AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, guys. I know, I know, it's been a looooooooong time. I'm going to write a couple of chapters before I post this one so I can get a huge chunk of them up at once. Then I don't know when I'm going to get the next ones. It's just that kind of thing; when the drive isn't there, you can't force it.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE – Ishizu and Steven

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Ryou sighed and tucked a section of her lovely white hair behind her ear as her father and Bakura stared each other down over the breakfast table as she loaded it with eggs, toast, and bacon. "Daddy, please play nice with Bakura."

Steven turned an eye on her and said, "So you're still going to continue this charade that you're my son and that he's some demon-creature."

"Because it's true, Daddy," Ryou insisted. "How can Bakura and I prove it to you?"

"You mean aside from summoning my Necrophear?" the yami asked, smirking with a piece of bacon sticking out of his mouth like a flat, limp cigarette. "I could always send the old man on a nice cozy tour of the Shadow Realm."

Ryou smacked him upside a bat-wing and said, "You'll do no such thing, Mister!"

"Ow! Damn it, woman!"

"Don't cuss at her… him…." Steven started out strong then petered off quickly.

Bakura glared at the table then looked up to see Ryou's sad eyes on her father. "Look," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Why don't you talk to some other people who have our spirit-y power stuff. Like when you met Malik that time, that wasn't Malik because Malik was a chick then, too. That was her yami, Marik; he's to Malik what I am to Ryou."

"I didn't like that friend of yours," Steven said, stabbing his fork into his plate.

"Well he didn't love you either, you crotchety old-."

"Kura!" Ryou shouted.

"If you don't want to believe us, then go talk to Ishizu! She's neck-deep in all of this stuff just like the rest of us; heck, her best friend is a ghost!"

"Would I be talking to her or her 'evil other half that lives in a mystic item'?" Steven mocked.

"To her! She doesn't even have a yami."

Steven stood up sharply, having only taken a few bites from his breakfast. "I'm going to go see her, but only to tell her that she needs to keep that deranged brother of hers away from you while I'm not around. It's obviously him putting these crazy ideas in your head; I saw you two playing that fantasy game with all of the magic and spells."

"I'm not an ancient spirit because I play Dokapon Kingdom!"

Ryou clamped her hand over Bakura's mouth and said, "Alright, Daddy; will you be back for lunch?"

He let out a dismissive non-answer and left the kitchen.

"What did you do that for?" Bakura demanded. "Do you not want us to be able to see Marik and Malik anymore?"

"Ishizu wouldn't really stop them no matter what Daddy said, and at least he's going to talk to her. She can tell him the truth and he might believe her since he knows her."

"He should know and believe you; you're his son." Bakura had some serious bad feelings about his hikari's father even though Ryou thought the man hung the moon.

"Well… you know how Daddy can be," she said, trying to brush off his statement. "Never mind him, though. Is the breakfast good?"

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"Mistress, Mr. Steven Bakura is here to see you," Odeon informed Ishizu over her walkie-talkie.

She blinked but picked up the communicator and pressed the large 'talk' button. "Very well, Odeon. Please send him in."

Ishizu wondered why he was coming so early. She knew he was back to do some more research on their site, but he was supposed to take the rest of the week off before he came into work. She wondered if Ryou was staying with the Mutous, since Ishizu didn't know that Steven hadn't called to inform his child that he was coming home.

Steven came into the office and offered his hand, though there were obvious lines of tension in his forehead and around his eyes. "Miss Ishtar."

"Mr. Bakura, welcome. I'm surprised that you came in so early," she said, sitting down after he had.

"I'm not here to do work. I want to talk to you about your brother."

"My brother?" she repeated, surprised. She knew that Steven had met Marik when he'd been in town before, and that it hadn't gone… spectacularly, but she didn't think Steven would wait this long to complain. "What about him?"

"I would like you to keep him away from my son. He is a bad influence on Ryou and is making him behave in an entirely unacceptable way."

Ishizu pressed her fingers to her mouth and wondered what Bakura had done now. "Please, Mr. Bakura, tell me what has happened and I will do whatever I can to help." Or at least she would threaten Bakura and Marik into acting well enough that he would think she had.

"He's gotten the boy thinking that there are things like spirits running around! Some girl is living in our house now and claiming to be Ryou and my son – who is acting entirely disrespectful and not at all how a proper son should behave – obviously needs mental help."

Ishizu blinked and realized that she had very much missed something. "I'm sorry, perhaps you should explain…."

"I came home early as a surprise for the boy, and he had some girl with him. He behaved in a completely unacceptable way and then they tried to tell me this ridiculous story about my son being an evil spirit from ancient Egypt or some foolishness."

She sighed and said, "Mr. Bakura, I'm afraid that what they told you was true."

"Preposterous."

"Not at all." He was puffing up and so she rushed to explain. "Thousands of years ago in Kul Elna, the site that you and your team is digging right now, most of the villagers were butchered in an attempt to do a ritual that would give certain items powers. These items were called Millennium Items, and there were seven of them. One of them, the Millennium Ring, is the golden object you gave to Ryou some years ago."

She could see the cogs turning in his head, but his mouth was still set in a disbelieving pout.

"The sole survivor of that village, a spirit named - coincidentally - Bakura, did… many dark things out of anger at the people who killed his family. The pharaoh at the time, Atem, fought against him. And both of their souls were sealed in two of the Millennium Items as a result."

"It's a fairytale for children," Steven accused. "This is all the set up for some elaborate joke."

"It is not," she replied calmly. "Your son's constant companion for the last several years is a spirit from ancient Egypt."

"So you don't mean my 'daughter?'" Steven asked, lip curling up.

"That is a different situation. A spell was cast on three boys, my brother among them, that turned them temporarily into women. The spirit that lives with your son has been going to school for him and pretending to be him, but Ryou is the girl that you saw."

"Miss Ishtar, I have always found you a logical and reasonable person," Steven said. "So please stop with all of this foolishness. I don't know what kind of lies you have been told or why you are telling them to me, but -."

"Must I perform magic in front of you to get you to believe in it?" Ishizu asked.

"If you can. Perhaps you should make your stapler do a little dance or turn your pencil into a snake."

She ignored his jeering tone. Instead, she reached up and carefully removed the Millennium Necklace from around her neck. "This necklace," she told him, "is one of the seven items. It is the item that allows the wearer to have visions of the future. If you put it on, perhaps you will see something."

"If you can see the future, then you should have already seen that I would say no," Steven told her.

"I recently learned for myself that the future is not set in stone. But let me ask you: what if you are wrong? What if magic is real and you simply do not see it? I can't imagine the parent of someone as smart as Ryou being content to remain ignorant."

Steven eyed the item in her hand and she could tell he was still undecided. Then his hand whipped out and snatched the necklace from her. He put it around his own neck - Isis decided that the tauk was always meant for a woman.

She watched as his eyes went misty and he leaned back heavily in his chair, staring at empty space in front of him. She was surprised that the necklace worked, but decided to just let him have his moment. While she waited for him, she did some of her own work since his sudden appearance had interrupted some papers that she had to fill out.

After a time, Steven's body gave a powerful twitch and he jerked upright.

Ishizu looked over and saw that he was fully aware of where he was. "Mr. Bakura?"

He all but ripped the necklace off and threw it on her desk, teeth catching his bottom lip.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

"Some kind of trick," he said. "It all must have been some kind of trick."

She resisted the urge to ask him what he had seen. "I assure you, it was not. What you just saw was one possible future."

He shook his head like a dog shaking off a fly as she carefully replaced her item around her neck.

"Mr. Bakura -"

"I'm leaving," he announced, standing up and marching out the door.

She wondered if she had gotten through to him at all. It didn't seem like it. She placed her fingers on the necklace and closed her eyes. She got a glimpse of something and let her mind follow that pinprick of light.

She saw Yami Yugi standing in a tuxedo, pulling nervously at his black bow-tie. He was standing at the front of a beautifully decorated hall, in front of a flower-decorated arch. It appeared to be some kind of school dance because under the glitz she could see a whiteboard and a covered trophy case. Somewhere off behind him, she saw Bakura and Marik, both also dressed up though Marik's shirt was untucked and Bakura was sans tie.

Yami seemed to look past where Ishizu was and his eyes lit up in pure amazement, but before Ishizu could turn around she was pulled out of the vision.

She pursed her lips in dissatisfaction. If she had been able to turn, she was sure she would have seen Yugi. She would have seen whether the puzzle light was a boy or a girl.

But she had long learned that images and foretellings did not always go as the director… directed. So she shook her head, picked up her papers, and started to work again.

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Steven walked into his house, mind still overwhelmed by what he had seen. It was impossible, too impossible, but somehow it had also felt real. But if so, what did it all mean?

He looked into the living room and saw the boy who should have been Ryou sitting in front of the television with a game controller in his hands. From the speakers, Steven could hear the sound of gunshots and squealing car tires. Then there was a boom and the boy - "Bakura" - threw down the remote and started cursing heatedly at the television.

Steven ignored him and walked into the kitchen where the girl who claimed to be his son was standing by the stove, absently stirring a pot of what smelled like minestrone soup as she read from a thick book.

She looked up and offered him a wary smile. "Oh, you're home. Lunch will be ready soon. I know you like rice instead of pasta with your soup so I'm baking some rice in the oven right now. Do you think we'll need any bread to go with the soup? I'm thinking of slicing up some sausage to add to it."

Steven sat down at the table and put his head in his hands. His brain was simply overworked. This girl who acted and talked just like his son was living with a boy who was nothing like his son at all.

The girl put a slip of paper in the book and closed it then moved closer to him. "Did you get to speak with Ishizu?"

"Yes, I saw Miss Ishtar."

"That's good," she said. He looked up and saw that she was eyeing him hopefully.

"That doesn't mean that I believe this insanity," he insisted.

"What do I have to do to prove it?" she asked. "Should I summon a creature from an alternate dimension right here in the kitchen? I can do it. Or how about tell you something about myself, you, Mom, that only I would know? Maybe I should tell you all about what Amane was like -."

"Enough," he snapped, angry that she had brought up his passed child.

"No, it's not enough. We've already lost Mom and sis. We're the only family each other has left, but sometimes it doesn't even feel like we're a family," she told him. "You're never home, always gone on some trip or another and I'm here with no one but Bakura for company. You hardly ever call, and when you do I always have to watch what I say so you won't be angry or disappointed. You've never shown any interest in the things I care about, you don't care at all about my friends, and now you won't even try to believe me when I tell you something that I know is true."

He glared at the girl but she stared right back, big brown eyes glistening and lips pressed together.

"Even if I'm in this body, I'm your son," she told him. "I don't know what kind of spell was cast to turn me into this or if it will be undone. I barely feel like I have a father when I'm a boy. Am I not going to have one at all for however long I remain a girl?"

Steven was tempted to automatically respond, but something about her set him on edge. She sounded so much like Ryou, even though those were words Ryou had never said to him. She was unnerving.

"Call me when lunch is ready," he said, standing up from the table and going to his room. He was surprised that he felt bad when she let out a little cry of frustration.