Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Honda, Bakura, and the Three Trolls ❯ Part 3 of 3 ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: tsutsuji 
Honda's in trouble now, and it's - Ryou to the rescue? Help finally comes from a most unlikely place.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Adventure / Action | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 11.14.2004 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 382 | Status: Completed
Honda's in trouble now, and it's - Ryou to the rescue? Help finally comes from a most unlikely place.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Adventure / Action | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 11.14.2004 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 382 | Status: Completed
Title: Honda, Bakura, and the Three Trolls (part 3 of 3)
Author: Tsutsuji
Fandom: Yugioh!
Rating: PG13, for a bit of language
Pairings: none really, but hints of Bakura/Ryou and maybe Honda/Ryou
Original characters: no
Type: action/adventure
Warnings: none
Status: work in progress?
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to these characters and I'm making no profit from this fic and intend no copyright infringement.
Summary: Ryou Bakura has more than one protector from school bullies, who get way more than they bargained for when they decide to pick on Honda.
Archive: whatever
Notes: Finally.... another story where the ending came to me ages ago, and I finally wrote the beginning and middle! There will probably be a sequel that reveals more about the relationship between Ryou, Bakura, and Honda. Eventually. If anyone cares.
"Bakura" is Ryou Bakura. "The Spirit" or "the other Bakura" is Yami Bakura.
***
Chapter 3
Honda couldn't believe it. When he'd thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. It wasn't enough that he was going to end up in the hospital, possibly mained for life. Now Bakura was going to end up that way as well, if he didn't end up dead... or worse.
"Bakura, get lost!" he yelled, wheezing. It felt like his intestines had been shoved upward by Kugi's fist and wrapped around his lungs.
Kombo and Hamaguri swung him around to face his would-be rescuer. Kugi stepped around them as Bakura came dashing up, running - to Honda's dismay - just like a girl, with his long, silvery-white hair streaming around his pale, pretty face.
But there was a fierce look in his eyes, something Honda had only seen a flash of once before, when he'd turned against the evil spirit that was in control of his body. There was fear there, too, but Honda realized that it wasn't for himself... it was for his friend.
The others watched with amused expressions as Bakura jerked to a sudden stop a few feet away. He pulled himself up and glared at them. Kugi laughed out loud.
"This makes it easier, doesn't it?" he said.
"Yeah," Hamaguri chuckled. "Oooh, I want a lock of that pretty hair! Or maybe..." he reached quickly into his back pocket, and a second later a gleaming white blade flashed in his hand. "Or maybe the whole scalp!"
"Shit," Honda muttered. He struggled to shrug out of their grasp, but Kombo only twisted his arm up against his back, pinning him so he could hardly move at all without breaking something.
Bakura stood stock-still, legs spread, arms out at his side, and his brown eyes wide and dark. Something in his expression caught Honda's eye. It wasn't just the desperate, defiant gaze he'd seen as if in a dream on Bakura's face before. There was a flicker of something else, something that was also familiar.
As the others watched with wary amusement to see what their intended victim would do, Bakura brought his hands up in front of him, as if he was holding something invisible in the air. A shiver ran down Honda's spine. He'd seen this before, alright. But he'd never expected to see it again. It couldn't be real.
But it was. He watched with fascination as the golden Ring appeared, at first seeming to float in the air before becoming a solid metal reality hanging around Bakura's neck. Bakura smiled. Only, Honda knew, it wasn't Bakura anymore.
When he'd been sure it really couldn't get any worse, it did. Again.
"No fucking way," he gasped. "I got rid of that thing?"
"Did you really? Perhaps you were mistaken. Maybe it was only a dream," said the strange, familiar voice.
"You're gone! I got rid of you for good!" Honda yelled, no longer caring about Kugi and his goons.
The Spirit in possession of Bakura laughed. "You thought it was that easy to get rid of me? Well, you'd better think again."
"Don't fight, now, lovers," Kugi said with an ugly smirk. "Cause you're not gonna get a chance to kiss and make up later."
"Yeah, when we're through messing with your face, nobody's gonna want to kiss it anyway, 'cause it's not gonna be pretty anymore" Kombo laughed.
Hamaguri flashed the blade in the air with a grin
"You have no idea how wrong you are," The Other Bakura said calmly.
He reached slowly and deliberately around to take something from his back pocket. The bullies tensed,and Kugi quickly took a menacing step toward him. Then there was a burst of relieved but disbelieving laughter when they saw what he was holding: a deck of cards.
Honda didn't laugh.
"That stupid card game!" Kombo said, still laughing. "Duel Monsters! That's for kids and sissies like you two!"
"What are you going to do, throw cards at us? Think we should duck, guys?" they laughed.
"Oh, you think so, do you?" the Spirit said smoothly. "It will be fun showing you how wrong you are. For instance, here's an interesting card..."
Honda couldn't see the card, but he could see its effect as the other Bakura casually tossed it into the air between the three. They watched it float in front of them, apparently unable to look away, and then their eyes glazed over and their expressions went blank, hands hanging limp at their sides. They looked more like zombies than anything else. But this also meant that the two that had been holding Honda by the arms had lost their grip, and he stepped away from them quickly. He turned to stare at Bakura - the other Bakura - who stood waiting with an expectant smile. His eyes glinted red in the twilight of the alley.
"You can't be here!" Honda said. "I got rid of you!"
"I'm not that easy to get rid of, especially as it seems my host missed me after all, despite his earlier betrayal. As a matter of fact, I owe you, Honda. Your attempt to free Bakura from my control only served to reveal the truth. Instead of getting rid of me, you gave me something that is very important to me."
"What does that mean?" Honda asked uneasily.
"I doubt you would understand, so I won't explain. But in return, I will do you a favor. Unfortunately, you won't appreciate it, because you won't remember any of this happened, but that's the way it must be for now."
Honda still had no idea what he was talking about, and was pretty sure he didn't want to know anyway. The other Bakura stooped and picked something off the ground: Honda's deck that had fallen out of his book bag. He bristled as the dark spirit flipped through the cards.
"Ah, I see you still have your favorite card..." he held up the Cyber Commander card. Honda cringed.
"You're not gonna put me back inside that card!" he said, although he had no idea what he could do to prevent it.
"No. I'm merely going to use it to even the odds," the other Bakura said, and laughed. He tossed the card into the air - and CyberCommander appeared full-sized before them, as solid as life. He looked like an older, fiercer Honda. He nodded silently to the other Bakura, then stepped aside, into the shadows.
"You fight fairly well for a 'modern human,'" the other Bakura said to Honda, "but I think he will do the job more efficiently." Somehow he flicked the trap card he'd tossed earlier back into his hand, and as he did Honda's attackers blinked and stirred. They looked at each other for a second, bewildered, knowing something weird was going on but not sure what it was. They spotted Honda and Bakura, and that seemed to remind them what they were about to do- give two sissy geeks a beating. Kombo and Hamaguri lunged to grab Honda again, while Kugi looked at Bakura like he had just discovered dessert served to him on a plate.
Then Cyber Commander stepped in front of them, his eyes hard and glinting like steel.
"Who the hell are you?" Kugi challenged, while the other two looked from Cyber Comander to Honda and back again, then at each other.
Cyber Commander didn't speak. He just reached out and, rather casually, cuffed the Kombo, who was closest, on the side of his head, sending him staggering backward.
Kombo was enraged. "Oh, yeah?" he said, and Honda almost laughed at the absurd response. The other Bakura did laugh, which made the bully go red in the face. Bristling like a porcupine, he threw up his fists, ready to strike back at this replica of his intended victim.
Honda couldn't see his look-alike's mouth, but he had the impression Cyber Commander was grinning.
After that, it was over pretty quickly. Cyber Commander ducked the first swipe of the Kombo's thick fist and darted in. Kombo had a second to realize his mistake before Cyber Commander knocked him flat. Hamaguri let go of Honda, and he and Kugi moved in to avenge their fallen comrade. Cyber Commander seemed mesmerized by the flash of Kugi's swirling chain. But suddenly his hand shot out, and the next thing Honda knew, Kugi's chain was wrapped around his own neck. Cyber Commander planted his knee in Kugi's back and shoved, and Kugi went down in the dust, limp as a rag. Hamaguri's eyes nearly bugged out of his pasty face. But he stuck out his chin and raised his fists, and dove toward Cyber Commander. A second later, he landed next to his friend, out cold.
Cyber Commander gazed down at each of them. He looked a little disapointed. Then he turned and stood at attention before the other Bakura. Fascinated, Honda stepped up beside him and gazed at him in awe.
"Wow, he's good," Honda said, forgetting that he was talking about a magically-conjured card-spirit that shouldn't even exist.
"Handsome as well," the other Bakura said wryly. That brought Honda back to reality.
"Oh crap. Hey - you're not gonna send those guys to the Shadow Realm, are you?"
"I would love to, but if they disappear or go into comas after they were seen bothering my Bakura, it would raise questions which I would rather not have raised at the moment, especially in the mind of your friend Yugi. I told you, I'm doing you a favor, as well as protecting my hikari and myself. When these goons come to, they will think you did all the damage. I doubt even they will be stupid enough to bother you or my other self again."
"Huh? They'll think I did it? Why? And what's your hikari?" Honda asked, more puzzled than ever.
"As I said, you wouldn't understand." He gazed at Honda thoughtfully for a moment, as if he was considering whether to explain himself anyway. Instead he gave Honda a dangerous looking smile. "Bakura considers you his friend. Be sure it stays that way. You don't want to end up on my bad side."
"Uh, no, I sure don't," Honda agreed, wondering why he wasn't already. He almost added "You mean you have a good side?" but fortunately he managed not to say it out loud. Something clicked in his mind: hikari, his other self... his Bakura? D oes he mean Bakura is his good side?
As this surprising thought occurred to him, the Millenium Ring flashed brightly, and Honda hid his eyes. "Yeaaah!" he yelped, and next thing he knew...
... He was shaking his head to try to clear it, and wondering why he was half-sitting, half kneeling on the ground, with one very slack-looking senior class bully flat on his back in front of him. His face hurt, and his fist hurt even more. Maybe that had something to do with the big lumpy bruise on the side of Hamaguri's face?
"Honda? Are you alright?"
"Huh?"
Honda looked up, surprised at the mild-sounding voice, thinking it couldn't be who it sounded like. But it was. There stood Bakura, of all people, gazing down at him in concern, his eyes wide. He held out a hand, and Honda gratefully accepted the help in climbing to his feet.
"You did quite a job on them," Bakura said in a tone of admiring wonder.
"Uh, yeah...I guess..." he vaguely remembered hitting at least one of them, as it came back to him in bits and pieces: the confrontation, the rude comments about Bakura and himself, and somebody grabbing him by the arm. But did he hit all of them? He could remember seeing each of them go down. As he thought about it some more he did seem to remember hitting each one of them, but it was as if he'd been outside his body, watching himself move. "Guess that's what happens sometimes when you're In The Zone," he said to himself. At any rate, his fists felt like they'd connected with a few faces, although his own face felt nearly as bad as the guy on the ground looked.
"Oh, and here, you dropped this," Bakura said, holding something out in his hand. "I hope nothing's missing."
"Oh! My deck. Thanks."
"Is that what the fight was about?" Bakura asked.
"Well, uh, yeah." Honda blinked, suddenly not wanting to look his classmate in the face as he remembered what they'd said about him. About them, in fact. He wasn't sure what Bakura would think and he didn't want to embarrass him, so he latched on to the idea that the fight was about Duel Monsters.
"They said card games like this are just for kids, and people who play Duel Monsters are losers. I couldn't let them get away with that!"
"Well, you certainly made your point," Bakura said happily.
Honda looked at Bakura and found him smiling that same wide, charming smile that had once scared the wits out of him and Jounouchi. How could he ever have been afraid of that innocent face, Honda wondered. He suddenly noticed that Bakura had a beautiful smile, you just didn't get to see it very often. "And that's a shame," he thought, to his own surprise.
"They seem to be coming round," Bakura said. "Er, should we do something with them?"
Honda glanced at the three victims, each of whom were starting to stir, moaning a bit. He'd been in enough fights, on both sides of things, to know that they weren't seriously injured. Tomorrow they'd be sore and pissed off, but maybe they'd also be a little more cautious of him now.
"Nah. Best if we aren't around when they wake up," he said. "Let's go. It's getting dark."
He led the way to the end of the alley and back out onto the street. It was a dingy part of town, but after the alley it felt like a gleaming, well-lit haven of safety. Once amid shops and people again, they paused.
"If you want to get cleaned up," Bakura said hesitantly, "my home isn't far."
He gestured across and down the street. Honda's home was in the other direction, and he still had quite a way to go .
"Do I look that bad?" he said, trying to catch his reflection in a shop window. He glanced down at his bruised hands, and noticed a new rip in his jacket.
"Well, no, not really," Bakura admitted. "I just thought I'd offer..."
He was smiling again, and yet he seemed nervous. It made the smile even more charming. Suddenly Honda felt nervous as well.
"I, uh, guess I'll just head on home, I guess," Honda said. "I appreciate the offer, though!"
"Okay. If you're sure?"
"Yeah..." Honda took a step back.
"Well, see you, then," Bakura said. "Thanks!" He turned away and started off down the street.
Honda stood blinking, suddenly wishing he'd gone along with Bakura's offer, though he wasn't sure why.
"Why go to Bakura's? I'm not that much of a mess. Then again, why not go? What's the big deal?"
He felt confused. Why had Bakura been on that path behind the school, anyway? And what had he just said "thanks" for? And what the heck was making him feel so nervous that he couldn't just go visit with his friend for awhile?
He couldn't answer any of those questions, so he gave up and went home.
Later, he took off his shirt and surveyed the damage in the mirror. It wasn't so bad, really. His knuckles and the bruises on his arms were the most obvious, and there was another bruise on his ribs that was going to look worse before it looked better. But his face wasn't as bad as it felt, not even a black eye to show for his efforts. "Heh. You should've seen the other guys!" he said to his reflection. "And they were lucky!"
He wondered why he thought that. As a matter of fact, he'd been damn lucky. They could have beaten him to a pulp, between the three of them, and it just had to be luck that he got his licks in first. He wished he could remember how he'd managed to knock them all flat even though he'd practically passed out as well. He wondered what Jonouchi would think when he heard about it.
Honda pulled his deck out of his pocket and glanced through it, checking for damage. He took a second, longer look, counting the cards. Then he counted them again.
"Damn!" He slammed the deck on his desk. "I'll have to go back and search the spot. It's gotta be there. Hope those jerks didn't find it."
There was only one card missing, but of course it had to be his favorite card
*the end for now....*
Note: In the anime, Yami Bakura seems to be able to make people forget things, at least temporarily, and he also seems to bring card-monsters to life. I'm using those parts of the anime reality here, even though neither of these things is true in the manga, as far as I know.
Author: Tsutsuji
Fandom: Yugioh!
Rating: PG13, for a bit of language
Pairings: none really, but hints of Bakura/Ryou and maybe Honda/Ryou
Original characters: no
Type: action/adventure
Warnings: none
Status: work in progress?
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to these characters and I'm making no profit from this fic and intend no copyright infringement.
Summary: Ryou Bakura has more than one protector from school bullies, who get way more than they bargained for when they decide to pick on Honda.
Archive: whatever
Notes: Finally.... another story where the ending came to me ages ago, and I finally wrote the beginning and middle! There will probably be a sequel that reveals more about the relationship between Ryou, Bakura, and Honda. Eventually. If anyone cares.
"Bakura" is Ryou Bakura. "The Spirit" or "the other Bakura" is Yami Bakura.
***
Chapter 3
Honda couldn't believe it. When he'd thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. It wasn't enough that he was going to end up in the hospital, possibly mained for life. Now Bakura was going to end up that way as well, if he didn't end up dead... or worse.
"Bakura, get lost!" he yelled, wheezing. It felt like his intestines had been shoved upward by Kugi's fist and wrapped around his lungs.
Kombo and Hamaguri swung him around to face his would-be rescuer. Kugi stepped around them as Bakura came dashing up, running - to Honda's dismay - just like a girl, with his long, silvery-white hair streaming around his pale, pretty face.
But there was a fierce look in his eyes, something Honda had only seen a flash of once before, when he'd turned against the evil spirit that was in control of his body. There was fear there, too, but Honda realized that it wasn't for himself... it was for his friend.
The others watched with amused expressions as Bakura jerked to a sudden stop a few feet away. He pulled himself up and glared at them. Kugi laughed out loud.
"This makes it easier, doesn't it?" he said.
"Yeah," Hamaguri chuckled. "Oooh, I want a lock of that pretty hair! Or maybe..." he reached quickly into his back pocket, and a second later a gleaming white blade flashed in his hand. "Or maybe the whole scalp!"
"Shit," Honda muttered. He struggled to shrug out of their grasp, but Kombo only twisted his arm up against his back, pinning him so he could hardly move at all without breaking something.
Bakura stood stock-still, legs spread, arms out at his side, and his brown eyes wide and dark. Something in his expression caught Honda's eye. It wasn't just the desperate, defiant gaze he'd seen as if in a dream on Bakura's face before. There was a flicker of something else, something that was also familiar.
As the others watched with wary amusement to see what their intended victim would do, Bakura brought his hands up in front of him, as if he was holding something invisible in the air. A shiver ran down Honda's spine. He'd seen this before, alright. But he'd never expected to see it again. It couldn't be real.
But it was. He watched with fascination as the golden Ring appeared, at first seeming to float in the air before becoming a solid metal reality hanging around Bakura's neck. Bakura smiled. Only, Honda knew, it wasn't Bakura anymore.
When he'd been sure it really couldn't get any worse, it did. Again.
"No fucking way," he gasped. "I got rid of that thing?"
"Did you really? Perhaps you were mistaken. Maybe it was only a dream," said the strange, familiar voice.
"You're gone! I got rid of you for good!" Honda yelled, no longer caring about Kugi and his goons.
The Spirit in possession of Bakura laughed. "You thought it was that easy to get rid of me? Well, you'd better think again."
"Don't fight, now, lovers," Kugi said with an ugly smirk. "Cause you're not gonna get a chance to kiss and make up later."
"Yeah, when we're through messing with your face, nobody's gonna want to kiss it anyway, 'cause it's not gonna be pretty anymore" Kombo laughed.
Hamaguri flashed the blade in the air with a grin
"You have no idea how wrong you are," The Other Bakura said calmly.
He reached slowly and deliberately around to take something from his back pocket. The bullies tensed,and Kugi quickly took a menacing step toward him. Then there was a burst of relieved but disbelieving laughter when they saw what he was holding: a deck of cards.
Honda didn't laugh.
"That stupid card game!" Kombo said, still laughing. "Duel Monsters! That's for kids and sissies like you two!"
"What are you going to do, throw cards at us? Think we should duck, guys?" they laughed.
"Oh, you think so, do you?" the Spirit said smoothly. "It will be fun showing you how wrong you are. For instance, here's an interesting card..."
Honda couldn't see the card, but he could see its effect as the other Bakura casually tossed it into the air between the three. They watched it float in front of them, apparently unable to look away, and then their eyes glazed over and their expressions went blank, hands hanging limp at their sides. They looked more like zombies than anything else. But this also meant that the two that had been holding Honda by the arms had lost their grip, and he stepped away from them quickly. He turned to stare at Bakura - the other Bakura - who stood waiting with an expectant smile. His eyes glinted red in the twilight of the alley.
"You can't be here!" Honda said. "I got rid of you!"
"I'm not that easy to get rid of, especially as it seems my host missed me after all, despite his earlier betrayal. As a matter of fact, I owe you, Honda. Your attempt to free Bakura from my control only served to reveal the truth. Instead of getting rid of me, you gave me something that is very important to me."
"What does that mean?" Honda asked uneasily.
"I doubt you would understand, so I won't explain. But in return, I will do you a favor. Unfortunately, you won't appreciate it, because you won't remember any of this happened, but that's the way it must be for now."
Honda still had no idea what he was talking about, and was pretty sure he didn't want to know anyway. The other Bakura stooped and picked something off the ground: Honda's deck that had fallen out of his book bag. He bristled as the dark spirit flipped through the cards.
"Ah, I see you still have your favorite card..." he held up the Cyber Commander card. Honda cringed.
"You're not gonna put me back inside that card!" he said, although he had no idea what he could do to prevent it.
"No. I'm merely going to use it to even the odds," the other Bakura said, and laughed. He tossed the card into the air - and CyberCommander appeared full-sized before them, as solid as life. He looked like an older, fiercer Honda. He nodded silently to the other Bakura, then stepped aside, into the shadows.
"You fight fairly well for a 'modern human,'" the other Bakura said to Honda, "but I think he will do the job more efficiently." Somehow he flicked the trap card he'd tossed earlier back into his hand, and as he did Honda's attackers blinked and stirred. They looked at each other for a second, bewildered, knowing something weird was going on but not sure what it was. They spotted Honda and Bakura, and that seemed to remind them what they were about to do- give two sissy geeks a beating. Kombo and Hamaguri lunged to grab Honda again, while Kugi looked at Bakura like he had just discovered dessert served to him on a plate.
Then Cyber Commander stepped in front of them, his eyes hard and glinting like steel.
"Who the hell are you?" Kugi challenged, while the other two looked from Cyber Comander to Honda and back again, then at each other.
Cyber Commander didn't speak. He just reached out and, rather casually, cuffed the Kombo, who was closest, on the side of his head, sending him staggering backward.
Kombo was enraged. "Oh, yeah?" he said, and Honda almost laughed at the absurd response. The other Bakura did laugh, which made the bully go red in the face. Bristling like a porcupine, he threw up his fists, ready to strike back at this replica of his intended victim.
Honda couldn't see his look-alike's mouth, but he had the impression Cyber Commander was grinning.
After that, it was over pretty quickly. Cyber Commander ducked the first swipe of the Kombo's thick fist and darted in. Kombo had a second to realize his mistake before Cyber Commander knocked him flat. Hamaguri let go of Honda, and he and Kugi moved in to avenge their fallen comrade. Cyber Commander seemed mesmerized by the flash of Kugi's swirling chain. But suddenly his hand shot out, and the next thing Honda knew, Kugi's chain was wrapped around his own neck. Cyber Commander planted his knee in Kugi's back and shoved, and Kugi went down in the dust, limp as a rag. Hamaguri's eyes nearly bugged out of his pasty face. But he stuck out his chin and raised his fists, and dove toward Cyber Commander. A second later, he landed next to his friend, out cold.
Cyber Commander gazed down at each of them. He looked a little disapointed. Then he turned and stood at attention before the other Bakura. Fascinated, Honda stepped up beside him and gazed at him in awe.
"Wow, he's good," Honda said, forgetting that he was talking about a magically-conjured card-spirit that shouldn't even exist.
"Handsome as well," the other Bakura said wryly. That brought Honda back to reality.
"Oh crap. Hey - you're not gonna send those guys to the Shadow Realm, are you?"
"I would love to, but if they disappear or go into comas after they were seen bothering my Bakura, it would raise questions which I would rather not have raised at the moment, especially in the mind of your friend Yugi. I told you, I'm doing you a favor, as well as protecting my hikari and myself. When these goons come to, they will think you did all the damage. I doubt even they will be stupid enough to bother you or my other self again."
"Huh? They'll think I did it? Why? And what's your hikari?" Honda asked, more puzzled than ever.
"As I said, you wouldn't understand." He gazed at Honda thoughtfully for a moment, as if he was considering whether to explain himself anyway. Instead he gave Honda a dangerous looking smile. "Bakura considers you his friend. Be sure it stays that way. You don't want to end up on my bad side."
"Uh, no, I sure don't," Honda agreed, wondering why he wasn't already. He almost added "You mean you have a good side?" but fortunately he managed not to say it out loud. Something clicked in his mind: hikari, his other self... his Bakura? D oes he mean Bakura is his good side?
As this surprising thought occurred to him, the Millenium Ring flashed brightly, and Honda hid his eyes. "Yeaaah!" he yelped, and next thing he knew...
... He was shaking his head to try to clear it, and wondering why he was half-sitting, half kneeling on the ground, with one very slack-looking senior class bully flat on his back in front of him. His face hurt, and his fist hurt even more. Maybe that had something to do with the big lumpy bruise on the side of Hamaguri's face?
"Honda? Are you alright?"
"Huh?"
Honda looked up, surprised at the mild-sounding voice, thinking it couldn't be who it sounded like. But it was. There stood Bakura, of all people, gazing down at him in concern, his eyes wide. He held out a hand, and Honda gratefully accepted the help in climbing to his feet.
"You did quite a job on them," Bakura said in a tone of admiring wonder.
"Uh, yeah...I guess..." he vaguely remembered hitting at least one of them, as it came back to him in bits and pieces: the confrontation, the rude comments about Bakura and himself, and somebody grabbing him by the arm. But did he hit all of them? He could remember seeing each of them go down. As he thought about it some more he did seem to remember hitting each one of them, but it was as if he'd been outside his body, watching himself move. "Guess that's what happens sometimes when you're In The Zone," he said to himself. At any rate, his fists felt like they'd connected with a few faces, although his own face felt nearly as bad as the guy on the ground looked.
"Oh, and here, you dropped this," Bakura said, holding something out in his hand. "I hope nothing's missing."
"Oh! My deck. Thanks."
"Is that what the fight was about?" Bakura asked.
"Well, uh, yeah." Honda blinked, suddenly not wanting to look his classmate in the face as he remembered what they'd said about him. About them, in fact. He wasn't sure what Bakura would think and he didn't want to embarrass him, so he latched on to the idea that the fight was about Duel Monsters.
"They said card games like this are just for kids, and people who play Duel Monsters are losers. I couldn't let them get away with that!"
"Well, you certainly made your point," Bakura said happily.
Honda looked at Bakura and found him smiling that same wide, charming smile that had once scared the wits out of him and Jounouchi. How could he ever have been afraid of that innocent face, Honda wondered. He suddenly noticed that Bakura had a beautiful smile, you just didn't get to see it very often. "And that's a shame," he thought, to his own surprise.
"They seem to be coming round," Bakura said. "Er, should we do something with them?"
Honda glanced at the three victims, each of whom were starting to stir, moaning a bit. He'd been in enough fights, on both sides of things, to know that they weren't seriously injured. Tomorrow they'd be sore and pissed off, but maybe they'd also be a little more cautious of him now.
"Nah. Best if we aren't around when they wake up," he said. "Let's go. It's getting dark."
He led the way to the end of the alley and back out onto the street. It was a dingy part of town, but after the alley it felt like a gleaming, well-lit haven of safety. Once amid shops and people again, they paused.
"If you want to get cleaned up," Bakura said hesitantly, "my home isn't far."
He gestured across and down the street. Honda's home was in the other direction, and he still had quite a way to go .
"Do I look that bad?" he said, trying to catch his reflection in a shop window. He glanced down at his bruised hands, and noticed a new rip in his jacket.
"Well, no, not really," Bakura admitted. "I just thought I'd offer..."
He was smiling again, and yet he seemed nervous. It made the smile even more charming. Suddenly Honda felt nervous as well.
"I, uh, guess I'll just head on home, I guess," Honda said. "I appreciate the offer, though!"
"Okay. If you're sure?"
"Yeah..." Honda took a step back.
"Well, see you, then," Bakura said. "Thanks!" He turned away and started off down the street.
Honda stood blinking, suddenly wishing he'd gone along with Bakura's offer, though he wasn't sure why.
"Why go to Bakura's? I'm not that much of a mess. Then again, why not go? What's the big deal?"
He felt confused. Why had Bakura been on that path behind the school, anyway? And what had he just said "thanks" for? And what the heck was making him feel so nervous that he couldn't just go visit with his friend for awhile?
He couldn't answer any of those questions, so he gave up and went home.
Later, he took off his shirt and surveyed the damage in the mirror. It wasn't so bad, really. His knuckles and the bruises on his arms were the most obvious, and there was another bruise on his ribs that was going to look worse before it looked better. But his face wasn't as bad as it felt, not even a black eye to show for his efforts. "Heh. You should've seen the other guys!" he said to his reflection. "And they were lucky!"
He wondered why he thought that. As a matter of fact, he'd been damn lucky. They could have beaten him to a pulp, between the three of them, and it just had to be luck that he got his licks in first. He wished he could remember how he'd managed to knock them all flat even though he'd practically passed out as well. He wondered what Jonouchi would think when he heard about it.
Honda pulled his deck out of his pocket and glanced through it, checking for damage. He took a second, longer look, counting the cards. Then he counted them again.
"Damn!" He slammed the deck on his desk. "I'll have to go back and search the spot. It's gotta be there. Hope those jerks didn't find it."
There was only one card missing, but of course it had to be his favorite card
*the end for now....*
Note: In the anime, Yami Bakura seems to be able to make people forget things, at least temporarily, and he also seems to bring card-monsters to life. I'm using those parts of the anime reality here, even though neither of these things is true in the manga, as far as I know.