The Host Chapter 1: The Man who May Have Been Ryou Bakura, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Re-Post! After a good two or three year hiatus, I'm ready to get back into the fanfiction game and I have this story now all planned out! If you want to check out some of my other writing, check out my reader-insert imagines blog on Tumblr: Sports-Shounen-Scenarios! Updates every day Monday through Saturday and sleepovers on Sunday! Enjoy!

Chapter 1: The Man Who May Have Been Ryou Bakura

Ryou's hand was completely numb. That's all he felt concluding the entirety of his fifteen minutes of sleep. He rolled onto his back, trying to shake it out, aggravated that this was the only thing his moment of peace would yield. He glanced over at his alarm clock.

3:15 A.M.

He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, allowing sleep to encase him…

…encase him.

…

…ENCASE HIM!

…

…Surely that was a few hours.

He opened one eye to take a quick peak at the alarm.

3:15, wait no, 3:16. It just changed. Good one minute of sleep, the next hours would come in no time!

…

…Who was he kidding?

He groaned as he sat up, abandoning any hope for sleep. He reached over and turned on the lamp on the nightstand and slipped out of bed. He wandered through his apartment, flicking on lights as he went, trying to find a more productive way to spend his insomnia than watching seventies anime re-runs and tournament poker on TV-as was all that was truly on at that time of night. Then again, it was so eerily quiet that that media box was starting to seem more and more tempting. Why if the Spirit of the Ring was here then-

No.

No even if he was still possessed by the Spirit of the Ring it would be the same. The Spirit wouldn't talk to him or ease his loneliness; he'd just leave him unaccompanied, that is, if he'd even allow Ryou to be conscious right now. For the majority of ten years, Ryou hadn't been himself. He never learned who he was, what he liked, who he liked. He never experimented; he never dated, or even had a full crush. There was of course one particular brunette dancer he had always found quite pleasant to be around and look at, but he'd never had the chance to favor her beyond that. He never was able to decide for himself whether he liked studying or slacking, whether he preferred reading a book at home or out drinking at a bar. He spent most of his life locked up in a room inside his own head. He spent so much time there that when he actually was conscious in his own apartment, he didn't remember where the silverware was, he couldn't even remember what drawer his socks were in, or when he had organized them. It had all been the spirit. And yet they never conversed. He found this to be the most ironic; the Spirit had been imitating a personality Ryou wasn't even sure he had.

The Spirit never abused him or praised him, he gained no pleasure from either, in fact he found any time he had to converse with his host more of a nuisance. Of course the spirit had never told him that, but Ryou could feel the semblance of those emotions himself. Or at least he thought he had. Even if the Spirit was here, Ryou would still be all alone in this empty apartment. They never talked or had fun or played games or even argued like Yugi and his spirit or Malik and his darker half did. They just coexisted, with two completely different goals, sometimes needing to manipulate the other to achieve their own. The Spirit never cared. Ryou was just a landlord who sometimes came by to collect the rent, only to be shunned away and locked in a box.

This was hurting him on far too many levels.

Without realizing it, Ryou found himself in the most unfamiliar room of his apartment, most unfamiliar because it was brand new. His father had always been quite good at gift-giving (save for one life-condemning Millennium Ring), and Ryou's High School graduation /college acceptance gifts had been no exception. His father had given him two keys to truly unlock the doors to his adulthood. Although not often, his father had come and lived with him time and again during Ryou's adolescence in Domino City, but when the albino graduated, his father gave Ryou his key to the apartment. It was all his and he was to do with his father's room as he wished for he now lived completely by himself. This in retrospect wasn't all too different from before, only now the house was a bit emptier and he had to pay his own rent, but it was a flattering responsibility and sentiment nonetheless. The second key had been to a 1998 Toyota Hiace van which Ryou absolutely loved.

But now that he had free reign of the apartment and all of its rooms and, in an extremely last-minute decision sparked from the idea of his overly-optimistic and nutty sister Amane, he had invited said sister to come and live with him in Japan. The first time they'd have lived together in nine years.

At nine years old, on the walk to school, he and his sister were almost hit by a car. He had blacked out and found himself halfway across the street with the car barely a foot away from his fallen sister. The Spirit had taken control of his body and gotten himself out of the car's way, leaving his defenseless sister to fend for herself against a thirty-five hundred pound metal monster, it had been sheer luck that the driver in his inebriated state had swerved to the side and barely missed her.

Although he hadn't realized it was the Spirit at the time, he had sensed there was a connection to the Ring and his sister's accident, to the voice in his head, to his blackouts, and to comatose friends. He couldn't be close to them anymore, it wasn't safe. So when his father decided it was time to stop moving the Bakura family around and just travel for work on his own, Ryou had volunteered to accompany him. Because of that decision, that car crash, and that spirit, it had been nine years since he had seen or heard his sister. He didn't want the Spirit to talk to her in his place, so he had always written letters instead, but still he had missed her so. She had been his best and only friend through most of his early childhood. And now tomorrow, she would be living with him, sleeping in this new room he had spent days, no, weeks, renovating for the teenager.

He smiled, taking one more look around the room before turning off the light and moving on in his late night wanderings. He now arrived inside his once-so-familiar game room. The large Monster World game board in the center of the room was covered with a large sheet, the glass cabinets filled with custom figurines were coated in a thin film of dust, and everything was untouched since the day he and the gang played with it all. During the days that the Spirits were here, through Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, and everything else, the whole world was in a Duel Monsters craze that still continued today, and the King of Games and his friends were no exception. Of course Ryou himself liked the game as much as the next teenager, but as for him, Ryou always preferred his good and familiar Monster World. It was exciting and reliable and revolutionary to the world of RPG's at its inception, but outdated in comparison to Kaiba's holographic additions to Duel Monsters. Due to this and the Spirit's constant control and affinity for dueling, Ryou's activity in the game vanished.

Ryou roamed around the room, coming across the desk he often used to make figurines. There was one still there, halfway complete and the image he modeled it after still fresh in his mind. It was a Dark Thief NPC he had created to add to the collection of bosses in his game, to Dark Master Zorc's army to make the game more difficult for him. He had yet to add hair or facial features to the figurine, all that had been designed were his red and white robes and shoes, tanned skin, and intimidating muscles.

Without thinking, Ryou found himself sitting down at the desk and mechanically unpacking his art supplies. He pulled out a small block of wood and began carving the sharp edges of the mop of long hair he saw in his mind. He was a bit rusty at first, having not whittled a character for about three years, but soon found himself in the swing of it once more. In a flurry of wood shavings, airbrushing, and wood glue the hair was complete and attached. Next were the facial details. He wielded the fine tip paintbrush with a familiar precision. Images of an Ancient Egyptian thief he had never seen even in his dreams flooded his mind—cold, merciless violet eyes, a double-crossed scar under the right eye, and a large wolfish grin that both warmed and chilled the heart with its confidence. Once he finished the detail, he put it in front of a small fan to dry and pulled up his computer to formulate a custom barcode for the figure in order to make the character compatible with the system. As he came across the last algorithm, the one to decide whether the character was playable or not, he found himself pausing. The character was originally intended to be an NPC, an antagonist, but now Ryou wasn't so sure. He was so comfortable with the figure, so enamored. He couldn't help smiling at it every time he looked at it. It wasn't the most ornate figure he had made by any means, but he somehow felt so proud of it. Maybe he could play it, but he himself—not his dark side—had never played the villain before…

"I've decided to keep you as my host forever!"

That's what he had said. But then why did he leave?

"Because I had a goal my dear landlord."

Ryou blinked. That was no memory, the Spirit had never told him that, there were never explanations as far as he was concerned. And what more he had heard it with his very own ears. He looked around, searching for someone else in the room. It was very empty. It was all in his mind.

He shook his head, muttering, "Whatever goals you had, I don't care. I had goals and wishes too you know."

"Yes but I granted those wishes did I not?"

"You did not." Ryou spat to no one in particular, "You twisted my words around. You hurt my friends. My sister…"

"You really are ignorant aren't you? I suppose it came from running around with that Pharaoh and his little cheerleaders all this time. They infected your views and made you close-minded. I only thought of your happiness—k!"

"LIAR!" Ryou screamed, slamming his fists on the desk. "If you'd cared about me even a little bit, you would have at least talked to me!"

And then he stood, panting from his outburst. There was no voice. He was a lone.

What else was new?

He glanced down at the figure, instantly panicking as he saw it fallen to its side, still wet with paint.

"Oh! Oh no!" he hurried to pick it back up and set it down on its base gently.

He was brought back to his computer, the algorithm. He stared at the screen once again. NPC, playable, NPC, playable…

…

…Playable.

He'd try something new.

He'd play a villain.

A window popped up to register the character into the Monster World Database. He submitted the custom bar code and the character appeared in 2-D on the screen. Now to enter a name…

A thief, no he was more than a mere petty thief, a thief king. Ryou smiled, as the sun began to rise in his window, and as the perfect name popped into his head.

Level 1 Human Thief.

Affiliation: Dark Lord Zorc

Name:

Thief King Bakura.