Title: 18

Genre: horror, romance

Rating: T for violence and language

Pairings: BakuraXRyou (mild others)

Summary: Nine years after the mass suicide that claimed 17 lives, the same mass suicide is attempted. However, out of the 18 students involved, a survivor is reported: Malik Ishtar. His best friend, Ryou Bakura, must now unveil the secret of the Mass Suicide and save Malik from falling deeper into it. But it's going to require the assistance of the only survivor of the Mass Suicide nine years ago, his 21 year old teacher, Bakura Touzoku.

Me: This is a horror story that I wanted to write! Inspired after the manga "Suicide Circle/Jisatsu Circle", because it was much less cynical than the movie! Much less gory and much easier to understand!

Lucy: This movie does contain character death, but only in the beginning and mostly near the end!

Me: We realize this might not be our best work, but the idea just stuck, and we wanted to write it up, so if you'll all be kind when you read it and not flame, that would be much appreciated!

Lucy: Enjoy this!

Prologue: Nine Years Ago

"This is Channel 7 Actions News with our breaking story for this evening! It would appear that 18 students have jumped from the top of Hongan Middle School in a collective suicide!"

Cars and ambulances rushed towards the scene, sloshing through a puddle of deep crimson blood. Sirens and red-blue lights flickered on and off, drowning out the noises of passing bystanders.

Why...?

Police gathered around, and bodies were put on stretchers. The bloody faces were twisted up and smashed, and some of were so misshapen that it was hard to believe they had ever been human.

Why did this happen, dammit!?

A teacher was startled into awareness by a soft shifting beside her. She glanced down and saw a figure rising up from the bloody tangle of bodies. The figure rose easily, and everyone instantly knew that he was unharmed.

His body, as well as his blue and white Middle school uniform, was covered in his classmates' blood, but he himself seemed fine. Silver hair was messy from the fall from several stories. His pale face was twisted up into a look of sorrow. His legs were shaking as he tried to keep himself up, hugging his arms as close as he could get them. He sniffled and closed his eyes, letting a few strings of tears slip through his closed lids.

"Touzoku-kun-!!" the teacher screamed.

Why, Marik? Why did this happen? Tell me why...

"This just in! It would appear that we have a survivor!! One of the 18 suicide victims has survived and is conscious!" The news crew was instantly near the silverette. They shoved microphones into his face, shouting questions at him. The young 12 year old just stared at the ground, his white bloody bangs covering his eyes.

The teacher leaped in between the young student and the countless onslaughter of news reporters. "How dare all of you!?" she screamed. The news crew fell silent. "This poor boy just survived a group suicide, he's covered in his friends' blood, and you're gonna question him!? Get the fuck out of here!!"

Camera shutters clicked and more questions were asked. The teacher flipped them off and turned her back on the cameras. She dropped to her knees and grabbed the 12 year old silverette by the shoulders.

Her golden eyes locked with his dull brown-purple ones. He was expressionless, tear-stains streaming down his cheeks. He was trembling, lips pulled into a tight line. The teacher brushed his bangs out of his eyes tenderly.

"Bakura, sweetie, what happened?" she whispered.

The silverette slowly glanced up and locked eyes with her. His lips didn't part as he looked to the side, gazing over the bodies that had belonged to his classmates. He scanned them over without a second glance until he spotted one body in particular lying near him. The closest body to his feet, whose blood was creeping towards him in thin trickles.

His best friend, Marik.

Marik, why did this happen? Because you survived a mass suicide, you became a leader of a suicide group? Why?

The tears started falling harder. 12 year old Bakura covered his eyes with his hands and shrieked. The teacher wrapped her arms around him and calmed him while he screamed and cried. She demanded that the body of Marik Ishtal be removed immediately so that Bakura didn't have to look at it anymore. The EMTs grabbed the body and put it into a body bag.

"No!" Bakura struggled and reached for the body bag.

"Bakura!" the teacher wrapped her arms around his chest and tried to keep him still. Bakura struggled and kicked out at her, biting and tearing at her arms. His small hand reached for the body bag.

"No-! Marik hates tight spaces! Take him out! Take him out!! You'll scare him-!" he shrieked, flailing. The EMTs ignored the silverette and zipped up the bag that held his spiky-haired Egyptian friend. "NO!! TAKE MARIK OUT OF THERE!! YOU'LL SCARE HIM! YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE HIM WANT TO JUMP AGAIN!! TAKE HIM OUT, TAKE HIM OUT, TAKE HIM OUT-"

Bakura stopped yelling when he realized that it was a lost cause. He watched as the EMTs threw the body bag into the ambulance, along with the others, and a few came to examine him. The EMTs brushed rubbing alcohol over his bloody face, washing the blood off and revealing that he wasn't wounded at all.

Bakura looked blankly towards the pre-teen bodies that he had emerged from. All of them were in a pile, the pile that had protected the fall from taking Bakura's young life away.

They all became my shield. Why me...?

"Son, are you okay?" a police officer touched Bakura's shoulder. The teacher smacked his hand away the moment he managed to make physical contact with the small boy. "Ma'am, what are you doing? You can't strike a police officer!"

"What kind of fucking dumb ass question is that!?" the teacher spat, eyes narrowed. "He just watched 17 of his classmates commit a suicide, he was involved, he's the only survivor, he's coated in human remains and blood that's not his own, and you think he's fucking okay!?"

While the two bickered, Bakura drifted back in his memories.

He remembered when he had gone up to the roof, where he knew Marik and his group were. He remembered opening the door and having a cloth thrown over his mouth. He remembered falling unconscious, and then awakening to find himself standing in a circle of 17 people, all of them surrounding Marik.

Marik had looked to Bakura with a smile.

"You're in my inner circle, Bakura. Come stand next to me."

Bakura was pushed into the center of the circle, the chloroform that had been over his mouth still in his lungs. Marik grabbed him and smiled down at his twelve year old best buddy. Bakura remembered gulping under Marik's possessed gaze. His eyes were dull, and there wasn't the amount of life that Bakura was use to seeing.

"I'll be 13 in a minute. So, hold my hand 'till then?"

Bakura remembered Marik grabbing his hand and stepping towards the edge of the roof. The 16 other students all locked hands and stepped on top of the railing, their toes inches off the edge. Bakura glanced down and saw the ground several stories below them. He felt his legs trembling, not because of the chloroform.

He took one horrified glance at Marik, who was smiling.

"Smile, Bakura. This is it."

That was the last thing Marik had said directly to him. Bakura then felt the 17 others, Marik included, start swinging their arms back and forth, chanting something that made Bakura's heart almost stop.

"A-one... A-two... A-three..."

Bakura felt them all crouch down, dragging him with them. His purple-brown eyes darted around to his spiky haired friend. Marik was glancing towards the ground, a smile on his lips.

"A-jump!!"

They then leaped off the building, and Bakura felt himself go airborne. No one screamed through, no one even cheered. It was almost silent, so silent that it was suffocating.

Bakura glanced sideways and saw Marik smiling at him. Marik squeezed his hand, and they talked. Bakura forgot his terrors for a moment, and just talked to his friend. Marik was truly his friend, not the possessed-acting young man that was the leader of the suicide group.

Marik was back to the way he was before he was involved in that suicide group, where he was put into a similar situation as Bakura, and was the only survivor out of 18. The other 17 died upon impact.

"I don't want this, Marik! I'm never going to see you again!"

"Bakura, don't say such depressing things. Right now is a happy time!"

The ground was starting to come closer.

"I guess so. Hey, we'll see each other in Heaven right?"

"No, Bakura. No, we won't."

"E-eh?"

The ground was merely feet away now. Only about a story and a half to the ground. Marik flashed Bakura his trade-mark smirk, and for a moment, Bakura thought he saw tears in the boy's eyes.

"Bakura, we won't see each other for a long time."

Bakura felt Marik's hand detach from his own. The other hand next to him clung on, but loosely. Bakura saw Marik push him away, and there became a huge gap in between them. Bakura reached for Marik, but the spiky haired blond Egyptian just smiled and gave him the peace-sign and a small laugh. Bakura truly did see tears in his friend's eyes.

"Because... I'm sure that... You will-"

Marik never finished.

Halfway through his statement, his head hit the ground. There was a sickening snap, and his face vanished into a sea of blood. Bakura suddenly felt a harsh impact rack his body, and darkness stretched across his vision. He could feel countless lumps under him, the elbows and knees and bodies of his classmates, who had formed underneath him in a human shield.

Tears swelled in his eyes at the memory.

"This just in! Bakura Touzoku managed to survive this 18 way suicide! This just in..."

Why did you protect me? Why was I the only one to survive?

Life wasn't quite the same for Bakura after the suicide.

Everywhere he went, people would murmur about him, especially the adults. But the students in his school, the ones that had wanted to be part of Marik's suicide group, but were too afraid, started forming a large circle around him, chanting things.

They called Bakura a god.

Am I a god?

Bakura hated it. He hated being called a god. He hated the group of suicidal students cutting their wrists and showing him, shouting that they wanted his blessings, for him to lead them to a proper suicide. He hated how they swelled around him and did everything for him. They carried his bag for him, got him food, and even when he told them to stop, they formed a protective wall around him and walked him home.

Soon, the group of three students soon swelled into a group of seventeen.

Bakura hated walking through the halls. His gang of seventeen worshippers would be right at his heels, but none of them called him by his name, or even by his last name.

They called him their leader, and some of them even started calling him Mazaki. That was what annoyed Bakura the most.

Mazaki was the last name of the first person to lead a suicide group of seventeen other students to jump off a building. She was the first person to even start this trend of suicides.

Mazaki... That's what they called me.

Finally, Bakura had enough of it.

I'd had enough.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! ALL OF YOU!!"

The seventeen followers fell silent at the look of hatred in Bakura's eyes. He grabbed his backpack and books from the people who had taken them off him, saying that as his followers, they would carry his books and ease his burden.

"Mazaki-sama?" one of them piped in.

"Stop-!!" Bakura shouted, covering his ears with his hands. "I've had enough already! My name isn't fucking Mazaki! It's Bakura Touzoku! And I'm not some suicide sage! I'm not a leader of a suicide group! I'm just a 12 year old who wants to forget all about that fucking suicide! So why don't all of you just leave me the Hell alone!?"

Ignoring them and anything they said, Bakura turned and rushed away, leaving the seventeen of them in the dust. When some of them started to follow after him, shouting "Mazaki-sama" and "Mazaki-sama, come back", Bakura spun and glared at them.

"If you wanna die so bad, go fucking jump in front of a moving train! Go ahead for all I care!! But I am not going with you!" he hollered. He was certain that people all over town had heard him.

I'm not going with you...

Huh...

I really did say that to them...

"B-but, Mazaki-sama..." The followers had long since stopped chasing Bakura as he ran down the streets. They reached for Bakura's retreating form, until he was out of sight.

"We can't do it without 18..." one of them whispered.

"And we can't do it without the survivor. Without our leader. Without the one... that Mazaki-sama possessed."

But no matter what they said, Bakura didn't come back. He even avoided coming to school for as long as he could just to make sure that they got the message that he didn't want to be anywhere near them. Finally, when he returned to school, some of them had given up on suicide, while about five of them still wanted to follow him. But that eventually stopped.

Go jump in front of a moving train...

Huh...

If only I had realized the mistake I had made my saying something that fucking dumb.

Bakura had gone through the rest of the school year without being bothered. Whenever someone asked him about the suicide, he dismissed it and told them that it was none of their fucking business.

How was I supposed to know that someone who claimed to be Mazaki was going to attempt it nine years later?

But while he thought the suicide group had ceased when he refused to be "Mazaki" and lead another suicide group, what he failed to realize was that someone else was going to attempt it. He failed to see that Mazaki has a plan on who she wanted to make the next leader of the suicides. Someone who wasn't Bakura. Someone... better suited.

How was I supposed to know that the suicide groups would start up again?

Someone who would make him pay for ignoring her suicide group tradition.

How...?

But I swear to you, whoever you are, be you the next survivor of the 18 Suicide, I will save you!

I will protect you from Mazaki's suicidal spirit, and I will protect you from becoming the next leader of a suicide group!

I promise this on my soul.

I'll save this person...

Like I could never do for my best friend Marik.

Me: Poor Bakura! Having to go through something like that! But, it's all part of the story, so he'll get his moment of glory later on in the story, so no one worry about a thing!

Lucy: But this leads into the next scene of the story!

Me: Please don't flame! We know it's not our best, but we did try! So please review if you liked it, and if not, just leave and don't read it! Thank you all so much, guys!