Ryou: *glares as best he's able* Yeah, like when I finally go back to school...

WSJ: *puts her hand over his mouth* Onii-san... That chapter hasn't even been written yet, let alone posted. So shut your mouth.

Ryou: *pushes her hand away and sticks out his tongue*

WSJ: Uh, Ry-chan? I'm over here.

Ryou: Oh, ok. *turns around*

WSJ: *sighs* I really need to get you some more of that De-blinding spray... *turns appologetically to Baby Winter* Yami ate the last can.

Bakura: *walks in and hands WSJ a mug of something* 0_o He ate it?!?

WSJ: *nods saddly* Yugi says he thought it was whipped creame... *looks at the mug* Ah... tea! Thank you Bakura! *takes a big gulp, then sputters and spits it out* HOLY KURIBOH!!!!!! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY TEA!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Bakura: *mystified* Tea? The drink? I thought you wanted Tea, as in Anzu.

WSJ: O_O IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE I SUGGEST YOU TELL ME WHAT I JUST DRANK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bakura: *shrinks away from the fuming authoress* Um... *meekly* Blood?

WSJ: (O__O) FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES!!!!!!!! I JUST DRANK TEA'S BLOOD!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Bakura: *winces, invisioning what she's going to do to him, and nods*

WSJ: *glares* I'll deal with you in a moment. *runs off. Sounds of running water, much teeth-brushing and gargling is heard. Finally she comes back on, wiping her mouth with a towel* Idiot yami... Hey Ryou, we're out of mouthwash.

Ryou: *sweatdrops* But I just bought three new jumbo-sized bottles yesterday.

WSJ: *grimaces* I know. We're out of mouthwash.

Ryou: 0_o; Okaaaayy...

WSJ: *turns to Bakura, her eyes wild and her hands twitching* Now for you, you little white-haired vampire!

Bakura: Eep! *runs*

WSJ: *pulls the Frying Pan of Doom out of HammerSpace and chases* COME BACK HERE, CHIKUSHO!!!!!!!!!!!

Ryou: *winces* This won't be pretty... Good thing I'm blind... *sighs* WSJ doesn't own YGO. And I regret to inform you that it seems that Tea has died because Bakura took all her blood. However, we were able to get non-dub Anzu, who is more kick-butt anyway. ^_^ So the story continues...

()()()()()

Visions of the Heart

Chapter 11: Gunpowder and Newscasters

~Yami-Malik's POV~

Yami and I spent most of the night watching Brady Bunch reruns on TV and trying to ignore the snoring of Joey, Malik, and Tristan coming from the den. Isis and Tea were in the guest room, and Ryou and Mokuba were in Ryou's dad's room. Yugi was sleeping who-knows-where. He said something about the bathtub.

Bakura hadn't so much as come downstairs all night, but Yami and I weren't worried. We'd be able to sence it if he tried to do anything.

At about six AM, just as the sun was beginning to come up, Isis came down the stairs, yawning tiredly to herself. Several minutes after that Mokuba helped Ryou down the stairs, a scowling Bakura following after them.

I blinked and nudged Yami. "Doesn't Mokuba seem... I dunno... Taller then he was yesterday?" I asked in a low voice.

Yami studied the younger boy for a moment, then nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on his face. "I think you're right. And were his eyes always blue? I thought they were grey."

(A/N: This is pure speculation. Does Mokuba even have an official eye color? In some Duelist Kingdom pictures I've seen they look brown, others grey, in Battle City they're a dark violet, and in the PS2 game they're blue! What is up with this kid!?! So for the sake of the story I'm using grey. Humor me.)

The night shirt he was wearing, which had previously dragged the ground and slipped off at his shoulders, now came to just above his knees and didn't slip at all. Supporting Ryou on one side, he came almost up to the blind teen's shoulder, where previously he'd only come up to his waist or a little above.

"Mokuba," Yami asked, standing up. "Did something happen last night? You seem, bigger. And your eyes changed color."

He blinked at us and for a moment he almost looked like our hikaris do when talking mentally to us, spaced out. "Um... Well..."

"Yes," Ryou said from where he stood with one hand on the wall for balance. "Something did happen." Mokuba shot him a murderous look, but Ryou just smiled, obviously not able to see the way Mokuba was glaring. "You can't keep it a secret forever."

"Yeah, but we can try..." Mokuba growled in a voice that quite obviously was too deep to be his own.

Then, before our very eyes, Mokuba got shorter and his eyes changed back to grey, the way we were used to him looking. "Big brother, don't be so mean. They're our friends."

Then he switched back, getting taller again, and his eyes changed to blue. "Your friends maybe, not mine." He scowled and crossed his arms, looking a lot like Bakura, and also like someone else I knew...

My eyes bugged out. "Holy macaroni! Kaiba?!? But you're dead!"

"Mokuba" sighed, and then closed his eyes, concentrating for a moment. Seto stepped out of his little brother's frame. "My body may be dead, but my soul got sent to the Shadow Realm. Ryou," he gestured to the white-haired hikari, "Was kind enough to use the Ring to put Mokuba and I into a yami/hikari sort of set-up, except we don't need a Millenium Item."

Yami and I turned in unison to see that Ryou did indeed have the Millenium Ring around his neck once again, hanging from a silver chain instead of a flimsey leather strap.

Yami held up a hand. "Hold it. Let's wake up the others so you don't have to repeat this more then once."

That turned out to be easier said then done, seeing as Joey could sleep through an atomic blast and a nuclear war, both happening at the same time. Finally Yugi (who had indeed been asleep in the bathtub. No water, of course) and Tea, who we'd woken first, just pushed him off the bed. He woke up as he hit the floor with a clunk.

We headed for the kitchen, where we all found seats around the mahogany table. Well, all except for Seto and Bakura, who stood at opposite ends of the room glaring at each other or us or the room in general. Isis walked over to the counter to fiddle with the coffee maker while Ryou and Mokuba took turns explaining the 'dream' of the night before. Seto offered nothing of his own oppinion, or any of the events in between his arrival in the Shadow Realm and his departure some four-odd hours later.

Once Ryou and Mokuba were done, the rest of us sat in stunned silence.

"So Pegasus is in the Shadow Realm?" Yugi asked, finally breaking the silence. "Who sent him there? We never did find out who stole the Eye."

I ducked my head to keep the others from seeing my smirk, and outright grinned when Bakura began to glare at me. The two of us and our hikaris were the only ones, it seemed, who knew where the Eye was currently. Either Moto and the others hadn't really looked too hard for the theif or they were just plain dumb. I voted for the latter. If they knew that the Eye was even now in a room right over their heads...

I snickered softly and everyone looked over my way. "What's so funny?" Seto asked, and my hikari echoed the question mentally.

"Nothing," I said aloud, while at the same time, *Gee, if they only knew just who has the Eye...*

Across the table Malik's shoulders were shaking with silent laughter, causing everyone else to give him odd lookes, glancing back and forth from me to him. ^Yami, stop it!^

Thankfully the both of us were spared from being questioned farther when there was a mini-explosion from the counter. We all blinked and jumped up to get out of the room as smoke began to full the kitchen. Bakura managed to step forward and grab hold of Ryou's arm to lead him out, so he wouldn't get trampled.

We all re-gathered in the livingroom, staring wide-eyed at the kitchen door. A moment later Isis stumbled out, her hair frizzy and her face blackened with soot. "Chikusho! I think I burned the coffee!"

"Idiot..." Malik mumbled. "You can't burn coffee..."

"Well, I did..." Isis said. "The coffee pot went up in a rousing ball of flame as soon as I turned it on."

Yami stepped forward and took the green coffee can out of her hand. "Is this what you used?" When Isis nodded he pulled the lid off and sniffed at the black powder inside. His eyes then widened and he slammed the lid back on. "This isn't coffee, it's gunpowder!"

Tristan blinked. "Who in their right mind would keep gunpowder in a coffee can?"

"Who in their right mind would keep gunpowder at all?" Tea asked, eyeing Ryou and Bakura.

Ryou, sencing our stares, sweatdropped and pointed to the Ring, since he couldn't tell which direction his yami was standing in at the moment to point directly at him. "It's his. Something I don't usually ask about because usually I don't want to know... You'd be surprised what he keeps in the basement."

"Ryou!" Bakura looked at his light in mock-disdain. "How could you!"

I furrowed my brow and looked over at Yami, who looked just as puzzled as I. Usually Bakura would have slapped his hikari by now, or, in the presence of so many other people, maybe just threatened. But joking? This was new, and more then a little disturbing...

Suddenly I realised something, and my eyes widened. When the kitchen had filled with smoke, Bakura had begun to cough and choke with the rest of the mortals. Neither Yami nor I had, because we didn't breathe! Bakura shouldn't have had to either!

Stepping forward and trying to keep my posture casual I motioned for Bakura, Ryou and Yami to follow me into the den. After a couple questioning looks they did. In the back of my mind I felt Malik mentally tagging along, and I was pretty sure Yugi would be listening in too, but I didn't care at the moment.

As soon as the door was shut behind us I pushed Bakura down on the couch and centered my ear against his chest, listening for a heartbeat.

"I-Ishtar!" he sputtered, trying to push me away. "Get off!"

After a moment I allowed myself to be pushed and stood back, looking thoughtful. I then turned to Yami and put my ear to where his heart would have been... If yamis had needed them.

Now I was officially worried.

"Bakura..." I said, trying to keep calm. "How long have you been here?"

He stared at me. "What, this realm? Since last night, when you guys pulled me out of the Shadow Realm."

By now Yami was catching my idea and looked almost as panicked as I. Now that we thought about it, Bakura shouldn't have been able to exist at all in this realm last night without the magic of the Millenium Ring, which Ryou hadn't gotten back until around 2 AM. But somehow he'd survived from midnight to 2 AM without any Item. Which shouldn't have been possible. "So your link with Ryou is back now?"

Both of them looked surprised for a moment. "Actually..." Ryou said softly, fingering the chain around his neck from which the Ring hung. "It isn't. How strange."

"How strange indeed." I said, frowning and hoping Bakura wouldn't deside to attack me after my next statement. "It seems that in pulling you out of the Shadow Realm without re-establishing your mental contact first, we inadvertedly created a physical body for Bakura's soul, instead of a merely metaphysical one..."

Bakura stared at us in shock as he put the peices together in his mind, absently placing a hand over his beating heart. Mentally, I winced, preparing to be pounced on.

"I'm MORTAL!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

~Tristan's POV~

I yawned and flopped down on the couch next to Tea, chewing on a donut that I'd found in a cupboard. I propped my bare feet up on the coffee table, and Tea looked at me in annoyance. "I doubt Ryou would like a stinky-feet smell lingering around his table," she said, pushing my feet off and onto the floor.

I gave her my best wounded-puppy look. "Tea, that's not fair! How do you know what Ryou wants?" I didn't give her time to answer, because something on the TV screen she'd been watching had caught my eye. "Is this the morning news?"

"Yeah, why?" She looked back at the screen and gasped, fumbling for the remote to turn the volume up.

"Hey Joey, Kaiba, you guys! You'd better get in here!" I yelled.

They poked their heads out of the kitchen, and the door to the den opened so Ryou and the three yamis could get out. "What?" Seto asked in obvious annoyance.

Tea pointed at the TV. "It's you."

That got everyone's attention, and soon all of us were crowded around the set, the volume turned up as high as it would go. Sakura Kinomoto, the reporter, sat at a desk with her notes spread out in front of her. Just over her left shoulder was a picture of Seto Kaiba, wreathed by a black ribbon. The headline read "Millionaire murdered and little brother gone missing"

"They mean you!" Joey said with a start, turning to Mokuba. "They think you've been kidnapped!"

"Shhhh! She's starting her report!"

"At aproxamatly nine-oh-seven PM last night, pedestrians walking down Crawford Avenue were startled to hear sounds of breaking glass. Ten stories above their heads a window in the Kaiba Corporation office building had shattered. It was not just any window, but that leading to the office of millionaire Seto Kaiba, CEO of Kaiba Corp. Two minitues later, just as police were arriving on the scene, people were further startled as the body of said millionaire was thrown down ten stories. It was determined early this morning, after careful examination of the body, that Mr Kaiba was dead before he hit the ground. Cause of death is still to be determined."

She paused to shuffle through her notes and Yami snorted. "How about 'stolen soul'?" he asked sarcastically.

"Shhhhhh!"

"But that is not the end of this already sad story. By orders of Kaiba himself, there were no video survaliance cameras in his office, so we do not know exactly what happened. However, we do think we have pinpointed the killers."

The screen shifted from a close-up of Kaiba to a grainy picture taken on a stairwell. The lighting was poor and the quality of the video even poorer, but there was no mistaking that hair. It was Yami and Yami-Malik.

"These two indeviduals, who have yet to be identified, were caught on the security cameras running up the stairs and into Kaiba's office just seconds before the window was broken. A minute or so later, Seto's younger brother, twelve-year-old Mokuba Kaiba, entered his brother's office. This tape was taken about three and a half minutes after that."

We gasped as the tape was advanced, and switched to the hallway outside of Kaiba's office. The heavy oak door opened, and Yami and Yami-Malik stepped out, with Yami carrying Mokuba, who looked like he was asleep. They made for the stairs and ran down them, and disappeared out the back door.

"We believe that after killing Seto Kaiba the murderers drugged and kidnapped Mokuba. Authoraties believe he is being held for ransom, although they have received no demands. Steps are being taken to determine where the kidnappers took him, whether he is dead or alive, and who the kidnappers are. One of them has tentativly been identified as Yugi Moto, champion of the Duelist Kingdom Duel Monsters tournement, although some minor details, such as the height, do not match up exactly. However, they look enough alike that the kidnapper could be a reletive of Yugi's, and even now the police are surrounding the Turtle Game Shop to question Mr Moto and his grandfather, whom he lives with."

Yugi's jaw had dropped. "Granpa!"

Joey put a hand on his shoulder. "Now Yug', jus' calm down! I'm sure they won't hurt Gramps."

"Oh, I know that." Yugi said. "But when they see I'm not at the Game Shop they'll get suspicious!"

"Won't they just figure you're at school?" Isis asked, looking at the clock. "It's almost ten-oh-clock you know."

Yugi groaned. "That's even worse! They'll see I'm not at school either!"

Tea tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the screen. "I think it's a little late Yugi."

Sakura had been listening to her ear-peice, her head cocked slightly to the side. "This just in, Yugi Moto, now considered at large and dangerous, is not at his home, nor his school. Furthermore, several of his friends, who previously were considered heros of the Duelist Kingdom, are not anywhere to be found either. If you have information about any of these individuals, please call the number on your screen."

Once again Sakura's face was replaced by a sucession of pictures. I watched in muted horror as Tea, then Joey, then Ryou, and then finally my own face was displayed.

"We are now led to believe that this is a plot arranged by Yugi and his friends, since during the Duelist Kingdom they were often at odds with Seto Kaiba and made it clear they held no compassion for him. As I speak, other possible conspirators, Mai Valentine, Bandit Keith Howard, Weevil Underwood, Rex Raptor and several others, are being rounded up for questioning. The suspects houses are being surrounded. We believe we know where they are hiding. All recent attempts to reach the home of Ryou Bakura have failed, while all the others' homes are accounted for."

"Because the phone blew up with the coffee maker..." Isis said sheepishly.

"Background information indicates that Ryou's father is an archiologist and will be away for the next several weeks, making the Bakura household the perfect hideout for the gang. That is all we have at the moment, but I will continue to give updates as we have them."

Reaching forward with a sort of numbness I flicked the TV off and we all sat there, staring at one another for several moments. Suddenly Ryou yelped as the last few sentences of what Sakura had said leaked through his brain. "They're coming here! We're gonna be in a lot of trouble..."

Bakura looked at his hikari with a half-bemused, half-annoyed expression on his face. "That, Ryou, is a very big understatement."

We were suddenly startled by a loud pounding on the door.

"Open up! Domino police!"

Not good.

()()()()()

WSJ: *cackles evilly* I am so bad!!!!!!!!

Yugi: *sniffles* I hate you! Meanie-poo!

WSJ: *grins* You'd better cooperate or I'll ship you off to KaTyA's for a week!

Yugi: 0_0 Eep! I think I'll stay here, thanks!

WSJ: Good. *turns back to audience* Well, during the course of writing this I went through about six more bottles of mouthwash and endless breath mints, trying to get the taste of Tea out of my mouth. None of it has worked, so if any of you have suggestions, I'm open to them. *licks her lips* However, I think I'm starting to like it...

Yugi & Ryou: -_-;; Reviews please.

Chapter 12: Mokuba, Kaiba and Bakura trick the cops into giving the rest of the gang some time, and they head for the Wheelers' to hide out. Serenity is a bit surprised to find that her brother and friends are now wanted, but does her best when the cops show up there too. Unfortunatly, it doesn't do much good, and two of our heros get hauled off to prison...

Meanwhile, in the Shadow Realm, Briar-Rose watches these events in great intrest, and begins to plot her revenge... (Major forshadowing for Sacrifice of Shadows!!!!! (the sequel to Visions of the Heart))

God bless minna-san!