After staring at the lapis lazuli for a tad too long, Sasha finally tears herself away to give some of the other artifacts her undivided attention. The gem-colored pages of that manuscript behind her beckon for her to come over and to trace those gorgeous words as the hours slip away. Yet, her mother's whisper tickles within her ears, causing Sasha to perk up. Even with the scuffle of other people's shoes and the mingling of voices in the air, it's easy for Sasha to pinpoint the place to her side where her mother walks towards her.

The click of her mom's heels against the linoleum tile echo among the other footfalls. Her mahogany lips purse in restrained distress as her dark eyes focus right on Sasha. She whispers Sasha's name again, as if she's trying to only draw the attention of her daughter and nothing else.

Years ago, when her mother last looked like that, there had been an accident with one of the artifacts and one of the interns disappeared only to show up in an obituary a week later.

This time, who knows what happened this time, but Sasha rushes forward. The mumbled insult of the guy she bumps into sounds far louder with her hearing now capturing almost every word, every rustle of cloth of the people in the aisles around her.

She could probably pick up the rumble of traffic outside if she stopped to listen hard enough, but right now her mother's fear scent curls in Sasha's nose and her mom's heartbeat echoes in Sasha's ears out of rhythm with her own.

"Mom, what's wrong?" It can't be another accident, can it? All the problematic artifacts are sealed up properly, and there isn't any new intern to open up the wrong box.

Her mother smiles, a shaking mimicry of comfort that fails to hide her fear. "Nothing, it's, I need some of your help in my office right now."

Ms. Morioko might be the linguist here, but she's also something else, something far more important to keeping the museum safe to the public. Her skills in curse containment and breaking surpass anyone else that Sasha knows, so there's no way she'd be asking an inexperienced high schooler for help. None whatsoever.

"Mom? What's happening?" Sasha tries again as her mother's hand encircles her wrist and pulls her along. She could stop, and her mom wouldn't even be able to move her an inch. But Sasha lets herself be led instead. They walk past the unaware people and then through the employees' only door leading to the well-lit hallway that glints too brightly in Sasha's eyes. When her mother's hand jerks as it tugs Sasha's arm, the sensation barely pings onto her awareness.

The walls are too bright, the runes agitated and simmering with barely contained fury. The weight of power in the air stops Sasha in her tracks.

"Mom?" Her own plaintive voice barely reaches her ears.

Her mother's head whips back around, dark wide eyes darting past Sasha's shoulder as if something might be lurking there.

Instinct drags Sasha's own focus back. Her nostrils flaring to catch the scent of the threat while her eyes see nothing behind her. There's nothing visible down the hall, even if her nostrils catch a whiff of something.

Is that smoke? Is something on fire? No, Mom wouldn't be taking me back here. That'd be dumb.

Sasha turns back to her mother who's as frozen as a deer that's caught the odor of the wolf.

"Mom, I'm smelling something weird." Her words snap her mom right out of her immobility, and she grips Sasha's wrist tighter as she gives a tug. Sasha follows her mother's pull, and it isn't long before they're behind the shut door of her mother's office. The click of the lock sends a ripple of blues and reds tracing themselves along the walls before sinking back into invisibility.

Her mother never locks her office like she does now. The seals along the walls are downright dangerous once that piece of metal in the door slides into place.

"Mom? What's going on?" comes out too high-pitched. Sasha didn't mean to sound like that. Her mom's scared enough as it is, but she needs to know what's happening. Not knowing makes the anxiety tighten her throat and sharpen the nails—claws—at the ends of her fingers.

Her mother doesn't answer. Instead, her hands come to cup the sides of Sasha's face as she drinks in her daughter's features.

"It's fine, you're going to be fine." Her mom's smile wobbles worse than before.

She's not going to answer! Sasha knows that there's stuff that her parents don't talk about. She knows that, especially when her dad comes home swamped in the chemical stench of soap that fail to completely drown out the coppery scents clinging to him.

It's fine. There's stuff they won't tell her about because she's a kid or whatever. But something happening now, and that's different. It's stupid to keep her in the dark about it.

With her mother's trembling traveling through her jaw, Sasha grips the woman's upper arms.

"Mom," she says, even if she really, really doesn't want to, "if you need to take care of something that's fine. I'll stay right here in this room. You're the best curse breaker here, they need you."

They don't need you to babysit me, curdles bitterly unsaid before Sasha swallows it down and smiles steadily at her mom.

With misty eyes, her mom nods shakily. "Okay," she whispers. "Okay," she says again, her hands sliding to Sasha's neck and slipping away, her fingers' absence leaving cold trails behind.

Even with this hesitation, her mother turns quickly, unlocking the door and leaving Sasha behind.

------------

This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.

The thoughts pelt Sasha's mood in time to the scuff of her shoes on the carpet as she paces. It's been five minutes, tops; but she can't stop herself from circling her mom's desk with her minuscule reflection following her as she passes the snow glob perched on the corner.

Veering off to skim by the bookcase again, the titles scrawled in various languages blur as she speeds by.

She shouldn't be in here. Sasha should be out there, patrolling with her father down the aisles of the museum or carving sigils and glyphs with her mother. Instead she's in here, not even able to clench her hands properly in frustration lest her claws cut through her palms.

This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.

She passes right by the door again, her nostrils flaring to try to pick up that strange scent from before. It wasn't like smoke but it was in a strange indescribable way. It's not like it even burned her nose or anything. It was almost like it wasn't there, but it was. She smelled it!

Urrggg!

Footsteps, light and near imperceptible tread through the hallway outside. Sasha freezes, her ears prickling to capture every footfall. Nostrils flaring again, this time she does catch an actual human scent as whoever walks quickly by...

The door's open before she even realizes it. The metal handle warm under her left palm while her right hand grabs ahold of tan fabric and yanks the boy inside.

She hears him sputtering in surprise as she slams the door shut, blocking out the sight of angry glow of the hallway runes and locking her mother's safeguards back into place.

Breathing in deeply, Sasha turns away from the door, facing the wide green eyes of the boy who stares at her. He hasn't straightened out yet from where he regained his balance and managed not to stumble all the way to the floor, so Sasha ends up looking a little bit down in one of the only instances where a boy's been shorter than her since the start of high school.

"Hi." Her voice comes out a little breathless as she gives a little wave. Maybe the lack of air comes from the way his soft white hair frames his face to soften even his expression of surprise. Or maybe it comes from that brief instance when she worried that the next obituary she'd read would be about a boy who walked down the hallway at the wrong time.

His stare isn't meeting her eyes, but rather he watches her claws that are still held up in the air.

Her hands whip behind her back, out of sight and out of mind...

Oh, who am I kidding? He totally saw those.

"Um, you're not a normal? Right?" If he is, she can just pretend it's cosplay or some weird, tricked out manicure.

Ryo Bakura straightens out as he watches her. That surprised look slipping away into that neutral expression he had when they first talked. "No, I'm not normal." He tilts his head slightly, his eyes narrowing. "Why did you pull me out of the hallway?"

"It's not safe. I mean, there's kind of a situation right now as you can tell with the glowing runes of doom." She wrings her hands behind her back until her claws nick the skin.

Damn it, retract already!

He's staring at her again. Pale green irises pretty even with those narrow eyes. And then their edges soften while he smiles, Sasha's heart fluttering at the change.

"I was fine, on my way out actually, but thank you for your concern."

Deep breaths, Sasha—wait, no, normal breaths, Sasha, otherwise he'll think you're weird for taking in air like that.

"So, do you know what's going on out there?" And then the worry and frustration come back, rolling over her and stifling the smile she was giving Ryo.

"I believe your museum director, Mr. Kanekura, mishandled something he shouldn't have."

"Oh," Sasha deflates because of course it'd be Professor Kanekura who screwed up at the end of the day.

Ryo's eyes flash with interest. "You don't seem that surprised."

"Um, well, he's a normal person, so he really doesn't know about a lot of this stuff..." It's weird, even the archeologists that don't have anything intricately different about them compared to a normal person have at least some inkling about the strangeness that exists in the world.

Professor. Kanekura though...maybe he's just lucky to have never encountered anything to shove the existence of magic and monsters right in his face...or maybe he isn't that lucky after all.

"Is Professor Kanekura okay?" He probably isn't, but Sasha needs to know.

That neutral expression of Ryo's shifts. It's just his eyes, but he looks interested in the way that Sasha does when she spots the neighbor's cat wandering around the streets at the wrong evening of the month and she has to look away, swallowing down saliva as she thinks of anything else but that stupid tabby.

"He looked a little unsettled, but he seemed fine enough. Fortunately for him, the protections of this place are quite thorough." Ryo's faint smile appears as Sasha's heart flutters strengthen into a steadier beat that shoves adrenaline through her veins.

He looks away from her, studying the walls of the room as if he can read the invisible carvings beneath the surface. "I have to say. It is quite ingenious, placing an ignorant buffoon in charge of the museum while having another carve out the protections of this place." His tone carries threads of amusement as his eyes roam over her mother's work.

"I can't exactly challenge him to a Game for control over a fortress that he doesn't even know how it runs. Yet," he smirks at her, a sharp glint of canines catching her gaze, "your mother's practically the hired help, so going through her is pointless. She lacks the authority to strip away in the first place."

He gives her a sharp, keen look. "You don't suppose she'd know how to unthread those protections? She did build them up in the first place, so it naturally follows that she be able to tear them apart."

The walls of the room lack the red and blue glows that should have come alive as Ryo spoke. As Sasha stands stock-still, the shadows rest opaquely under the boy's feet even with the overhead light above making it too bright for them to be that dark.

"By the way, did you have a guess yet as to what my name meant? I'm curious to see what you've come up with. Who knows, perhaps you've even come close to its true form."