"Your little brother has a real hate-on for me, doesn't he?"

Bakura had barely spoken since they had left Kaiba Corp about half an hour ago. That this was his opening topic was actually a little surprising. Somehow it was so far from what he had expected that it wasn't even on the list.

"He hasn't forgiven you for kidnapping him," he eventually replied. It was the truth, after all. While always telling the complete and utter truth had never been his policy -- and in fact, had rarely served him well at all -- this much at least was honesty. "He holds grudges."

"So I see."

They crept along through near perfect darkness without a word exchanged between them. Looking around now, he was hard-pressed to make out a single landmark he recognized, aside from Kaiba Corp's tower fading into the background behind him. If he didn't know that this was Domino City, the town where he had spent the majority of his life, he would have thought he had wandered into some post-apocalyptic movie, one of those urban disaster flicks. The city had looked terrible from the high windows of Kaiba Corp since Zork took over, like the smoldering remains of a ghost town. Down here in it, though, it seemed less like that and instead more like a burning wasteland. How much of this was Zork's doing, and how much was due to the raiders that had sprung up in the chaos?

"What are you expecting to find when we get there?" Bakura did seem to have a real knack for asking odd but pertinent questions.

All the same, though... "How do you mean?"

For the first time since leaving Kaiba Corp, Bakura stopped moving, standing still in the shadow of a half-demolished building. "Exactly what it sounded like. What are you expecting to find in the museum?"

He paused as well, considering his words before he spoke. "I'm not certain. You say you've been inside. What should I be expecting to find?"

"Insanity, madness, death, horror, desolation... I could go on, but that's the general idea. The really lucky ones in there are already dead. Of those still alive, the best off are the ones who have gone insane. If the Pharaoh is still alive, there will be no guarantee he'll be sane enough to help you."

That sounded a good deal more bleak than he had been willing to entertain a notion of before now. "I suppose I'll just have to take my chances then, won't I?" He couldn't help it if it came out sounding sullen. Even after over a year of living in this hell, there were still apparently some things that could depress him.

"On the other hand, though, the Pharaoh does some of his best dirty work when he's out of his mind. Yadonushi mentioned something once about him just loving to drive people mad before the little Pharaoh calmed him down." Bakura sounded like he was merely thinking aloud, but he wasn't placing any bets on that. He wasn't saying anything was set in stone around someone like Bakura, who was obviously at least little bit out of his own mind. "Come on." He cut his thoughts short to glance over and see the white-haired man sliding a large piece of sheet metal aside to reveal a rough doorway of sorts through the brick wall into the building they had been leaning against.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. Maybe his sense of direction was off, but he was pretty sure that they were nowhere near the museum yet.

"It'll be daylight soon," Bakura commented. The other man wasn't even waiting for him to catch up, so with an annoyed huff, he followed him inside. "I'm neither crazy enough nor stupid enough to try to sneak into that hellish place in the daytime. We'll head out once it's dark again."

So he was going to have to spend an entire day locked in here -- wherever 'here' was -- alone with him? Of course. Just, of course. This would be what he got for thinking that this was going to be the easy part.

09 September 2009

9/9/09! It seemed an appropriate day to update this, yes?

So, first off, I'm sorry on how long it's taking between chapters. All I can really say is, I have been unbelievably busy lately and it has cut into my writing time. I'm about midway through a new book in a new series; I'm calling it The Seekers, a series title which is all Katsuko's fault... really. I've also been contemplating a new project, something a bit ambitious. And I want your opinion on it.

I know I have some Endless Loop fans reading this story as well. If I were to rewrite EL as an original series, would you be interested in reading it? My plan is to do a pretty thorough rewrite, changing things that I didn't like and such, and then sell it as an e-book and maybe a print book through Lulu. That way, I can keep the cost lower on both you the readers and me the author. So the question is, if it was available, would you read it? Please, drop me an email at apollymi (at) gmail DOT com; tell me what you think!

I'm not going to make any promises this go-round for the next chapter. My next fan fiction priorities are Belladonna and then Route 666. I do, however, want to have one more chapter of this out before November. Here's hoping, right?

Thanks,
Apollymi/Katherine