Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Honor Among Thieves ❯ Chapter 1: Spring-Cleaning In Autumn ( Chapter 1 )

Spring-Cleaning In Autumn

 

BHS: ^^ The title actually has meaning to the story, I swear.

 

Drof: Yeah, it actually does.

 

BHS: Um, anyway…Let's go on with the story.

 

Disclaimer: Drof owns nothing, `cause she's stupid.

 

Drof: I OWN THE OCS!! I OWN THE OCS!!!

 

BHS: ^^0 On with the chappie. By the way, I'm working with a total lack of ANY extensive knowledge of Yu-Gi-Oh!, because I've only seen up to the island-thing. Also, this fic will NOT be centered around the card-game, mostly because one of the main characters doesn't know how to play it.

***

Chapter 1: Spring-Cleaning In Autumn

 

 

It was, all in all, a normal day in Domino City, Japan. That is, I assume, a rather odd name for a Japanese city, but I've never been to Japan, so I don't know. `Domino City' just strikes me as rather unJapanese, if you know what I mean. However, Dear Readers, you are not, in fact, here to discuss the Japaneseness—or lack thereof—of the name of the city in which this story—mostly—takes place. If you are, I suggest you stop reading and go somewhere else, because all discussion of the name ends here.

 

Since those of you still left want to read the story, I shall begin it, rather than keep jabbering on at you. Ahem, anyway, on with the story and all that.

 

It was, as I've said, all in all, a normal day in Domino City, Japan. That is to say, no evil beasts were rampaging about, no one was being sent to the Shadow Realm, that sort of thing.

 

It was also a perfectly normal day at Domino High-School. Well, from the viewpoint of one Ryou Bakura, the star—for now—of our story, it was.

 

That is to say, no one was talking to him, except for the irritated voice in his head, who was wanting to know why he had to leave every day of the week and why couldn't he leave later than seven in the morning or at the very least leave quietly.

 

`Because,' Ryou thought back at said voice, a little irritated himself, `I have school, and I have to get ready.'

 

~But why?~ Bakura, the irate voice in Ryou's head, whined.

 

`Why do you care?' Ryou retorted. `Do you miss me, or something?'

 

~No!~ Bakura hurriedly replied. Ryou snickered, and could imagine well enough Bakura's glare. ~You just wake me up…~

 

`I'm sorry,' Ryou mentally sighed, rolling his eyes.

 

~You'd better be.~

 

Ryou didn't bother waiting for anything else, he knew that Bakura was gone. He could feel it, like how you know someone you're talking to has left even if you can't see them.

 

So, our lonely Ryou Bakura, now bereft of even of the company of the voice in his head, headed towards the doors of his school, where he would spend the day in complete solitude, despite being surrounded by people.

 

Well, that's what he thought would happen, anyway. What actually happened was very different. It went something like this:

 

Jounouchi, Yugi's blonde friend, came up to him and said `hello'. Well, actually, he said, “Hey, Ryou, how ya doin'?”, but it's basically the same thing.

 

“Um…Fine,” Ryou answered nervously, wondering if he was about to get beaten into the ground for something. Jou had something of a reputation for hurting people like him—`him' being Ryou, not Jounouchi. Jounouchi had never, as far as anyone knew, beaten himself up.

 

“Cool. Hey, wouldja eat lunch with me an' Yug? I think he wants ta ask ya somethin'.”

 

“Uh…Sure.” Ryou watched as Jou departed, wondering what exactly had just happened. Seeing that the answer wasn't forthcoming, he decided to pretend it hadn't happened for as long as he could, and deal with it later. That was what he'd done when he'd realized that the weird necklace his father had given him contained an evil spirit, and it was still working. He was coping with Bakura's existence wonderfully.

 

Shaking his head and dismissing all thoughts of the insane spirit, Ryou hurried to his first class, determined not to be late.

***

 

Lunch, for Ryou—and, coincidentally, Yugi and his friends—was after fourth period. As Ryou moved to find somewhere to sit—without any lunch, Bakura had eaten what he'd planned to bring—he remembered that he was to eat with Yugi and his friends. He looked around for them, and spotted them—mostly because of Yugi's hyper waving.

 

Ryou ambled over and sat down, feeling rather awkward.

 

“Um…Hi,” he greeted, licking his lips nervously—a habit he'd picked up from Bakura. He resisted the temptation to bite his nails—another nervous habit of his yami. Who knew that Bakura had so many nervous habits? They were very good for blackmail—Ryou had a hundred little things that he could tell the others—or, mainly, Yugi—Bakura did if the thief ever bothered him.

 

“Hi!” Yugi replied, grinning manically.

 

“Er…”

 

“Hey, Ryou,” said Tea—yes, Dear Reader, Joey's `Jounouchi' and Tristan's `Honda', but Tea's still `Tea'. That's just how it works.

 

“Um, hi,” Ryou replied, saying the same thing, only without the `…'. The reason for the plethora of `…'s in this story—well, the chapter, anyway—is a simple one: I like them. Anyway, continuing with the story…

 

“Yugi,” Ryou said a bit hesitantly, eyeing Tea in a nervous manner, “Jou said you wanted to ask me something…?” Tea edged closer, and Ryou edged away, not liking her shark-like grin. He began to feel very unsafe.

 

“Oh yeah! I forgot!” Yugi clambered off the bench and over to his backpack, and yanked something out. It was small and round, with a hole in the center.

 

“….?” Ryou gave it a questioning look.

 

“It's a CD, Ryou,” Yugi explained. “You know, they play music…?”

 

“I know what a CD is,” Ryou said gently. “Why are you giving it to me?”

 

“My grandpa's doing spring-cleaning and I want to keep it safe,” Yugi replied. “And he always throws away all my CDs, and this one was imported from America, so it's really expensive…”

 

“…Yugi,” Ryou began, licking his lips, “um…Why is your grandpa doing spring-cleaning? It's autumn…”

 

“Oh, um, he's weird like that,” the diminutive boy answered, rubbing the back of his head nervously. “Um…”

 

There was a terrible silence.

 

There was a terrible noise.

 

There was a terrible silence.

 

There was not, in fact, any of these. I just wanted to write it. Douglas Adams is a genius. Now, back to the story.

 

There was a very awkward silence, as everyone sort of tried not to stare at Yugi and failed rather utterly. Yugi turned a rather bright red color, and muttered something about his grandpa being old and getting things confused sometimes, and then chirped out something that had nothing to do with the current subject. I do believe I've changed tenses three times in that sentence, but please ignore it if I did. Thank you.

 

About five minutes went by, during which there was a conversation that Ryou half-heartedly participated in, and then Tea noticed something.

 

“Hey, Ryou,” she chirruped—and, we all agree, it's rather a vile noise coming from her, isn't it?—, “why don't you have anything to eat?”

 

“I, uh…Bakura ate my lunch,” the white-haired boy muttered, feeling a trace of irritation at the reminder that he didn't have anything to eat. He was hungry, dammit, and it was all Bakura's fault. Of course, sweet, gentle Ryou didn't think it quite like that, but that's the general gist of his thoughts, so I believe I may be forgiven for my inaccuracy.

 

“He did? That was mean!” Tea, bless her little heart, pointed out. Of course, that was rather obvious.

 

“Bakura isn't particularly nice by nature, Tea,” Ryou said, only a tad dryly. He tried to avoid being sarcastic or wry when he spoke to people, but sometimes it simply can't be avoided.

 

“Well, he should be. If he weren't so mean, he'd be a lot nicer and more pleasant to be around!”

 

Ryou stared at Tea for a moment after she made this statement, and then turned to Yugi with a `How do you stand her?' look. Yugi gave a helpless little shrug.

 

“Well, um, I should probably get going,” Ryou said after a moment of silence. My next class is kind of far away, and I'm always late if I don't leave early…Bye.” With that, he got up and left, rather thankful to be away from Tea.

 

~I don't like that girl,~ came Bakura's opinion.

 

`I know,' Ryou sighed, `neither do I, but she's not really that bad. Just a little…overzealous.'

 

~She's a nutcase! A lunatic!~

 

`Oh?' Ryou was really rather amused by this. `And you're not?'

 

~Not like her!~ the thief half-yelled. Ryou winced—he'd been having a throbbing headache all day, and having Bakura yell at him in his head wasn't making it any better.

 

`Yeah, she's not homicidal.'

 

~Exactly!~

 

`Bakura…' People were giving Ryou odd looks. Then again, he was walking down the hall, occasionally muttering to himself, and shaking his head while smiling slightly. `That's a good thing. It's bad to homicidal.'

 

~Why?~

 

`It gets you locked up,' the boy replied. `In jail, in cells with big ugly smelly guys who end up—`

 

~There's no need to go on, hikari, I get the picture,~ Bakura said hurriedly. Ryou smiled.

 

`Alright, Bakura,' he said. `Now, leave me alone, I'm in class.' Indeed, during the course of his conversation with the voice in his head, Ryou had managed to get to class without hurting himself. That was amazing, seeing as he'd not been paying any attention to his surroundings. The boy shrugged, chalked it up to luck, and sat down.

 

Ryou had learned, long ago, not to question good things when they happen. Doing so tended to result in being saddled with evil spirits that ate your breakfast. Well, actually, no it didn't, but to Ryou, a lot of things resulted in being saddled with evil spirits that ate your breakfast.

 

Bakura always woke up hungry, and Ryou always tripped over his own feet right aside Bakura's door, crashing to the floor and thus waking the thief, so he—Ryou, that is—didn't ever get to eat breakfast. As a result, he'd developed a slight obsession with early-morning meals. He was also always very hungry in the morning and afternoon, but that's beside the point.

 

The teacher, Ryou noted, was talking. The class, unfortunately, was history, and therefore Ryou, as a human being, couldn't really be reasonably expected to pay any attention whatsoever. So, he didn't. Instead, he decided to talk to Bakura, which was always fairly entertaining.

 

`Hey, Bakura,' he said. `I'm bored.'

 

~So?~

 

`…I'd like to talk to you.'

 

~Go away.~

 

“….” Ryou huffed, and glared at a nearby wall. Unfortunately, since he was Ryou, his glare was actually more of a `rabid-bunny' expression, which was infinitely more amusing but not nearly as scary.

 

~…Hikari, you do know that you can't glare properly, right?~

 

`Since when did you say `properly'?' Ryou returned, trying to change the subject to something other than his glaring abilities—or, rather, lack thereof.

 

~Well, it sounds funny to say `you know you can't glare right, right'?', so I decided to say `properly' instead of `right'. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a brain.~ Bakura sounded rather annoyed. He also sounded bored, and Ryou fancied he could hear a dull sort of `thunk' in the background, which probably meant that Bakura was being careless with the mindlink and letting in sounds, while the `thunk' itself no doubt meant that he, Bakura, was throwing darts at Ryou's ceiling. This was an activity he had been banned from doing, and one he therefore found very fun and engaged in as often as he could.

 

Life, as I'm sure you can guess, was not easy when one lives with an insane, homicidal evil spirit.

 

`It could be worse…' Ryou mused gloomily. `He could beat me.'

 

~Do you want me to beat you?~ Bakura wondered. ~Because I'd be glad to oblige.~

 

`No, Bakura, I don't want you to beat me, thank you very much,' Ryou responded. `Your interest in my desires is quite touching, though. I'm really glad to know you care.' As I've said earlier, Ryou tried to avoid being sarcastic, but there were times when it simply couldn't be helped. Most of the times when Ryou found it simply couldn't be helped were in conversations with Bakura.

 

~I was just asking,~ Bakura muttered. How one could mutter in a mental conversation was actually quite a good question, and Ryou found himself contemplating it for nearly ten minutes, until he realized that people were staring at him. One of the girls who sat next to him—she was a pretty brown-haired slip of a girl, with striking green eyes—leaned over and asked why he was talking to himself.

 

“Oh, um, er…” Ryou could feel himself blushing, and really did wish he would stop. When he blushed, his entire head turned a bright pink color. Not just his face, but every inch of exposed skin on his head went the same identical shade of pink. It was a color that Tea wouldn't wear. “I was just…thinking aloud.”

 

“Oh, okay,” the girl said, smiling. `Chiyoko, I think her name is,' Ryou found himself thinking. She was, he believed, one of the girls in his `fanclub'. Why he had a fanclub was, in fact, quite beyond him, but he was sure there was a reason for it.

 

This thought kept him occupied for the rest of the day, and for most of his way home. While walking home, he kept bouncing ideas off Bakura, who'd resorted to grunting in response, when he realized that cursing at Ryou wasn't going to work.

 

“D'ya think they're actually a government agency, and they're spying one me?” the white-haired boy asked. Now that he was alone, he spoke aloud, knowing that Bakura would hear it anyway.

 

~Hm.~

 

“Like, maybe they're from America or something, and they're with the CRA,” Ryou went on.

 

~…The `CRA'? Is that a government agency?~ Bakura's curiosity got the best of him, and he asked the question. He immediately regretted it, as it sent Ryou into yet another long rant.

 

“I think it's the CRA. It's the `C'-something, anyway.”

 

~'C'-something. Well.~

 

“Or, maybe they're actually assassins hired by Taiwan to exterminate people they see as threats to the Taiwanese plan to take over the world…”

 

~Hikari, what are you on, where are you getting it, and can I have some?~

 

“I'm not on anything, Bakura!” Ryou replied, irritated. “Why do you say that?”

 

~Because you're talking like someone who's completely stoned.~

 

“No I'm not! Hey, Bakura, I'm almost home, so if you're doing anything you don't want me to see, then I suggest you stop.” Ryou felt it necessary to say this, because he could now hear a steady `thunk…thunk…thunk' in the background, and he sincerely hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.

 

~Oh? Like what?~ Thunk…Thunk…Thunk…

 

“Like, oh, I dunno, throwing darts at my ceiling!”

 

~Why would I be doing that?~ Ryou could imagine Bakura's face, it'd match his tone—utter innocence with a bit of wounded trust added in for effect. Bakura was frighteningly good at sounding rather like a child being punished for something he didn't do. Thunk…Thunk…Thunk…

 

“Oh? So you aren't?” Ryou replied, in as innocent a tone as he could manage—which was, considering he's Ryou, pretty innocent.

 

~Of course not!~ Bakura protested hotly. ~What kind of person do you think I am?~ Thunk…Thunk…Thunk…

 

“I was only asking, because if you were throwing darts at my ceiling, you'd find yourself having to cook your own dinner tonight,” Ryou said, turning the innocence up another notch. Somewhere up above, angels wept, and men with beards became inspired and wrote long-winded plays in which absolutely nothing happened.

 

~Of course I'm not throwing darts at your ceiling!~ This time, Ryou thought he heard the sound of someone jumping up and down on a bed, trying to pluck something out of a ceiling, perhaps…He grinned, knowing that he'd finally caught the thief at his own game.

 

“Of course not,” he agreed, walking through his door and into his living room.

 

Many have speculated that, in Ryou and Bakura's relationship—and I don't necessarily mean a sexual sort of one, but you can think I do it you want—that one of them was being abused. It was, general consensus said, Ryou. However, had anyone asked Bakura, he would have ranted—vehemently, at that—about how badly Ryou treated him. He would have listed off terrible things such as blackmail, bribery, extortion, threatening to tell others things he said and did while under the influence of alcohol, threatening to tell others things he did and said in his sleep, and, worst of all, threatening to tell the pharaoh about Mr. Snuggums.

 

General consensus would not believe that sweet little Ryou was capable of such horrid activities, but he was. Bakura was a cruelly abused yami, and no one knew of his plight. Of course, this was in part because, if anyone did know of his plight, they knew about Mr. Snuggums, and no one was allowed to know about Mr. Snuggums. Well, Ryou knew, but he didn't count.

 

So, as Ryou walked into the door, looking nothing like the cruel, abusive person that he was, Bakura was busily plucking darts out of Ryou's bedroom ceiling and hoping they weren't poisoned—if they were, he'd be feeling nasty for awhile, courtesy of all the times he'd jabbed himself in various places with them.

 

You wouldn't think someone could jab themselves in the small of the back with a dart, but Bakura managed to do just that. Ryou came into his room while the thief was cursing about that, and couldn't help but raise one eyebrow at the small, feathered thing sticking out of his yami's back.

 

“Bakura?” he asked.

 

“Godsdamed—What, hikari?” Bakura twisted around in vain, swearing under his breath as he tried to extricate the dart from his back.

 

“Why is there a dart in your back?” Ryou took a moment to reflect that this conversation was probably heading into an area he'd rather avoid—a long conversation with Bakura about sharp objects.

 

“It's not supposed to be there!” the thief yelled. “Ow! God…damned…Yow! Fu—“

 

“Bakura,” Ryou interrupted again, “how did you manage to do that?”

 

“Do—ow!—what?” Bakura asked, gritting his teeth and attempting to glare at the dart. This attempt rather failed, as one cannot, in fact, glare at one's own back. In fact, Bakura failed particularly miserably. He managed to overbalance himself and fall over—on his back. This resulted in Bakura screaming nearly every curse he knew at everything in general, but mostly beds, darts, and gravity.

 

“Get a dart stuck in your back,” Ryou clarified when Bakura stopped screaming. “How did you manage to do that?”

 

“I don't know!”

 

“…Do you need some help there?” Ryou tried very, very hard to sound concerned, rather than amused, but, judging by the look on Bakura's face, he rather failed.

 

“No, hikari, I don't need any help.” The thief managed to get up, and decided not to risk standing up. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and attempted to pick the dart out of his back.

 

It wasn't working very well.

 

“Hey, hikari,” Bakura asked, abandoning for the moment his attempt, “what's that?”

 

“What's what, Bakura?” Ryou was busy. He was sitting at his desk, doing his homework. Unfortunately, it was history homework, so he had no idea what he was supposed to do. There was a note in his history book, written in a barely legible scrawl, which said `Reizei-san always assigns a report on medieval Europe for the third week of the new school-year'.

 

“That...round thing,” Bakura said, pointing. Ryou turned and looked, and saw the CD Yugi had given him.

 

“It's a CD,” Ryou answered, turning back to his homework. “It plays music. Yugi gave it to me.”

 

“Really?” Bakura sounded rather as if he didn't care, which suited Ryou just fine. He didn't feel like explaining CDs to the evil spirit who lived in his house. Thunk…

 

“Bakura!” Ryou yelled, jumping out of the chair. “Don't throw darts at it!” Bakura gave Ryou a look of complete innocence, a look that would have worked better if it hadn't been for the dart he held in his hand, ready to throw.

 

“Why not?”

 

“It's important!”

 

“Why?”

 

“It's not mine!!” This probably didn't have the effect Ryou intended for it to have, but that was because Bakura didn't have much of a concept of this thing called `ownership'.

 

“…So why shouldn't I kill it?” Bakura asked. Ryou sighed and contemplated banging his head against the nearest wall, but decided against it.

 

“Because, Bakura,” the white-haired boy explained with a patience that could only be described as divine, “someone gave it to me to keep safe, and it's not safe if you kill it. Now, give it to me and I'll see what music it's got.”

 

“Can I kill it if I don't like it?” Sometimes, Ryou reflected, Bakura was like a little kid. Of course, little kids typically didn't ask to kill things…

 

“No, Bakura,” Ryou sighed, wondering all the while why him, of all people, “you can't.” He grabbed the CD and put it in his radio, which was rather dented and chipped in places from Bakura's constant attempts to kill it. So far, the radio had won every fight, but Ryou knew it was just a matter of time before Bakura found out how to chew through cords.

 

When the music started playing, Ryou found he quite liked it, even if he didn't understand the words. About ten minutes passed, during which the music played, Ryou worked on his history report, and Bakura began throwing darts at random objects in Ryou's room.

 

Ryou yelled at him to stop, and Bakura was about to throw a dart into the wall beside Ryou's head in retaliation, when there was a flash and a soft sort of `thump'. Bakura's eyes went wide, and the dart that had been aimed at the wall flew from his hand, wobbled slightly in its flight, and ended up drawing a long, thin line across Ryou's cheek. The boy was too shocked to notice he was bleeding.

 

There, standing in his room, was a person. There had not been a person in that space before, and no one had entered the room. Ryou and Bakura were the only ones in the house, so how did the person get there? It was a very good question.

 

The person was rather short, with pale skin, and they were very, very thin. Large blue—teal, actually—eyes blinked in slight bewilderment at Ryou from a thin, pale face. Thick, very slightly wavy hair of some unidentifiable blue color—sort of a hard, pale, brittle, icy blue—fell down this person's back and a little below their waist.

 

The person who stood there, looking at Ryou, was very pretty. Despite this, the gender of said person was not easy to tell, the aforementioned person being pretty in a sort of androgynous way rather than pretty in sort of a feminine way.

 

“Uh…Who are you?” Ryou finally managed to ask, staring at the person and wondering if it was a man or a woman. Whatever it was, it looked about eighteen.

 

“My name,” the person said in a voice that was slightly too deep to be gender-neutral but still high enough to leave doubts as to their sex and very, very British, “is Nikio.” He/she pronounced it `Nikyo', not at all how it was spelled. I only write it as it is spelled because that is what I must do, even if that only complicates the job of pronouncing it even more.

 

“Nikki-oh?” Ryou asked faintly. The person smiled slightly.

 

“Nikyo,” it said again. “Two syllables.”

 

“Oh.” There was a long pause, and then Ryou said, very faintly, “I feel rather dizzy.”

 

“You're bleeding,” Nikio noted, gesturing towards Ryou's face. “What happened?”

 

“Bakura threw a dart at me…” Ryou murmured. He reached up and ran his fingers over the cut in his face, and then looked at them. They came away bloody. “Bakura, why do I feel dizzy?”

 

Suddenly, the room began to dim. Ryou realized that he was falling in a detached, distant sort of way, but couldn't seem to do anything about it.

 

Faintly, he heard Bakura say, “I don't think those were the poisoned ones…”

***

Drof: Haha!! We're finished!!

 

BHS: We are, aren't we? When this is posted, it will be around twelve-forty-ish, and I will be tired. I've been at the lake-house all weekend, which is why I haven't updated or anything. I'm dizzy and I feel sick and I just watched War of the Worlds and now I think the world will end, which is really a shame, because I haven't finished any of my stories.

 

Drof: Oh, do shut up.

 

BHS: Fine. Anyway, Yami-ko, if you're reading this, email me at reiki_sama@hotmail.com, okay? The email address I sent to you doesn't work. If anyone reading this can contact Angel Yami-ko for me, please tell her that, if she doesn't read this. ^^ Thank you.

 

Drof: We're not your messengers.

 

BHS: Sure you are! Anyway, review, everyone, okay? Reviews make the world go `round. Anyway, I won't update until I at least one review each from five different people, okay?