"I don't understand" Ryou said. He and Marik had been repeating that same phrase and trying to answer it ever since the cat, now known to be called Bakura, had communicated with them. After spelling his name out to them with the destruction of their magazine he had left the room smugly and the boys had retreated upstairs to ponder the events privately.

Marik was trying desperately to put everything he'd learned together, racking his brain in the hopes that all the information would come together in one quick blast and everything would suddenly make sense to him, but just as he thought he was about to get everything sorted he would remember something else the cat had done and then when he tried to remember everything together again he would miss something and have to start all over again. It was all too much for his mind to hold on to at once. He sighed and fell backwards so that he was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling whilst trying to figure out why things like this had to happen to him.

"Why don't you just ask?"

"What?" Marik suddenly snapped back to reality by the sound of Ryou's soft voice. He sat up and gazed at his friend looking back at him from the bottom of the bed.

"It's obvious you've got questions on your mind" Ryou explained, "I have too, why not just ask Bakura?" he smiled.

Marik thought about this. It did sound like a good idea, he had more questions than his freshly shredded maths homework, but he wasn't sure if giving the malevolent creature a reason to rip up more innocent articles was such a good idea. "I don't know" he said hesitantly, "I might just take some time to think about this" his voice trailed off along with his thoughts, all of sudden he found himself thinking a lot more seriously about things he'd normally have done without thinking, as if the simple presence of the pet had brought out some deeper philosophical side of him.

"Alright" Ryou said quietly with a sympathetic smile, he was always smiling Marik noted mentally, and always rather quiet too.

Marik returned to reality again, noticing for the first time that his deep thought over everything had Ryou looking concerned. "besides," he smiled continuing his last statement, "somehow I don't think that thing would obey me anyway!"

A delicate white ear twitched. Bakura sat patiently outside the boy's door, he felt confident after having successfully made contact with the boy and correcting him on how to properly refer to the proud feline. That wasn't the only reason he was eavesdropping on his new housemate, for a reason he could neither explain nor bring himself to think about, he felt a certain ownership over the boy, as if it were his boy and it was his job to watch over it and keep it in one piece, a feeling he assumed was mutual between the two, that is until that last sentence struck his soft ear drums.

At first a feeling spread through him that felt awful to say the least, a feeling of deep sadness, heartbreak he even thought but quickly shook the thought from his head, he didn't need the child whatsoever. In a matter of seconds the sad feeling had been replaced with rage and he raised his small pale body from the rough carpet and padded quietly down the hall.

"Yeah, I suppose" Ryou said hesitantly. He smiled at his friend as he did with everyone and everything else, but this time his smile was not entirely honest, behind it he suddenly felt a great feeling of guilt, the kind that only comes after hurting a close friend. Ryou frowned immediately upon recognising the emotion and turned to Marik swiftly, "are you alright?" he asked in a rushed, almost panicked voice. "Erm, yeah… I think so, why?" asked a startled Marik, giving Ryou a strange look. "Oh, alright" he said in a more relaxed tone, putting his head down a bit, "I just got the weirdest feeling, like I'd made you mad or something!" he admitted embarrassedly with a nervous chuckle. The Egyptian smiled at his panicky friend, he always seemed to be worried about hurting other people.

"C'mon!" he said sliding off the bed and standing in front of the doorway, "why don't we go get something to eat?" he offered as an alternative to a further awkward silence between the two. Ryou nodded and got up to follow his friend.

They chatted about various school events as they entered the kitchen, stopping dead at the sight they were welcomed with. Just as had happened with Marik's room on the first day he'd let Bakura out of his cage, the kitchen lay in shambles. Many of the appliances were unplugged or had their cords slashed by a set of crafty claws, any appliances featuring glass were shattered yet curiously no broken glass was present anywhere in the room, the fridge was open for no more reason than to display the damage to various foods within and many bottles of juice and containers of food lay open and spilled on the tiled floor.

The boys stared on in silent disbelief until a swift scratching noise caught their attention. Both gazes immediately snapped to the source of the sound, the cat who'd been the source of all the trouble and discussions they'd been having since yesterday. Usually after having destroyed someone else's property in such a monstrous manner the animal would be sneering at them like a villain and lapping up the horrified looks that preyed on their features, but instead he simply scowled at the teenagers from his position in the shadows of a nearby cupboard.

Marik tried to force out any word that would tell the cat what he had done was wrong but nothing came to mind whatsoever, he was left literally speechless at the mess, Ryou in much the same situation.

The cat leaped down from the counter and grunted loudly and irritably as it stomped past them as best it could with it's small paws, kicking something in Marik's direction as he exited.

"What's this?" Marik asked, noticing the small sheet of paper at his feet. He lifted it gently and Ryou shuffled over next to him to investigate it also. It was a simple plain white piece of paper with a few pieces of their magazine stuck to it, each letter spaced out quite far and positioned quite awkwardly, as if someone had put it together with their feet. The letters spelled out a simple word but someone, or something as the case May be, had slashed the word down the middle with a sharp claw so as to accentuate that the word no longer had meaning as it did when the paper was made. Marik read this word over and over, checking again and again each time hoping that it wasn't really what he was looking at, that this wasn't real.

"Oh no…" he whispered brokenly as the now sliced word finally processed in his mind,

F R I E N D