((Here it is folks! The BIG finale! The moment you have all been waiting for! I hope you all have enjoyed this first story in my "Classic Tales Retold" saga and tune in soon for the next installment in the series. Anywhose, here is the final chapter in "Bakura: Dead and Loving it!" enjoy!))

Kaiba and Atem stand with lanterns in hand in front of the asylum, looking around the grounds desperately until Yugi and Mokuba run up to them.

"We searched every inch of Carfax Abbey…" Yugi pants heavily, trying to catch his breath.

"There wasn't a trace of him!" Mokuba's body shaking as he looks up at his brother and Atem, "What are we going to do?"

"I-I don't know!" Kaiba clenches his teeth and racks his brain as he tries to think of something to do to save his daughter. Atem meanwhile looks around for anything to give him an idea and his gaze rests upon the window of Marik's cell above them.

"Marik…"

"What about him?" Kaiba frowns at Atem, not understanding his thought.

"We must release Ishtar from his cell!"

"Are you crazy?"

"Listen Kaiba, Marik called Count Bakura his master!"

Yugi thinks for a moment until the obviousness of the plan dawns on him. "I get it: when he escapes, he will go straight to Bakura!"

Marik yelps as he is thrown into his cell by Kemo, who glowers at him from the doorway.

"By decree of Kaiba, my hair is keeping you here until you rot!"

Marik falls onto his bed and starts crying onto the pillow as the door slams shut behind Kemo. A second later however, the door re-opens and the agent grins happily at him.

"By decree of Kaiba, my hair is letting you go!"

"L-letting me go? Why? How?"

"Good behavior!"

Marik frowns, puzzled by his response, "But…I've only been here for a few seconds..."

"Well for those few seconds, your behavior was very good!" The agent responds by picking up the confused Egyptian and starts walking out of the asylum with him. As he opens the door, he throws Marik onto the ground before closing the door behind him.

As soon as Marik hits the ground, he recovers and starts running. "I'm coming, Fluffy!"

After a few steps however, he stops as a thought crosses his mind. "Wait a minute…I know what these morons are up to. They want me to lead them to Master Fluffy…I must outsmart them!"

Marik looks around quickly and proceeds to run in circles, jump into bushes, and move his body awkwardly. Grinning madly, Ishtar cackles with glee from his….amazing plan…and runs out the gate.

"Foolish fools!"

The second Marik runs out, Atem, Kaiba, Yugi, and Mokuba peep out from behind one of the statues.

"Gentlemen," Atem smirks. "We should feel fortunate…"

"Why, Atem?" Mokuba asks.

"Cause Ishtar is a complete idiot…" Kaiba face palms.

At the abandoned chapel…

Marik Ishtar runs up the steps to the heavy wooden door and puts his hand on one of the handles, ready to open it. Before he does however, he turns around to make sure no one followed him and does a victory dance as he sees no one, opening the door and running inside.

"Master Fluffy! I have arrived!"

Count Bakura turns on the staircase he is on with Tea and lets her continue to the attic above without him, waiting for Marik to approach.

"Were you followed?"

"No need to fear, I led them in the wrong direction! Those imbeciles have no idea where I am!" Marik gleefully grins.

"He went into the chapel! Hurry everyone!" Kaiba's voice calls from outside, making Bakura's eyes narrow to slits and glow blood red at a now sheepish Marik.

"You bloody barmpot*! You led them right to me!"

Marik falls onto his knees, crying for forgiveness as he grabs Bakura's leg like a child. "I'm sorry Master! Punish me!"

Bakura growls as he tries to pry Marik off. "Get off, Ishtar! Lead them away from me or something. I don't have time for this!"

"But I deserve it; I failed you! I'm a useless, fool who has betrayed you! Hurt me!" Marik grabs Count Bakura's cape and pulls it, trying to aggravate him into punishing him for his mistake.

Bakura glowers at Marik before he snarls, grabbing him by the throat and hoisting him up into the air, slowly crushing his windpipe. After a bit, Marik asks Bakura to stop but it is unheard by the Count as he takes his frustrations out on his poor minion. Finally deciding to let him go, he turns to continue up the stairs as Marik tumbles down, ending up unconscious on the ground.

Yugi is the first that opens the door that Marik had come through and seeing Count Bakura nearing the door to the attic, he points upwards at him with fury.

"Bakura! Give Tea back!"

The Count responds by looking down at him and bearing his fangs with an evil hiss before slamming the door behind him. Kaiba and the others run in behind Yugi and follow him up the stairs, only stopping when they bang into the door.

"The door's locked!" Kaiba grunts as he slams his shoulder into it to try and break it down.

"Put your backs into it!" Mokuba cheers from behind Atem as Yugi and Kaiba begin pounding on the door with all their strength.

"Mokuba…" Atem looks down at the boy and places his hands on his shoulders, kneeling so they are eye to eye. "When we go in there, I want you to stay out here and watch Ishtar over there. If he wakes up, he may help the Count and make this a lot harder."

Mokuba considers Atem's plan and he nods seriously. "I promise he won't get past me!"

Inside the room, Count Bakura stands over a now unconscious Tea, the Millennium Eye glowing on her forehead as she lays in a white coffin. Softly, he moves her hair and necklace away from her neck, only stopping to look back at the door with a bored expression.

"Your friends and family are too late. Soon, you shall be my bride for eternity…"

He opens his mouth and hisses with an evil glee as he nears Tea's throat. Just as he is about to bite, the door bursts open and Kaiba and Yugi fall on the floor with Atem close behind. Seeing his foes, Bakura snarls in anger and advances to them, his eyes burning with rage. As Kaiba rises up to attack Bakura, the Count grabs his arm and crushes it in his hand before throwing the screaming asylum owner against a wall.

Yugi is the next to attack, but he skids to a stop as Bakura picks up a beam of wood and throws it at him with a roar. He ducks, the beam sailing over his head and hitting Kaiba in the chest, knocking him out cold.

Atem, realizing that with brute force they were outmatched, runs to a corner of the room where a pile of wood and other things laid and finds a cross among the rubble. He picks it up and thrusts it into Bakura's face, making him hide his face behind his cape with an agonized growl and back away from the professor and Yugi.

"Yugi, now! Grab a stake, a sharp wooden stick, anything!"

Yugi scrambles for a sharp piece of wood and finds something that looks like a stake, advancing to the Count with the weapon held high above his head.

"Good work, now drive it through his black heart!"

Yugi goes to stab the Count, but in his rage Bakura raises his hand and grabs the stake, breaking it in two while kicking Yugi away. With a snarl, he turns and whacks Atem across the face with it, watching with glee as the cross breaks on the ground.

Laughing demonically, Bakura grabs Yugi by the throat and raises him above the ground so they are eye to eye. "Arrogant worm; you are in my world now and you will never leave this attic alive!"

He tightens his grip, making Yugi's eyes roll backwards as he struggles to breathe.

"And when you are dead, I shall take the one you love the most! There is nothing you can do to stop me!"

Bakura's laughter is cut short as he feels something kick him in the shin. Enraged at the thought of who would dare attack him head on, he glares at a terrified Mokuba and advances toward him. Seeing his chance at the grip being loosened a bit, Yugi raises a hand and pokes Bakura in the eyes, making the Count scream in pain and drop Yugi onto the ground.

Roaring with anger, he backhands Mokuba and stomps on Yugi's chest, hissing with satisfaction at his feeble struggling.

"For that, young Yugi, you shall watch as I take your beloved Tea and consummate our marriage!"

Atem holds his head and shakes it a few times as he recovers from the blow, staring upwards with horror at what may be Bakura's victory. Out of the corner of his eye however, hope springs within him as he spots a ray of sunlight coming through a crack in one of the boarded up windows. As quickly as he can, Atem runs to the window and pries off one of the wooden boards covering the window, a beam of sunlight hitting Bakura in the face.

With a roar of pain and agony, Bakura glides away from the sunlight and holds his face, a faint smoke cloud hissing from his wound.

"What's wrong Count Bakura, sunlight bad for your complexion?"

With an evil grin, Atem opens the shutters on another window, basking The Count in a full cone of sunlight. Bakura screams as his body smokes and hisses, almost catching on fire from the light. In his pain, he looks upwards and spies a single patch of shadow in the rafters and as a last resort, transforms into the white Dark Bat.

"Grab him! We cannot let the spawn of Anubis get away!" Atem runs forward and leaps at the Dark Bat but misses as it flies just above his head. Yugi and Mokuba both try in to catch him, but the bat soon flies up into the shadow, a sigh of relief seeming to escape its mouth.

"Where is he?" Kaiba moans as he sets the beam aside and gets up groggily.

"He's up there, Seto!" Mokuba points up to where the Bakura went.

"We must catch him or all is lost!" Atem growls in anger as he looks up at the bat, hearing it chuckle at its luck.

Just when all seems lost, a part of the roof opens and the face of Marik Ishtar peeks through the hole.

"Fluffy! This way, escape through here!"

As the bat looks upwards to congratulate his minion, he realizes all too late that Marik is outside and the sunlight hits him in the face, knocking him off his perch with a screech. Falling to the ground, The Count's shrieks turn into human screams as his body catches on fire and starts to turn to ash. With his last ounce of strength, Bakura looks upwards to Marik and screams with rage.

"Marik, you asshole!"

Atem, Kaiba, Mokuba, and Yugi stare at the ash pile of what was once the evil and menacing Count Bakura with disbelief. Who would have thought that his end was met by his own devices? At the same moment that their battle with the unholy demon was over, Tea gasps and sits up as if she had awoken from a terrible dream. Yugi, the first to hear her, runs to her side and takes her hand gently.

"W-where am I? Yugi, what happened to Bakura?"

"He's dead Tea….and you're free…" Yugi smiles down at Tea and grips the hand tighter.

Before Tea can reply, Mokuba clutches his sister tightly and starts to cry. "I was…so worried…thank God you're back sis!"

Kaiba stood next to Atem, sighing with relief at everything turning out alright. Hearing him sniff, Atem turns to him and smirks.

"Kaiba, are you crying?"

"Of course not; I-I'm perfectly alright…Come on. Let's take Tea home."

Yugi nods and helps Tea out of the coffin, escorting her with Mokuba out of the attic. A few seconds after they leave and Kaiba starts to leave as well, Marik slowly walks in with his eyes full of tears. Sobbing, he kneels next to the ash pile and whimpers like a sad puppy.

"Fluffy…forgive me…"

Finding two wooden boards, the Egyptian gently and carefully sweeps up the ash and puts it in Bakura's open coffin. As Atem and Kaiba watch, Marik makes the ash into a neat little hill and draws a smiley face on it.

"There…you're starting to look like your old self again!"

A tear falls from his cheek and lands on the pile, making it look like the face is crying as Marik closes the lid, sobbing his heart out.

Kaiba rolls his eyes and walks over to Marik. "Why are you crying, Ishtar? Since Bakura is dead, you are your own man again. You're free."

Considering Kaiba's words for a few seconds, Marik stops crying as his eyes go wide and the Millennium Eye disappears off his head. "Y-you're right! I'm me, Marik Ishtar, once again! No one shall ever control me and I will-"

"Yeah, whatever Ishtar. Let's go."

Marik sees Kaiba leave and follows him out, a psychotic grin on his face. "Yes, Fluffy!"

Atem stands alone in the attic and looks around at what could have been his final hours of life. He brought out his Ankh and kissed it, thanking Ra that everything turned out alright. Walking out of the room, he passes Bakura's coffin and stares at it for a few seconds before lifting the lid and smirking evilly.

"(Who has the last laugh now, bloodsucker?)"

( author note: "barmpot" is a british word for "clumsy idiot")