My Time in Battle City [Tales of Luna, Book 1]

Chapter 24

"Marik?" She asked as guilt and regret squeezed her heart.

Marik's monstrous face suddenly contorted into a wicked grin and got bigger- no, got closer. It was only then that Luna noticed how far and large this face had been.

Shoot! She willed the command to her dragon, but the monstrous face opened its mouth and swallowed them, engulfing her world into darkness.

Shoot! Shoot!

Her dragon shot a beam, lighting everything up in bluish white. Luna didn't know what she had expected to see, but before she could make sense of anything, she flinched as she felt a strong impact right below her chest followed by an excruciating pain.

Yami Bakura had been standing in front of her, but his right arm seemingly had become a purple snake, its head covered in blood.

"Hesitation is always what gets people killed." Yami Bakura said, raising his snake arm closer to his face before licking at the blood. "That and bad guys like me, of course. Diabound absorbs the likeness and powers of those it kills, hence the face."

Suddenly Bakura's face changed to that of Marik, but just as monstrous as before.

"Of course, because that's Diabound's power, the skin becomes purple and scaly like that." Bakura's face became his own once again as he got closer to Luna. "Which, was enough to make you hesitate. But surely, the great and heart-of-ice Kaiba won't hesitate if your face is all purple like that. Which is why I need your real body."

He was now crouching on her dragon's neck, his face close to hers. She tried to will her dragon to spin, to knock Bakura off somehow, but her dragon seemed to be frozen in place. Her breathing grew ragged, the pain persisting as she realized that her clothes suddenly felt drenched. Looking down, she saw that she had a hole at the base of her chest, much like Marik had at the time of his death. She started to panic as she realized she was bleeding too much.

"Once you are dead, I will possess your body." Bakura continued to talk at his own pace as if they had been chatting over tea. "Seto will be none the wiser."

Luna opened her mouth to speak but all that came out was a pained gurgle.

"Your friend Marik isn't here to save you this time, so what will you do?" he said as he scratched his chin, as if truly curious. "Well, whatever the case, if you could speed this up so I can go murder your friends wearing your meat suit, that would be great."

The pain started to feel like it was somehow lessening, but she realized that the edges of her vision had started to blur and even Bakura's voice started to sound a little muffled. She didn't want to die.

Not like this, not here.

Had she been too overconfident? What made her think she could make a difference?

Not like this! Not here!

Luna's shaky hand reached out with her Millennium Rod, making it glow.

I've got to-

Bakura slapped the artifact out of Luna's hands like one would a child touching something they shouldn't.

"Naughty girl. Can you please just go with my plan this one time?" Bakura seemed to be mocking her as he continued to smile. "Just do as you are told, and nothing will happen- well, I guess it already did happen to you. But you get the idea."

As her hopes waned, Luna realized it was getting more and more difficult to breathe. Her eye lids felt too heavy to keep open and a weirdly familiar cold sensation started to spread from her extremities.