[open]

[doormat_hikari]

Who: Ryou Bakura & Vatheonites
When: Afternoon
Where: The plaza (because I love to dump my characters in fountains)
Status: Open!
Style: I am a prose-aholic, but I'll match your style.

Ryou woke suddenly, staring up at the top of a fountain in the plaza. He was only half in the fountain, floating on his back while his lower half was completely dry. He sat up sharply, shaking out his fluffy white hair before taking a long slow look around.

Last he remembered, he was heading home from Egypt with everyone else after the Ceremonial Battle. Well this didn't look like Egypt or Japan or anywhere he knew. Ryou thought this dazed and lost business was finally over now he didn't have a spirit dumping him in random places. But here he was, sitting on the side of a fountain in what looked like Atlantis. Sure, Atlantis would be an interesting place to learn about, but it was fiction.

This was not fiction. Well at least he thought it was real. He could be dreaming. Or something. He rubbed the top of his head, completely and totally confused.

[ ooc: tag me up pls :) ]

Comments

[unshelledbullet]

It was the week where new arrivals appeared in Vatheon, and Squall had seen several members of the Welcoming Committee bustling to and fro in an attempt to greet every newcomer and help them find their feet in the underwater city called Vatheon. He wasn't a part of it, but he went out of his way when he saw someone who seemed to have not been greeted before.

And there seemed to be someone with that classic "what the hell is this" look on his face. Grabbing a towel from a smiling local, Squall offered it to the newbie.

"Here."

[doormat_hikari]

Ryou was staring. Just staring. Baffled. He couldn't figure out what country this was, or if it was even one on the map. Maybe there really was some sort of Atlantis here....

He looked up to see the stranger. He looked like he shopped at the same store Yugi did, with the leather and the belts and all. "Ah, thank you," he took the towel with a smile, drying his hair off. It poofed back to its usual fluffiness. "This is a bit of an odd question, but could you tell me where this is?"

[unshelledbullet]

"Not odd at all," Squall replied, crossing his arms. "This is Vatheon. It's not your home. It's not even in the same world as your home. It's a place that pulls people from their worlds to live in it." And since it was new arrival week, Squall actually had a welcome brochure on him. He held it out. "This has some information you can use."

[doormat_hikari]

"E-eh?" Ryou stammered. Even thinking about being so far from home didn't quite prepare him for hearing it. He'd found himself lost in places before but it was still always in Tokyo. This was not Tokyo. "How in the world?"

He stared down at the pamphlet before taking it and skimming over it. "SFC.... Bubble world... It's almost as if we're in some sort of video game or VR...."

[unshelledbullet]

If only.

It would be so much nicer if they were just characters in a video game, wouldn't it?

"People think it's that thing over there that caused it." He casually pointed at the huge coral. "It seems to have powers of some kind."

[doormat_hikari]

Ryou looked over at the coral. Now he knew how weird inanimate objects could get but a coral? That was a very primitive animal....

"Maybe it has some sort of spirit in it." Hopefully not malicious, but with wherever this was, as weird as it was, who knew.

[unshelledbullet]

A spirit? Squall could say that he's never actually considered that possibility. Everyone spoke of the coral as if the coral itself was a living sentient thing. The idea that there was a powerful being inhabiting it was just as possible. He's seen things like that himself, after all.

"The locals here seem to regard it as a god," he said. And it kind of made sense - if it was true that the coral was what powered the barrier, then of course they would worship the thing that prevented them from drowning. "I'm Squall Leonhart, by the way."

[doormat_hikari]

"A god," Ryou echoed. Idol-worship wasn't entirely out of the question. Many cultures worshiped inanimate objects or lower life forms. It seemed this one was similar in that respect.

"I'm Bakura Ryou. Nice to meet you."

[unshelledbullet]

"You too."

And sometimes Squall wondered if he was actually starting to mean it at this point. Normally, you say it's nice to meet someone even if that's not true just to be polite. It used to be that he rarely tolerated anyone he met. Not so much now. Vatheon, its people, and Rinoa were probably rubbing off of him. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out his SFC.

"You have one of these. There's a list of names of people who got dragged here. Is there anyone on it you recognize?"

[formerabyssinian]

So, this was how it looked when someone else arrived here. A good thing Aya chose today to look further into this area he first arrived in. It was just a shame everyone seemed to arrive here wet. Similar to rubbing salt into a wound.

He walked over to the new arrival casually.

"Are you alright?"

[doormat_hikari]

Ryou looked up at the other man. It was good to see someone who didn't look like he had a smile plastered across his face.

"I suppose so," he replied, ruffling his hair up. It was still rather wet and not its fluffy self. "I suppose I got lost... again."

[formerabyssinian]

"You and everyone else." It couldn't be that much of a coincidence at everyone got 'lost'

[doormat_hikari]

Now that was something he wasn't expecting to hear. Normally he was the only one who got lost and it was usually not his fault. But here he was, apparently lost like everyone else. "Really? How odd. I wonder where this is."

[formerabyssinian]

Everything was odd as far as Aya was concerned.

"They call it Vatheon. It's a city far beneath a sea." Aya looked up at the marine life above. A shark was circling them currently.

[doormat_hikari]

"Vatheon," he echoed, looking up at the top of the bubble. "For a moment, I thought this could be Atlantis." A silly thought, since Atlantis was simply a legend. Then again, a lot of stuff he saw was just a legend.

[formerabyssinian]

"That's an easy assumption to make, in all honesty." Aya hadn't thought of Atlantis off the bat. He was too occupied with wondering why Ken was uninjured and both of them soaking wet.

[doormat_hikari]

"It has a lot of similarities to the legends of Atlantis," Ryou agreed. He glanced back at the nearby locals, who simply smiled. They looked like they belonged in his occult deck in Duel Monsters. "The locals are rather strange. Do they always smile like that?"

[puzzle_king]

Nope, sadly there's still a lot of dazed and lost business to go. Atem still hadn't figured this place out, and he'd been around for a while, now. Finding someone familiar, though, was a fantastic change. He'd found Yuugi (who really was all he needed, but...), and if that really was Ryou he was seeing, that would broaden things quite a bit!

"Bakura?" he called, not quite sure about approaching him yet. Depended on which Bakura, after all.

[doormat_hikari]

Ryou had leaned over to attempt to shake the water out of his hair, as it still sat upon his head as a sopping wet mop. Hearing his name wasn't something he'd expected here. In Atlantis. Or whereverthehell this was.

He shook his hair out, then stood up with a smile.

And then he took a double-take. A big double take. He had to be dreaming. or maybe he was stuck in the Ancient Egyptian version of Atlantis?

"Ph-pharaoh?!"

[puzzle_king]

Nope, not Atlantis--though he'd thought it might be kind of like that at first when he got here. That or a shadow game, but apparently it isn't and Atem could actually accept that. He'd try to help Bakura through that, too. Especially since it was apparently the Bakura who wasn't out after his life. Would have sucked pretty hard if it was the Ring's Spirit.

"Yo." Atem smirked, but it was that sort of smirk that bordered on a smile. "Welcome to Vatheon."

[doormat_hikari]

Okay, yeah, this was weird. Very very weird. He shook his head, thinking that it was a dream, but sure enough, the Pharaoh was still there, looking all pharaoh-y. It was an interesting sight to take in. The first and only time Ryou had seen the Pharaoh separate from Yugi was in the Ceremonial Battle. And after they'd battled, the Pharaoh had returned back to Egypt, taking this form, and yet here he was, standing right in front of him, clear as day.

This was really the first time he'd gotten to talk to him without interruptions from his rather pushy ring spirit. There were so many questions to ask, but the only thing that came out was, "Where's Vatheon? This isn't a dream, is it?"

[puzzle_king]

Atem didn't really blame Ryou for the reaction; Atem hadn't been particularly present in the teen's life so much as the spirit possessing him's. With that in mind, and the fact that the only time Ryou'd seen him being when he left, Atem decided to try avoiding overwhelming the poor boy; let's take this as slowly as possible. Arms folded across his chest, the pharaoh's smirk slipped only slightly with the questioning. Ah, the nature of their location. Well, that made his earlier goal difficult.

"I've been told it's a world separate from ours, though it's probably connected somehow. Like the Afterlife connects to the world of the living, or something like that." Or something more distant. "But no, you're not dreaming. Yuugi's also here, but there are people from other worlds here, too." His partner's name might help keep things a little calmer, but Atem wasn't entirely sure about that. Here's hoping, right?

[doormat_hikari]

Other worlds weren't entirely far-fetched. There were theories about it all over the place. He just never expected to see one. (Then again, he didn't expect to be possessed by a cranky Ancient Egyptian thief king either.) He'd seen soul rooms, shadow games, and even heard voices in his head (pretty much all of it was the psycho spirit's fault).

"I suppose that's not too far-fetched." Just as long as he wasn't dead, though the possibility hadn't quite escaped his mind yet. "Yuugi-kun is here too?"

[puzzle_king]

"Yeah. I ran into him not too long after I got here; his birthday's just passed." The excitement at their reunion still made him smile more than it probably should. But that made Yuugi nineteen, right? Sheesh. Atem wouldn't be aging past this point, he figured. Ah, didn't matter. But back to Bakura. No, he wasn't dead. Not as far as Atem knew, and that woman, Zelda, hadn't said anything about them being dead, either.

"It kinda looks like an RPG setting though, don't you think?" Atem planted his hands on his hips, giving the plaza a once over. He'd come here a few times, just to get the odd thing here and there, but he still couldn't get over it.

[doormat_hikari]

"I missed it..." Truth be told, Ryou missed a lot of stuff, mostly due to being dragged around for three long years. He couldn't remember half of the last three years....

Ryou looked around again. "It does." And that worried him a bit. Every time an RPG was involved, the ringspirit would take over to try to destroy everyone. But the ring spirit was gone. No more of that. Hopefully.