"Ugh! My head!" Joey said as he woke up from his weird dream where he was the Flame Swordsman and was running away from a reaper.
Tristan beside him also woke up at the same time.
"Joey, you won't believe the weirdest dream I had just now."
"Wait, you guys also had a weird dream?" Tea asked curiously.
"It was no dream," Yugi said as he slowly sat up. He didn't remember what happened towards the end, but since they were all safe and sound, the spirit of the puzzle must have won the duel.
"Bakura!" Yugi suddenly shouted and rushed towards Bakura, who had a difficult time standing up and was leaning against a tree.
"I am okay... Thank you, Yugi. For releasing me from my curse..." Bakura said as he started to cry silently.
Now that he didn't have the Millennium Ring on his body anymore, he could remember everything clearly... every single bad thing he had ever done when he was possessed by the evil spirit was crystal clear to him now.
"AGHHHH!! GET THIS VILE THING OFF OF ME!!"
The group turned around to see Yuta rolling on the ground and trying to take off the Millennium Ring that was now on his chest.
"Yuta, calm down!" Tristan rushed to Yuta to hold him down.
"Calm down!? CALM DOWN!! Do you even know what this is!?" Yuta screamed at Tristan in hysteria.
It wouldn't be a lie to say that Yuta was about to shit in his pants out of fear right now.
This damn thing on his chest housed the fragment of the Evil God of the Underworld, Zorc!
Even if it was just a fragment, he would rather not have anything to do with this accursed thing.
He didn't want to be possessed by this damn evil god and lose control of his body.
*ROAR*
Hearing the roar of Red-Eyes calmed Yuta down, and he stopped struggling.
He wanted to laugh in despair.
This damn shitty anime world!
Since he was a better duellist than Bakura, the evil god must have done something to attach himself to him.
Red-Eyes was also a very good host for Zorc's powers.
In the GX anime, Red-Eyes was also infected by the Darkness (the final boss of the GX saga) and got a brand new vest in the process called Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, which was the counterpart of Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon, but as always, compared to its Blue-Eyes counterpart, it sucked.
No wonder!
No wonder the evil god had infected him.
*ROAR*
Feeling its master's broken mindset Red-Eyes felt guilty and also reminded him to check the deck.
"Get off me." Yuta looked at Tristan coldly, which scared him, so he stopped pinning Yuta to the ground.
Just like Red-Eyes asked him, he pulled out his deck, and there was an unknown card in there.
It was the Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, but there was no text on the card.
From the distance even Yugi could feel the dark power emanating from the card.
"Yuta, I don't think you should put that card in your deck..." He said to him as he came to help him up.
"Yeah, no shit, captain obvious!" Yuta replied angrily.
He also berated himself for getting involved with these people.
If he kept his distance, he wouldn't have had to deal with this shit!
He should have just abstained from the tourney after getting Red-Eyes.
"Watch it pal! He was only trying to help!" Joey couldn't help but get angry on Yugi's behalf. This Yuta guy was always too rude.
"Do you even know what's going on? If not, don't comment on it! Bakura, I don't care how, but just take this thing back from me."
As he got up to tell off Joey, Yuta noticed Bakura, who was crying quietly in the corner.
"No!" Bakura said as he replied in panic.
Yuta went to grab Bakura from his shirt, but he was held back by Tristan again.
"What do you mean no!? This is your shit! Take it back; otherwise, see if I will force it down your throat myself!"
"No... I just can't." Bakura took a step back away from Yuta as if he was afraid that the ring would suddenly latch on to him again.
"Bakura, what's going on? Why are both of you so agitated?" Tea, not knowing what's going on, decided to ask Bakura, as he seemed the calmer of the two.
"Tell them! Tell them why I am so angry!"
"I… I will."
Soon everyone was gathered in front of the campfire again, even though Yutaka was still glaring daggers at Bakura.
"Everything started when I was a child.
My mother and sister had... an accident... and lost their lives.
My father couldn't handle it and threw himself into his work.
He was an archaeologist, you see. So we travelled all around the world.
Eventually, he learnt of an item.
An item so powerful that it could even reverse life and death."
"The Millennium Items!" Yugi chimed in.
"Yes... the Millennium Items.
My father became especially obsessed with the Millennium Ring.
We searched around everywhere in Egypt.
Just when everything seemed hopeless, my father finally found them."
"Found who?" Tristan asked as Bakura stopped talking.
"The Tomb Keeper clan. They were tasked with protecting the Millennium Items and finding worthy wielders for them.
My father tried on the Millennium Ring, and at first it seemed like the item chose him, but suddenly it started to attack him.
I was scared.
Scared that, just like the rest of my family, I would lose my father as well, I ran up to help him up.
That was when the ring latched onto me and chose me as its owner.
It was scary.
After the ring rejected him, my father seemed to have forgotten everything regarding the ring and even the Millennium Items.
He was just like he was before the accident.
No longer so obsessed with his work, and he was finally paying attention to me.
He stopped going to dig sites and settled in Domino City as the director of its museum because he wanted to give me a better life."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Joey asked.
"That's what I thought at first as well, but soon I noticed something.
There were gaps in my memory.
I would find myself in places that I didn't even remember going.
I was scared and confided in my father, but he thought I was crazy.
It was the evil spirit inside the ring. It would take over my body and do whatever it was that it wanted to do.
Then something even scarier happened.
I even started to forget that there were even gaps in my memories.
That's how much the spirit was controlling me, so I couldn't even recognise its existence anymore.
I was nothing more than a puppet unaware of anything going on around me." Bakura started to cry again.
"It's okay, Bakura. We defeated the evil spirit! You don't need to suffer anymore." Yugi comforted Bakura to soothe him.
"Bullshit!" Yutaka replied angrily.
"What do you mean?" Yugi asked, frowning. He couldn't remember the process, but he was sure that they had defeated the evil spirit of the ring; otherwise, they would not even be here.
"If you really defeated the spirit, why did this ring latch on to me like a parasite then?" Yutaka replied mockingly.
"This... maybe because it was a shadow duel?" Yugi answered uncertainly.
"Oh really? But I don't even remember anything about that, unlike the rest of you. For me, I just went to sleep and woke up with this parasite. So why, out of all people, was it me that the ring latched onto?"
"I don't know... but believe me! After the tournament is over we will search around and find a way to take it off you," Yugi said, also noticing that there was something wrong. He also started to doubt that the evil spirit of the ring was gone for good.
"Why after the tournament? Why not now? The original owner of the ring is here, so why doesn't he come and take this off of me and wear it again? Since you want to solve the problem of the ring, you can just help Bakura, then, couldn't you?"
"This..." Yugi didn't know how to answer. Yuta was right in the fact that he had nothing to do with this but suddenly found himself possibly infected by a mind-controlling evil ghost. Though on the other hand it would be too cruel to force Bakura to take the ring again.
"I will do it," Bakura said before Yugi could even answer.
Bakura was a little bit naive, but he was not a bad person.
He had an innate kindness to him, which was why people flocked to him naturally (not just because of his british accent)
That was why he had believed it would be too cruel to make someone else go through what he experienced.
Yugi also promised that he would help with the curse of the Millennium Ring.
So he was willing to wear it once again and help Yuta out. After all, this was his burden to bear not Yuta's
"Great! Come take it off me!" Yuta excitedly went to Bakura.
Bakura looked nervous, but he reached out to the ring.
That was when the ring gave off a blackish-yellow light that pushed Bakura away.
"What!?" Bakura looked in disbelief.