Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction / Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction / GetBackers Fan Fiction ❯ Something for Nothing (All Possible Worlds part 1) ❯ In Which Bakura and Ryou discover a House Is Not At Home ( Prologue )

All Possible Worlds - Prologue: In Which Bakura and Ryou Discover a House Is Not At Home

Author: Tsutsuji

Fandom: Yugioh, with crossovers!

Crossovers: Prologue - Tenchi Muyo

Written in part for Crossovers100, Prompt: Home

Also written as part of NaNoWriMo, November 2007

Rating: PG13

Warnings: - a little language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.

Disclaimer: Yugioh! characters and Duel Monsters belong to Kazuki Takahashi and associates. GetBackers characters and settings belong to Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine and associates. Descendants of Darkness characters and concepts belong to Yoko Matsushita and associates. Tenchi Muyo! characters belong to Hitoshi Okuda and various others. "Tsutsuji" is just a fangirl who is borrowing them all for the moment, and she makes absolutely no money from any of this silliness.

 

 

Notes: "All Possible Words" is a series of connected crossover stories that follows "Anything's Possible," a crossover with "Kim Possible" in which Bakura and Ryou got evil genius Dr. Drakken to make Bakura his own body. (Also, "Anything's Possible" is actually a sequel of sorts to "The Golden Dance," where Bakura and Ryou first discover and admit their mutual attraction to each other - if anyone's interested in following my B/R fanon continuity.)

 

Prologue

 

"The Greatest Scientific Genius in the Galaxy actually has a website too?" Bakura said, looking over Ryou's shoulder at the computer screen with a bemused smile. "Who'd've guessed? I told you, everyone has a website except you, Yadonushi!"

 

Ryou sighed. "Well, maybe I should make us one, then," he said wearily. "I'll just advertise the fact that you're a clone looking for a better-made new body that won't disintegrate in a couple of months, and then all the clone-makers in the world will beat a path to our doorstep, just for the chance to make a new you."

 

Bakura squeezed his arms around Ryou, and Ryou leaned his head back on Bakura's shoulder with another sigh.

 

"I'm sorry," Bakura said. "Don't get discouraged, we'll find a way. After 5000 years of not having a body of my own, and months of waiting to be with you, I'm not giving up being alive again! Besides," he chuckled, nuzzling Ryou's hair playfully, "it's too much fun to see all the girls at your school (and half of the guys) stumbling over themselves when they see us!"

 

"I don't like it," Ryou muttered darkly. "I hate it when other people look at you like that!"

 

Bakura laughed and squeezed him tighter. "I know. I love it that you hate it so much! It's just like I used to feel when people gawked at you and groped you. You're mine."

 

"Mmm," Ryou sighed, snuggling against him. "I am. And you're mine. And I'd feel that way even if Drakken hadn't made you so... "

 

"Hot? Sexy? Irresistible? "

 

"Cute!" Ryou said, squirming around suddenly to give Bakura a smack on the lips. "And all the rest, too. But you were all of that even when you were still just a spirit living inside my body, a voice in my mind..."

 

"A nightmare, taking over your body and your life," Bakura said quietly.

 

Ryou looked into the shadowy blue-gray eyes. It was odd, he supposed, that he didn't regret all the evil Bakura had done since Ryou had acquired the Millennium Ring and become his host, but he couldn't - not with the ancient Egyptian's arms warm and solid around him, and feeling the heart beating inside his chest as Ryou curled up and laid his cheek there. Bakura had protected him, too, and somehow along the way between nightmare and now, he'd fallen quite completely in love.

 

"I just wish Drakken really knew what he was doing when he made this body, though," Ryou said. "It seems so - alive. It's hard to believe something's going to go wrong with it in a few months. And I must say, it's a little hard to trust any more self-advertised geniuses after all that."

 

Bakura frowned. "I know. I feel perfectly fine, alive, and ordinary, even if I am a 5000 year-dead spirit inhabiting a poorly-made cloned body."

 

He and Ryou both looked toward the computer screen again. "Well, we do have a few other (equally insane-sounding) geniuses to check out," Bakura said. "Some of them are even right here in Japan, thank the gods," he added under his breath.

 

Ryou hid his smile; Bakura could face all the horrors of the Shadow Realm without a twitch, but he still hated to fly.

 

"That article you found in the science journal at the library, about the university that's doing cloning research, sounds like the best possibility to me," Bakura went on, scanning Ryou's list, "but I suppose this 'scientific genius' is exactly what you said you wanted when you started looking. Does it say how we can find this person?"

 

"Her site looks like it hasn't been updated much recently, but it says she's an expert in cloning, artificially created life forms, and inter-dimensional and interstellar travel...."

 

"Space travel?" Bakura growled. "I thought you said we didn't have to leave Japan!"

 

"We don't!" Ryou said, laughing. "See? The site says she's set up a laboratary near a shrine in the mountains - in fact, it's not far from Domino. Actually... " He frowned and trailed off, squinting at the screen. The more he read, the more strongly skepticism battled with hope.

 

Bakura leaned forward to read out loud over his shoulder. "Currently residing at the Masaki Family shrine. Full research laboratory, containing several fully formed artificial environments and intra-dimensional lockways providing access to several distant planets of interest, with on-premises access by means of a particularly cleverly designed dimensional portal under the stairs in the family household near the Shrine."

 

He sat back and folded his arms. "A gigantic research lab in a closet under the stairs, hm? My, my, that sounds... promising," he said dryly. "When do we leave?"

 

~~

 

They found the shrine without too much trouble. It was well known by local residents of the district, but Ryou wasn't sure if the way eyebrows raised when they asked for directions was a good sign or not.

 

He was even more uncertain what to think when they got to the place. It was a beautiful location, particularly on a fine autumn day with the surrounding hillsides all golden and red in the clear country air. It was just the kind of place that Ryou always felt drawn to, with its long stairway built into the hill as if it had grown there naturally, leading up to the shrine itself. The simple forms of the shrine buildings blended in with the forested hills, along with the ancient stones and great, old tree draped with shimenawa marking the boundaries between the spirit world and ordinary life. Even before real magic had burst into his life, he'd always felt an enchanting sense of it in a place like this.

 

However, all of that was relatively ordinary in rural Japan. What made him and Bakura look at each other with raised eyebrows and mingled hope and frustration was the household of the family that was connected to the shrine - or rather, not connected to the shrine at the moment, due to the fact that the house itself was simply not there.

 

They stood at the gate and stared at the place where the house had obviously been, but was no longer. It must have been removed recently, Ryou thought, since the leaves were scattered thickly over the lawn around it, but only a few of them had drifted into the empty outline of the foundation.

 

Bakura raised his hand and reached out, as if touching something in the air. Ryou thought he could feel it too: the remains of some crackling energy that had barely begun to dissipate.

 

"Do you suppose one of the scientific genius' lab experiments went awry?" Bakura said, half-humorously. "Perhaps the 'cleverly designed' laboratory door malfunctioned and sucked the house off to another planet, or into another dimension? If that's the case, I hope she's a lot better at cloning than she is at making dimensional portals!"

 

"I wonder," Ryou said. His skin prickled lightly, hairs standing on end as if an electrical charge was drawing on them from above. He looked up. It was daylight, on a silky-bright autumn day, but he thought he could see stars glittering in an endless black sky. Bakura glanced at him and followed his gaze.

 

"What? Do you think they blasted off into space instead?"

 

Ryou shook his head, more to clear it than to disagree. "I don't know. Something strange happened, obviously, but even if it means this Washuu really is a scientific genius, it doesn't do us much good, does it? There's obviously not anyone around."

 

"Well, it's certainly no wonder she hasn't updated her website in a while," Bakura said. "Looks like the professor has been a bit busy lately, at any rate!"

 

"Yes," Ryou answered vaguely. Busy with what, he wondered. And would she be back anytime soon? Somehow, although the house was gone and the shrine untended, the place didn't feel completely deserted. Maybe it was just too old and settled to feel that way, but he had a sense the whole place was just waiting placidly for its masters to return, as if they went on jaunts to other worlds on a regular basis.

 

Bakura seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "For all we know, this is a regular occurrence around here," he said. "That would explain the reactions we got when we asked for directions! Maybe Professor Washuu's house will fall out of the sky and bring her back sometime soon."

 

He sounded sarcastic, but Ryou could tell easily enough that he was hiding the same frustrated hope he felt in his own heart.

 

"Maybe. We can check back another time, I guess."

 

"Sure. Let's do that. In the meantime..." Bakura turned his back on the gate and the absent house. "Back to the list of possibilities? After all, if there's one dimension-traveling, clone-making scientific genius in Japan, there may well be others!"

 

"Yes," Ryou said with a sigh. "I suppose we could check out the others, while we're...." He trailed off. There was no point waiting around here in case the house happened to reappear.

 

Bakura gave him a wry smile when he pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of his pocket.

 

"Plan B, then? The cloning research at that university in - where was it, anyway? I didn't notice."

 

Ryou glanced down the list, but quickly returned to the top.

 

"You never pay attention to the details," he said, which wasn't strictly true; it just depended on which details Bakura decided were relevant at the moment. "Shion University, in Kyoto. I've never been to Kyoto," he said thoughtfully. "It's supposed to be especially beautiful in the fall..."

 

~~~

Continued in Part 1: In Which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing

~~~