There was no time to process what he'd just seen. The Ryou beside him let out a strangled cry, slammed the door shut and snapped Yugi away by his collar.
"RUN. NOW."
Everyone else had heard his shout. Anzu and Jonouchi scrambled out of the bathroom and fell in behind them. Honda and Miho were quick to follow from the kitchen.
Ryou launched himself onto the front door and ripped it open.
Brick.
Solid brick.
"NO!" His frustrated cry rang out through the living room.
"Ryou what's going on!?" Anzu yelled, throwing out her hands in panic.
Yugi gave a start when Ryou turned around to face her. He looked like a wild animal. Yugi half expected him to start foaming at the mouth.
"Had I known you'd attract such flawless specimens, perhaps I would have delayed your ceremony."
If they hadn't been looking right at him, they may have mistaken this for Ryou's voice, but the remark came from behind.
Everyone spun around except for Ryou, who was already looking past them with a mixture of pure hatred and terror. His tail mirrored his anxiety, repeatedly smacking the ground with large thuds.
In front of Yugi, once again, was another Ryou, clean and human; as he usually was.
But something was off.
"Bakura." The disgust was unmistakable in Ryou's acknowledgement.
"You remember me. How nice. Not too far gone yet, I hope?"
The man who was leaning up against the hallway wall had an unmistakable air of superiority. Despite looking and sounding nearly identical to Ryou, his tone was mocking and his way of speaking dripped with malice. Similarly to the other man they'd ran into before, something old hung around this new acquaintance. Sharp wrinkles and crow's feet cut into the sides of his eyes, one of the only physical indicators that the person they were faced with was not who he was trying to pass himself off as.
Nothing but a strange façade.
Honda stomped forward between his group and the man Ryou had called by his own name. He threateningly brandished the pole he'd taken back from Jonouchi.
"What's going on?! Who are you?!" he barked.
"That question hasn't gotten you anywhere before, what makes you think it will now?"
A chill ran down Yugi's spine. This person somehow knew they had seen the other man in the basement.
Through Honda's arguing and shouting, he was barely able to make out Ryou's whispered warning behind him.
"Don't piss him off, he's dangerous."
Bakura cut off Honda's barrage of questioning with a nonchalant wave of his hand and snapped his gaze over to Ryou, who's back was up against the wall that was blocking their way out. He had been trying to inconspicuously scratch at the brick with his fingers and the legs sprouting from his torso without much success.
"Oh, don't worry, I'm afraid there isn't much you could do to make me angry. Especially after leading all your friends to me." Bakura righted himself and took a confident step towards them. A ghastly smile spread across his face. "My colony is starting to thin out. Maybe I should consider delaying your progression a bit more. Marik needs someone to keep him company. I'm sure you two will get along well."
"FUCK YOU!" Without warning, Ryou leapt by them, teeth bared and hands ready to tear at Bakura.
"Crass, but clear."
In a millisecond, Bakura sidestepped, grabbed the back of Ryou's head and smashed his face up against the wall. A sound between a gasp and yelp echoed out as he stumbled backwards in confusion, leaving a splatter of black tar and blood behind.
Honda let out a cry of rage and sprung forward, readying a swing at Bakura with his pole. Before he could get anywhere near him, he kicked out one of his legs and bashed it against Honda's left shin, sending him sprawling across the floorboards on his front. The pole clattered loudly to the ground alongside him.
His assailant's expression morphed into twisted glee.
"Alright then. Let's play."
Bakura snapped his fingers.
Yugi felt vertigo grip him as the walls and ceiling suddenly bulged outwards. They stood as they were for a moment, then steadily began to push out. The floor became distorted and angled to keep up with the quickly widening room, skewing and pushing furniture out of place.
Yugi lost his footing as a wave of warped floorboards hit his ankles and threw him off balance. He landed hard, quickly followed by the people who hadn't already been knocked down. From his spot on the floor, he could see that Bakura stood smiling and hunched forward on the only portion of the ground that was flat and unmoving. Wood flowered up around him and then sunk down to give way to all-too-familiar concrete.
As soon as the spreading floor made its way to the baseboards, bricks began to sprout out and climb up the walls in a similar fashion.
Bakura's demented chuckling began echoing throughout the morphing room as Yugi watched the windows, door and hallway entrance melt into the ground, followed by the kitchen counter and cabinets.
The furniture, now haphazardly pressed up against the corners of the room, began to erratically melt in and out of the floor and walls. For a moment, it all hung in a way that was very similar to the mess in the strange version of Burgerworld they'd seen earlier, but in an instant, it all shot up and was absorbed into the ceiling.
Before they knew it, they were in another brick room. This one however, was massive and washed in bright white light. No matter how hard he looked, Yugi couldn't find the source. What he could find though, were that all the exits had disappeared. They were sealed in with Bakura.
Still menacingly hunched over and smiling, he hadn't moved from his spot in the center of the room.
Without letting her eyes leave his threatening gaze, Miho leaned over to offer Ryou a hand. He took it and let himself be pulled back onto his wobbling legs. For the first time since he'd changed, he was thankful for the long tail behind him. It helped keep him upright. Jonouchi tried to do the same to Honda, who waved him away and picked himself back up. Blood was caked around his nostrils and lips. He wiped it away with his sleeve.
Yugi and Anzu stepped in between Bakura and their friends. They both knew that given their situation, they couldn't do much, but they wanted to make it clear that they weren't going down without a fight. Despite the undeniable fear he felt in the face of the strange man, Yugi was strengthened by Anzu's presence. A comforting and sure aura radiated from her.
"I haven't had anyone witness me in a long time. It's been lonely, you know?" Mock sadness spread across their assailant's face as he dramatically threw his hands out in front of him. "I'm glad I've got a crowd to show off to."
He threw his head back and cackled for a bit before lowering it again and locking eyes with Yugi. No more jokes. He could feel those slits burning into his brain. They were malefic.
The room was dead quiet as they all held their ground, waiting for Bakura to lash out.
He didn't.
Instead, his whole body shuddered. For a moment he was still, and then he fell forward on all fours.
What? Was he fainting?
Was that it?
Yugi's tentative reassurance was short-lived.
An inhuman screech shot through Bakura's now gritted teeth and tore through the air.
The clothes he wore, exact copies of the coat and jeans Ryou had on, began to stress and bulge. Masses, red and angry looking, were forming along his back and ripping through the fabrics as if they were made of nothing but tissue paper.
Down by his face, sharp red mandibles similar to Ryou's began splitting the edges of his smile. Unlike Ryou's, they kept going, pushing the corners of his mouth into an impossibly wide grimace. It should have been painful, but Yugi could tell from the pure satisfaction reflecting in Bakura's eyes that it was anything but.
More ripping echoed throughout the room, but Bakura had tossed his clothes aside as his mandibles had begun growing.
It wasn't long before the horrific realisation hit Yugi.
It was his skin; Bakura's skin was ripping.
Jeans and coat now in a heap, he seemed to be growing too big for his own body. Lacerations spontaneously broke out around his chest, giving way to explosions of blood, tar and the same masses that had pushed out from his back.
Pieces of his flesh fell in chunks, hitting the floor with sickening slapping sounds.
His torso gave a sudden spasm. It began growing longer and longer, fully rending the skin at his midsection and giving way to crimson segments reminiscent of Ryou's own. They spread downwards, over his groin and wrapping around the bottom of his pelvis before violently ripping out and extending beyond his backside. His new tail whipped threateningly back and forth as it grew out into a point that curved and glinted in the artificial light. A stinger.
Bakura dug his fingers into the concrete as his neck began to push out as well, his mandibles clicking as he let out a satisfied hiss. All along his body, insectoid legs sprouted and curved into the floor. His arms and hands swelled until they too, wrenched their way out of his skin.
As he changed, his entire body pulsed as it grew bigger and bigger, beginning to dwarf Yugi and his friends.
With his new arms, wicked things which ended in sharp dangerous looking claws and from which grew large spires of exoskeleton that spiked backwards, he pushed his massive body upright. It creaked as he moved his long neck forward, his head coming to rest a few meters away from theirs.
For a second, a stretched, haunting mockery of Ryou's face glared down at all of them, dripping blood and tar onto the floor by their feet.
Then, his eyes bubbled and melted into tiled red globes and the final bits of flesh: nose, cheeks and forehead, sloughed off to join the rest of the mess on the floor.
Yugi's stomach lurched. Honda's did a little more than that.
The direness of their situation was starting to sink in. They were stuck in a room with no doors, a monster more than fifteen feet tall and a pile of blood and sludge. Miho was quietly crying behind him, Honda was doubled over in a pile of his own sludge, and everyone else looked like they may drop dead from fear, except for Ryou, who's horrified expression was mixed with grim familiarity.
As Yugi frantically racked his brain for an idea, a plan, anything, a huge burst of sweet-smelling wind knocked him backwards into Jonouchi, who caught him and barely managed to stay upright himself. Looking up, he saw that enormous colourful butterfly wings had burst from Bakura's back.
His heart sank even lower. This was the creature they had seen in the mural. It was towering over them and shrouding Yugi's heart deeper and deeper in insignificance by the second.
They were going to die.
"You know, I'm feeling generous today."
The deep booming voice tore Yugi out of his stupor. Bakura lurched forward until he was inches away, his two dozen legs skittering along the ground. His wings fluttered lazily behind him as he leaned forward, his right hand outstretched. Yugi's breath caught in his throat as he dodged out of the way, but it was quickly made obvious that the massive creature wasn't aiming for him.
From somewhere behind, Yugi heard Ryou cursing and spitting. A writhing shadow passed over him, and he looked above to see that Bakura had hauled Ryou up by his hair.
"It appears my last offer wasn't satisfactory, so allow me to conjure you up a new one." He hissed his words out, holding Ryou up at eye level.
"I let you go, and you leave me these morsels instead. I'll even make you a doorway out. Right here."
Ryou seemed to barely register Bakura's words as he hung there. His body writhed wildly as he tried to hook his fingers onto his assailant's own, arms flailing uselessly above his head. Coughing and choking sounds echoed throughout the room, his own body weighing him down and straining his throat.
"So?" Bakura pressed his face to Ryou's and snapped his jaws. When he was met with more coughs and gasps, he shook him a little.
No answer.
Bakura shrugged.
"Fine. Have it your way then."
A weak thump resounded as Ryou was dropped to the ground.
Bakura spread his wings and righted his body. What was probably a smile, but looked nothing like one, stretched across his face, skewing his mandibles and showing off rows of sharp black teeth. He whipped his stinger into view and took aim at Anzu first.
"This will hurt."
In a flash, Jonouchi leapt out of Yugi's peripheral vision and made a dash for one of the forgotten metal poles on the ground.
"I don't think so."
Yugi's heart flipped as Bakura effortlessly slinked sideways and crushed the pole with one great slam of his tail. But Jonouchi didn't stop. He jumped over the tail, locked his fingers onto a segment and used his momentum to vault himself up onto Bakura's lower back. The monster instinctively made a grab at him with his claws, but he was just out of reach.
Raucous laughter filled the room. "Enough of this."
There was no time to register what happened until Yugi was already flying up towards Bakura's face. Distracted by Jonouchi, the air had been crushed out of his lungs by Bakura's fist. Now eye level with him, he smelt a familiar sickening sweetness hazing out from the monster's throat. The large red globes twitched and bulged. Antennae shivered along Yugi's face and he fought back the urge to vomit. Pinpricks of light danced at the corners of his eyes and the world began to darken as he struggled to breathe.
Jonouchi desperately screamed something from below.
Bakura's grip tightened.
"You - make - anyway." Loud. Garbled. His hearing was failing. Everything sounded like it was being passed through cotton.
Something clamped down on his head and shot dull bolts of pain through his skull. Wetness welled around his forehead. The world was spinning. He was fainting. The pressure was unbearable. Something heavy and red dripped down and consumed what little was left of his clouded vision.
Blood…
His?
He felt his body fail and go limp.
…
"gi.." "uGI.." "YUGI!"
Anzu's eyes sprung out of the darkness. She was cradling him, shaking him, crying down onto his face. He slowly reached up a hand to wipe away the tears that had fallen onto his cheeks, but his fingers came back covered in gore.
Adrenaline shot through him. The floor was shaking. He fell forward out of her lap onto his hands and the world blared into clarity once again.
Bakura was wildly thrashing about. Jonouchi was holding on for dear life. Yugi caught a flashing blur of white being slung along back and forth. He squinted and it came into focus.
Ryou had sunk his insectoid mandibles into one of Bakura's many legs.
"YOU PETULANT LITTLE-"
Bakura's massive body crashed up against the wall. Jonouchi was flung off by the impact. Everything shook and small fractures shot out from under the monster, crackling out into the bricks. There was a moment of silence, and then the wall gave way. Chunks of rubble dropped to the ground, leaving a gaping hole through which the long winding hallway they'd came from reappeared. Yugi felt hope rush through him once again. They had a chance.
The huge bug writhed around in front of them on top of the heap of rubble. Legs kicking, neck squirming, wings slicing uselessly through the air; he was trying his best to fight against the paralysing venom that was quickly spreading through his body. Pure hatred seethed from his eyes when they locked onto Ryou, who still had a mandibular vice grip on one of his twitching legs. Yugi's breath caught in his throat when he saw the huge stinger laboriously rise up.
"RYOU!"
Right before its tip could sink into his friend's back, it fell to the floor, twitching alongside its owner.
Ryou finally loosened his jaws and shook himself free. He looked back at them in terror, his sides heaving. His remaining pupil was the size of a dinner plate.
"I had no idea you could do that." Anzu hiccupped incredulously, looking over at the incapacitated monster.
"Neither did I." He managed to gasp out between shallow breaths.
They all stood motionless, looking at Bakura, holding their breaths as if he might suddenly start thrashing around again. More blood trickled down into Yugi's eyes, snapping him back to his all-too-painful reality. His entire head felt like it was going to explode with every beat his heart took. He cautiously explored it with his fingers and found deep gashes circling his entire skull.
"What happened?" He gasped out through the pain.
Anzu extended her hand to help him up, ignoring the blood, sniffling and using her other hand to wipe away her remaining tears.
"He bit into your head and well-"
"He almost brained you man!" Honda interrupted, coughing from his spot on the ground. Miho was rubbing his back, looking up at Yugi with the most concern he had ever seen her express.
Anzu, her fists balled up tightly around her chest, was barely able to get out, "Yugi, I- I thought you died."
A shuffling in front of them made them all jump, but it was only Jonouchi limping his way over. The fronts of his pants had been ripped open and his hands and legs were skinned and bleeding. Despite this, he seemed to be doing ok. His eyes widened when he saw Yugi.
"I… That was rough man. I'm glad you're ok. Here." He took off his undershirt and held it out at arms length, pinching it between his thumb and index. "Anzu, can you uhh… my hands."
She quickly came over and took it, carefully, to avoid pushing it up against Jonouchi's bloody palms. She ripped it into strips which she started tying snugly around Yugi's head. He relaxed a bit. It wasn't much relief, but it was something, and it would keep the blood out of his face. His eyes wandered over to Bakura once again and he shuddered, averting the monster's unwavering glare.
Anzu finished up. "This'll have to do for now. We need to get you to a doctor or something. Can you walk?"
Yugi nodded, taking a few steps and wobbling at first, but more or less evening out after. He had no intention of sitting around and feeling sorry for himself. That would be a death sentence.
As if on queue their gazes all wandered over to Bakura and the hole in the wall. His large wings almost acted like a blanket, shielding most of his grotesque body from view. The colourful swirling patterns that stretched across them were hypnotising. It was insane how one creature could be so beautiful, but so ugly and dangerous at the same time.
A worrying realisation from Ryou was quick to snap them out of their trance.
"This won't last. I'm tiny compared to him. We need to go. Now."
No one needed to be told twice. Jonouchi and Anzu were the first to hurry past the monster, followed closely behind by the others. Yugi saw that Honda and Miho had picked up the two remaining poles as they hopped by. When it came to his turn, he tried not to look down as he gingerly stepped around Bakura's huge head, but it was hard to miss the monster's scathing glare and gritted teeth. He didn't need words to know what was most likely going through his mind.
Ryou brought up the rear. He hurried by as well, but stopped in his tracks. "Wait."
They all looked back to find him, once again, biting down onto one of Bakura's legs. This time, up close, Yugi could see the black venom bubbling and squirting from his mandibles. He held on for a few more seconds and unlatched himself, using his sleeves to wipe away the liquid from the corners of his mouth. If Bakura was mad before, he was furious now.
"Just to be sure." Ryou whispered. He joined them and they all started running again.
The scenery was exactly the same as it had been. The same doorways, strange rooms and bricks upon bricks upon bricks. The tunnel hadn't changed at all, which was a huge relief and sparked even more hope in Yugi. All they had to do was run back the way they came. There was however, still fear and uncertainty eating away at the back of his mind.
Once he was able to move again, would Bakura catch up to them? How fast was he? Could he block off their exit? Change the hallway from far away? Yugi shook his head. There was no use scaring himself like that. Focus on running. Ryou had bought them some time and that was all they could ask for.
"How long do you think we're in for?" Miho gasped, the pole she was carrying bumping up and down against her right shoulder.
Ryou spoke up. "I don't know. Keep going."
Yugi was surprised by his friend's curt answer, but he couldn't blame him.
Since they'd started running, he had noticed Ryou's transformation had progressed. Red spots had started climbing up his neck, more legs had sprouted from his sides and the edges of his remaining human eye had begun taking on a burgundy hue. He smelled worse now, but it was nothing compared to what Yugi had been exposed to when Bakura had picked him up. While it still wasn't a pretty sight (or scent), it seemed at least, to be relieving him of some of his previous difficulties. His tail slid along the ground more easily now instead of being dead weight behind him. His gait was more confident.
Another uneasy thought popped into Yugi's mind. Would Ryou be able to return to his former self? It seemed that being in Bakura's presence might have been the cause for the sudden increase in centipede characteristics, but he couldn't be sure. Time seemed to be working strangely down here. Would he revert once they were back out into the school?
No. Stop. There was no sense in posing any of these questions, if Yugi was anxious about it, he had no doubts Ryou's concerns were tenfold. They could worry about figuring that stuff out later. For now, he would concentrate on running.
Yugi felt a collective relief ping-pong through the group as they caught sight of bizarro Burgerworld's dim rainbow lighting projecting out into the hall up ahead. They were making headway. He allowed himself a quick glance as they passed it. All looked exactly the same as it had when they'd ventured inside earlier. Another good sign.
More running, and the rooms around them started to get dimmer. They must have passed the room they had found Ryou in a while ago. No matter, Yugi strongly doubted his friend wanted to see it again. As darkness began to close in around them more and more, he felt around his pocket and found that Miho's frog light was still inside. He crossed his fingers and pressed down. Nothing. He did it again and it sprung to life. Somehow. He sighed.
"How the hell did this thing manag-"
A massive boom, followed quickly by a shock wave that reverberated through the hallway and shook chunks of concrete loose from the ceiling. Anzu and Honda barely dodged large pieces that crashed down into the floor.
A bloodcurdling shriek echoed through the hall.
For a second, all was still.
And then Ryou screeched and lunged towards Yugi.
Chapter 6 Notes
Had to put this on hold for a while to prioritise some things, but I'm glad to be back. Was excited to write the "true form" reveal in this chapter. Hope I did it justice.