Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Just Another Crossover...Or Is It? ❯ Chapter 4

Priestess: Thanks again, reviewers! In this chapter, the romance circle becomes more apparent—the circle being that Kaiba likes Bakura, Bakura likes Yu-Gi-Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh likes Malik, Malik likes Ryou, Ryou likes Yugi, Yugi likes Kaiba, Kaiba likes Bakura, Bakura likes Yu-Gi-Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh likes Malik, Malik likes Ryou—
Kaiba, Bakura, Yu-Gi-Oh, Malik, Ryou, and Yugi: YOU'RE JUST DOING THE ENTIRE STUPID, RIDICULOUS, UNBELIEVABLE ATROCITY ALL OVER AGAIN!!
Priestess Aishisu: Oops…Anyway, some of these pairings probably won't end up very apparent. But some will. The Kaiba/Bakura pairing, at least, is made quite clear in this chapter. So is the Yu-Gi-Oh/Malik one. Also, I'm thinking of adding the pairings of Isis/Mariku and Akefia/Atemu (the ancient Egyptian version of Bakura/Yu-Gi-Oh).
What do you think of those? One of my friends suggested Bakura/Kaiba, Yu-Gi-Oh/Akefia, Malik/Ryou, and Yugi/Isis. So now I'm changing it to three options, which unfortunately means previous votes are discounted unless it comes to a tie between one and two.

***

"AAAAAAARRRGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!" shrieked Malik, flinging his arms in the air and flinging his homework onto the ground. "I give up! I give up I give up I give up I give—"

"SHUT UP!!!!" yelled Yu-Gi-Oh, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

"Hello, Yugi," said Kaiba frigidly, glancing up from his own homework, sapphire eyes narrowed. "Have you been torturing Bakura again? Or arguing? Or both? I do hope he punished you—you deserve it."

Yu-Gi-Oh growled under his breath. Then his voice rose, and he yelled for the entire dormitory to hear, "He took twenty points from Gryffindor! And he gave me a detention—with Finch!"

"And I suppose Yugi's going to have to take the detention," said Malik as he picked, making a point to sound as if he were speaking to himself—Ron and Harry were in the dormitory as well, along with some other boys who didn't know about the yamis and hikaris.

Yu-Gi-Oh drew himself up to his full height—which wasn't much. "Are you accusing me of shirking my responsibilities? If I chicken out, it will show Bakura he's winning!"

"And so will driving Finch insane, killing him, burning him, or otherwise hurting him," said Kaiba. "So don't try to use magic, wit, or trickery to get out of this, either."

"I do not shirk!" said Yu-Gi-Oh, lifting his chin stubbornly. "I never shirk!"

"This homework is too hard," muttered Malik. "Maybe Professor Ryou can help." (If speaking of both, they had decided on 'Professor Ryou,' since saying the full name would seem weird)

"Are you sure that's safe?" Kaiba asked with unusual tentativeness. He put his own homework down for a moment. "He's probably ready to go on a rampage right now, we shouldn't disturb him…"

"Why Kaiba," said Malik with a cool smirk. "Are you scared?"

Kaiba blanched. "Me? Scared? I am not scared of—oh, no!” he gasped suddenly. “You are not getting me this time! I am not as stupid as certain fern-head midgets I could mention!"

Yu-Gi-Oh's eyes narrowed and his fists clenched. "Don't. Make. Me. Hurt. You."

"I'd like to see you try," Kaiba retorted. "This is your fault anyway, you know. Bakura at least is trying to stop being such an antagonist, whereas you're clearly determined to start World War III!"

"I am not!" Yu-Gi-Oh shouted. "In fact, I think you might be the one trying to start it, from the way you've been acting lately!" The two long-time rivals glared furiously at one another, not aware that by now the entire dormitory was staring at them.

It had been this way for months. Yu-Gi-Oh couldn't forgive, Bakura couldn't just sit by and let himself be insulted, and Kaiba couldn't stand his adversary being a jerk to one of his few friends.

Kaiba was the one who finally turned away. He had learned in the last year and a half—as well as in his memories of Egypt—that the ancient Pharaoh tended to deal with any sort of unhappiness either violently or childishly, and God help the poor soul that got in his way.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered, shaking his head and going back to his homework. "I have homework to do, and then I have to send another owl to Mokuba for more stock information."

"If you two nutcases are quite finished yet, I still need to go talk to Professor Ryou," said Malik, putting a hand on his hip and narrowing his lilac eyes with impatience.

"You might end up impaled on the wrong side of a knife," Kaiba reminded him.

"Do you take me for an imbecile? I know that I might." Malik threw back his silky blonde hair and smiled at Kaiba evilly. "And that's why you're coming with me!"

***

The sight which greeted them was not a pleasant one by anyone's standards. Bakura, dressed in a wine-red robe (from what they could tell, he had at least twenty different robes) was running around flinging everything within his reach at the walls, cursing in four different languages (Egyptian, Japanese, English, and a language neither of them knew)

"Stubborn, mindless, spiky-haired little fuck!" he yelled, every word interjected by the sound of something smashing into a wall—then magically repairing itself and floating back to wherever it had been. "When I get my hands on him, I'll rip him to shreds!"

Malik cringed as an ink bottle smashed against the wall a few inches from his face. Black liquid splashed against the stone, a few drops hitting him. He yelped, wiping frantically at the stained fabric of his robe (though this was a bit silly, as it wasn't even visible)

Only then did Bakura notice them. He blinked, as if seeing them for the first time. "You?" he asked slowly, lowering the wine bottle he had been about to throw. "Wha…What are you doing here?"

"Umm…I think this is a bad time," said Malik nervously, backing out of Bakura's stone chambers. He looked more than ready to break into a run at the first possibility, but Kaiba grabbed him by the sleeve of his robe and pulled him back inside.

His eyes flickered from the empty bottle in Bakura's hand to the five or six bottles sitting on his desk, also empty. "Have you been drinking?" he asked sharply, but his usually-frigid sapphire eyes were unusually worried and almost warm.

"That's ridiculous," Bakura replied flatly, but his eyes shifted away from him. Kaiba glared hard at him until he finally admitted, "Maybe. A…A little. But I'm not drunk."

"You never get drunk," Kaiba pointed out, and Malik didn't even want to think about how he might be aware of that little fact. "But you might want to remember you're in a human body—a teenage human body."

"You've drunk underage, too!" Bakura cried, and heaved a sigh. "Why is he so stubborn?" he asked, looking up at Kaiba with an almost-unbearable depth of sadness in his eyes. "If I can forgive him for the slaughter of my entire village, can't he forgive me for things which are practically nonexistent compared to what I could have done? To what others have done? I mean, I haven't even tried to murder the lightning-haired midget!"

"Well, let's see," said a familiar voice from the doorway, a voice which made all three of them jump. They turned to see Yu-Gi-Oh standing there, glaring at Bakura, and both Malik and Kaiba groaned inwardly at the look in his eyes. "You first sealed his soul into a game piece. Then you sealed his soul into his favorite card. Then you—"

"But those are all just little things!" Bakura argued, placing his hands on his white-clad hips.

"You would have destroyed his soul if I lost those games," snapped Yu-Gi-Oh, crossing his arms. "Stop trying to play innocent. It isn't a very befitting role for you, Thief."

"Bakura."

"Whatever."

"You must like to seal people's souls into things, don't you, Bakura?" asked Malik, who hadn't been aware of either of these occurrences. He seemed almost amused by his newfound knowledge.

Yu-Gi-Oh's eyes, blazing with barely-contained fury a moment before, grew cold enough to freeze the sun. "Which is all the more reason for me to kill you right now."

Kaiba's sapphire eyes narrowed, his eyes even colder than Yu-Gi-Oh's. Blue-white fire glittered around him. "Just try it, bastard. I'll kill you before I let you even lay a hand on him," he threatened, causing Bakura and Malik to lift their eyebrows.

"You wouldn't dare," Yu-Gi-Oh retorted, but there was an edge of uncertainty in his voice.

"Try me."

Malik glanced at Bakura and whispered in his ear, "Unless you are drunk, which knowing you I doubt is possible, I'm sure you've realized that Kaiba either wants to start World War III or is in love with you."

Bakura stared at him as if he had just said that Kaiba had green hair, or that he didn't like dragons, but then his eyes narrowed. Stepping forward, he laid a hand on Kaiba's shoulder.

"It's not that I don't appreciate the help," he informed Kaiba in an unusually gentle voice, especially for him, then turned to give Yu-Gi-Oh his fiercest glare. "I just don't need to be protected from the likes of him."

Yu-Gi-Oh snorted, but whirled around and left.

The lightning faded, but Kaiba was still gasping with rage. "That…that asshole," he ground out, eyes blazing. "That lousy, good-for-nothing, piece-of-camel-shit asshole."

Malik smirked at Bakura, sending him a mental I told you, and asked, "Do we get any points for that? We should get at least…a hundred! All right, ninety. Eighty? Please say eighty!"

Bakura rolled his eyes, but the faintest wisp of a smile seemed to pass over the very edges of his mouth. "Fifty for scaring off the little bad wolf," he said to Kaiba. "Ten for…doing nothing," he said to Malik. "Oh, and by the way—tell Yu-Gi-Oh he got three detentions with Finch for being an asshole and gained twenty points for running away like a chicken."

Malik gave him a crisp salute which looked positively ridiculous for someone like him, his expression grave but his eyes dancing. "Yes, Professor. Captain. Generalissimo. Sir."

Kaiba snorted and grabbed Malik by the arm, dragging him to the door. "Come on, you shameless Kiss-Up," he sneered, though his voice and his expression was not unkind.

A smirk played across his lips. "I want to see his Royal High-Ass's face."

***

"Why that…that…stupid, shameless, unjust, idiotic, bloodsucking, demonic little albino monster!!" yelled Yu-Gi-Oh when he heard the news. "I swear to Ra, I'll kill him!"

He stormed to the door of the dormitory, not caring that every Gryffindor boy in their grade was staring at him. Eyes narrowing, Kaiba stormed forward and blocked his way. "You leave Bakura alone!" he shouted, causing Malik to snicker for some inane reason known to no one but Malik (and me. And Bakura if he were there.)

Yu-Gi-Oh's eyes narrowed with a mixture of frustration and suspicion. "Since when did you care so much about that damn thief?" he demanded. "What are you, in love with him or something?"

Malik hid a grin behind his paper at Kaiba's wide eyes and the faint-as-a-whisper blush which spread over his cheeks. "That has to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard," he retorted, stammering only slightly as his mouth tightened into an angry line. "Why would you think…?"

"Hasn't this conversation gone on long enough?" asked Malik, squashing his laughter as he walked up to stand next to Kaiba in the doorway. "Kaiba doesn't love anything except his company, dragons, and Mokuba. He just thinks you're being unfair to Bakura—and frankly I think so, too!"

Yu-Gi-Oh glanced from Kaiba to Malik, and for a moment it seemed as if he was going to hurt them. But then he seemed to falter, for the first time since they came to Hogwarts.

At last he turned around, muttered an angry, "fine," and relinquished control to Yugi.

***

"Hey, Kaiba?" Malik said.

"Yeah?"

"Did you manage to do your Transfiguration homework?" Every student in class was given an item and told to turn it into a certain vegetable. Malik had had to turn a carrot into a cucumber, Kaiba a rock into a radish, and so on. It had been an especially challenging assignment—not because of what was turned into what, vegetables were third-year magic, but because the students had to either research to find the right spells or make up their own.

¬¬"Malik, has anybody ever taken the liberty to inform you what an utterly lousy wizard you happen to be?" Kaiba asked, pulling a radish out of his bag. Malik made an indignant noise at this rather warranted insult.

"Hey, it's not my fault we can't all be geniuses!" he cried. "I never had to change one vegetable to another back in Egypt, much less three! And that McGonagall person is scary! That time we were supposed to turn shoes into boxes, and I just brought some regular boxes, she said she would turn me into a cheetah if I ever tried to be one again! And apparently, house elves make great cheetah custard! What is a house elf anyway?"

"Problems?"

Kaiba, Malik, Yugi, Hermione, Ron, and Harry all jumped and whirled around. Yu-Gi-Oh tensed up when he realized it was Bakura, but the warning glance Kaiba gave him let him permit Yugi to remain in control.

"I can't turn this carrot into a cucumber," Malik replied, showing them to Bakura, who seemed to find this quite amusing.

"You can't turn a carrot into a cucumber?" he repeated incredulously, still snickering. "I could turn a rock into food by the time I was thirteen, and you can't even turn food into food?"

"Are you insulting my cooking?"

"No, I'm just taking the liberty to inform you what an utterly lousy wizard you happen to be."

"So there!" said Kaiba triumphantly. Hermione, for her part, thought Bakura wasn't being a very encouraging teacher. Ron and Harry, for their part, were all the more convinced he was as cool as Lupin. Yu-Gi-Oh, for his part, thought Bakura and Kaiba were being arrogant jerks and that Malik wasn't stupid at all—his broccoli was barely greener than the cauliflower it used to be.

"I didn't know the spells!" Malik protested indignantly.

"Who needs spells?" Bakura asked. He took the carrot from Malik and twirled it around in his long slender fingers, then held it up. Jaws dropped, eyes widened, and even Yu-Gi-Oh was startled—the carrot was now a cucumber.

Bakura bit into it. "Mm. Delicious," he announced.

"Hey!" Malik cried. "That's mine!"

"You want to be an abnormally large gold cat? No…you are one already. Still, I doubt cheetahs drive motorcycles—and that's really all that separates you from animals and transvestites…"

"You are being a horrible teacher," snarled Yu-Gi-Oh, no longer able to stop himself. Kaiba's eyes narrowed, as did Bakura's. They both opened their mouths at the same time, but Malik let out a dramatic cry and threw himself onto his knees.

Lifting his clasped hands in a gesture of supplication, he began screaming prayers in Egyptian, not caring who stared at him. Here are some rough translations (Bakura, Kaiba, and Yu-Gi-Oh knew the words so why shouldn't you? Not so say they understood half his babbling, but I think they got the general gist of it):

"Oh Ma'at, deliverer of justice, deliver justice
Either end the arguments or end my life
Because I can't take it anymore!

Same to you, Anubis
And Osiris
And Set and Isis just in case

Thoth, bringer of wisdom
Bring wisdom to these arguing morons
Open their eyes to the light!

And while you're at it
Help me get a good grade

Sehkmet, goddess of war
You've had your fun
Now make them shut up!

Oh Bast, luminous one
Illuminate the path of truth
And let the—"

At this point, Kaiba decided to do them all a huge favor, and he smacked Malik over the head with his bag. Malik let out a strange sound between a yelp and a groan, and fell onto his back.

"Thank you," groaned Bakura, knuckling his throbbing forehead against a headache.

"You're welcome."

Raising his bag, Yu-Gi-Oh attempted to hit Kaiba, but succeeded in nothing except losing his footing. Stumbling forward a few steps, he dropped his bag and whirled around. "You're bastards, both of you," he said, and Hermione clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified that he would curse at a teacher. "You say I'm unfair to Bakura," he gritted out, glaring at Kaiba. "But you're always making fun of Malik!"

"Don't be so melodramatic. Malik doesn't mind!" cried Kaiba. "Do you, Malik?" he asked, as the blonde Egyptian staggered unsteadily to his feet, looking ready to pass out at the next moment.

………………………&# 8230;………………………… …………………

"Huh? What? Why does my head hurt?" moaned Malik.

Tiny images floated around his head—a spiky-haired falcon (a falcon is the symbol of Horus, and Pharaohs were considered to be Horus in his human guise) and a white snake (symbol of the thief) with a silvery dragon between them, the spiky-haired falcon and white snake tearing each other apart, the silvery dragon and white snake together, a green tiger pouncing on a gold cheetah with earrings, the white snake smashing things and crying, a cucumber, a carrot, a bolt of lightning striking the head of the gold cheetah…

"Look at him!" shouted Yu-Gi-Oh. "He's pathetic!"

……………………… "Sorry, Malik," he muttered sheepishly.

"Yeah, sorry," said Harry.

"I apologize," agreed Hermione.

"Whatever," snapped Kaiba.

"You apologize to Malik right now!" shouted Yu-Gi-Oh, stamping his foot as hard as he could and glaring at Kaiba as fiercely as possible. Not an eyebrow for yards was not lifted curiously.

"No, really, it's al—" began Malik, but Yu-Gi-Oh cut him off rudely.

"Stay out of this, Malik." To Kaiba, he demanded, "Apologize."

"Not until you apologize to Bakura!" Kaiba retaliated. Yu-Gi-Oh froze and stared at him in disgust, clearly horrified at the thought that he of all people should be made to apologize—and to Bakura!

"Well? Are you going to apologize or not?"

Bakura and Malik glanced at one another. Bakura, for his part, wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. Malik seemed almost amused, though Bakura was sure that that, given the opportunity, he would relinquish control to his other half just as willingly as Bakura would—and his relationship with Mariku was much more strained than Bakura's was with Ryou: Malik even suspected Mariku of flirting with Isis.

Yu-Gi-Oh swallowed, but his throat still felt try. He tried to speak with his usual arrogant tone, but his words were a croak. "And what, exactly, should I be apologizing for?"

"Would you like me to make a list?" Kaiba sneered. "It would stretch from here to Egypt." Gripping him by the shoulders, he spun him around to face a rather flustered Bakura. "Go on," he said flatly. "Apologize."

Yu-Gi-Oh stared at Bakura. His lips worked, but no sound came out. His expression became one of desperation. At last, he disappeared, and Yugi blinked around in bewilderment. "What did he do?" he asked Kaiba in Japanese.

"Listen…I need to teach the next class. Bye." Bakura vanished.

"We should probably get to Transfiguration," agreed Kaiba, though his stance was tense and his nails digging into his palm. He, Yugi, Harry, Hermione, and Ron made their way to Mrs. McGonagall's class.

Malik followed them, shouting, "Hey! What about the cucumber?"