See, before now I always just wrote on this when I felt like it, whatever I felt like writing. But now... now I have plot. >:D

Ryou: X( Bah humbug...

WSJ: *snicker* A crude, rudementary plot, but a plot it is. ^~ And it will continue on until I say it is over. Mwaha.

Ryou: Kill me now... Please...

Damon: (SJ's newest muse and OC from her fic The Falcon) Tch, you wish... SJ doesn't own YGO. The plot is hers, but nothing else.

WSJ: Bwaha! Behold, Psycho!Ryou lives!

Ryou: Oh joy...

()()()()()

I stare down at the bodies of what used to be my best friend and his yami, my face expressionless. Malik was the closest thing to a brother I think I ever had, even if he did hang around with my yami more then he did me. I think they were so close because in my yami's insanity, Malik saw something of himself. Or maybe the other way around. No matter what, I can't just let him go.

Bending down, I retrieve one of the longer pieces of the Rod. Unlike the Puzzle and Ring, which shattered, the Rod almost splintered. I slide the piece into the pocket of my coat that already hold a small fragmant of the Puzzle. And of course, the Ring's shards are tied around my neck, two of its pointers looped through my ears almost like Malik's own earrings.

Kneeling down next to them, I slowly move their bodies so they look almost natural, Ishtar's wounded shoulder hidden behind his hikari. Gently I slide their sightless eyes closed, and I gather up the rest of the Rod and deposit it in Malik's lap. What he loved so much in life will now be with him in death. Now that the white-hot obsession of pain has passed, the blood on my hands has cooled and caked, I began to realize what I had really done. But still, no regrets.

I wonder briefly what I'll have after my own death comes for me. No one knows or cares I excist, no wife to love me, no children to say my name long after I'm gone. All anyone knows of me is what the news papers and talk shows tell them about the King of Thieves.

And really, what have I done to earn the title? Only what my yami did in his own time, stealing what is needed to survive. But if I steal clothes from the richest, food from the chefs, weapons from the government itself... who's to blame me? Why steal at all if you don't try for the best? And if the best just so happens to sit behind locked doors with supposedly invincible security systems, then I say all the better. I like challenges. Life is a challenge.

My life has had three stages, four really. The first started the moment I was born, and ended sometime between when Amane died and I recieved the Ring. The second both began and ended with Bakura. It began with that first beating all those years and years ago, and ended the moment he won the Puzzle from Yuugi. During that time I was meek and subjective, too scared of my yami to do more then tremble when he suggested anything even slightly illegal.

The third stage of my life ended between when the Puzzle and Ring shattered and when Jou ran me out of Domino. That time, now that I look back on it, was a transision period between the meek little Ring Holder and who I am now. Heh, now. Now is the fourth stage of my life. I'm King of Thieves, as was Bakura before me, and no one's to forget it!

A vision comes to me as look at Malik and Ishtar, who look now thanks to me like they've just fallen asleep. I see again the Puzzle and Ring break, Yami and Bakura fade away before my eyes. I feel the Rod give way beneath my heel, and I know then what Destiny has chosen for me to do. Oh Fate's cruel sister, she's chosen me. The Sennen Items are no longer needed, and I've been chosen to make sure no one ever gets their hands on them again. I know what I have to do, and I begin to plan, even as I lean over to kiss Malik gently on the cheek, as brothers would, in a silent farewell.

I'm still kneeling there, staring at them, lost in my own reflections and memories of days long gone, when I hear a sound from behind me. At first I think it to be the mewling of a cat, but then I realize that I've stayed too long, that the drug I used on Isis and Rashiid is beginning to wear off. With chagrin I realize too that the first thing Rashiid sees as he comes awake will be the corpses of his foster brother and yami, but that can't be helped now.

I jump to my feet, throwing my cloak around me so that my face is wreathed in shadows. I run for the door and down the hall of their small flat just as Rashiid lets out a long keening cry of grief. A door to my left flies open and Isis stumbles out, still only half awake. She trips, and reaches out for the nearest thing to catch herself, which happens to be me. She pulls at my cloak and stumbles, and for a moment her sleepy eyes look up into mine.

I do not know, even to this day, if she recognised me or not. Gently I pry her hands off my robe and run for the door, my cape flaring behind me in what I recognise as a dramatic gesture of farewell to the Ishtar house.

I'm outside in the alley, safely in the deep shadows, when lights begin to go on and Isis screams. That wail, one of a grief-ridden older sibling, is what tears my heart in a way not even watching Malik's life ebb away could. Tears prickle the backs of my eyes as my mind flashes back to a day when I was only nine...

But no. I shake my head sharply to clear it. It's not my place to be thinking of the past today. I put my palms together and bow my head briefly in respect to both Isis and Malik, murmering a short prayer in Egyptian I often heard Bakura repeat, and then I turn and leave them behind.

"'At my death let the bubbles of blood on my lips taste as sweet as berries. Give me not words of consolation. Give me magic, the fire of one beyond the borders of enchantment. Give me the spell of living well'..."

()()()()()

WSJ: The verse Ryou quoted at the end is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, helpfully translated by Carol Thurston in her magnificint book The Eye of Horus, page 19 in the year 2000 hard-back edition.

^~ It's not over. Not by a long shot.

God bless minna-san!