving around, its hard to make friends. We understood that," Fred admitted, realizing that what they would talk about would undoubtedly put Monte in a bad light. So it was for the best to put Monte in some better light before it got bad. He floundered for a bit trying to think of a good analogy for the trio to understand Monte. Then he held up his slice of pizza as an idea came to mind, "say we were having a party, the old gang. If we sent Monte out to get pizza, he'd know what to get for us and we could expect him to bring the right amount of pizzas, types we all could agree on and the right drinks."

As Fred took a bite, George picked up the thread as easily as any twin. "But if it was with you guys, he'd panic. He'd bring too much food, more drinks than necessary, he would be desperate to not disappoint you. But too afraid to make himself look like asking questions was something that he 'had' to do. Which was what he did with Cat, he lavished so much attention on her in an effort to appear confident that she got smitten by him. We all saw it, well she didn't, but we knew what he was doing and let it carry on because it was harmless. It was a really good match, because she started being his assistant and in doing so he fixated on her during his performances. He stopped being nervous when she was around! Then while we were in Texas for Make a Wish about a kid, we got together and were hanging out with Richard when..."

George took a bite, and Bakura took the opening in silence to fill it by filling in Malik and Jounouchi. Granted Malik knew 'something' of Pandora, he was still going to have to act clueless and hiding his expressions behind his huge slice of pizza was a start.

"Dad called us... Monte had an accident during a performance, as soon as our stint with the foundation was done we were on the first plane to see Monte."

Fred took a sip before he continued, "we're not sure what exactly happened, Cat was at the hospital when we arrived. The police let us, since we're professionals, check over the equipment after they were done with their investigation. Mostly 'because' we're trained professionals, but it looked like it was just too much gun powder. Either Monte got careless which seems insane, or one of the assistants added too much. Though I should add 'too much' isn't as bad as it sounds, Monte didn't get hurt because of the blast."

Once more there was a pause allowing Bakura the time to explain what had been explained to him, though this time Jounouchi wasn't just passively quiet.

"What was the trick?" He asked, opting to use his limited grasp of English.

George blinked and gave a small grunt as a place holder while he swallowed what was in his mouth. "He was bound up and put in a box, what was 'supposed' to happen is that he disappears from inside the box as it collapses in a small explosion and ends up in another area of the stage. Didn't happen though," he explained, though he grew quiet since this was more Fred's thing.

"Yeah, the explosives were too strong and went off too soon, he wasn't prepared for that so he cracked his head against the inside of the box at first. Later the doctors showed us the X-Rays and there was a fracture along his forehead." Fred began detaching one hand from holding his pizza to show on his own face where the fracture roughly was. "Because of the nature of the trick no one realized there was a problem, save Cat and even then, her realization was delayed by the nature of that trick. The paint was defective, it didn't dry properly and the box ignited. By the time Monte came to on his own and got out, the box was in flames. If the box had been painted properly the trick would have been a failure, but he would have been fine..."

"Instead he came to in a box on fire and had no way to let anyone know he was in trouble. He had to abort the trick and in doing so rushed out the front door and the flames ate him alive," George finished.

"But running through a fire shouldn't cause substantial damage?" Bakura asked genuinely curious about how this could have happened. Sure he would get a little burned, but Malik made it sound like it was 'substantial' injuries.

"True, but Monte liked to wear hair gels to keep his hair slick back, his hair is actually naturally wavy." Fred admitted with a rueful grin and shrug while George sighed and looked at a spot on the table.

"We don't know why he's been burned like 'that' though, when we reached the hospital he was wrapped up like a mummy. But, you look at him now and for the most part his body and most of his face looks fine. Its just the upper part of his face that is damaged, and its 'that' which makes no sense. Sure you can do skin grafting, but he didn't have enough skin for all 'that'..." George pointed out, "there's this weird thing that happens to us now. We can't be near each other for very long before we feel like we have to get away from one another."

Bakura dutifully updated the pair with him with what he heard, though now both Malik and Jounouchi had something to say.

"How can hair gel cause a burn?" Malik asked, though the answer came from Jounouchi of all people.

"Its not the 'gel' its the fumes, remember what I said about car fuel and how its the fumes that power an engine? The same thing can happen with hair care products. My bet? He probably raked some gel through his hair right before show time and the gel didn't dry out in time. So it still had just enough combustible air." Jounouchi explained, calling back to the conversation they had waiting for Catherine to come home from before.

"Yeah, but Pandora isn't bald at all, his has a normal hair line and a fire should have created a permanent bald spot at least," Malik countered, though not in an effort to discredit Jounouchi. The smell of the gas was potent and unique so learning this bit of fact 'was' interesting. It also explained why gas stations always insisted on that list of don'ts near the pumps.