Time travel with aspects of a general series involving Gates, hunters and the like.
Marik knew he didn't have much time. That man and the elders would soon come to drag him to the room that most of his nightmares were made of. All to leave a legacy he didn't want or need. Bastards couldn't even be bothered to give him any anesthetic before forcibly tattooing him using such outdated methods that left his psyche scarred for life.
Isis was in another section of the compound being trained to handle her seer powers on top of the Millennium Item she possessed. She was exempt from this hell purely because of her gender.
He skidded down the corridor, already hearing the footsteps of the adults behind him. They had found him missing from the preparation room, which was three doors away from where he needed to go. The clan had held the Tauk and Rod for as long as he could remember, entrusted to them by that damn keeper who couldn't be bothered to keep their ego in check.
Marik didn't even hesitate to bolt through the door. Rather than waste time locking the thing, he went straight for the Millennium Rod.
"Marik, put that down!" snarled his irate 'father'. The man lost that title years ago.
Marik sneered at the man and the angry elders behind him. It was past time to do a little house cleaning, in his opinion. His hand closed on the cursed metal, and power surged through his body. The eye of Horus appeared on his forehead as the shadow magic coursed through his veins. Like hell was he getting that damn tattoo placed on him twice.
Odion arrived just in time to see Marik place the elders and his adopted father into a Shadow Game...and they lost, badly. Their souls were consigned to the Shadow Realm until Marik released them, if he was feeling merciful.
Marik's mother was horrified, and rightly so. Marik shouldn't have the control or capability of using shadow magic to that extent. Not so young at any rate.
Now appropriately wary of the boy, Marik was beyond relieved that the clan was too afraid to dare marking him as planned. Odion was now firmly tasked in keeping an eye on the "obviously unstable" heir to the clan, as Marik at least listened to him.
Odion found it hilarious that the clan honestly expected him to do more than act as an enabler to Marik's chaos. At least he seemed to calm down a bit since his 'father' and the elders had been dealt with.
Then something happened that caused Marik's brain to crash and crash hard.
He had been traversing a random path, and found a weird glowing thing that was in the middle of the corridor radiating a ridiculous amount of shadow magic.
Marik didn't know what the hell it was, and he couldn't remember anything like this happening before.
He heard Odion shouting, but it was too late. He had touched the weird vortex of shadow magic and was promptly sucked in.
Marik had to stare at the monsters before him, ready to attack. He didn't even think twice, having already recreated most of his old deck using what cards were available. Some of his better cards had yet to be made, but he had more than enough to work with.
He didn't think twice, as he was so used to having shadow magic at the tip of his fingers since meeting Hikari. Helping her learn how to properly harness her own magic had done wonders to help him and Ryou learn how to use theirs without the aid of their darker sides helping.
Marik pulled out his deck and immediately summoned the first monster he could get his hands on. Fortunately, it was a low level one and more than capable of dealing with the creature before him.
He breathed heavily, as he had mostly forgot how taxing it was to summon even low level monsters without the aid of an Item or a Yami.
Odion managed to catch Marik before he passed out from the strain.
When Marik woke up the next morning, it was to Isis and Odion chastising him for being so reckless, entering a gate like that.
Marik had to blink.
"What's a gate?" he said, baffled.
Isis' eyes softened a bit. They had mostly forgotten that Marik was sheltered from the outside world, since the elders hadn't liked the fact he was so rebellious and wasn't interested in showing the same slavish loyalty to a long dead king.
Odion had a patient look with his younger sibling.
Marik listened with hidden incredulity about how a few months before he woke up in his younger self, portals known as "Gates" had suddenly started appearing and people that the clan believed to be dormant shadow mages had suddenly started awakening to their potential power.
It hadn't taken long for the newly created Duel Monsters game to go from "mildly popular" to "required" for the newly awakened mages. All because one mage had their dueling deck in their pocket and found out quite by accident that they could summon and use the magic effects in the gates.
High level or rare cards were coveted even more than before, and for a more practical reason.
Neither of his siblings were very surprised that Marik had been able to summon a monster. Just that he had gone into a gate so carelessly like that.
Once he had recovered from the shock, Marik went back to the gate as they had yet to defeat the boss inside.
Something about the magic coming off the gate felt ridiculously familiar. Marik put his hand close, but did not actively touch the gate this time.
He knew this magical signature. It was on the tip of his tongue, and he was intimately familiar with the source. Damned if he could remember who it was though.
Definitely not Bakura, besides the thief had only become active last month. He was mostly basing that on the fact that Isis had sensed the death of Shadi, who Marik had never particularly liked to begin with.
He vaguely recalled hearing about the incident, but he had been too busy recovering from the nasty infection that had set in due to the tattoo not being properly cared for. His father had barely deigned to give him any actual antibiotics and only allowed his mother to get him treated properly because it might ruin the sacred tattoo.
Some time later...
Marik could sense the presence of someone he knew very well. He followed that feeling towards one of the openings that lead to the surface, and happened to overhear people above. Odion stayed close, as he was tasked with keeping Marik out of trouble.
With the elders and his father still imprisoned in the Shadow Realm, Marik's behavior had calmed down significantly. To be fair, they were the main instigators of most of the nonsense he had to deal with last time. And with the appearance of a gate in the tunnels, his lessons had shifted to train him in how to use shadow magic correctly.
Lessons that he forced the new elders to include Odion or else. Keeping the older boy around kept Marik calm and nowhere near the Rod, so they had agreed.
Marik stayed quiet, mostly because he had no idea who was up there and he didn't want the headache of dealing with outsiders.
Hearing the sound of paper crumpling up, Marik waited patiently. He didn't have to wait long, as something fell down and rolled next to him. Straightening it out revealed...a phone number and an address?
Marik grinned, as he recognized that hand writing. He flared his magic briefly to acknowledge he got the message. A flare from above alerted him that a certain Thief knew he was the one who got the letter.
Odion was very confused, but it wouldn't hurt for Marik to make a friend.
Ryou was very pleased that Marik had gotten his message. It was good to hear his voice, even if he sounded absolutely ridiculous before his voice broke.
Stealing the cash required to pay for the long distance phone calls was absolutely worth it, because it meant they could coordinate their arrival to Japan. If they had ended up in their younger bodies, then they had little doubt their Queen had as well.
Ryou couldn't help but curse the pharaoh. Hikari had been screwed over almost as badly as the Thief King himself because of that fool's arrogance.
When Atem left his other half, he more or less stripped her of any natural 'filters' to protect her from the Shadow Realm. Her light magic was strong, mostly to act as a natural counter to his role as the ruler of Shadows.
His departure left Hikari with no defense against her own light, and with no real 'filter' for the darkness required in her role as the new Queen of Games.
Hikari had been devastated, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. While her body was fine, her inner turmoil from having half her soul literally ripped away from her with very little warning or explanation nearly killed her.
It had been Marik who had saved her from self-destruction. While he had a Yami at one point, it hadn't been a natural creation.
Through him, Hikari had learned how to 'dump' her excess light magic into the Shadow Realm almost directly, though it was easier to use someone else as a filter of sorts.
It had been awkward for all of a month before the three had settled into a normal, and became semi-permanent roommates.
Ryou sometimes wondered how his Yami would have reacted to the situation. As if in response to his musing, he felt Yami Bakura uncurl in the back of his mind like a particularly grumpy cat.
He waited until nightfall so that he could have a proper chat with his Yami, if only to set the tone for later.
Yami Bakura was very surprised to see his other half in his room.
Yami looked at him, confused. Ryou pleasantly smiled back, as he had gotten very good at the innocent look and knowing how to bullshit adults.
You tend to learn real quick when you were best friends with someone so stab happy, and someone who got extra bitchy once a month when dead drunk.
He always found it hilarious that people always assumed it was Hikari who was the bitchy one, and Marik the stab happy one.
"So let me get this straight...the Pharaoh's light would be more than happy to let me stab the bastard on the condition he's not possessing her at the moment?" said Yami Bakura dubiously.
"The Pharaoh screwed her over almost as much as his father did you, and she's spent several decades trying to recover from his abandonment," explained Ryou. "It was a complete accident that we even found a way to help her issue, and even then it was only a stop-gap measure at best since we had no idea how to properly resolve it."
"What sort of issue?" asked Yami, curious.
"When her other half left, he completely obliterated any sort of 'filter' she had to shield her from the effects of shadow magic. The problem is that she's supposed to be the counterpart of the pharaoh, so her light magic was already absurdly strong. Losing that filter caused it to grow out of control."
Yami Bakura looked thoughtful.
"Yeah, that sounds like a major issue. She'd have to create a new filter or something to shield herself from her own powers, since a mage who's primarily light based cannot exist without some form of shadow to shield them. On the plus side if she can figure out how to fix it, she'd be even more powerful than that asshat."
Ryou sighed tiredly.
"The only solution we could find was using someone who created his own Yami out of pure trauma. Since his wasn't a naturally formed one, she was able to offload most of her light magic through him. It took us a few years to figure out how she could do it directly from her soul room, but that was always a temporary measure at best. And since shadow magic was never properly recorded..."
Yami Bakura winced slightly at the implications. It was a miracle the pharaoh's other half hadn't died from the sound of things.
"What happened to her?"
Ryou thought of how to describe the woman Hikari had become, before he remembered this was his soul room. He took Yami Bakura's hand and lead him to the well that held his memories.
Yami Bakura came out with an incredulous and slightly gleeful expression on his face. The pharaoh was so fucked and from the looks of things he was going to have a front row seat. It was going to be glorious.
The future Queen of Shadows was a no-nonsense woman who would never allow the pampered king to walk all over her. Far from it, she was likely to give as good as she got in terms of power.
Besides, Yami Bakura was a man. Learning his other half had been sleeping with a woman who had a body and a rack like that was something of a source of pride, even if she was only a part-time participant in the bedroom.