Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Family Bonds ❯ Chapter 6: Mokuba's Birthday ( Chapter 6 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh, however I do own all of the Original Characters except for three and they belong to my friend. (They'll be mentioned later)

-F-A-M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S--F-A-M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S--F-A- M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S-

“So.. it’s not people in the box?” Malik asks, looking at the TV.

Tama shakes her head. “Nope. Think of it like moving pictures with sound. It’s all really complicated so it’s hard to explain it very well.”

Malik has been with them for two days now and has made “friends” with several kitchen appliances. The toaster has caught on fire, he tripped over the chord for the blender, the dishwasher door slammed shut on his hand, and numerous other things. The ten-year-old Egyptian has vowed to never again set foot in the kitchen. That won’t last too long though, since that’s where they eat.

Malik has been sleeping on the couch, not ready to accept Tama, Seto, and Mokuba’s offers to sleep in their room.

They have also discovered one other thing about Malik and that is that he refuses to eat meat. He’s a vegetarian.

“Hey guys, why don’t the three of you take Malik outside for a while.” Kiba suggests. “I have to help otou-san with something, otherwise I’d go too.”

Seto glances out the window and then nods. “Good idea. We can teach Malik how to play tag.” He says.

Mokuba runs to the back door excitedly. “The what are we waiting for?”

Within seconds all four of them are outside and Seto is explaining how to play tag to Malik. While the brunette is explaining, Tama catches sigh of Ryou and runs over to the whole in the fence.

“Ryou-kun! Come over and meet our cousin!” She calls.

Ryou looks up from his small garden and then sets aside the spade he’s using. “I’m coming, Tama-chan.”

“Hayaku! Hayaku!”

Ryou carefully puts the small marigold plant into the ground and then gently covers it with dirt. Tama watches his, almost mesmerized by how gentle he is. Ryou takes off his gloves and sets them beside the spade before joining Tama by the fence. The Muto girl grabs his hand and pulls him into the yard.

“Malik-kun! This is our friend Ryou!” Tama happily introduces. “Ryou-kun, this is our cousin Malik.”

“Hello.” Ryou greets.

“Hi…” Malik murmurs.

Mokuba jumps up on Seto’s back in an attempt to break the awkward silence. “Ryou-kun! We were getting ready to play tag. Do you want to play with us?”

Ryou nods. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

July 7, 1999

“… happy birthday to you!” Kojiro, Kiba, Seto, Ryou, Tama, and Malik finish singing.

“Happy birthday to you,” Tama continues. “You live in a zoo! You-”

-BONK!-

“Play nice.” Kiba says, mentally berating himself for ever teaching his sister that song.

Tama pouts. “Aww, but Mokie doesn’t mind. Do you, Mokie?”

“Hmm… let me think about it.” Mokuba replies teasingly.

Tama can’t resist getting up and hugging her little brother, using her newly discovered puppy-eyes. “I’ll love you forever and ever!”

“Do you have no shame?” Seto mutters while Mokuba laughs and says, “You’ll do that anyway, aneki!”

It’s been nearly a month since Malik first arrived and the boy is almost used to the way things work, but he does get confused easily. He’s no longer as shy around his family and Ryou, although he’s still not used to all of the hugging.

Malik has found Ryou to be an interesting companion to talk to and usually turns to the albino for help when things start getting too weird.

So now it’s Mokuba’s sixth birthday and they’re all ready for a day of fun and excitement. After eating a piece of the pure chocolate birthday cake, they all head to the living room so Mokuba can open his presents.

“Catch, Mokuba!” Kiba calls from across the room before tossing a package to his youngest sibling.

Mokuba catches it and immediately rips off the wrapping paper. Tama giggles when he unfolds a light blue apron and a cookbook falls out onto Seto’s toe. After apologizing to Seto, Mokuba excitedly sets aside the apron and picks up the cookbook. “Cool…” He murmurs, thinking of all the things he can learn to make. “Thanks, Kiba-nii-chan!”

Kiba gives him two thumbs up and then proceeds to hand the gift from Ryou to Kojiro, who passes it to Malik, who passes it to Mokuba. He opens it up to find some homemade chocolate and a book with different dessert recipes.

“Yay!” Mokuba exclaims, falling off the couch and crawling past Seto to Ryou so he can hug the boy. “Thank you, Ryou!”

Besides cooking supplies and food, he also gets a notebook and sketchpad from Tama, the game ‘Trouble’ and a bunch of water balloons from Yugi and grandpa, Seto got him a 1000-piece puzzle and a TY (1) cat, and Malik got him a black teddy bear and a blue bandana.

“And now for my present to you,” Kojiro says. “I’ve decided that today we shall go ice skating!”

“Uh, dad?” Kiba says. “It’s the middle of summer.”

“I know that.” Kojiro replies. “We’re going to an enclosed ice skating rink, so grab your jackets and we’ll get going!”

Malik looks at Tama in confusion. “Ice skating?” He asks.

Tama nods as she gets up. “Yeah. We wear special shoes and then go skating on ice. You’ll see when we get there.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

At the skating rink all of them including Kojiro, get their ice skates on and carefully head out onto the ice.

“The key is to keep your balance.” Tama tells Malik.

“Which is the reason why Tama is horrible at this.” Seto teases. “She has no balance.” He skates off when Tama reaches out as if to hit him, which makes Tama fall face first onto the ice.

Ryou, being the kind boy he is, helps her up. “Tama is right though. Balance is the biggest part of this, so you should do just fine.” He helps Tama away from the wall so she doesn’t fall over again. Slight fear overrides Malik’s other feelings when he finds he’s the only one not out on the ice yet.

Hesitantly, Malik puts one foot on the ice and tests it, as if afraid it will crack beneath him. After a moment he grabs a hold of the wall and puts his other foot on the ice. Again he waits for something bad to happen but when nothing does he lets go of the wall.

Across the room Tama laughs after crashing into the wall while Ryou patiently waits for her to stop so he can help her up.

“Hey Malik, come on out here and have some fun!” Kiba says as he skates past backwards. The show-off.

Malik takes a calming breath and then decides to throw caution to the wind and pushes himself away from the wall. Exhilaration overtakes his fear as he gets the hand of ice skating.

“Hey, Malik-kun!” Mokuba calls, skating across the rink to Malik. “Do you wanna race?”

“Sure.” Malik replies.

“Yay! Do you know how to stop?” The younger asks.

Malik shakes his head ‘no’.

“Well, there’s several ways to stop. You can either slam into the wall like Tama or drift to a stop or skid to a stop by turning your foot- here, I’ll show you.” Mokuba demonstrates the third way to stop, nearly falling over in the process. “That one’s harder to do though, so I don’t use it much. I know what we can do! We’ll race straight down the middle and the first one to tap the opposite wall wins. We can just veer off and not even have to stop right away.”

Malik turns over the idea in his head, wondering if it will work. Deciding that Mokuba knows more about it than he does, he agrees.

Mokuba wins, even after both he and Malik crashed into Tama and Ryou (somehow).

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

There’s just a month before school starts back up and Kojiro has already gotten everything together and has gotten Malik all the necessary shots he needs to be able to go to school. This will also be Mokuba’s first true year of school and he’ll be in First Grade.

By now they’ve dismantled the triple-bunk bed in the Dragon’s Den and instead they have two normal bunk-beds. Malik and Seto share one while Tama and Mokuba share the other. Usually though, all of the blankets either wind up in a pile on the floor of their room or in the living room and all five (six with Ryou) kids sleep all curled up together.

Tonight, however, they’re planning on sleeping in their beds instead of on the floor. Tama’s currently reading one of her favorite books while lounging on her bed, Malik’s writing something, Seto is off talking to Kiba, and Mokuba’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth.

Malik’s writing catches Tama’s attention and so she marks her page in her book and walks across the room and climbs up into Malik’s bed. “Whatcha writing?” She asks.

“Nothing. Just practicing.” Malik replies.

Tama peers at the paper and then looks at her cousin in confusion. “Malik, those are pictures, not writing.”

“This is how I was taught to write. Weren’t you?”

Tama shakes her head negatively. “No.” Something clicks in her mind. “Oh! Those are Egyptian hieroglyphics, aren’t they?”

Malik nods. “That’s right.”

Tama bites her lip. “Umm… Malik? We don’t use hieroglyphics anymore.”

She picks up one of Seto’s books and opens it up to the first chapter. “Malik, can you read this?”

Malik looks at it for a moment. “No… should I be able to?”

Tama frowns as she closes the book and puts it back. “Well, you need to. This is how we write here in England.” She slips off the bed. “Come on. Lets go talk to otou-san about this.”

The rest of the month is spent giving Malik a crash course in writing and reading in English. By the time school begins, Malik has a pretty good grasp on it. At least he can now read and write without getting confused.

-F-A-M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S--F-A-M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S--F -A-M-I-L-Y--B-O-N-D-S-

Words:
Hayaku: hurry
aneki: big sister
nii-chan: brother
otou-san: dad

(1) Not really sure if everyone knows what I'm talking about with the TY cat. Remember the little beanie-critters with the pretty red and white tags with 'TY' on them. Yup, that's what I'm talking about. I still collect those. They're too cute! (huggles)

0-0-0-0

Shiro: It's been so long since I last went ice skating... actually, the last time was my first time. Boy did I have fun...

Bast: Now's not the time for reminiscing, hikari.

Shiro: Right, sorry. Anyway, next chapter they get to go to school and they encounter some problems there. Is it just me, or do I torture Malik far too much in my stories? That poor boy...

Bast: Apparently that's how you show you care.

Shiro: Maybe... hey you know what I just realized? I completely forgot about Kiba's birthday! It's on June 12 and I completely forgot about it! I feel so bad now! I should go apologize... (goes off to apologize)

NEXT TIME: School problems, comforting, fighting, and the principal's office.