Ryou narrates as he leaves his apartment and walks to the museum: Hello. I’m Ryou Bakura. My friends ditched me again to go save the world...as usual. But I don’t mind...most of the time. Today I’m going to visit my father at the museum. I haven’t seen him for quite some time, so this should be fun.
Guard: “He’s in his office.”
To pass the time, Ryou looks at some recently retrieved artifacts, including those from his father’s expedition. Among them a tablet with Egyptian hieroglyphics stands out. Ryou thinks, Oh, this must be the artifact that Father brought back.
Suddenly he realizes he is not alone. A small group of shady characters have their eyes on the artifacts as well - the tablet in particular. Ryou quickly ducks behind the display where they can’t see him, hoping that he had not already been seen. He overhears them talking in hushed tones about stealing the tablet and using it to perform some sort of ritual. This can’t be good, Ryou thinks, not good at all. He lets out the breath he’s been holding after the group moves along, pretending to look at other exhibits so they seem less suspicious.
Ryou considers telling the guard what he’s overheard. No, he thinks, no one in authority would believe me even if I was the most trustworthy person on the planet. But what about Father?
Ryou’s father joins him at the display case, taking him by surprise. “Ryou! So glad you came down to see me today.”
“I’m just glad you’re home, Father.” Ryou smiles.
“I know that look, son. You’re smiling through your worries again. What’s wrong?”
Ryou looks over his shoulder and sees the group leaving. “I overheard a group of people talking about stealing the tablet you brought back.”
“Where are they?”
“They’ve left. Let’s go home, Father, all right?” Ryou doesn’t want his father working late should the alleged thieves return that night. He doesn’t even want to think about what might happen to anyone else left in the museum at night.
***
Ryou waits until his father is asleep before getting ready to leave. After giving this situation much thought, he has decided that it’s up to him to stop those people. This is something I have to do, Ryou thinks. I’m going to save the exhibit all by myself. I don’t care that the others aren’t around to see me do it. As he packs a bag full of supplies he thinks he might need, he turns to open the door to leave when he hears a voice...
“You weren’t thinking about going on an adventure and not letting me in on the excitement, were you? How hypocritical!”
Ryou’s hand freezes on the door handle; the look on his face is one of dread. The evil spirit of his Millennium Ring is speaking to him again. No good can possibly come of this. Ryou musters up the courage to tell him off. “Look, this is supposed to be my very own episode. Besides, you always hog most of my screen time to yourself, what little I get of it to begin with.”
Spirit Bakura appears next to him menacingly. “Does it look like I care?”
“I hate you so much,” Ryou sighs with conviction.
“What’s happened to you lately, Ryou? You’ve developed a nasty little temper.”
Ryou knows the spirit is just toying with him, baiting him, so he tries not to let it get to him. “This is my battle,” he says more calmly, “so I don’t want any more of your so-called help, nor do I need it.”
“Oh that’s how it is, is it? Fine. I’m not going to be of any help at all, then.” Spirit Bakura vanishes again.
Good, Ryou thinks as he quietly leaves.
***
I’ll show everyone that I’m not someone to be taken lightly and that I don’t always need saving! Ryou fumes bitterly to himself as he walks over to the museum. Though I have to admit that the museum is going to be creepier at night and what I’m doing isn’t exactly legal...I must calm myself and keep determined if I’m to have a fighting chance!
When Ryou arrives at the museum, he finds an open window. That isn’t normal...I hope I’m not too late... Peeking through the window to gauge the situation, he carefully climbs in. Cautiously, he makes his way to the room where the new exhibit is. His heart is pounding, knowing that an open window means that the thieves are already there. Okay, it’s just me against a bunch of them. Where is the night guard??
Unfortunately, Ryou suspects that the night guard has been knocked out and tied up, or worse. His next thought is the security cameras. He looks around for them, but they seem to be off, just like the alarms. Unless...They never all left! One of them might have hidden until closing and let the others in through the window! Ryou’s mind is racing. I have to do something quick!
“You, the ever mild-mannered Ryou? What are you going to do?” Spirit Bakura speaking again.
Ignoring him, Ryou walks out in the open toward the display case. There they are, the same group from before. They were sort of disguised like the Rare Hunters, whom he’s never actually seen but had heard about from the others. Who could these people be, and what were they going to make the tablet do? More importantly, Ryou thinks, what am I going to do? It’s six against one. He looks around to see what is immediately accessible (there was really nothing he had brought that could be used as an effective weapon). That may do nicely, but it also means that anything would be accessible to the thieves as well...and they might already be armed. If I’m going to do anything, it might as well be now.
Reaching into his bag, he pulls out some spare lead from his RPG and tosses it across the room. The thieves take notice and send two of their number to investigate. Ryou still doesn’t feel comfortable with these odds, and he knows that the other two will come back before long. At least the slight noise was enough to make the thieves a little paranoid. Ryou decides that his next course of action should be investigating the guard’s station. He finds the guard tied up and unconscious, presumably alone. Having locked the window he had entered through, he now turns the alarm and cameras back on and calls the police.
Watching the thieves on the monitors, Ryou starts to think of consequences. Will the cops believe him? Is his father going to be angry with him for sneaking out? Will the thieves get to him first? He watches as the thieves go back to the window only to find it locked. They split up to search for the “intruder” - Ryou. Ryou gasps and decides to turn off the lights. The thieves have flashlights, so he can still see where they are on the monitors. The one coming back toward the guard station is carrying the tablet. Ryou has no time to escape - he is cornered in the guard’s station.
The thief holding the tablet and training his flashlight on Ryou is not happy to see him. Thinking quickly, Ryou punches him in the gut, takes the tablet from him, and runs. Not daring to take his hands off the tablet, he runs blindly through the darkness without bothering to reach into his bag for his flashlight. I just have to find a place to hide and hope the police come before they find me again! Ryou thinks. He decides his best bet is the men’s restroom.
Even though it was a clever idea to hide in one of the stalls, hidden from sight by standing on the toilet and hunching down, Ryou knows it won’t last long. Sooner or later they’d figure out where he was, and then he’d be done for.
Fortunately, he has thought things through. Having known it would come down to the worst-case scenario (his capture), he had made and brought with him a duplicate of the tablet, which he now swaps out for the real one. When they find me, I’ll have the fake in my bag, he thinks. Now where to put the real one for the police to find...? Looking around, he doesn’t have many options. This would be so much simpler if this were the girls’ bathroom, he can’t help realizing when no obvious hiding places leap out at him.
“Oh, so you do have naughty thoughts after all,” Spirit Bakura says out of nowhere.
“Shut up!” Ryou says a little too loudly, clamping both hands over his mouth immediately afterward. Too late. As he hears the thieves about to enter the bathroom, having heard his outburst, he makes a split-second decision to just shove the tablet behind the toilet with the writing facing the wall. The thieves wouldn’t see it anyway if he was still standing on the toilet, and if they did, there’s a chance it wouldn’t look like much.
Moments later, the thieves burst into the room and thrust open the stall doors one by one until they find Ryou, who clutches his bag misleadingly as if he has the real tablet inside it. Sure enough, two thugs grab him and pull him out of the stall without giving the inside of it another glance. As sirens wail in the distance, the leader, whom Ryou had punched earlier to get the tablet, snarls, “Get ready to go for a ride, kid,” before knocking him out.
***
Ryou comes to about an hour or so later. He is alone, tied up and unaware of his surroundings. Wearily, he wonders if the police have found where he hid the tablet, if his father has been notified, or if anyone knows he is missing.
“If you were planning on getting kidnapped tonight, then congratulations,” Spirit Bakura says.
“All that matters is that the real tablet is safe,” Ryou whispers, not wanting to be overheard again if the thieves are still close by.
“How very noble of you...By the way, you didn’t happen to carve the EXACT SAME SYMBOLS onto your little fake, did you?”
Ryou realizes that he had in fact made that mistake and curses loudly, not caring about volume this time.
Spirit Bakura is amused. “I take it it never occurred to you that these thieves might be more interested in the message than the artifact itself?”
“Well then if they just needed the message, why didn’t they just copy it down?” Ryou asks pointedly, lowering his voice.
Just then, the thieves come into the room and throw him his bag, laughing. “Your little bag of tricks won’t save you now,” one of them jeers before they leave the room again.
The bag is sitting open a few inches away from Ryou. The fake tablet is not inside it. Ryou sighs, regretting his mistake. “So...you were still observing everything I was doing. What does that tablet say?” he asks his yami.
“If read, the tablet can bring about the end of the world,” Spirit Bakura replies.
“Wonderful,” Ryou moans.
“Relax, I’m just kidding!”
“Then what does it really say?”
“I can’t tell you - it would bring about the end of the world!” Spirit Bakura laughs at his own joke.
“You think you’re funny, but you’re not.”
“By the way, what do you have left in your little bag of tricks?”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“Did you at least leave anyone a note in the case of your imminent capture?”
“No, I did not.” Ryou replies flatly. Dammit, maybe I should have. Father’s not the only one who will miss me...
“Oh, that’s right. You wanted to be completely alone on this one.” Spirit Bakura says mockingly.
“But as long as I’m here, you’re NEVER alone.”
“That would be much more comforting if you weren’t practically my worst enemy.”
Bakura sneers. “I’m looking in the bag now.”
“Well I see you at least gave me that bit of privacy...only to violate it just now.”
“You’re absolutely correct. You are a bright boy after all...and so sentimental, too.”
Ryou looks startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Looking in Bakura’s direction for the first time since he started looking through the bag, Ryou blushes when sees Bakura holding up a small teddy bear. “Put that back right now.”
“Now why would you bring this little trinket along? Is it because it reminds you of a certain person you hold dear?”
“I mean it, put it back!” Ryou flashes back to the summer festival before his birthday. He had gone with his girlfriend, who had given him the bear as a birthday present.
“Tsk, tsk. I thought you would have left this at home if it’s of so much value to you. But you left the girl completely in the dark instead. For her sake, you’d better come out of this little adventure alive, mollycoddle.”
Ryou grits his teeth at Bakura’s insults, knowing that they have a ring of truth which makes them sting all the more. It’s true: he had not wanted to ask his girlfriend to come along with him or even tell her what was going on. However, he had brought the bear to remind himself of her fighting spirit. Was that so wrong? “Don’t call me that!” he fumes. “I am not weak! I’m not!”
“I don’t think you’re weak at all, Ryou-chan,” he remembers his girlfriend saying. “I like you, Ryou-chan...just the way you are.”
“Then prove it!” Spirit Bakura spits, mimicking Snape from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “This is why nobody except that little girlfriend of yours takes you seriously. Ra be damned, what does she see in you that no one else does?” He puts the bear back in the bag exactly where he took it from, hidden from plain sight.
Before Ryou can answer, the thieves come back into the room and spirit Bakura makes a timely disappearance. The thieves haul Ryou to where they are holding the tablet ritual. They take Ryou’s bag along as well. “In case you haven’t guessed by now,” the leader says, “no one has come for you, and we’re gonna make you watch as we use this tablet to bring our plans to fruition.”
“I’d rather -!” Ryou starts to say, but something else his girlfriend said enters his mind.
“Please don’t do this, Ryou! I won’t let you sacrifice yourself! Because if you’re gone from this world, I’ll fall to pieces! And I’m not the only one...”
“Er...never mind.”he mutters. He lets them plunk him down on the stone floor and leave the bag in his lap. I’ve got to figure a way out of this before they read that tablet and all hell breaks loose!
“Eqivalent exchange: Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal or greater value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law, the one and only truth,” the leader commences. His comrades shout in agreement.
Alchemy? Ryou thinks. What are they planning to do with that?!
“The alchemic properties in this tablet are exactly what we need to resurrect the Dark Lord from his imprisonment!” Again, the other thieves cheer.
I hope my fake tablet doesn’t have those exact properties...and which dark lord are they talking about?
“And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for...”The leader turns to perform alchemy on the tablet by reading the inscription on it, but nothing happens. “What trickery is this?!” the leader screams, chucking the tablet to the floor where it smashes to pieces in front of Ryou.
“Why didn’t it work?!” shouts one of the thieves.
“The tablet was fake!” the leader declares, and the others explode in anger. Ryou sees this as a potential opportunity to try and get away, but before he can move more than an inch or two he becomes the inevitable target of their anger. The two thieves nearest to him yank him up from the floor and the leader gets up in his face. “At what point did the tablet turn into a fake, boy?”
“I don’t know...” Ryou stammers, still hoping for his freedom.
“You’re lying, I can tell! Now when did the tablet become fake?!”
“I’ll never tell you!”
“If the one in the museum was a fake, then we’ll have to go after the man who brought it back.”
“Leave my father out of this!!” Ryou yells.
“Father, is it? Then we’ll just have to use you as bait.”
“No! I’ll admit it! I made the fake tablet! I’m the one you want!”
“Indeed. Either you help us get the real tablet of your own accord, we persuade you to help us get it, or your death will be slow and painful.”
“And just what is it that you’re trying to do?” Ryou asks boldly. His new plan is to stall them long enough so that they are caught - at least, he hopes the police can track them to wherever it is that they are right now.
The leader stares him down, and Ryou stares back. One if the thieves whispers, “The kid’s a liability.”
The leader nods. “I know exactly what to do with him.”
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