Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Curse of Water ❯ Setup for Disaster ( Chapter 3 )

There's no crueler temptress then temptation herself, Kaiba decided as he sat in detention that afternoon...alone. Yugi had gone home at the end of lunch, and Jounouchi had simply baled, leaving Kaiba wishing he'd done the same. Alright, so he wasn't completely alone, the only reason he wasn't getting out of there himself in the first place, but they, i.e. other people, really weren't worth considering.

 

So as not to bore the reader the actual detention time shall be skipped since nothing worth mentioning happened, quit literally. In fact, Mitsuhori-sensei didn't show her face up until the last couple minutes of class and then only to return the items that had been confiscated earlier that day. She didn't make any comments on the individuals absent from the confinement, just merely sent those that had shown on their way. With an aggravated sigh at all the wasted time, Kaiba pulled out his cellphone and called for a pick up once he was outside the school doors.

 

The wait was only slightly more interesting than the actual confinement back in the class room. But not for any pleasant reason. Kaiba grew quickly agitated standing there by the door, he had the feeling somebody was watching him, and he prided himself on having pretty accurate perception on such things. How could he not when he had to dodge the media, fangirls, hateful business partners, stalkers, and the like? Yet, no matter how hard he looked around and tried to spot the culprit, he saw nothing.

 

When the limousine finally pulled up in front of the gate, Kaiba couldn't help the sense of relief. There was something particularly overwhelming in the area. He wasn't a superstitious person by no means, but it took all his self control to cross the school yard to the limousine with a walk instead of a run. It wasn't until he had closed the black door behind him and told the driver to move out that he glanced out the window back towards the school grounds.

 

There, right by the open school gate, sat a cat. It's fur was a distinct tan, while its belly and paws where white with splotched tabby eyes. Almond shaped green-yellow eyes stared at the him. Kaiba wanted to scoff at his own paranoia, getting spooked by a cat of all things, for the most part he did. That didn't stop him from staring at the feline as the limousine pulled away. And the cat stared right back, straight at his eyes, completely undisturbed by the near black of the limousines tinted windows.

 

* * *

 

Home was a trial on Yugi's almost limitless patience.

 

The first trial came in the form of the vile little bottle of red liquid that was supposedly cherry flavored. Cherry's that had been left out in the sun too long and rotted away into a pile of melting limburger cheese. Frankly, he thought the medicine was more likely to kill him then the cold.

 

“You know why medicine tastes so bad?” his grandfather chuckled wickedly standing in the bathroom doorway and watching Yugi furiously brush at his teeth and tongue to get rid of the taste. In that condition, the teen could obviously not answer, but the old man continued on anyway not having expected a confirmation. “It's so that you get better faster, just so that you don't have to take it again.” Laughing at his own cleverness, old Muto shuffled down the hall to fetch some extra blankets for his grandson.

 

Quite invisible to the old man had been the ancient spirit gagging behind Yugi. Yami had not taken too well at having to share the sensation of the medicine's taste with his host. Once Sarutobi was out of sight and sound a mini-war for the toothbrush ensued which Yugi, by virtue of possessing a physical body, ultimately won. Yes, even Yami could loose at some things.

 

By the time the bathroom was vacated Sarutobi was was back to herd Yugi to his room and bed. Nope, the younger wasn't given any options. “Nothing like food and rest to make a person feel better.” and true to his words, by the time Yugi had changed into his pajamas and settled into his bed Sarutobi was back with a tray of warm vegetable rice. Yugi wrinkled his nose at the meal, but swallowed the food down under pressure from both Yami and his grandfather.

 

Of course, as soon as Yugi was done his grandfather started tucking blanket after blanket around him. All-together there were three blankets and comforter on him, far too hot for Yugi and his fever. Of course his grandfather wouldn't have any complaints.

 

“You kick 'em off I'll staple them to the bed.” He said as he left the room, waving a staple gun, which he pulled out of a convenient pocket, menacingly.

 

“Just for the record. If I melt to death, it'll be all your fault!” Yugi wined after Sarutobi as the old man closed to room door behind him. Listening quietly for his grandfather's footsteps going down the stairs back to the shop, and then counting the seconds of three extra minutes, Yugi judged himself safe. Kicking the blankets off, he sat up with a sigh of relief.

 

“You should rest” Yami admonished from his seat at Yugi's table. Yugi glanced at the watch which happily declared the time as 1:37 p.m.

 

“Too early.” Yugi whined, standing from his bed and pulling a large square of cardboard from under his table. A half complete puzzle sat atop the thick paper, and Yugi quickly set to work on it. “Wanna finish it?” He asked his darker half, holding one of the pieces up to the spirit. Yami just snorted and turned his head aside. “Go to bed and get better. We need to go back to that pond and see if we can find out what happened.”

 

“Alright, I'll finish it.” Yugi hummed, not responding to Yami's comment. He knew that they would have to go back eventually. Didn't like the idea at all but accepted it as a necessity. If somebody else got hurt just because he was too scared to fight whatever had attacked him he would never be able to forgive himself.

 

Until that time though, he could enjoy this little break and finish this puzzle.

 

“If you don't go to sleep soon, the medicin'll wear off and you'll just start coughing again.” Yami said as he turned around in the chair to stradle the seat, placing his arms atop the back of it and resting his chin on them. He watched Yugi try to put the puzzle back together on the floor below him.

 

Try being the functioning adjective in this case, because Yugi spent more time staring blankly at the puzzle then putting pieces back into place. The younger of the two just gave a hum to acknowledge Yami's statement. Yugi just couldn't get his mind focused on the task, drifting off in thought and often finding himself dosing off.

 

Finally after half an hour of fruitless attempts of working at the puzzle Yugi slid it back under his table, acknowledging defeat to his failing mental faculties. Yami flashed him a V for victory as he stood to crawl back into bed. With a sigh Yugi laid back down, pulling only one of the blankets over himself. He thought that it must have been the medicine, it probably had some sort of 'make ya sleepy' chemical or whatever in it. With a yawn he closed his eyes and let himself drift off. He did smile slightly when he heard Yami whisper a “Goodnight.” from his yami.

 

* * *

 

Mokub stared out the window with glazed eyes. Seto should have been home long ago, and Mokuba really wished that his older brother would stop long enough once in a while to let him know that plans might have changed. Heaven forbid Seto spend the extra three minutes calling his beloved sibling so the younger didn't worry.

 

Not that Mokuba worried about Seto, his older brother was quite capable of taking care of himself. It's just that when Seto disapeared for prolonged periods of time, bad things tended to happen to Mokuba. That alone would be more then enough to put most people on edge. Even in the Kaiba mansion, with its radically redesigned security system, just didn't feel quite so safe anymore.

 

That and Mokuba was bored. When Seto was at work you don't bother him, but at home one could get away with the darndest things...like toilet papering his home office. But Seto was late, so there wasn't anyone to bug, and Mokuba hadn't planned anything that would require lots of preparation time. Thus a time off general monotony and boredom was spent in the wait for Seto's return.

 

Mokuba blinked and came back to reality as a movement caught his attention out in the front yard. A cat was crossing the green lawn, dodging the wet circles of spray shot up by the sprinklers. With a grin Mokuba dashed from the window, slipped a pair of sandals, and was out the door. He slowed his headlong rush as he got close to the cat and it turned to look at him.

 

He crouched down, holding his hand out, trying not the scare the cat while still trying to get it come to him. “Here, here, here..” he cooed. The feline blinked a couple times at him before walking proudly up to his outstretched limb. It was an odd cat, Mokuba mused, a chocolaty tan color except for its paws and underbelly which were covered in odd splotched tabby stripes.

 

It purred as Mokuba started to scratch it under the chin and behind its ears. Mokuba smiled as the feline took another step forward and arched its back under his hand. After just petting it got a bit boring he plucked a long piece of grass and waved it in front of the animal. The cat was quick to try to pounce on the waving object, batting at the stalk with soft paws. Mokuba laughed and continued to play it.

 

Too soon though he heard the clang of the opening front gates and the rumbling entrance of Seto's limousine. The cat seemed to be very interested by the cars sudden appearance, watching it with keen eyes as it pulled level with the buildings front door and Seto Kaiba stepped out.

 

“Nii-san!” Mokuba picked up the cat, holding it against him like an overgrown stuffed toy and ran to greet his brother. Seto was closing the limousine door when Mokuba bounced up to him with a cheerful “Welcome home.” The older Kaiba just grunted a reply, turning away from the retreating limousine towards the front door. Mokuba shot a pout at Seto's back, it had been a long time since Seto had greeted him with little more then a grunt. He glanced down at the feline in his arms which blinked large gold-green eyes at him, and grinned as an idea came to him. Seto, if distracted enough, could say some rather out of place things so why not take advantage of such.

 

He bounced up to beside his older brother as Seto opened the door and asked in his most neutrally innocent voice. “Can we keep it?”

 

Mokuba was being optimistic, nobody that had cared for any child would ever let such a question pass under the radar. Seto immediately put his attention on his sibling and 'it.' Not an all together bad thing for Mokuba, at least he had Seto's attention now. 'It' however was staring back at Seto, opening its mouth to reveal pointy fangs and teeth in what was eerily like a feline equivalent of a grin.

 

“Put that down!” Seto made a grab for the cat but the feline in less then a seconds time had wriggled out of Mokuba's grasp and skittered away from the two Kaiba's.

 

“You scared it.” Mokuba whined as he tried to go after the cat which had halted its run in the middle of the drive way, but a his brother's hand held him back.

 

“Leave the thing. You shouldn't play with stray animals, you'll get sick.” Mokuba bit back the bitter 'like you'd care' he had been about to say in favor of leveling a pleading gaze on his brother. “Please, can we keep it.” he tried again.

 

“No.” Seto emphasized the finality of his command by pushing the younger Kaiba through the door and inside the manor. He glanced behind him on last time to see the cat staring at him once again. It couldn't possibly be the same feline that he'd seen at school, Seto reasoned, no animal could cross that distance faster then a car. But there the feline was, and with an amused, or perhaps dismissive, flick of its tail it loped off, squeezing between the bars of the front gate and away. Seto shook the eerie feeling that was back in full force off, stepping into his manor, closing and locking the door firmly behind him.

 

Half an hour later Mokuba was still in a fine temper. He hadn't said a thing to his brother since having been forced into the house, not because he was being stubborn but because if he did open his mouth to say something, he'd probably regret what would come out of it in the long run. So he sat on his bed, arms and legs crossed, and firmly ignoring the rest of the world, at least until his mood improved.

 

Ratkatatat.

 

The sound of something shaking pulled him out of his own dark thoughts and drew his eyes to the open door of his room. Across the hall, the door to Seto's room was also cracked open. Again he heard the rattling, come quite obviously from his brother's room.

 

Sliding off the bed, Mokuba tip toed out his room and to Seto's door. He first peeked through the crack to make sure that he hadn't at some point missed Seto coming out of his office one floor below and entering the room. But what he could see seemed to indicate that the room was quite empty. Again something rattled from withing. With a light shove Mokuba opened the door wider to see the room fully.

 

It was spartan at best, only the most basic furniture represented within, and most of it went completely ignored by the younger Kaiba who'd seen the room too many times to pay the furnishings any attention. His gaze focused on the only moving object in the room. On Seto's small table was the leather case that held the elder Kaiba's dueling deck. It was rocking back and forth slightly on its curved front, as if something had just shaken it.

 

Mokuba glanced around to make sure nothing else was moving. This was japan and earthquakes that were mostly unfelt but set stationary objects to shaking weren't all that uncommon. However everything else in the room was quite still, even Seto's swinging pendulum balls. Even more curious now, Mokuba walked up to the table and picked up the duel deck case, flicking it open with his thumb. The back of the cards was facing towards him and, without really thinking, he pulled out the first one. When he flipped it the iridescent image of the Blue Eyes Shining Dragon glistened back at him in the diminishing evening light.

 

* * *

 

Bakura pressed the delete button of the answering machine, erasing the latest message his father had left him. The man had been calling obsessively since word got to him off Bakura's hospitalization. It had been all Ryou could do to convince the man that he was fine other then needing some extra money wired into over to pay for the hospital bills. It was only after the call had been finished for 15 minutes and Bakura was running late for school that he'd realized that he'd just convinced his father to stay away, when for the last ten years he'd been doing everything possibly to convince the man to stay at all.

 

Bakura wasn't eager, or in good enough health, to want to deal with that bit of soul searching and questioning. So, just like that morning, he pushed the troubling thoughts out of his mind as the answering machine happily told him that there were 'no longer any new messages.'

 

From there it was the same old regular routine. Make food, eat and do homework, clean up mess, finish homework, study, read, check e-mail. Same old, same old, even if now he had an occasional round of coughing to deal with. Before he went to bed he did his usual ritual, lighting the candle and incense, praying, and such like.

 

Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact, by that time he was coughing less and felt generally better then he had that morning. Even the Millennium Ring was unusually well behaved, he'd felt nothing from the magic item or its spirit the entire weekend and day, though usually his yami maid himself quite well known when bad things began happening. Something like that should have disturbed him, but Ryou couldn't help but feel relieved at the small respite, he knew well enough that it would be a short lived break. The ring was rarely quite for long these days.

 

Unkown to him as he went to sleep that night, the rings spirit was very much trying to make itself heard. But Bakura's yami, for all his effort and centuries of accumulated power, could not break through the barrier that had insidiously inserted itself that cold Friday evening in the park. The spirit was still cut off from his host, and he could feel the tear between the two of them growing ever larger. The spirit was afraid, not for his mortality, but because if the connection broke completely he'd go back into that timeless sleep within which he'd before the Millennium Ring had come into Ryou's hands.

 

Yami Bakura had no intention of being defeated in such a simple and pathetic manner. But nothing he did seemed to have an impact on the cold liquid barrier. And so he sat in his darkened soul room, staring at the liquid that flowed from the top of the rooms door to splash at its bottom in a never ending waterfalls. A deceptively fragile looking wall of water that all the force in the world seemed unable to part.

 

He'd been glaring, kicking, and cursing, at the water in turn for the last couple days and was by now, even in his spirit form, quite exhausted from the effort. The more he grew tired the darker the room became. The water which had at one point simply vanished beneath the door began to gather in an ever growing pool at its foot. It seemed as if sleep would soon claim the spirit for another thousand years.

 

Except, as Bakura watched the flow of the water began to lessen, and the pool at the doors foot shrink. Life and awareness seemed to seep back into the room and the spirits which had already fallen into a threatening doze woke fully to the sight of only a few drips of water falling from the doors roof. Cautiously Yami Bakura stood from where he'd been sitting against the wall, the absence of the barrier was only noted in passing, his focus instead drawn on a voice from beyond the door. A voice calling him, and a shadowy force tugging at the Ring's own power to pull him out. The dark spirit opened the now freed portal and stepped out.

 

Bakura sat up in his bed, the physical body well within the control of the dark spirit, even as his host continued to sleep. Ryou had left the window open a couple inches and the moonlight revealed a small dark shape sitting within that gap. Yami Bakura stared back at the glowing gold-green cat eyes laughed at him. In an instant he placed the voice that had summoned and let out a hissed egyptian curse, which made the feline within the window smile, truly and literally smile.

 

“It has been such a long time.” purred the cat in a feminine voice, leaping lightly off the windowsill and landing on silent paws. “Hasn't it?” her eyes never once wavered away from him, or changed their laughing expression.

 

“What do you want?” the dark spirit asked lowly, though he made no attempt at gathering any dark power to either defend or attack. Even he could tell that time had not been as kind to this one as it had been to him. While within the Millennium Ring he'd grown stronger it was obvious that she had grown weaker. For the first time they stood as equals, though he drew little pleasure from the fact.

 

“To make a new bargain.” The felines maw opened to show white teeth, turning the smile into a full blown grin. “You were ill repaid for your last services.”