Yu-Gi-Oh: A Past and Future Pharaoh
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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"HOW COULD YOU LEAVE ME?!" Jounouchis' voice could be heard from across the suite and sent Malik flying out of his bed, crashing into the floor and wondering how he got there.
Because it was Bakura who answered the phone and he was in his, other, suite. Malik looked up from the floor, completely floored, both figuratively and literally so, as Jounouchi continued ranting.
Bakura, meanwhile, had dropped the phone and was backing up from it, fearing that maybe somehow Yugi would let Jounouchi teleport through the device out of pure mischief.
"I can't believe you would take Anzu instead of me to a tournament! You know how great a duelist I am! Can you imagine the fame that comes with placing high in a tournament?!" Jounouchi demanded as he continued railing against the situation.
The side doors that lead to Maliks' suite opened a crack as Malik peeked out before walking in. "Think he realizes the only reason he got into my tournament was because I wanted to use him?" he asked, his voice low as he eyed the phone.
"And the first tournament he got in only because Yugi took a hit in star chips to let him in," Bakura answered in acknowledgment. He quietly walked back to the phone while Jounouchi continued complaining. "Jounouchi, Anzu has been through enough, she needs a break from being home. Besides, you were not invited to attend, and there isn't any external threat going on. There's no way luck would just let you slip in free of charge."
"Hey I'm a great duelist! I could have beaten Malik if I hadn't passed out after all!" Jounouchi pointed out in continued frustration.
"Anzu needed a break from the bullies and time off from having to deal with Yugi's father. Who is here, by the way, and he's not like Yugi's grandfather," Bakura warned as he picked up the phone.
"Do you have any idea how much the purses are for tournaments?" Jounouchi countered, as Bakura gave the wall in front of him a tired stare. 'He's not as bad as he was a year ago, but he's not done with the work.'
"Wow, way to be a friend," Malik muttered shivering from the way American air conditioning froze the room. His sweat pants and a sleeveless shirt 'not' covering him properly. Brrr.
"Look Jounouchi, I understand that you're upset, but my decision was final when we left."
Malik nodded, 'Anzu looked so much better after her time in the pool that Yugi created, and she's supposed to be doing a 'spa' thing tomorrow?' "Is there anything going on over there that we should know of?" Malik asked, wondering if Jounouchi could be distracted.
"Eh, Honda's worried about a nurse that he knew... She's been missing and he's been focusing on that. She told him her husband was missing when he last saw her. Yet that was incredibly recently and the news says she's been gone awhile? I don't know, outside of that, there's been talk at the shop. Strangers walking around, lot more outsiders, but so far nothing bad has been going on." Jounouchi reported as he kicked back in his room on an old but comfy chair.
"Missing?" Bakura could be heard and the way the sound echoed made him think it was on speaker. Despite knowing that they couldn't see the action, Jounouchi nodded at that.
"Yeah, he said that she's listed as having been missing for over a year, in America, yet she was here as his personal nurse back in the hospital." Jounouchi explained as he stared up at the ceiling and thinking on it further.
"Valon mentioned that too, there were missing people in Italy and they've been encountering it everywhere they've gone..." Malik noted, sounding a bit more alert as he spoke.
"Who's that?"
"Mai's boytoy slash boyfriend." Malik answered before the sound of a smack could be heard and his yelp.
"They appear to be dating, however;" Bakura began when Jounouchi flattened his feet to the floor in shock.
"Mai's got a man?" He demanded sounding incredibly offended and betrayed to the pair on the other end of the line. For Jounouchi...
And it was enough of a proclamation to make Bakura sigh and it carry over the phone.
"Mai's life is her own," Bakura pointed out in an attempt to calm Jounouchi down.
"Where does she get off getting a guy?!" Jounouchi demanded.
"She's her own person?" Bakura's tone was flat, perhaps because he was a grown man listening to a teenager getting emotional over another adults' relationship status.
"Yeah so whatever happened to Honda's nurse is happening all over the world, which makes me think of the demon," Malik interjected. Eyeing Bakura and deciding fast to try to drag Jounouchi back to the topic at hand. "It takes sacrifices to summon powerful monsters in the game, and to bring the Demon into the physical world, even if Yugi drove him back. It makes me think they're using human sacrifices."
Jounouchi sat there, mulling over Mai got instantly repulled to that horrible mental image. Just 'the Demon' alone was enough to make him think... "You take the poor, you take the lonely, or the sick and you just toss them into a... whatever to give to the Demon... That... the twins, Monte, they are forced to sacrifice their time together. Now people being forced... 'Kura you should know if this is possible."
"More than possible, likely is more like it. We discussed it before, only back then it was more a theory of what 'could' happen. But now its clear that it 'is' happening, and we have signs its happening around the world." Bakura agreed as he went to pull over a chair. "The only strange part is that they are grabbing 'anyone'. It makes me fear that they've grabbed what they could off the street and they're starting to grab the fringes of what is still considered accepted in society."
Malik, who had already claimed the chair next to the phone, crossed his arms and looked lost in thought. "Is there a way to track this woman? Just as it was with the twins and Pandora, there may be a thread to our situation tangled with this woman..."
Bakura sat there, Jounouchi also sitting in his room back in Japan, and no one said a word as they thought.
"We don't have the means. I mean short of maybe asking Isis but she can't see the past right?" Jounouchi finally asked. "We're just high school students, we can't exactly go to the police or the Embassy and ask questions about her after all.."
"And while Kaiba might be able to, we'd have to convince him to allow us to use his resources to find a missing person." Malik pointed out though he shook his head. "He won't go for it I think."
"Yeah he's a bit stuck up but this is important," Jounouchi pointed out, only for Malik shook his head.
"That's the thing, he's the CEO of a 'company' and that means he has people working under him. The Demon knows about us, and could try to come at us in a number of ways. But Kaiba has a full company with lots of employees who, obviously, are not part of this."
"Point taken," Bakura nodded slowly. "He can't just drag them into this war, he's not Pharaoh after all."
Realizing what Malik meant caused Jounouchi to wince as he thought about it. From the security guards, to the receptionists, all the way up to the play testers? "We really 'are' small timers trying to take on gods... Can Yugi tell us?"
"He shouldn't, he's trying to balance his mortal life that we know him by with his divine life. Telling us whatever we want to know would take the balance out of the situation," Bakura warned.
Malik leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, allowing his gaze to trace invisible lines into it. "We'd probably have to prove ourselves worthy of that knowledge. He could just expect us to prove we've done the leg work to be given this information."
"Or we could just ask him, he's still Yugi after all," Jounouchi pointed out with a faint grin, even if it lacked the spirit it used to. 'He's a god now... he's the Big God in fact...'
"Yes, and he's found a means to talk to us without putting the universe at risk," Bakura agreed readily. "But as a friend, would you use him for that?"
The rooms grew quiet for a time, each teen lost to their own inner voices.
"We're small time, and people are dying. Its not fair that they should die just cuz we don't have the means to save them." Jounouchi finally voiced, it was soft, and surprisingly weak from the voice he used when Bakura picked up the phone.
"That's how this works," Malik was the one to answer even as his gaze traced new lines down the wall. "This has been going on since the world was new. The Demon got resummoned because people gave in to greed. As hard as it is to think or accept, the reality is that Yugi probably can't do anything about the Demon because 'we mortals' don't want him to. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, if this group found themselves a little... little..." Malik paused and looked over at Bakura as he tried to think of a term to use. "Group of worshippers?"
"'Congregation'?" Bakura offered, "a group that comes together for religious purposes?"
"Yeah! That sounds about what I was thinking," Malik acknowledged before turning his attention back to the phone. "Little congregation that is actively praying for Yugi to do nothing."
"How do you do that? How do you pray to God for innocent people to die so you can summon something else for personal power?"
No one said anything in answer, there wasn't any noise outside for Bakura and Malik to hear. It was late, the hotel was deep on the grounds so it was far from any car sounds from off the grounds. Whereas Jounouchi was still being confronted by the noises of everyday Japanese life. A tv running, conversations so muted that it was just a mumble in the distance.
"Small group of teenagers taking on a who knows how big an organization. Sounds insane when I try to wrap my brain around it," Jounouchi confessed.
"It feels like we should get the governments involved," Bakura agreed with a sigh, "but I know what the Demon is capable of. Perhaps I'm jaded from my time as his prisoner, yet I'm afraid to think of what would happen if we did. The idea of governments being seduced to helping the organization instead of fighting them."
"War games... They would get a world wide war game," Malik thought aloud. "Sure Yugi's all about games, but this would be a game that the world could never win. If I had the power to seduce government officials to join my Ghouls I would have. I would have had the agents hunt Yugi down and bring him to me. But the Rod, while strong, had its limits."
That was all it took for Jounouchis' imagination to stir to life. Getting arrested and thrown in the back of a cop car. But never reaching the station, their families getting located and taken... If this group went after his sister or mom! 'They already killed Yugi's grandpa, and they probably will never be brought to any type of justice for it. Well until they die and Yugi can get his hands on them...'
"We'll need to have a frank talk with Yugi about how this 'is' going to be handled," Bakura agreed. "Right now though we can just sit back and enjoy Mai toying with that Wong, Vivian woman..."
"Wong? 'Wong' is there?!" Jounouchi blurted out before resuming his whining about not being there.
"Uh..." Malik leaned closer to Bakura with a confused look on his face, but the Tomb Robber could only shake his head.
"Jounouchi? What's so great about this woman?" Bakura inquired, though he had to sigh in relief that they were able to get off the heavy weighted conversation they had found themselves in yet again.
"Uh well... Only the current top fashion model slash actress! Yeah! She duels too, does pretty good but that's not really her 'thing'. She plays it off a lot as just something to do to fill the time between shots. Honestly it just sounds to me like she says it to sound smart. But she's got a 'killer' body," Jounouchi explained eagerly. "Come on Bakura! Yugi and Mahaado are both there, get them to bring me over!"
"Yeah cuz Kaiba 'totally' wants to see you here," Malik mused with a grin while shaking his head.
"Jounouchi," Bakura's voice dropped to something between amused and smug. 'Stammering huh?' "How did you really first hear about her?"
"Well," Jounouchi gave a weak laugh, 'ah hell why not? Its just between us guys and maybe they don't watch the same stuff...' The blond thought before opting to answer. "She started out as a porn star."
'THERE IS THE ANSWER!' Bakura thought as those long hidden, tucked under the white lions mane of hair that he had, bunny ears shot up! The one thing that was purely Ryou is a young, pure boy, who never does anything 'naughty' came back! They fairly vibrated as Bakura's lips tucked in a little and went straight as he realized... that no. 'I don't want to realize anything.'
"More soft core really, nude wrestling, oil, sensual play stuff like..." Jounouchi recounted when he heard a thud.
"Bakura? You ok?" Malik could be heard on the other end of the line.
"Did he faint?" Jounouchi asked, preparing to howl with laughter upon positive confirmation.
"No he just dropped his head on the table... So she would wrestle people naked?" Malik asked, curious as Bakura slowly rolled his head to look at the blond as his head rested on the table.
"Aren't you too young to watch that stuff, Jounouchi?" Bakura asked when Jounouchi began howling with laughter as he heard the white haired teens' voice.
"Legally maybe, but that stuff was censored anyway, sides Vivian wasn't someone Yugi was interested in."
"Oh for Hathors sake!" Bakura covered his face...
"So basically, Mai is pretending to be engaged to Yugi, cuz a porn star tried to make moves on him through his dad..." Malik recounted when Jounouchi began clearly choking on his side of the phone.
"What?!"
"Anzu told Mai who Wong was talking to, she wanted Anzu to pretend to be engaged but, well Anzu refused. Since unlike Anzu, Mai hasn't officially seen Yugi yet, and Anzu probably got several levels of flustered at the thought. So Mai did it herself, and has been pretty gleefully causing chaos by basically being a brat to Wong." Malik explained, before adding as a quiet side thought, "I wonder if she knows 'that' part of Wongs' history..."
"I suspect not, its even possibly Kaiba was unaware. After all this event is targeted towards kids as well, oh Gods..." Bakura began when the realization hit him from the side and he wanted to just lay out on the floor and die right there.
"True, but if its about making money and there aren't enough girls, girls are a source of income. It would make sense to try and get them involved in the game to help boost sales," Malik pointed out. "Maybe there just wasn't any other woman on Wong's level save Mai?"
"My soul is leaving my body..." Bakura groaned and at this point he wasn't lifting his head for anything it seemed.
"So now I'm imagining Mai and Wong in an oil wrestling match, Anzu could ref..." Jounouchi began, his voice filled with whimsy.
Meanwhile those bun ears of Bakura were rapidly tapping out an S.O.S in his head as he tried.
And the God who was listening to this conversation, would reinforce, TRIED, to not think of said God in question.
'I mean I could have such an illusion created... don't even need to bring Maha into this...' said God thought to himself. Granted this was equal to giving a trio of guys enough rope to hang themselves with but whatever.
Yugi, in fact, was still in Kaiba's suite, the pair discussing the finer points of the seeding and the strengths and weaknesses of each of the duelists who had been invited...
