#watching city title races from the outside is better than a line of crack

[rainstormcolors]

A post that will only be of interest to maybe like two of my mutuals, but whatever, I want to write it. It’s a summary of the garbage Azureshipping fic I wrote many many years ago, while the dubbed Yu-Gi-Oh! anime was still airing. I included some excerpts from this story as well, though I’ve already shared them with a few of you. This story was never given a title, was never given an ending, is 350 handwritten pages long, and is crap. But I’m very fond of it even still. (BTW, this summary is very -very- streamlined. The work as a whole is a pure mess.)

Kaiba Corporation mysteriously goes under, and Seto and Mokuba are left penniless. I didn’t bother to going into detail regarding this, but it’s implied dark forces are at work. In the meantime, the brothers scrape by, living in a shabby apartment, and Seto seems to have given up. Yugi and Tea visit the brothers and Yugi offers to give them money, to which Seto’s attitude is, “Piss off! I don’t want your charity!” but as Seto’s turned away, Mokuba snatches the money from Yugi’s hand and whispers, “Thank you.” Meanwhile, in his dreams, Mokuba sees strange fragments of the past and the future.

Seto is deemed an incompetent parent to Mokuba by social services and Mokuba is taken away, but Mokuba runs away from the agency and takes to living on the streets for a string of days. A new Duel Monsters tournament is being held in a nearby city and Seto enters, hoping to win the grand cash prize, and is full of misery. Joey and Mai also enter this tournament. Seto and Joey duel, the two exchanging insults, but Seto wins and he proceeds to the finals. (I should mention I didn’t actually write any of the duels in this story. The moves are kept vague.) The final game is between Seto and Mai. Joey’s still unhappy about losing to Kaiba, meanwhile Yugi, “Yami,” and Tea watch the duel silently and uncomfortably. Tea then sees Mokuba in the crowd, watching his brother, and so in that moment she begins to cheer for Seto. Seto wins the duel and Mai doesn’t really seem to mind at all. But Seto isn’t given the prize money, because the tournament’s host has a grudge against Kaiba Corporation. (I don’t give any details for why.) And Mokuba vanishes, remaining hidden in the streets.

That night however, the Millennium Ring takes on a life of its own and teleports onto Mokuba’s body, and Yami Bakura’s energy possesses him. (I was making the Millennium Ring possess random people before DSoD made it cool!) Possessed Mokuba goes to the hotel Yugi and co. are staying in and he steals the Millennium Items, Joey’s deck and duel disk, and Tea’s cellphone, but Yugi and Tea catch him in the act. Possessed Mokuba races off into the night with the pair of friends in tow, when suddenly a man in a truck snatches up Mokuba (such an original plot point) and the Items from the street. The man rushes to an airplane held at the edge of the city, drives the truck into its cargo bay, and it flies off towards Egypt.

At some point around this part I decided this was going to be an Azure romance. While I realized the woman in Seto’s vision during his duel with Isis was far and away most likely not going to actually be Tea, I decided to give Tea a vision of that moment with the implication it’s her.

After finding him, Tea tells Kaiba what’s happened and he’s infuriated. Tea tells him to try tracking her cellphone and he does (just somehow), and they pinpoint his brother’s location in Egypt. Tea has enough money for two plane tickets, and while Seto isn’t happy about it, he needs to rescue Mokuba of course, and so she and Seto go together as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Yugi, Joey, and Tristan explain the situation to Mai and she decides to front the money for the four of them to fly to Egypt on another later flight.

Mokuba is still possessed by Yami Bakura as he’s brought to an underground temple in a secluded corner of Egypt. There are three siblings, who I make it clear care very much about each other: the oldest brother, the middle child who is the head of the group—a woman with short purple hair and wearing a black dress, and the youngest sister who has brilliant red hair and is in white robes. (I was ripping off the Ishtar siblings as villains before DSoD made it cool!) (I’ll also note it doesn’t seem they caused the collapse of Kaiba Corporation from earlier.) I wrote this story before the Millennium Scale was revealed in the anime, and it’s the Big McGuffin here. The siblings are the protectors of the Scale, which is said to be the most dangerous of the Millennium Items. The Scale is welded to a stone and only the chosen one may remove it, King-Arthur-and-the-Sword-style. There’s a prophecy inscribed in the temple walls, which states in part that the wielder of the Millennium Scale will become a vessel to filter evil from the Shadow Realm into the mortal world, and the siblings believe Mokuba is the chosen bearer of the Scale. Yami Bakura is gleeful at the chance to take hold of another Millennium Item but his spirit is unable to budge it, and touching the Scale ejects his grasp over Mokuba’s body. None the less, the siblings jump to the conclusion that they were mistaken, this boy is much too young to be the bearer anyway, and that it must be the older Kaiba brother who is the chosen one instead. Despite being the villains who kidnapped him, the trio are actually fairly hospitable to Mokuba. The middle sister is grouchy about how things have gone, though she’s happy to keep the Millennium Items for herself, and she has the friendly and pretty youngest sister (who is Mokuba’s age at that) take Mokuba into town in the morning.

Tea and Seto arrive at Egypt together and head to the place they’ve pinpointed, and in the town they find Mokuba waiting, and he and Seto have their sweet warm reunion at last. But tensions are high. Tea and Mokuba decide they need to get the Millennium Items back, and Seto agrees begrudgingly after Mokuba confronts him with, “How is it better?! What’s happened to you? You don’t care about anything anymore. […] If you go home I’ll come, but if you care, then help Tea get that stuff back.” Mokuba leads them to the temple in the nighttime and they sneak inside. They grab the collection of Items, but before they go, Mokuba finds himself strangely drawn to the Millennium Scale. It’s as if there’s a magical tug, and he goes to it and nudges it, whispering, “It is me…” before Tea and Seto call him to leave.

(Stuff gets really convoluted at this part and I’m really streamlining it here.) As they escape, Tea loses her sandals. There’s a confrontation with the trio of siblings, and soon Tea and Seto only have the Millennium Rod as all the other Items are stolen back, and the purple-haired woman challenges Mokuba to a duel for some weirdo reason, summoning the Shadow Realm as a test or something. Mokuba duels using Joey’s deck and duel disk but flounders. Tea shouts for Yugi, and with this, thousands of miles away, Yami realizes the others are in trouble. But as Mokuba’s about to lose, Seto uses the Millennium Rod to shatter the Shadow Realm, and so Mokuba’s soul is safe. Seto, Tea, and Mokuba steal the siblings’ car (noticeably not the truck; I don’t know what happened to the truck or airplane) and drive off, back towards the town.

Shadi appears to Mokuba in a vision spouting lofty nonsense about destiny at some point.

At nightfall, Tea and Seto have this embarrassingly written romantic moment:

[from pages 206 to 211; it’s goofy and bad and overwritten and so so so woobified]

““Oof!” she groaned w/ a loud thud, Tea had rolled off her bed onto the floor. There was no difference from when Tea had her eyes shut and when she had her eyes open, it was darker than the pitchest of blacks. “Hrmm,” she groaned rubbing her eyes, she was still very sleepy. As her eyes slowly adjusted, she could see an extremely dim light barely visible to the human eye seeping through the cracks of the flap hung over the back entryway as a tacky, cheap cover. Tea pushed up against the side of her invisible bed to help her stand and from there she felt her way round the tiny room, pushed through the flimsy flap to the outside world which left her totally breathless.

It was beautiful, the sky was speckled w/ what seemed like a trillion stars. Tea had never seen so many stars in her life. Back in Domino City, the bright lights almost always left the nightscape completely starless. Now that she was out in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t a single light source to fade the sky and everything from up in the heavens shown through, and she could see to the edge of the universe. Then Tea saw a dark figure radiating a faint silvery lining. It was Seto, staring off into the unknown. Seto didn’t seem the type to enjoy something as simple yet precious as stars, but this didn’t surprise Tea. There had been enough hints of his fascination w/ the sky. From how he held his tournament on a blimp and a high up tower, to him simply peering out the window as they flew here. Even his favorite duel monster could fly far up into the atmosphere.

She walked over and stood next to him. They didn’t look at each other, they didn’t say anything, there was absolute quiet, but the quiet didn’t bother Tea this time. The 2 just stared off into the silvery-blue desert silently. There was a gentle breeze, a soft whirling sound pierced the air.

“Why are you up?” Seto finally said in a tender voice, his eyes still fixed up to the moonless starscape.

“hmm, oh, I fell off my bed,” Tea quietly replied, “and why are you still up? We found Mokuba and you’ve been awake for several days straight.”

“more like a month”

“A month? You haven’t been to sleep for a month? Is that even physically possible?”

“Unless you count me passing out, yes.”

“Why?” He didn’t say anything, he shut his eyes like he was trying to sleep standing up. Tea looked at him, he was so broken. “Seto? Erk- I mean Kaiba!” she shook her head trying to snap some common sense into herself, “Sorry, I’ve been hanging w/ Mokuba too much and I’m starting to talk like him.” Why do I keep calling Kaiba Seto? I-

“Tea, Seto’s my name,” he reopened his eyes slowly, “you’re suppost to call people by their name. I never got why you and your pals call me Kaiba.”

“Well that is your last name,” she pointed out to him.

“My adopted last name. The name of my evil, wicked stepfather. Don’t even have the company anymore.”

Seto’s stepfather, a topic his mind seemed hopelessly stuck on. It haunted him in ways no one else could ever really understand, as icy essence that would always linger in the back of his thoughts. He was a little boy, the forgotten boy lost in time, forever running from this tangled fear, forever trapped in this endless chase, too afraid to stop and be devoured by this monster locked inside his frigid heart. Too afraid to even look back.

“You really don’t like your past, do you?”

His eyes were hollow and lifeless. Seto slowly rocked his head back and forth, lost somewhere in a numbing trance.

“Was it really that bad for you? I mean if that creep hadn’t adopted you, you never would of…” Tea stopped herself. Since he no longer held the position of president for Kaiba Corp, all the good had been sucked away from his adoption.

“It depends whether you value youth or not. Guess I did. But I just have to put all that behind me.”

“You mean forget?”

“It’s nice for your little friends to spit at me for that, especially when they have no idea what it was like.”

“You’ll never forget trying to forget, because in trying to forget you’ll remember and it will always be there. Don’t try and forget, try and let go,” Tea explained. Seto remained stuck in his daze. “So do you not like being called Kaiba? Besides Mokuba, and me too I guess, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody call you by anything else.”

“It was alright when I owned Kaiba Corp, it was one of my accomplishments, earning that name. But now it shows my failure.”

“If it bothered you so much, why didn’t you tell us?”

“What ever.”

“Ah. Well anyway, why can’t you sleep?” she asked getting back to the point, returning the conversation’s personality back to quiet and mellow.

“I just can’t, I lost my company, I lost Mokuba,” he explained to her.

“Stressed out then?”

“I’m a failure, a throwaway…”

This was not the Seto Tea grew to know, before all this rained down on him, Seto was always going on how much more superior he was to the others, now he was ranting how much more worthless he was. “Oh come now, you’re not a failure. Your company was stolen, I know you don’t believe in magic, but it was some ancient magic power that did this. You’d only be a failure if it was actually your fault, and it’s not. You’re really smart and skilled, I’m sure you’ll eventually bounce back. We’ll fix this. You know what they say, when you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up.”

“And you fall right back down,” he grumbled.

Tea was not getting through to this guy, “What do you mean?”

“What do you care? This is only going to result in one of your long, annoying speeches like it always does.”

“It does not.”

“Oh yes it does. You don’t even know the half of it.”

“Tell you what, if I promise to not say a single thing will you tell me?” she coaxed trying to come to a compromise.

He hesitated, feeling Tea’s waiting gaze upon him. “Look at my life, it’s a disaster, it just goes up and down, up and down, it never stops.” Seto quivered a little as he spoke, “Everytime I think things are starting to look good, I plumbit back down. My and Mokuba’s parents died, our remaining relatives stole our inheritance and then just dumped us off at an orphanage and no one cared for us. I tricked a rich CEO into adopting us and I thought things might change, but he turned out to be a heartless, dictating snake, so I overthrew him and took control of his company. Things were okay for a while, and now this! I have nothing, everyone hates me! My life has been ripped to shreds!”

Tea looked at him, she had never heard Seto talk so openly. His eyes looked so sad. She had known a little about Seto’s rugged past, but for some reason hearing it made her finally understand Seto’s bitterness, his distrust for people. “Everyone does not hate you, what about Mokuba? He doesn’t hate you.”

“Yes he does. And I can’t blame him. I’m a horrible person…”

“He just wishes you’d be more light hearted, try having fun. I mean, why aren’t you ever happy? Try smiling every once in a while.”

“Yes, I should try smiling, who cares how I actually feel? I should just pretend to be happy and smile, even if I’m dead inside, cause as long as I’m smiling everything’s alright.”

Tea thought about that for a second. “Are you really always that unhappy?”

“Speech, Tea. This is turning into a speech.”

“Well I can’t help it, you’re ranting on about how tenuous a life you have, and maybe you’re right, but you’re afraid of your past, you’re afraid of your future, I strongly doubt you like your current position, what is it you want? What would have to happen to make you happy?”

He finally turned to look at her, his deep blue eyes reflecting the dazzling stars. Tea felt a bizzar pull to him, like some force was bringing them together, it was weirding her out. Just a week ago the thought of talking to Seto left a foul taste in her mouth, she had been beating herself up for dragging herself here w/ him. But not anymore, instead of talking at him, she was talking to him, she could see the world through his eyes, everything had changed.

“You promised you wouldn’t say anything,” he gently said.

“Sorry, I forgot,” she whispered back. The 2’s personalities were an absolute contrast, there was no chance of ever hitting common ground, Tea was a jovial, kind-hearted girl, Seto was a bitter, withdrawn boy who lost his place. Still, there was a strong connection between them as they gazed back up into the star-frosted heavens, absorbing it’s pale silver glow.”

That same night, Yugi, Yami, Joey, Tristan, and Mai arrive in Egypt.

In the morning, Seto gives Tea his shoes, and she, he, and Mokuba have a “day of fun” in the town since they don’t know how they’ll get home yet. Seto plays a casual duel with Tea as if it was a lesson. Seto and Mokuba go off together and leave her alone for a bit as well. Later, sitting and watching the sunset together, Seto finally falls asleep and he slumps gently against Tea.

Then Tea’s friends find them and it’s all bustle and explaining things. They decide they’ll make another attempt to re-capture the Millennium Items because this shit is dangerous. Seto leaves them. When Tea meets him later, he pulls out the Millennium Rod from under the bed and asks her why she didn’t tell her friends about it, and she tells him it’s his. He forces it into her hands but she holds it back out to him. Seto then places his hand over hers on the Rod and bends down to her but she stumbles back, saying she should be getting back to the others now, and he lets her go.

Tea, Yugi, Yami, and Mokuba go to the temple and approach the Scale on the stone together (apparently the sibling villains are really really incompetent at guarding it). Tea guesses that Yami is the chosen one and he steps forward, but something feels wrong and evil, and Mokuba begins to see things and is able to read the scripture on the walls. Tea tries to comfort him. Then the purple-haired woman confronts them. She tells the group it’s one of the Pharaoh’s rivals who can pick up the Scale, and Mokuba feels confused as he hears this. She gives them the Ring as a peace offering. She offers to return the Millennium Necklace to them if they would be so kind as to bring Seto Kaiba to her to activate the Scale.

Tea and Yami aren’t sure what to do next, but as they leave with the Ring they find Seto standing outside the temple. As it should turn out, some kind of hallucinatory vision had carried him along with them and he’s just as confused as they are. They tell him about the situation. Mokuba, knowing he’s the only one who can remove the Scale and wanting to put an end to all this, tells Seto to try it. Seto does and is able to lift it with ease, and Mokuba is shocked. (The idea is Mokuba’s nudge was enough to free it, but he didn’t realize that.) The purple-haired woman is ecstatic, reveals that there’s dark magic inside the Item, and she challenges Seto to a duel to claim the Item’s powers. The youngest sister goes to Mokuba’s side. The woman and Seto duel, everyone watching, and Seto wins.

And so Yugi, Yami, Seto, Mokuba, and Tea leave with all the Items in their possession, but Yami and Tea are very concerned. They return to the others, and Mokuba is disturbed as things are explained and considered.

Here’s another excerpt:

[from pages 305 to 316; bad bad bad and overwritten and woobified again, now with terrible melodrama]

“Seto leaned over the sink in the inn’s bathroom. It’s edges were lined with scuz and sludge ringed the foucet, it’s handle was very loose. There was a shower, but it didn’t work. Washing his hair in the sink had grown used to him. He had done it back when he and his brother were living in that broken down apartment of deferred dreams and causes, and at the airport in London while waiting for his and Tea’s plane to arrive, but being without soap he couldn’t get it too clean. He wished the water was colder.

“Seto, are you OK?” Mokuba asked him standing in the restroom’s doorway.

He didn’t look up, “Why?” he said through the dribbling sound of running water.

“Because the girl you decided to f-“

“Mokuba, please.”

“Sorry,” his eyes shifted to the millinium scale that had carelessly been laid on the floor, “Heads up, Joey and Tristan might try to steal that from you.”

“Steal what?”

“The millinium scale, for some reason they seem to think it’ll make you go crazy or something.”

“Idiots. And let me guess, Tea-“

“Did nothing. Talk to her already, or do you want me to do it for you?”

Seto finally pulled his head out from under the grummy, near-broken sink. “Mokuba, you’re not helping,” he said as he squeezed the water out of his tangled hair with his fingers. Then he picked the polished scale off the floor. “See, this is why I don’t make friends,” he grumbled, “I knew this would happen.”

“Seto, you can’t just give up, that’s so unlike you.”

“She’s made her choice, let it be.” He walked out of the restroom, his hair damp and spirit low, “I have nothing, I don’t deserve her care.”

Mokuba stared blinklessly at his brother a bit horrified at what he was saying. Seto walked away and disappeared down the sliver of a hallway.

Hours were swept away never to be retrieve or re-lived again. The brief sandstorm had passed away a short while after noon broke, and the gang would of probably started to head to a city and airport so they could set their sights on home, but w/ this idea an ugly problem showed it’s face. Not even half of them could fit into that pathetic car to transport them anywhere, so for the moment they were stuck.

“OK, here’s my plan,” Tristan announced.

“If it involves leaving Seto and I stranded here…”

“First off, no it doesn’t,” he replied to Mokuba. Everyone was sitting outside in a ring formation, discussing ideas and ways to tackle this issue, everyone except Seto. He was off leaning against the side of a building feeling feverish and soaking in his aloofness. “Tea, did you ever get your cell phone back?” Tristan continued on.

“Umm,” Tea reached into the shallow pocket of her brilliant apple red skirt with grey, yellow, and forest green cross hatching, “yeah, why?” she said as she felt it’s hard, plastic surface.

“Cause we can call someone up then to come and pick us up or drop off another car or something.”

“And who do you propose we call Tristan?” Mai said.

“I dunno, anyone.”

“Yo, Kaiba! Do you have any ideas?” Joey yelled over at Seto, who was nodding off, “Hey, wake up! It’s not night time yet!”

“You always have to find some way to make a nussence of yourself Wheeler, don’t you?” he said, “figure something out for yourself for once.” Seto pushed off the building and walked away wishing not to be bothered anymore.

“Fine! We don’t need your help!” Joey barked at him as he left.

Tea watched as he turned into the building. “Ahh, I have to go to the bathroom.” She hopped to her feet and followed Seto’s footprints that he left in the pale, colorless sand. Mokuba crossed his fingers.

Unaware of the fact Tea had followed him, Seto let himself fall limp onto one of the beds, his worn out body, as weak and tired as it was, had reached it’s limit. How he could stay as perky as he’s been he’d never figure out. He heard someone else enter the room. “Tea?” his heart lifted a bit.

“Um, yeah, Kaiba, where’d you put the millinium rod? Cause the thing of it is-“

*Clank* Seto had quickly pulled it out from under the bed and threw it bitterly against the wall. The loud sound it made as it clashed against the wall made Tea flinch, she hadn’t expected him to throw it. He didn’t throw it at her, in fact he had thrown it at the opposite end of the room from which she stood, sending a strong message.

“Take it,” he spat.

She glared at him for a second, then moved over to pick it up. Right now she didn’t know how the rod’s magic might affect Seto, and it was Yugi’s. It was wrong for her to have handed it over to him to begin w/.

“Tea?” Seto said, his voice had calmed down and now came off as tender.

But Tea ignored him and went back outside. The second she passed through the cloth flap though she stopped and looked down into the millinium rod held in her grasp. What had she just done? Part of her wanted to run back immediately into the room and return it to him. No, she couldn’t do that, what was wrong w/ her? She wished it would just disappear right out of her hand.

“Tea? You took it back?”

Tea shot her head up. There Mokuba stood before her, his glassy, oversized eyes reflecting the deep navy sky painted over w/ pale pink clouds.

“Huh, oh, well it’s Yugi’s,” she said.

“You’re taking it back because you’re afraid he’s evil aren’t you?”

“No, it wasn’t mine to give away to begin with. I’m taking it back because it’s my friend’s,” she told him.

“Seto is your friend!” he cried.

“Um,” Tea became figety and nervous, she squeezed the millinium rod so hard her knuckles turned white, “I have to go, they’re expecting me back you know.” She brushed past him and headed back to Mai, Joey, Tristan, Yami, and Yugi.

Mokuba clamped his teeth hard together. He couldn’t just let it be, this was wrong. “Why are you ignoring Seto?!” he angrily yelled at her.

Tea didn’t even get 6 feet away. She stopped and turned back to look at him, “Mokuba?” she weakly muttered.

“How could you just of forgotten this past couple days?” Mokuba had so many things worrying him, so many thing picking at his stability, but he thought he could finally stop worrying about his brother being friendless. He wasn’t about to let Tea piss it all way. “He opened up to you, doesn’t that mean anything? I’ve never seen him open up to anyone before until now. Why have you just thrown it all away?” He looked at her, hungry for her reply.

“I- Mokuba. It’s really complicated and we just don’t know. I’m sorry my friends don’t trust him right now. My friends and I have been through so much together, I can’t just abandon them,” she explained.

“So you abandoned Seto?!”

She didn’t know what to say. Mokuba was exactly right. “Look, this is really hard for me-“

“-Not as hard as it is for him.” Mokuba cut in, his voice grew serious and low, “No one has ever cared for us before like this, until you. Even when Seto pushed you away, you still stuck by him. And it meant something to him, it really did.”

“Mokuba, what am I suppost it do?! My friends mean more than anything to me and they’re concerned,” she cried, “And I mean more than anything to them. Our friendship is forever.”

“Your friendship with him could be forever too…”

“I’m sorry Mokuba, I just can’t.” She slowly turned back around, staring empty into the ground. But before she could head off anywhere, Mokuba said one last thing that caused her to freeze up.

“He loves you!”

Tea quickly jerked her head back around, “Love? That’s an awfully strong word.”

“Well he does.”

“Mokuba, don’t take this the wrong way, but your brother doesn’t seem the type to fall in love,” she told him.

“I know, and that’s what’s so cool about it. I never thought Seto could grow so attached to someone, but he did, and it’s you!” Mokuba looked pained, she could see he was telling the truth. “He loves you, he told me! It was yesterday, when we went off for a walk…”

-- “Seto,” he said snapping his pendant shut, “I have a question. It’s about you and Tea.”

“What about me and Tea?” he lazily replied snapping his pendant shut as well.

“Are you guys like friends or something? I mean I’ve never seen you like this before,” Mokuba asked.

Seto had his eyes fixed over the sands of the desert as they bathed in the deep orange rays of the sun, “Yeah, well, no one’s ever cared for me like this before,” he replied in a tone that Mokuba never quite heard his brother use before.

“I care,” he said.

“Not like this, this is this is different…” his voice was so soft.

“Oh my gosh,” it hit Mokuba, his later bloomer brother was finally, “You lo-“

“Weird, isn’t it?”

“I never thought I’d see the day where Seto Kaiba falls in love,” he said joyously, “Tell her!”

“Mokuba, we’re going to have to go back to reality eventually. You’ll be placed in foster care, who knows where I’ll be, and once Tea meets her little friends again, she’ll forget about us,” he cooly explained.

“No, Tea wouldn’t do that!” Mokuba argued, “Tell her!”

Seto let out a weak sigh, “We’ll see…” he said, shutting his eyes slowly. --

“… And he was right!” Mokuba cried, “The second your stupid friends showed up you forgot about us!”

“… Seto loves me?” Tea slowly mumbled as if in a dream, and to be honest, not all too surprised to be informed of this.

“Yes, or at least he did. But then you started ignoring him,” he said calmly, “Tea, I understand that you would care much more for your old friends than you would ever for Seto, but you mean so much to him. Very few people have ever gotten to his heart, in fact there’s only 2, me and you. But once you’re there, trust me on this, you’re never coming out. You know, I always knew eventually down the road you’d be forced into choosing, but I thought it’d be Seto’s doing, not your friends, what does that tell you about them?”

“Mokuba, it’s not like that!”

“Are they really your real friends?”

“You know how close we are, of course they are!” she growled disgusted.

Mokuba paused, he paused for a long while, staring longlingly into her eyes. And then he walked away, off towards the rising silver sliver of a moon.

Tea watched him as he shrank away into nothing, she was alone now, left to think over everything that had just been told. The millinium rod was a retreat, for her to compare the Kaiba she once knew to the Seto she now knows. Tea stared into the gold for several minutes, studying the warped reflections. Her decision was made as she remembered she was wearing Seto’s shoes. He had been walking around bare foot this whole time.

The sun was swallowed up by the earth, a few white speckles had been sprayed into the deep heavens. The clouds that hung in the sky had transformed into a brass color, it was pretty.

“Where the heck is Tea?!” Joey grouched.

“Calm down Joey, girls always take a long time in the bathroom.”

“Hey!” Mai spat at Tristan, who snickered.

“She’s probably off talking to that brat Kaiba again. What the heck is going on with them?” Joey grunted.

Yami? It was Yugi, his spiritual essence hovered around Yami like a mist.

Yes Yugi? All their talking was done telepathically, both being souls trapped in the same body.

Don’t you think it’s kind of mean to assume Kaiba might go crazy from the millinium scale? Yugi had been neutral since the start of all this, in fact the truth was he was rooting for Seto. And Yami had been neutral too up until this morning, but something changed.

These items are dangerous. We have to protect Kaiba and Tea too. Yami replied.

Who do you think you’re kidding? This isn’t about us and Tea, this is about you and Tea. Ever since we saw them watching the sunset you’ve been weird. I can see your thoughts. I think you’re jealous.

Jealous?

Can you admit it or not? Talk to her.

I can’t.

Why not?

Yugi, I live inside a piece of jewelry, just a spirit who takes temporary control over your body. I’m not even sure how long I’ll be here…

What will it hurt? Hey, you 2 have been through so much together, how could she reject you? If it calms you down, I’m for it.

Different parts of Tea’s head pulled her different ways. Eventually Seto had come out of the room. If he had seen her, he gave no acknowledgement. Up against the grit wall, Tea just observed him for a minute. Once again she found him staring up into the sky speckled w/ silver. She walked up silently to him.

“Seto?” she barely murmured. He didn’t look back at her. “Seto?” she repeated, a little louder this time.

“So you’re calling me Seto again?” he finally said, his voice cold and dead.

“Well that is your name,” she playfully replied, but it was obvious Seto was in no such mood.

“I’m not sure I want you calling me by that anymore.”

She held out the millinium rod to Seto, despite the fact he wasn’t facing her, “Here, take it,” she insisted, “I didn’t give it back to Yugi. You don’t take back a gift.”

Seto stood stiff, still staring into the sky’s great vastness. Everything became a shade of blue as the stars and moon cast majestic silver shadows over the earth.

“Mokuba said you loved me.”

“Did he?”

“You’re not angry at him, are you?”

“Why would I be angry at him?”

“Because he either lied to me or spilled out your secret.”

Seto finally spun around to her, “Is it really that big of a secret?”

Tea looked away, “… no.” She already knew, ever since she first cheered for him when he dueled against Mai, she felt something changed. That was the turning point. She looked back over at him, “Seto, I’m sorry. It’s just- my friends just appeared out of nowhere, and you guys kept fighting over nothing, and they got worried about these stupid items and prophecies, and I didn’t know. We’ve been through so much, but th-“

“Tea, stop talking.” Seto took 2 steps towards her. She found herself staring into his eyes. She had never noticed before how they changed color. Sometimes they looked turquoise, other times they were almost lavender, now they were very distant and dark. Hope lived in them again.

And that left her to think about yesterday, when they almost- If her friends hadn’t suddenly shown up, would she have gone through w/ kissing him? The more she thought about if she’d have done it, the more she saw herself doing it.

He was so close to her, it should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t.

Are you sure about this? Yami asked Yugi.            

What are you afraid of?

They were slowly traveling over to where Tea had vanished off to. Yugi and Yami at this point had figured that, being gone for as long as she was, Tea had gone off to Seto. But they were OK w/ this. Yami just wanted to get the facts known and get the facts out there. What was Yami so nervous over? It’s not like Seto had any romantic interest in Tea…

Yami froze, and from a distance watched the lip-locked couple numbly. Yugi was in shock as well.

… that’s… interesting…”

I know there are about 35 more pages to the story, but it’s at this point when it begins to fizzle out. It’s more that it takes that many pages for the story’s thrust to finally die.

I wrote this story during a dark place in my life and it became a kind of oasis for me. I felt alone and full of anger and self-loathing, but when I was writing, those feelings dimmed and it was like I could breathe for a moment.

I’m sorry to anybody whose time I wasted with this nonsense, but this was once something very meaningful to me. That’s all.

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Dr Who, Bubbles & Dreams

Doctor Who has finished another season with the biggest bombshell in nearly 60 years of stories. What does this mean? Why is it happening? And why does it taste like caramel and marzipan? Nobody except the leakers could have known what was going to happen this time, and it's more controversial than politics. Doctor Who has time traveled back to the 80s to pick up some plot ideas from the Dark Times between the cancellation and revival.

Hello Ducky, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again. Because a bathtub slowly filling is behind this week's scientific breakthrough. The Sound of Bubbles is key to understanding the physics behind their growth and collapse. Aren't you glad I didn't choose "Where did you come from, where did you go, where did you come from Bubbleeye Joe?" as the musical reference.

And then it's time for Dreams, the newest evolution in a long history of amateur game development tools. Some developers have already been picked up by a company thanks to their work on a No Man's Sky clone. Professor is excited for the resurgence of amateur game development and hopes Dreams will rise up to be the next generation's rapid prototype and release tool.

Dr Who Finale Discussion & Christmas announcement

            -https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/2020/03/01/doctor-who-season-12-finale-2020-new-year-christmas-special-revo/

The sound of…..bubbles

- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sound-soap-bubbles-pop-reveals-physics-behind-bursts

- https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.084502

Next gen making games using…the power of Dreams

            - https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/dreams-is-already-helping-to-foster-the-next-generation-of-game-devs/

Games Played

Professor

- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1064221/Halo_Combat_Evolved_Anniversary/

Rating – 3.5/5

DJ

- SYNTHETIK Arena - https://store.steampowered.com/app/984110/SYNTHETIK_Arena/

Rating – 3/5 

Other topics discussed

Truck carrying toilet paper rolls exploded in the middle of the highway

- https://10daily.com.au/news/australia/a200304ghwdy/toilet-paper-gate-continues-after-truck-carrying-rolls-bursts-into-flames-20200304

Regeneration (In Doctor Who, regeneration is a biological ability exhibited by the Time Lords, a race of fictional humanoids originating on the planet Gallifrey. This process allows a Time Lord to undergo a transformation into a new physical form and a somewhat different personality after instances which would normally result in death.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(Doctor_Who)

Cartmel Masterplan (fan name for the planned Doctor Who backstory developed primarily by Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt, by which they intended to restore some of the mystery of the Doctor's background that had been lost through revelation of the existing backstory.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartmel_Masterplan

Dr Who : Who are the Division

- https://www.cbr.com/doctor-who-season-12-finale-division-explainer/

Section 31 (Section 31, in the fictional universe of Star Trek, is an autonomous intelligence and defense organization that carries out covert operations for the United Federation of Planets.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_31_(Star_Trek)

Bradley Walsh to quit Dr Who after Christmas special

- https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bradley-walsh-set-sensationally-quit-21618111

Dr Who : Series 13 to feature the return of the Daleks

- https://www.cbr.com/doctor-who-series-13-daleks/

CyberMaster (The CyberMasters were Cyber-convertedTime Lords created by the Master from the corpses of all those who had been on Gallifrey when he destroyed the Capitol.)

- https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/CyberMaster

John Nathan Turner (ninth producer of the long-running BBC science fiction seriesDoctor Who. He was also the final producer of the series' first run on television (from 1980 until it was cancelled in 1989).)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nathan-Turner

BBC drama chief: Dr Who will not get cancelled

- https://www.cbr.com/doctor-whos-ratings-are-dropping-but-show-is-in-no-cancelation-danger/

Time Field (The time field was a body of time energy that spilled from cracks in the fabric of time and space.)

- https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Time_field

The Rani (Ushas, better known as the Rani and known more formally as Ushas of Miasimia Goria, was a renegade Time Lord and member of the Deca.)

- https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rani

Jenny (Jenny was the daughter of the Tenth Doctor, artificially created from his DNA when it was sampled by a progenation machine.)

- https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Jenny_(The_Doctor%27s_Daughter)

Georgia Moffett (Georgia Elizabeth Tennant (née and credited as Moffett) appeared as Jenny, the title character of the Doctor Who story The Doctor's Daughter.)

- https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Georgia_Moffett

Chris Chibnall (English television writer and producer, best known as the creator and writer of the award-winning ITV mystery-crime drama Broadchurch and showrunning the long-running BBC sci-fi Doctor Who.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Chibnall

The Slow Mo Guys : Bubble bursting at 18,000fps

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvZ2Z_s4Bo

Tom Scott : Help, My Fusion Reactor's Making A Weird Noise

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrtGp8hv-0Y

PS2 : An important piece of gaming history

- https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-51736665

Unity (cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Inc.'s Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X-exclusive game engine.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)

Blender (a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, and computer games.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)

Kodu Game Lab (originally named Boku, is a programming integrated development environment (IDE) by Microsoft's FUSE Labs. It runs on Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodu_Game_Lab

Garry’s Mod ((often abbreviated as GMod) is a sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry%27s_Mod

Lancing with Myself (TNC Podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/lancingwithmyselfpodcast

Shout Outs

29 February 2020 –Game Developers Conference 2020 postponed - https://www.pcgamer.com/au/game-developers-conference-2020-has-been-cancelled-due-to-coronavirus-concerns/ 

GDC has announced that the 2020 event will be postponed until "later in the summer" due to ongoing concerns about the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak. "After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March," reads an update from GDC's organizers. The coronavirus is also having an impact on events outside of GDC: Sony, Square Enix, Capcom, CD Projekt, and PUBG Corp all pulled out of PAX East. Multiple game tournaments, like IEM Katowice, have also had to deny access to the public, opting to continue as an online only event.

1 March 2020 – Luis Alfonso Mendoza passed away - https://comicbook.com/anime/2020/03/01/dragon-ball-anime-latin-dub-death-murder-gohan-luis-mendoza/ 

Luis Alfonso Mendoza Soberano known mainly for being the voice in the Latin American Spanish dub of teenage and adult Gohan in Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid saga, the voice of Bugs Bunny since 1997 and Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory was murdered in a shooting in Mexico City at 604 Balboa Street. According to local media, the incident was due to "a quarrel for a property" with the attacker. He died at the age of 55.

1 March 2020 – Ghibli art exhibition in Japan – https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2020-03-01/preview-ghibli-theme-park-displays-one-last-time-before-its-2022-opening/.156989

The Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art will hold an exhibit called "The Great Ghibli Exhibit ~Two More Years Until the Ghibli Park's Opening~". It will include display items destined for the upcoming Ghibli Park from June 25 to September 16. The exhibit will be the last preview of the theme park's contents before they move into the park's Ghibli no Daisōko Area (Giant Ghibli Storehouse) in two years. The latest version of the exhibit will also add previously unreleased materials. Entry to the exhibit will cost 1,600 yen (US$14) for a same-day adult ticket, or 1,400 yen (US$13) for a pre-booked ticket.

Remembrances

2 March 1729 – Francesco Bianchini - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Bianchini

Italian philosopher and scientist. He worked for the curia of three popes, including being camiere d'honore of Clement XI, and secretary of the commission for the reform of the calendar, working on the method to calculate the astronomically correct date for Easter in a given year. His deduction of a rotational period of Venus was based on the observation of its surface using a 2.6" (66mm) 100-foot focal length aerial telescope. Today, we know that this is impossible, because of the thick cloud cover on this planet. He also worked on the parallax of Venus, and he measured the precession of the Earth's rotational axis. As part of his efforts to improve the accuracy of the calendar, Bianchini was commissioned by Clement XI to construct an important meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs) in Rome, a device for calculating the position of the sun and stars. Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honour. He died at the age of 67 in Rome.

2 March 1930 – D.H Lawrence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence

English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Some of the issues Lawrence explores are sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". Lawrence is best known for his novelsSons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. In these books, Lawrence explores the possibilities for life within an industrial setting. Lawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships that can be had within such a setting. Though often classed as a realist, Lawrence in fact uses his characters to give form to his personal philosophy. His depiction of sexuality, though seen as shocking when his work was first published in the early 20th century, has its roots in this highly personal way of thinking and being. He died from tuberculosis at the age of 44 in Vence.

2 March 1944 – Ida Maclean - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Maclean

English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society. Between 1920 and 1941 Maclean published in the Biochemical Journal approximately thirty papers, many in collaboration, on her particular interests, namely the role of fatty acids in animals and the synthesis of fats from carbohydrates. She came to be regarded as an authority on biochemistry, and her 1943 monograph The Metabolism of Fat was the first published of Methuen's series Monographs on Biochemical Subjects. She died at the age of 66 in London.

2 March 1962 – Charles Jean De La Vallee Poussin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Jean_de_la_Vall%C3%A9e_Poussin

Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, baron de la Vallée Poussin, Belgianmathematician. He is best known for proving the prime number theorem. The king of Belgium ennobled him with the title of baron. Although his first mathematical interests were in analysis, he became suddenly famous as he proved the prime number theorem independently of his coeval Jacques Hadamard in 1896. He also published a counterexample to Alfred Kempe's false proof of the four color theorem. The Poussin graph, the graph he used for this counterexample, is named after him. He died at the age of 95 in Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels.

Famous Birthdays

2 March 1545 – Sir Thomas Bodley – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bodley

English diplomat and scholar who founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In 1444, the existing university library was augmented by a gift of some 300 manuscripts from Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV; this prompted the university to build a new library above the Divinity School which was at that time under construction. However, during the Reformation of the 1550s, the library had been stripped and abandoned, remaining virtually untouched until the return of Bodley in 1598. The library was later named the Bodleian Library in his honour. He determined, he said, "to take his farewell of state employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford." In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. Bodley began his book collection effort in 1600, using the site of the former library above the Divinity School, which was in near ruin. Although Bodley lived over 400 years ago, modern libraries benefit from some of his ideas and practices. One important idea that Bodley implemented was the creation of a "Benefactors' Book" in 1602, which was bound and put on display in the library in 1604. While he did have funding through the wealth of his wife, Ann Ball, and the inheritance he received from his father, Bodley still needed gifts from his affluent friends and colleagues to build his library collection. Although not a completely original idea (as encouragement in 1412 the university chaplain was ordered to say mass for benefactors), Bodley recognized that having the contributor's name on permanent display was also inspiring. He was born in the city of Exeter in Devon.

2 March 1886 – Willis H. O’Brien – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_H._O%27Brien

American motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer, who according to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history," and is best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949), for which he won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) proposed giving O'Brien an Oscar for his technical effects on King Kong but Willis insisted that each of his crew receive an Oscar statue also, which the AMPAS refused to do, so O'Brien refused to accept the Oscar award for himself.  He was born in Oakland California.

2 March 1902 – Edward Condon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Condon

Distinguished American nuclear physicist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, and a participant in the development of radar and nuclear weapons during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. The Franck–Condon principle and the Slater–Condon rules are co-named after him. During the McCarthy period, when efforts were being made to root out communist sympathizers in the United States, Edward Condon was a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee on the grounds that he was a 'follower' of a 'new revolutionary movement', quantum mechanics; Condon defended himself with a famous commitment to physics and science. Condon became widely known in 1968 as principal author of the Condon Report, an official review funded by theUnited States Air Force that concluded that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have prosaic explanations. The lunar crater Condon is named for him. He was born in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

2 March 1904 – Dr. Seuss – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss

Theodor Seuss "Ted" Geisel, American children's author, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. Geisel adopted the name "Dr. Seuss" as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College and as a graduate student at Lincoln College, Oxford. He published his first children's book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937. During World War II, he took a brief hiatus from children's literature to illustrate political cartoons, and he also worked in the animation and film department of the United States Army where he wrote, produced or animated many productions – both live-action and animated – including Design for Death, which later won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After the war, Geisel returned to writing children's books, writing classics like If I Ran the Zoo (1950), Horton Hears a Who! (1955), If I Ran the Circus (1956), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957), and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). He published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, five feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Events of Interest

2 March 1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute - https://www.wired.com/2010/03/0302b50-nonstop-circumnavigation/

The flight covered 23,452 miles, averaging a ground speed of 249 miles per hour. The modified bomber required air-to-air refueling four times as it flew ever eastward. The airplane was an updated version of the B-29 that had fought in World War II and was close to being obsolete by 1949. Refueling while flying was the biggest challenge of the flight. Though commonplace today, the technique was not widely used at the time. The Lucky Lady II was refueled from its close relative, the tanker version KB-29. Four pairs of KB-29s based in the Azores, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Hawaii were used as airborne gas stations. The Lucky Lady II was actually the second aircraft set up for the around-the-world flight. The first B-50, Global Queen, experienced engine problems after taking off Feb. 25 and landed in the Azores. The jet-powered B-52 bomber erased the Lucky Lady II's record in 1957 with a circumnavigation lasting just 45 hours, 19 minutes. Another B-52 lowered the record in 1980 to 42 hours, 23 minutes. The record still stands today.

2 March 1972 – The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral,Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pioneer-10-launched-to-jupiter

Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet. In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant. In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10 project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having traveled a distance of some six billion miles.

2 March 1978 – Grave robbers steal Charlie Chaplin’s body - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/grave-robbers-steal-charlie-chaplins-body

In one of history’s most famous cases of body-snatching, two men steal the corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland. After Chaplin’s widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, police began monitoring her phone and watching 200 phone kiosks in the region. Oona had refused to pay the ransom, saying that her husband would have thought the demand “ridiculous.” The callers later made threats against her two youngest children. After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics–Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria–who on May 17 led them to Chaplin’s body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from the Chaplin family’s home in Corsier. That December, Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion. Political refugees from Eastern Europe, Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin’s body in an attempt to solve their financial difficulties. Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. As he told it, he was inspired by a similar crime that he had read about in an Italian

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[prixmiumarchive]

Honda Isn’t Good Enough (Gen; Honda & Anzu)

Part 2 of a series of fics cheekily titled It’s Always Sunny in Domino City.

Honda Isn’t Good Enough

Characters: Honda Hiroto, Mazaki Anzu

Rating: T

Relationships: Honda Hiroto & Mazaki Anzu

On AO3 - the best place to read in my humble opinion.

Previous Installment: The Gang Graduated High School

An izakaya on an amber-glowing, rainy street, Domino City, still likely located in Japan

Another shift slowly comes to an end, and Hiroto Honda pushes along a cart that has one squeaky, stubborn wheel. First he goes along the bar and picks up the delicate, short and wide and tall and slender glasses, placing them in a special bin on top of the cart. Then he goes about being less and less cautious with each subsequent part of the job, cleaning up after another night of professionals, young and old, and their dates and coworkers finding a social life after work, away from home. The scent of the remnants of sake mixed with other kinds of alcohol burn at the inside of his nose and he inhales sharply, fighting the urge to sneeze.

Some of the other smells are considerably better – like the pleasant char of chicken on a skewer or delicate pieces of skirt steak in a black, sweet sauce. He isn’t about to steal table scraps, though. He is making a living, and if he wants some of it, he’ll make it and pay for it himself.

Somehow, the thought almost immediately puts him off his appetite. When he has almost finished cleaning up after the last round of customers, he takes a moment and leans with his back against a wall, just to the side of a door where there are no decorations or chairs blocking the way. He looks down along the length of the bar toward the door and down at the low tables across from it. It’s late and very nearly quiet on the street outside.

He’ll be back in school soon – going to college when no one would have ever expected it of him.

He just hopes it isn’t all some big, stupid mistake. It already seems like it might be. A place like this, doing a job like this, seems like the height of where he belongs. And yet, he wants more than that. He looks down and flexes his fingers, feeling a pull here and there where the skin has dried enough to nearly crack – water and dishsoap more a match than some people he has come to blows with.

- - -

An apartment complex on the economical side

On his way home, he is a little startled by the sight of a familiar silhouette outside his apartment. He lives on the third floor of an apartment building, and it’s still pretty bare. He doesn’t know many of his neighbors, and he has been working hard to make sure that he keeps his job once school starts. He has heard that it’s easier than the exams were, but he still doesn’t quite believe that someone isn’t going to show up one day and tell him he didn’t pass after all.

He hangs back just a little as he looks down at Anzu who has sat herself against the half-height wall that makes up the little exterior hallway that leads along the third floor. Her face is illuminated by the blue-white glow of her phone, and she appears to be concentrating on something with a slight furrow to her forehead. Honda’s mind races as he tries to figure out why she might be here so late at night. Most of the things that come to mind are pretty bad. Why wouldn’t she – they – call or text him instead?

He straightens his shoulders and walks along, treading carefully. Over the past couple of years, his life has been strange enough to warrant a certain kind of apprehension when approaching anything out of the ordinary.

“Anzu,” he says, warm and restrained into a whisper at once, making into something of an awkward wheeze. “Are you… are you hurt?” he asks, almost afraid to know the answer. Somehow, that seems like one of the most reasonable explanations for why she would come, alone, in the middle of the night in the first place.

Anzu looks up at him, pupils contracted in the eerie glow of her phone screen until, abruptly, she locks it and it goes black.

“I’m not hurt,” she assures him. “Why would you ask me that?” she asks as she pushes back a little against the retaining wall to her back and gets to her feet. She looks around behind herself and brushes her hand against the back of her skirt and jacket.

“I just figured if you were coming to  me , you know, specifically in the middle of the night that… maybe…”

Anzu makes a bit of a face at him, incredulous and a little cool around her eyes.

He lifts his hands, fingers spread apart a little – surrender.

“I don’t mean it in a creepy way,” he says. Her expression doesn’t immediately change. “... A pervy way?” he tries to correct himself.

“No. It’s just—” She shakes her head and runs her thumb underneath the strap of her bag that rests on her shoulder. She looks toward his door and seems to clear the expression away like he clears the floors of the izakaya at night.

“Wait,” Honda says with a slight widening of his eyes. His hands are up again, and he isn’t sure if he ever lowered them down completely. He feels a little bit numb and hot but only right at the back of his head. “You didn’t come here for a pervy reason, did you?”

“No!” Anzu says, pushing back against his shoulder hard. “I came over here to make sure you’re ready for next week,” she finally announces clearly and decisively. It’s a little loud for his neighbors, and he winces, but he sure wishes that she had said that in the first place. Then he wouldn’t look like as much of an idiot.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, still wincing as he fumbles for his keys and reaches down to unlock the door.

He glances back and forth just over the threshold as he kicks off his shoes in the appropriate spot. He hopes there’s nothing inside that a girl would judge him for. Not that there’s much in general.

Upon entering and kicking off her shoes, Anzu marches into the center of the singular room that makes up most of the apartment and looks at him expectantly.

“So… you wanted to make sure that I had school supplies in the middle of the night?” he asks.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Anzu replies. She steadies her bag against the front of her body and rifles through it, looking through papers she has apparently been carrying everywhere since they received them at their orientation meetings. They share a lot of the same classes for the first year, at least.

“You don’t think I can do it, do you?” Honda asks, figuring that it is the only reason she would worry enough to stay awake and make her way all the way from her parents’ to this side of town. He sighs and pushes himself up onto the counter next to his refrigerator.

“What?” Anzu replies – politely, he guesses.

“You don’t think I’m smart enough... I don’t blame you,” Honda admits, kicking his feet lightly. He looks at his dark socks at the way the material reflects the low light in tiny, silvery lines.

“It’s not that…” Anzu says, but he hears a hesitation in her voice that he figures is hard to explain any other way. He keeps watching the slow movement of his own feet. He only realizes that they had still been in the dark when Anzu goes over and switches on the one lamp he has set on his one, small desk/table/flat surface near his bedroll that’s still laid out in the corner. He blinks at her and the light. “I just… didn’t think you would be the one – the only one, I mean – I was getting ready to do this with,” she admits as she takes a few steps closer to him and the counter.

“You and me…” he muses, an echo as he thinks through what she must mean, frowning a little. He clears his throat as he takes another stab at it. “You… mean that Yugi and Jounouchi decided not to go,” he finally concludes.

“Yeah,” she replies softly, her gaze softening with it. She seems relieved that that he said it for her. He gets it. She probably feels a little less like she’s saying she’s disappointed that it’s him that way. Her shoulders drop, but he smiles against it.

“I surprised me too,” he says with some amount of weak, possibly ironic pride.

“I just always thought Yugi and I would…” Anzu says. She trails off, and Honda thinks she might be embarrassed. If she is, he doesn’t really get why. She knows what she wants, and everyone else knows what she wants. He figures that might actually be a nice feeling. He thinks about it for a moment. He tries to think of something to say to finish it for her.

“Do everything together?” he asks. It isn’t meant to be suggestive. Instead, it’s all-encompassing and with a little bit of cautious hope. She gives him another look, and he can see her searching more seriously. After a moment, she stopped looking like she might reach out and take a swipe at him.

“... Yeah,” she says. She looks back at his barren apartment, and he stops thinking so much that she’s looking for something to nitpick about his hardly necessary housekeeping. “Can I stay here tonight?” she asks.

Honda widens his eyes. He slides down from sitting atop his counter and his feet hit hard against the half of the apartment floor that’s covered in vinyl. He opens the refrigerator as casually as he can and snatches out a bottle of soda. He touches it against the side of his neck. It’s shockingly cold, but it is something to do with his hands.

“Sorry, Anzu. I’m… really sorry, but am I getting mixed signals here?” he asks. He swallows hard.

“No,” Anzu says. He thinks she’s aiming to give him the singular signal of giving him a heart attack when she drops her bag to the floor with her back to him and begins removing some part of her clothes. He exhales again when he realizes it was just a sweater. “I can sleep on the floor,” she says, mercifully oblivious to his crisis of faith. “You’ve got room,” she remarks, a little dryly.

“... Yeah,” Honda agrees. “Yeah, I do,” he repeats. He feels almost a little giddy for a moment. “Why, though?” he asks when he remembers what an odd request it is and that he has the power to grant it.

Anzu starts to fold her sweater into a roll and slides down against the wall, more than an arm’s length away from his bedroll.

“No, you can… take that and I’ll take… the pillow?” Honda offers, walking quickly over to the bedroll and taking up his pillow by the corner of its case in compromise. Anzu pushes herself up again and gives him a skeptical look.

“You sure it’s clean enough? I don’t want to sleep in a week-old puddle of your drool,” she remarks.

“It’s clean!” he promises. “Besides, you’re the one who wanted to stay. I’m trying to be gentlemanly,” he explains with a soft touch to his chest.

“Okay,” she agrees, sitting down on the bedroll and twisting at her waist as she manipulates her sweater into a pillow of sorts. “... I just don’t want to go home,” she says.

Honda remembers his first suspicions that Anzu would only show up if there was something wrong - something a person like he was wired to be could fix. He shimmies down the wall with his pillow and hugs it for a second. He watches her and wonders if he should ask, but judging by the determined look on her face, he decides not to risk it.

“You can have the bathroom first if you want to,” he offers – still trying to be nice to her, gentlemanly or not. “You know, in case you have to do lady things.”

“Like what? Wash my face?” Anzu asks as she rifles through her bag.

“Yeah, lady things like that,” Honda agrees. He gets a sly smirk on his face. “You know, so it’ll be nice and clean when you drool on your sweater.”

Anzu rolls her eyes, and he isn’t sure if he sees a tightening of her little fist or a rude gesture as she closes the bathroom door behind her.

#yugioh dm #yugioh fanfiction #yugioh fandom #honda hiroto #mazaki anzu #anzu mazaki #hiroto honda #yugoh #myfic #mine #long post /

[arosegardenofstories-blog]

Project Churchill

Hey guys!  This is a new project I’m working on for my writer's portfolio.  The working title for the story is Project Churchill and it is about a murder mystery that takes place in Baltimore, Maryland.  Please feel free to give constructive criticism and feedback.

Synopsis: Detective Minna Churchill is one of the best P.I.s the death and crime ridden city of Baltimore has to offer.  But when Jill and Howard Miller ask Minna to find the murder of their twin children Grahm and Ainsley; Minna for once is at a loss for ends.  Between plot holes in the Millers’s story, ruin ins with the notorious Black Gorilla Family, and mysterious late night phone calls that lead to great leads, dead ends, and suspicious relatives; Detective Churchill will have to draw her own plot lines in the case of the Miller twins murder.

Chapter 1

Smoke.  I wake up to the smell and sight of smoke everywhere.  The scent is nothing like Granddad’s cigarettes.  No, this smoke is much heavier.  It’s suffocating, making the air thinner and harder to breathe.  I pull the covers up over my head and roll over on my side to try and escape the smell, thinking maybe it’s just a part of some weird dream.  But it only makes it worse.  I feel like there’s some type of weight on my chest, like an elephant, weighing my chest down; making it impossible to inhale.  This must be what people with asthma experience during an attack, I can’t imagine ever having to live in fear of this feeling, knowing that at any moment it could creep up on you and you’re totally unprepared to handle it.  I sit up and swing my long legs onto the floor and stand.  For some reason the floor is hot and I know it’s not because of my cheetah print onesie.  I turn towards my mirror and see that it’s completely covered in a thick layer of fog.  I rush over to the door to tell Mom and Dad that the furnace must be acting up again, but when I touch the door handle it burns.  

“The hell?”

I drop my hand from the handle, cradling it against my side.  When I reach up to open the door again it bursts open and I see Mom standing there, holding what looks to be like wet rags or towels in her hands.  She pushes one of them against my mouth and nose saying,

“There’s a fire! Breathe into this!”  

She took my hand and we rushed down the steps.  We get down to the bottom of the stairs; the wooden floor boards are hot, even through the fleece of my onesie.  Down the hallway I see the door to Dad’s study is thrown open.  I can see him rummaging through all his old books, looking for something.  But why?  He should be with us heading to the door, getting away from this fire that is already too hot and getting even hotter.  I move the rag away from my face,

“Dad,” I cry, “come on!”  I hold my arms out to him, as if that would be enough to call him to my side.  

“Sweetheart,” he yelled over the sound of the flames “go with Mom I’ll meet you outside.”

“Dad, you have to-”

“Go!” Mom cried as she pushed me toward the front door pressing a button on the security alarm on the way out.  Mom pulled me out to the front yard onto the wet grass.  Frost, I realize.  The grass was frosty, but I felt hot and cold at the same time on this December night.  

“Minna,” Mom turned toward me gripping my shoulders, “stay here.”

“What about Dad?” I ask, trying to push past her and back into the house, but her grip on my shoulders was too strong.  I stayed right where I was.  

“I’m going back in to get him.  But you have to stay out here where it’s safe.”  She looked over her shoulder toward the house.  “Wait for the fire department to get here.  They should be here any minute.”

“But you-”  

“Wait for me Minna! I promise I’ll come back.”  She pulled me close and kissed the top of my head.  

“I love you.” She whispered.  

And just as quick as the embrace came it was gone, and I watched as Mom went running back into the flames.  I waited; it was all I could do.  God damn, what the hell was taking the fire department so long to get here? They were only two blocks away.  Around me the smoke got heavier.  Our neighbors had come out to see what was wrong.  Some of them were trying to put the fire out in vain with one of the garden hoses.  I watched too stunned to move as I watched the roof of the house start to cave in.  Good God I had to get to them.  I had to save them before it was too late.  Or if not that, die with them as that was a better idea than watching them die in front of me.  I made a rush for the open front door, but someone, Mr. Wright, I think, held me back, keeping me from my parents.  

“Mom! Dad!” was all I could scream as I watched the roof finally give out and smother my parents.  

    I woke up to the sound of my own screams.  I looked down and saw that I’d managed to get myself tangled up in the blankets again and I’d sweated through my new pajamas.  I looked over and saw that my alarm clock read 3:30 A.M.   What a coincidence, that’s the exact time my whole life went upside down.  The time I realized that parents are not something to take for granted.  The time I realized that bad things really do happen to good people.  But most importantly that God isn’t always watching; if He was, my parents would be alive.  

I detached myself from the bed sheets and heavy quilt, throwing them onto the other side of the bed, the heat and weight of them bearing too strong a resemblance to what I felt that night.  I turned onto my side and breathed in deep and slowly to steady my breathing and racing heartbeat, just like the doctors taught me to do so many years ago.  I felt my breathing return to normal but the taste of fear was persistent in my mouth.  I reached over to my nightstand and reached for the glass of water just to the left of the clock.  I sipped on some of the water hoping to get that terrible taste out of my mouth.  As if waking up in the middle of the night wasn’t enough I missed the night stand as I go to set my glass down, causing water to spill everywhere.  

“Shit” I muttered as I sat up, giving up all hopes of going back to sleep as I got up to get a towel to clean up the mess.  

I walked across the hall, into my bathroom, using the nightlight on the wall as my guide.  I look in my linen closet and grab an old towel.  As I  started my way back to my room I was jolted to a stop by my appearance.  

In the mirror I saw that my face was clammy.  My hair was a mess and I figured my scarf is somewhere tangled up in the sheets.  Puddles of sweat could be seen under the arms of my flannel shirt.  Suddenly I was aware of the stench that was coming from them.  Holy hell I looked a hot mess.  

I knew that I should probably call Aunt Lottie to let her know that the dreams are becoming a lot more frequent, but I won’t.  She has enough to worry about with the kids she’s working with at her school.  I cupped my hand underneath the faucet and splashed some water on my face.

“Pull yourself together Churchill.”

I cleaned up the mess as best as I could.  Seeing that I was up and moving and sleep didn't seem to want to come back to me, I decided to clean myself up some.  I pulled off the flannel and used some of the wipes on the dresser to rid myself of the smell of my sweat before I pulled on a tank top.  Suddenly my phone vibrated and flashed on the nightstand.  As I looked at the screen I saw it was Mr. Easton, my newest client.  Good lord, its 3:30 in the morning shouldn’t he be asleep?  But then again I wasn't asleep either.  

When I first opened my P. I. business, “Clues and Rumors” I never expected to have clients trying to get a hold of me at the ass crack of dawn, even if I am a night owl.  I really need to change the hours on my sign and business card.  

I opened Easton’s text that read:

“Tracked Claire to some parking garage by the harbor.  Bet she’s with “him” again.”  

Honestly I didn't know why Mr. Easton hired me, if he could do my job himself.  If you’re able to track your wife’s phone from across town, why are you texting me at 3:30 in the morning, to tell me where she is, when you go simply bust her yourself?  I debate whether or not I wanted to be a troll and exit out of his text before the message changes to read, or actually help the man.  The message changed to read, and just like that, as if he was on standby, which he probably was, Mr. Easton sent me the address of his wife’s location.  Well, I guess doing my job wins.  

Unplugging my phone from the socket I walked into the kitchen, charger in hand, turning on the lights as I go, to boil some water for tea.  It’s only 3:40 and I already knew that that morning wasn't going to get any better.  I put the kettle on and went back to my room to slip on a pair of black leggings and pull on my combat boots.  I looked at myself in the vanity on my dresser; I had no idea what to do about my hair.  I did the easiest thing that came to mind, pulling it up into a messy bun, leaving the bangs I’m growing out to flip over and secure with a bobby pin.  I absently grabbed a bandanna and tied it across the front of my hair and over the pins to hide them.  I gave myself one more glance over.  

“Not bad for a rush job.” I assured myself.

I reached the kettle just before it wined, begging for the heat to be turned off, and grabbed  my biggest to-go cup and two tea bags.  I could tell I was going to need the extra caffeine; and I was right.  I poured the water, sugar, and honey in and let the tea steep as I went to pull on my leather jacket and gloves and drop my phone and its charger into my purse.  

Grabbing my purse, cup, and keys I grumbled to myself,

“This had better be worth it.”      

#myroses #projectchurchill