Last Waltz Part 7

[apollymi]

Series: Yu-Gi-Oh
Extended Series: Endless Loop
Word Count: 51,502 (total); 6,167 (this part)
Chapters: Master Post
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII
Patrolling Domino for any sign of Chono is actually really dull, I muse to myself. There are a few places a leopard could hide, even this close to the full moon, only one night away.

I've already exhausted the warehouse district, checking inside each and every one of them for any sign a cat was ever in here with Mai's help.

I've checked the business district. I've even broken into buildings it seemed likely that she might try to hide in. It was actually rather refreshing. It's been a while since I've committed breaking and entering. I was worried that I might have been getting rusty, and to some extent, I was. It took me nearly fifteen seconds longer than it should have to pick some of those locks. I'm going to have to get myself back into practice.

I'm running out of options on places to look. At this rate, I'm going to have to start going door to door, and that's going to take a lot of time. Frankly, I don't really feel like wasting that amount of time.

I do still have two major areas to check, and frankly, I would rather avoid the both of them. I don't have fond memories of the west side of town, with all the crap that has ever happened to me or mine there, and I would rather avoid the area around the Christian church that was the site of the mass zombie rising that led to the dream world, which in turn led to Yami's death.

From where I'm at, though, the church is closest. I may not like it, but it would be irresponsible of me not to check the area. And while I'm frequently irresponsible on a lot of things, this is not going to be one of them.

So reluctantly, I make myself turn the corner that will take me into that area of town. When Kaiba and I came here years ago, only to be attacked by zombies and ended up with me dragging everyone into the dream world by summoning Zork, all the businesses in the area were dark. All the homes were likewise empty. Everyone in the area had died, been sacrificed, so that their deaths would help fuel the zombies. It certainly also helped where Zork was concerned.

There are lights on here now. Not a lot, but it's enough to at least let me know that people are here and alive at this point. It's a step, I guess.
I suppose it means that Kaiba is doing his job correctly. He's getting Domino back on its feet, after everything it has been through both in his reign as Master of the City and Gouzaburou's before him. Kaiba, at least, gives a damn what happens to the city and the people in it.

You know, I would have thought that people would have left this area after what happened here. If anything, the opposite has happened. It's more like they're determined to all live here. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it's definitely not what I would have expected. I guess I shouldn't be so damn surprised when someone is more stubborn than I expect them to be, since I'm frequently more stubborn than people expect me to be.

Other than the fact that there are more people here than I would have expected, everything seems to be much the same. Even those two bicycle racks are still there, standing sentinel in front of the alleyway leading to the church.

And I really don't want to be doing this. I mean, I knew I didn't want to be doing it, but I might be dreading it before than I thought I was. I'm not quite to hyperventilating or anything like that, but honestly, I don't feel like I'm that far off of it either. It wasn't quite the worst thing that ever happened in my life, but it was up there. I'm still not a hundred percent certain how we managed to survive it. Maybe it was Cynthia; I just really don't know, and that's part of the terror of it.

But I'm not giving in to that terror. I'm not. I swear that I'm not. Freaking the fuck out, yeah, that's a definite maybe, but I refuse to be terrorized.
The church... Well, it's right where we left it. Hell, it looks like it's exactly as we left it. Maybe this is the one part of the neighborhood that people have actually abandoned. I would have.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid any place with actual cemeteries with actual dead people buried in them, after what happened here all those years ago, just for safety's sake, you understand. It's one of those things I just prefer to be safe than sorry on.

There's no choice right now, though. Right now, if I'm going to finish checking the area, I'm going to have to go through the cemetery and inspect the church itself. There's no other choice. And I'm going to keep repeating that to myself until I've made it through this. It will be what gets me through this. I may not make it through this without the need for intense therapy, but I will make it through this.

At least for once I came prepared for just about anything where shape shifters are concerned. I remembered a gun; I even remembered to load it with silver bullets. Beyond that, I have something that I never would have prepared before I started working with Kaiba and had access to his resources: a tranquilizer gun loaded with something high enough grade to put an elephant to sleep... or a pissed off wereleopard.

There are a few other toys I'm packing, but those are the two I like best right now. I will admit, though, that I'm curious to see how well Chono handles getting tasered. It's a bit of an experiment, one that I've been waiting to try out on some unfortunate shape shifter for years now. I don't want to try it out on the ones I'm friendly with, but in no way, shape, or form am I friendly with Chono. She'll be the perfect lab rat for this. I can't wait.

Except for this whole picking my way through the cemetery. I can tell which graves have someone in them now. I can tell which ones are unhappy - and honestly, that's almost all of them.

I can even tell which ones have the wrong person under them; it's a high enough number that I try to make a mental note to have Kaiba come through here and get people back where they belong, so they don't start pitching shit-raising fits that might lead to more zombies. Honestly, that's the last thing we need right now.

The church itself looks abandoned. Appearances can be deceiving, though; I probably know that better than most; so I guess I should take the time to check inside the church itself. I've put it off quite long enough.

The inside of the church looks twice as abandoned as the outside. The pews are all still there - or at least that's how it looks - and they're all still in line, which probably shouldn't be as surprising as it is. The stained glass windows are all still intact, and somehow that surprises me less than the pews. What the hell, I don't pretend to make sense, even to myself.

I've been in a few Christian churches over the years, mostly since I fell in with Kaiba. In that time, I've seen some pretty damn impressive ones. This one isn't one of those. It isn't anywhere close to one of them. In fact, all that this one says to me is that it would probably be a damn good place to hide out. With that thought in mind, I start reaching for my gun.

I'm not overly fond of carrying or using a gun, but it does serve its purpose. It gives me distance from the people trying to kill me that my knives really don't. I'm not as good with them as Yami was either. I just don't like them enough for that, nor have I been training myself as rigorously as he did.

I do sit down, figuratively speaking, with Magnum every so often and basically prove that I know what I'm doing with the thing.
And reaching for the gun is probably what saves me from my arm getting bloodily ripped off.

One second it looks and seems like the church is abandoned, like I am the only one who has been in it in years. The next second, there is this mass of tawny fur and claws flying at me.

If there's one thing I've learned about living with cats all these years, it's that they are damn fast. I have never met a slow leopard, including Dartz with how laidback he is. Chono - if that is who this is - is no exception to that rule.

I don't even give myself time enough to think about it. I hit the ground and roll forward, toward the leopard that is pouncing towards me. That way, she overshoots me and I manage to come out intact, if a bit bumped and bruised.

However, it also means that I end up losing the gun. I didn't have my hand completely on it yet, and so I end up bumping it instead of grabbing it. It ends up flying out of my grasp and under a pew on the other side of the church's center aisle.

Damn. If I get out of this alive, Magnum is going to kill me. All his lessons, getting me to the kind of proficient where I can hit a target eight times out of ten, doesn't really matter when I drop the gun.

I do still have other weapons, though.

Chono flies over my head and slams feet first into a pew. Almost immediately, she's back on her feet and using the rebound to head back at me. I have all of a split second to think, but it is long enough for me to come up with a small delaying tactic.

Leopards are among the smallest of the feline shape shifters, but they aren't small cats. Rolling beneath one of the closest pews buys me a second. All Chono has to do is make her way through the wooden pew to get to me, and I can practically see it dawning in feline eyes when she figures that out.

One swipe of a powerful paw knocks away a good chunk of the wood, but it's going to take more than that for her to get down to where I am. And that gives me the time I need to get out the Taser.

I try my best to aim, but it's not like she is a cooperating target. I also don't want to have to emerge from beneath the pew and give her a clear shot at me. I'm pretty much holding my breath as I fire.

Twin prongs shoot out of the Taser. By some random bit of luck actually going my way for once, both prongs hit her.

What do you know? It looks like tasering works as well on leopards as it does on humans. She's down, if not out. Note to self: try to get a higher voltage next time.

Still, it gives me long enough to get out the tranquilizer gun and hit her with a shot from it.

Good night, Chono. I promise you aren't going to be happy to wake up.
If there's one thing I've learned over my years of dealing with wereleopards, it's that they can be amazingly messy. I lived with Kitty for years, and after he left, the rest of his pard stuck around the place with me and Kaiba. I have yet to meet a wereleopard who doesn't end up leaving a mess in his or her wake. Even Dartz with all of his mellowness tends to leave a trail wherever he's going, especially the closer to the full moon it gets.

Some leopards might be messier than others, though. Hirutani, for instance, was probably the messiest I ever had the misfortune of meeting, even before the gutting got involved. Once it did, though, God, it was awful.

No one ever tells you that, with actually gutting someone alive, the smell is one of the first things that get you. It just sort of starts and rolls over you until you think it's never going to go away. I still need to have words with Kitty, whenever I find him again, about gutting. Of all the things he could have wanted done to Hirutani, why gutting? Why one of the smelliest, nastiest ways?

At least with Chono, I didn't have to actually go about the whole gutting process again. Oh, I opened her up, of course. It goes a long way to cutting down on the smell, if not the mess. Some things that are on the inside of a person's body just need to stay on the inside, really.

A few years after I was done with Hirutani, I did come to the conclusion that I had ended it for him all too quickly. Yes, I wanted him dead, but more than that, I wanted him to hurt. I'm going to fix that error when it comes to Akunadin and Vivian. I like to think that I fixed that error when it came to Chono tonight as well.

If it wasn't for who she was, I might have had to thank Chono for choosing a place that is so secluded. It certainly beats the warehouse I had staked out to use. If anyone heard her, they didn't respond. That might be all that matters on that front.

There's something about having a word with a wereleopard that always seems to end with me covered head to toe in feline blood and bits. It's a good thing that leopard gene is hard to pass on and that I'm a human servant to a pretty damn strong master vampire; otherwise, I'm pretty sure I would be getting fuzzy once a month from here on out or after Hirutani.

I couldn't kill her. That was my one and only limitation. I got creative in getting around it, though. Once I got her open, I 'accidentally' dropped a few bits of silver - whatever I was able to find before I left the house - and let her heal up with them still inside her. It will hurt her from the minute she wakes up until she is able to find someone willing to cut open a wereleopard and take them out again. I can't imagine that will be easy.

The representative from Osaka came and collected her pretty quickly after I got done. I called Kisara, who in turn called Kaiba's counterpart in Osaka, who supposedly called her representative. Said representative had to have been waiting just outside the city, because he got to the church pretty damn fast, got her bundled up, and removed her from my sight.

And that's fine. I can live with that. It's one less thing for me to have to deal with later on. I can be amused later at how green the man looked when he was carting Chono out.

Right now, though, my most pressing concern might well be how to get myself home. I look like hell. No, actually, I look like I just murdered someone and decided to take a swim in their blood. This isn't the best look for walking across the city to Kaiba's place. Hell, it's not the best look for walking anywhere in the city, period, full stop. I look like an axe murderer.

I guess I didn't exactly think this part of the plan through very well, did I? I'm covered in blood and bits and stuff that I'm not very sure I want to think about the origin of. The representative from Osaka looked way too green around the gills for me to even consider asking for a ride home, even if it wasn't the opposite direction.

Jounouchi-kitty was damn sure that most of the monsters in nearby cities were utterly convinced that Domino breeds its monsters to be ten times scarier. I may not be a Domino-bred monster, but I think I've made up for where I was born. I've brought plenty of scary and horror to my adopted city. That should count for something, right?

Though it is possible that this isn't something to be proud of, you know?

Hmmm, nah. It's been my goal to make one of the monsters wet themselves for years now. It's an ongoing goal. I haven't even managed to make one of them puke yet. It's come close a few times, but no dice yet.

But none of this solves my problem: how to get home without getting arrested.

I mean, I have thrown around my weight before. Once the cops found out that I'm Kaiba's human servant, they were more than happy to let me go. But that does dictate that I get arrested again first. I don't enjoy that, not in the least, so I would really rather avoid it if at all possible.

Well, I guess I always have one tried and true fallback. It's not one I try to use too often, but there's not a lot of choice this time. I can't take a cab, and I didn't bring a spare set of clothes with me this time.

Oh, I have a spare set stashed at the warehouse I had prepped for this, but that doesn't help me when I found Chono in a church. And carrying the clothes would have been awkward when I needed to be traveling light.

So I guess I don't really have a lot of choices. I fish out my cell phone out of my jeans pocket; this would be why I started wearing cargo jeans, because I am always in need of pockets; and call Kaiba's line.

"Are you done?" he answers the phone with. Okay, obviously he knew it was me calling in that case, since that is what caller ID is for, but a little basic etiquette? Even I have had that much driven into me by Ryou. But on the other hand, it is a sign that I've managed to get him to loosen the tree up his ass a bit. That's an improvement, so I won't give him hell over it.

"Yep, I'm done. Chono is taken care of. I could use a ride though. I got drenched." I've gotten a lot better at asking for help, it seems, at least from Kaiba. I'm not too sure how I would be with anyone else.

"Do I even want to know?" I have to snicker, and I don't even try to hide it.

"Probably not. The Osaka courier picked up Chono about five minutes ago, and he looked a little green around the gills, so I didn't even bother asking him for a ride."

"So why didn't you take Chono to wherever you had your spare clothes and other stuff?"

I shrug. "I didn't know how long the tranquilizer would work on her. I didn't want to be moving her when she woke up. It might not have been terribly good for either of our life spans, you know."

"We have to get you a car." He may be complaining, but I can faintly hear him closing doors and starting up the engines on one of the cars. I should have my ride soon. "There is no need for Akito or me to have to come get you every time you need transport."

"You know you guys love it. Ferrying me around is the highlight of your nights."

"You certainly sound better." The words are said conversationally, like he's pointing out the weather or something. There might be a layer of concern under them. I don't know. It's harder to tell when we're on the phone. "I take it you're feeling better."

And yeah, now that I think about it, I do feel a bit better. I feel a bit closer to human. No, wait, that's not what I meant. I don't feel closer to human, but I definitely feel closer to Bakura. Weird that it took some blood, guts, and mayhem to get me to this point. Or maybe it was the adrenaline of actually going up against a fully shifted leopard and coming away with only a few bruises.

I think that that might be one of the more impressive feats of my career. After all, not a single drop of blood on me is my own. Yeah, maybe I had to cheat a little and use the Taser and the tranquilizer, but it wasn't like I was going to go after her barehanded, not and hope still be breathing when all was said and done.

Well, that's why the Taser was invented anyway: to even things out. It may be or it may not be why it was invented, but that's what I like to think, so please, no contradicting. I'm the crazy with way too many knives.

I can almost hear Kaiba blink over the phone. "I thought the Master of Osaka was sending a vampire to pick Chono up."

"Yeah, he definitely was one. He just got a bit green when he was packing up Chono."

"I don't even want to know, do I?"

"Nope!"
And apparently torture makes me a little hyper. Who knew?

No, thinking about it, it's not the torture. It's the blood. That shouldn't surprise me in the least. I am a creature of death, after all. All of my powers revolve around the dead. Blood is sort of a natural consequence of most kinds of death. But yeah, this does make a kind of sense.

I feel more alive, more like myself, than I have in years, and frankly, this is the only thing that's really different. I tortured a leopard within an inch of her life, and suddenly I start feeling better. I'm going to have to bear this in mind, at least for those really down, depressed bouts that hit on occasion.

And somehow that bring something else to mind. "And we might want to see about talking to whoever is in charge of the cemetery here."
"That's a segue I'm not sure I want to think about either. Why?"

There's a squeal of tires in the background; obviously, he's making a turn. I should be feeling bad about all the poor innocent people between him and here, especially with him on the phone with me. It's their own fault if they can't dodge him quickly enough.

"Some of the bodies got put back in the wrong graves." I can hear him sigh heavily, one of those deep resigned ones, like he was just waiting on this. "They aren't particularly happy about it, the spirits, I mean."

There is this faint growl that I'm pretty sure I'm not mean to hear. "They assured me they were doing DNA tests to compare the bodies with family members, to make certain that all the bodies were going back to the correct graves," he mutters just loud enough for me to hear. "When I get my hands on them..."

When he gets his hand on them, he's going to ream them up one side and back down the other. I've been in the room when he's done that to someone, though I forget who it was. It's actually a lot of fun to watch. It probably wouldn't be a lot of fun to be on the receiving end of, though. I wouldn't know, though.

Then again, I wonder if those lectures he tries to give me, like the one earlier tonight, are the version of the yelling match he gives everyone else. I just tend to yell back, not just stand there and take it. I'm not so good at standing there and taking it; I never have been any good at it.

"They must have decided to cut some corners," I offer. I am going to need to some serious deep cleaning on all of my knives after this, I realize, glancing down at the one I still have in my hand. There's even blood in the hilt, as well as all the grooves of the blade. It would be a damn shame to let it dry on here. On that note, though... "Did the Osaka master chick say why Chono was here anyway?"

I can see him trying to follow my logic jump there, giving up, and then finally just answering the question. "All she said was that Chono has been leading the pard since Hirutani's unfortunate incident," I don't even bother covering the fact that I'm all but cackling, "and she was looking at expanding the pard from Hirutani's 'old stomping grounds'."

I can actually hear the quotes around the last words. "Wow. That was... dumb of her." She probably would have lasted a lot longer as Nimir-Raja without getting Domino involved. We're the scarier monsters, after all.

"Definitely not the brightest of all moves," Kaiba comments calmly. How he can sound so calm when he's probably taking corners at ungodly speeds I will never figure out? He does it well, though. "I will be there momentarily."

Now that I really listen, some of those horrible car sounds are coming from outside the church and not over the phone. He really should be here any minute. That's good. I think some of Chono is starting to dry to me.

"The sooner, the better" is all I say on that. I may feel giddy, but I'm definitely looking gross. Actually, no, I look like one of the extras on those bootleg horror movies Ryou so loves, the extras that are generally already portraying corpses.

If Chono were human and had deposited this much of her own blood all over me, she would probably be very dead. That is an advantage of shape shifters, I suppose. They're studier.

I can hear the car stopping, both over the phone and outside the doors. "I guess you're here then," I comment blandly.
"It didn't take as long as I thought it might. Are you coming out, or do I have to go in and retrieve you?"

I snicker to myself at his words. He just sounds so pissy. It's nothing like his old 'hi, I'm Kaiba Seto, and I have a tree up my ass' attitude. It's an improvement of sorts, something of a lateral improvement I suppose.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming out in a minute. I just need to find where I dropped my gun," I answer, hanging up before he can say anything else. He loves it. Really, he does.

Okay, he loves it about as much as I love the kittens sneaking up on me. It amuses me to cheese him off, though, and that totally counts.
The gun is pretty much right where I remember seeing it slide. That's good at least. If Osaka boy had taken it with him, I would have been very cross. I might have even had to pay him a visit.

I like this gun. It was Yami's, yes, but Magnum has been teaching me a hell of a lot that I can do with it, at least on the condition that we train with lead bullets. I've gotten better, but there were a couple accidental discharges at the beginning.

And Kaiba is waiting just outside the cemetery itself. There's no surprise there. There's no real way to get too close to the church itself without driving over a few graves. After our last experience here, neither of us really want to do anything to risk cheesing off the local spirits and ghosts.

Speaking of which...

I can feel them. They're a bit more awake now than they were when I first arrived here. Whoops. Guess I should have tried to avoid spilling blood in their vicinity.

But maybe I can use it to my advantage. I mean, my powers are all about the dead. I'm surrounded by the dead. It might be time to see what I can really do when I set my mind to it.

Under my breath, I whisper, "Go back to sleep."

I can see Kaiba's head lift. Of course he caught the words. There was no way he wouldn't. Vampires have this stupidly impressive hearing after all. Right now, though, I don't really care if he's listening or not. I'm conducting an experiment.

And it's a successful experiment at that. The spirits quiet back down, even if they don't go completely silent. I must not have phrased it quite right to put them completely back to ease. They are quieter, though. They're willing to bide their time until I have a chance to do something more for them. It's a decent compromise.

"Are you all right?" Kaiba finally asks when I walk up next to the car. I can't say where blame him. I look like I've been murdered myself.

I shrug nonchalantly. "None of its mine."

Kaiba's eyes go slightly wide. "All of that is from Chono?"

I might be mistaken, but he sounds (very) slightly surprised. It takes a lot to shock Kaiba. The fact I'm covered in feline blood and didn't have a drop of my own spilled in return might be enough for that, though.

I nod, and yeah, I might still be a little too excited. It's not every day I get to play like this.

And maybe I came out of the situation with Zork a little fucked up.

Okay, honestly, I knew I was getting out of it fucked up: I can't remember stuff, I still white out, and my mind drifts in and out without warning. But there is a possibility that I came out of the situation fucked up in the head.

Okay, I was fucked up in the head before Zork, but I think maybe I'm a little more. I'm a lot more violent than I was before.

Before, I had only killed one person in my entire life: my father. I may have looked the other way when people were being killed, most notably the time with the guy and Malik and the Volkswagen, but I only killed one person myself.

Since Zork, I've killed at least another person that I can immediately think of: Hirutani. I've tortured both Hirutani and Chono to the point that the only reason either of them survived the torture itself is because they're wereleopards; that I immediately killed Hirutani afterwards is irrelevant.

I'm not sure I could have stomached the idea of torturing someone before Zork. Having been tortured by my father's favorite goon before, I'm not sure I could have done that to anyone else, no matter what they did to me and mine. Now, well...

"It's all Chono's," I confirm. "Things got a bit... messy."

"I might be able to understand better now why the courier left ill," he comments blandly. Like it's no big deal. It's not the first time I've showed up covered in blood before, though admittedly, the last two times were after I actually got to kill someone: my father and Hirutani.

"I did say I got drenched," I remind him mildly. "The forecast isn't calling for rain. What did you think I meant?"

He gives me this withering look, like I'm trying on his patience. So what else is new? "I was expecting you with blood on you. I did not realize you decided it would be a good idea to take a bath in it."

And honestly, he's starting to look a little green around the gills too. Of course, I'm covered in leopard blood. It's not that vampires can't drink shape shifter blood. Far from it, in fact. It likely has more to do with the fact that it's getting really old and stagnant fast. It doesn't exactly smell pleasant to my human senses; it has to be a hell of a lot worse to his vampiric ones.

"Let's get you home so you can get all of that off of you." The look in his eyes says 'the sooner the better' very clearly.

"Fine by me."

And aww, look, he even brought one of the older cars so that the blood wouldn't ruin the upholstery in one of the newer ones. See? He's thinking ahead where I'm concerned now. The more he hangs around me, the better he gets at this sort of stuff, plotting around death and destruction and such.

I flop down in the front seat and try my best to ignore the squishing sound I make. From the wince on his face, Kaiba completely fails at ignoring it himself.

Over the years and over many car rides with Kaiba as the driver, I have gotten really good at learning to deal with death defying turns and breakneck speeds. I don't like it any better now than I did the first time, but I've learned to take it better. Now I just treat it like it's my own personal rollercoaster and just go with the flow of it. I do still bother with the seatbelt, though. It would suck out loud to get thrown from the car in the event of a wreck, after all.

"Is there anything I need to know about what happened in there?" he asks as we peel away from the church, the cemetery, and all the bad that comes with it.

"Anything that's going to come back and bite us in the ass, you mean?" I clarify. "Probably so."

"Such as?"

I can tell in his voice that he really doesn't want to know anything about what just happened. He's just being prepared, being ready to cover my ass if something I did in there doesn't sit well with the Master of Osaka.

"Well," I hedge, actually shifting around in my seat a little nervously, "I mean, I did torture the woman. It got messy." It got really messy, but that's torture for you.

"I know that much, Bakura. I can see it all over you." Literally, for once, at that. "Did you do anything that I'm going to have to cover for with the Master of Osaka?"

"I did leave a few bits of silver inside her." I can almost see him rolling his eyes. Whoops, that might have been on the not kosher list of things for me to have done. Oh well. What else was there? "And I did taser her, which works pretty well, I might add. And I tranqed her. Other than that, no, nothing."

"We might have some fallout from this." If I didn't know better, I would swear that he is running game plans by me. That would be new and interesting. At the very least, though, he is explaining what he's expecting to go on once Chono is delivered back to Osaka. "To be fair, though, nothing was specified about being out of bounds, as long as she came back alive. She did go back alive, right?"

I'm nodding my head before he even finishes speaking. "Yeah, she was alive when the courier packed her up and out of here. She wasn't awake or anything, but she was most assuredly still breathing." I frown in thought before putting forth my next question. "Is the silver going to cause some problems?"

"The Master of Osaka will not be overly happy about it, but unless it's huge amounts," this comes out like a question, and I shake my head, "then it's not like it would eventually be fatal."

"It wasn't really that much silver, just whatever little trinkets I could find laying around the house."

"We should be fine, then."

"Good." I sigh heavily, mostly in frustration. "And really, it's her own damn fault for coming back to Domino for her recruiting drive anyway. She would have been fine if she had just stayed the hell out of this town, like the sensible monsters on my shit list are doing."

Kaiba lets out that weird snicker-laugh again. "Of course. They're avoiding your shit list."

And yeah, now I'm snickering too. "Hey, I'll have you know that people live in terror of being on my shit list. I'm working on being the scariest goddamn monster in this city, if not the country."

"Of course, Bakura. Of course."

And if it sounds a bit patronizing, I'm just going to ignore that little fact. That's just how Kaiba rolls and all that. I'm sarcastic and violent as hell by nature. Kaiba, on the other hand, is cynical and withdrawn by nature. Patronizing is a step up from his former condition, one I liked to call 'tree up his goddamn ass'.

See? People can change, and I guess monsters can too.