Chapter Text
“What the fuck do you MEAN we’re last minute additions?!” The brother shouted, having jumped to his feet after the feeling of dread that came over the two of them subsided enough for either of them to move. “If we don’t do it, we’ll not only be known by the entire world, but ridiculed by everyone for being the only contestants to Not arrive!”
“Are… are we really that surprised though? I mean. Got isekai’d, usually that means plot involvement whether you like it or not,” Kat said, shrugging apathetically. “Might as well happen.”
Rai sighed and planted his ass back down into the couch. “Is there a participation prize at the very least? Someone had to get knocked out first, and as far as I remember the most they did was fade into obscurity rather than be the butt of every joke from then on…”
Kat glanced across at him. “You suggesting we throw the tournament?”
“Well, now that you say it out loud… Honestly still kinda maybe. At least then we won’t be kidnapped every third day and dangled over a pit of piranha infested alligator shark water. Or lava. Or acid, or just tossed straight up into hell…” he replied, leaning back in the couch a bit with his arms crossed slightly.
She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad. The shadow game bullshit only happens if you have Millennium Items at stake - which we don’t - and the rest only happens like… a few times. And the rest only happens on occasion, we should avoid it just fine if we dodge Yugi.”
“And if we don’t?”
She shrugged. “Then we still won’t die. He’s got Plot Armor, and it extends to his buddies. Honestly we might be safer befriending him than anything else."
“Guh, stupid isekai moral dilemmas, to follow the whims of plot and be assured in your foreknowledge, or change things for the better or worse…” He said, fist clenched in front of his face as he got up. “The question still stands though, was there a participation prize?”
“I’unno. Don’t think so? I haven’t seen the anime in fucking forever, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t.” She snickers a little at his dramatics. “Really the only thing I could maybe think of would be, like, minor plot relevance maybe?
“Right, it's not like they actually already sent the…” Rai said with a joking tone before trailing off. Spotting a grey box on the kitchen counter with the Millennium Eye printed on the side as a logo. This in turn prompted Kat to look over, out of curiosity if nothing else. “Well, teach me not to tempt fate… huh."
“...Dueling gloves, probably.” She sighs, unsurprised but still a bit annoyed.
The box was already unsealed, so it was just as easy as pulling the satisfyingly smooth top off the base to behold the pair of right handed gloves within. The large metal base around the wrist actually being some kind of shell with an engraving of the name of the duelist it was made for on the underside. Picking Kat’s glove up, Rai felt the weight of it in his grasp, tossing it up and down in his hand as a small grin crossed his face.
Without looking, he tossed the glove into his other hand and threw it towards the couch, closing his eyes and looking down with a smirk like he had entirely meant to do it. When he looked next, he saw that Kat’s hand was lifted up, having grabbed the glove right out of the air. “Little warning next time, maybe?"
He blinked at her statement, still grinning. “Well, did you need one?” He said, gesturing to her hand, still holding the thrown glove. “Ugh this feels so contrived, I can’t even fucking play and I'm being dragged into this too…” He said, idly putting on the glove. Perfect fit, of course. “Ok, as creepy as it is, Maxy does good work…”
She leers over the back of the couch, putting her own glove on. “Okay. One, don’t call him Maxy. Ew. Two, I can teach you how to play if you want? At least a little bit. I’m not the greatest ever at Duel Monsters - don’t keep up with tournament meta or anything - but I sorta understand it.”
“Fine, but I reserve the right to think of another weird nickname later.” Rai said, crossing his arms. “Alright, it's been a few years since I last saw early series Yugioh, how did they go about the game in the first season again?”
“Uhhh. Badly, for the most part. Like, ok, game mechanics weren’t fully set in stone yet, a lot of card effects just straight-up ignored or used incorrectly, lots of cards that are now BANNED outright because of how Fucking Busted they are in practice, approximately 10% common sense at any given time, constantly found themselves 'backed into corners' for Drama even if they had an obvious way out, aaaaaand kinda just did whatever looked cool.” She pauses, considering this. “No real strategy at all, for the most part… even Yugi and Seto weren’t actually very solid. I bet I could come up with a better deck, even with the limited cards of the early game. A lack of archetype support might be a pain but it probably won’t matter if we’re close enough with Yugi either way…”
“Huh… Well I think I’ll pass on the tutoring then, at least for now. Sounds to me like the power of bullshit seems to pull through more often then proper strategies do. And knowing what I do about Joey… Yeah that tracks, didn’t he only have monsters in his deck in the first few seasons? And Still consistently get into the finals in basically every tourney he entered?”
“Nah, he used a spell card halfway through season one - Shield and Sword, I think. And his battle city strategy relied mostly on gambling, spell and trap cards included. Also, he has Dumbass Logic Luck, ergo he wins. Because funny, improbable nonsense makes the show interesting.”
“So we’ll need to test the various bullshits before we do it so see if we’re working with worldwide improv or like, trope world or something… Hey wait I wasn’t actually paying attention, when did they say duelist kingdom was again?” He said.
“Uhhhh. Two weeks? Yeah two weeks. We got time.” She considered the level of Bullshit that’s usually pulled in this series, then the level of Bullshit Rai usually manages to pull off. Yeah, that’ll work. "I think I know what you're getting at, but I'd prefer to stick to strategy myself. Think I'll check out a deck-builder site and see if I can schrödinger's deck my way into not paying to make it physical. Better cards, if I can pull it off."
“Oh like saying 'Hey I have this card already' or something then checking a card to see that you did indeed have that?” He asked and suggested at the same time. “Think we can do it with food too? Like say ‘Oh hey remember all those awesome snacks we got and put in the pantry, and all the incredibly delicious meals we prepped to make later in the week and put in the fridge yesterday?'" He continued, opening the fridge door for emphasis without actually looking inside to see the thing practically full to bursting with tupperware containers and plastic bags full of premade food. “Would be cool to be able to do, but would it actually work is the question?” He said obliviously.
Kat raised an eyebrow, seeing the fridge actually filled with tasty meals. “Might wanna actually check the fridge,” she said with a snicker. “Schrödinger method it is.”
He opened the fridge with a raised eyebrow, jumping back in an anime fright pose and letting out a manly yelp as he saw the fridge completely full with all the food that the two of them ‘had prepared’. Recovering from the surprise, he went over and opened up the pantry as well, the moment he did 12 different massive party sized chip bags fell out onto the floor, having been unopened. “...That’s so cool… What the fuck would happen if I said something like 'you remember how we escaped hell?' or some shit, does it have to be the end of a statement?"
She blinked once, twice. "Hm. I don't... I dunno. My guess is just. Put enough 'yeah this is true trust' into the statement and it becomes true. Probably helps if we both add to it. Like... 'oh, yeah, glad we got out of hell, good thing we can hide our demonic features.' Or something. To follow that line of logic." She shrugged again, settling back on the couch and pulling out her cellphone. "Gonna look for a deckbuilding site now, I've got some Ideas."
"So we're 'Yes, And'-ing the universe... Improv really is the most powerful superpower oml frfr," Rai said, using the letters instead of the words on purpose and nodding to himself. Pulling out a few of the tupperware containers and some of the chip bags off the floor "...Aw shit we should have done something with like the magic bullshit to make a self refilling pantry and fridge… Probably only works for the first time we do it"
"Too late for that. We can live with it." She realized something, fueled mostly by the lack of the typical fluffy presence she's used to. Ash was a very affectionate cat, after all, and usually hung around her. If they could effectively retcon things into existence… "...Hey, we should probably find a catsitter for Ash while we're at the tourney, yeah? Bowling ball needs her food still. Gods know she’d be pissy if we just left here here alone."
“Huh?” Rai said uncomprehendingly as his sister spoke those words while the fat grey tuxedo cat known as Ash hopped up onto the back of the couch, out of his view from the hallway.
“YES! Hi ash, hi babey, baby kibby…” The cat was very much not a baby, being an absolute chonk of a shorthair cat that meowed very loudly in response. “Meow! Yes, meow. Hi.” Ash meowed back again before dropping into Kat’s lap, purring. “Yessss!”
There was a bit of a stifled cough back in the kitchen as everything suddenly became covered in cat hair retroactively.
Kat very quickly realized what she forgot. “Oh, uh, you aren't allergic anymore remember? You fixed it." She didn't bother elaborating, instead focusing on petting the now-purring fluffball in her lap and trying to free her phone from underneath her without disturbing her beloved cat. (Because, of course, Ash sat on her phone in true Adorably Annoying Little Bitch fashion.)
“Y-yeah… Just, reflex…” Her brother said, walking up and petting the cat a bit, pulling his hand away and staring at it expecting to see anime style instant allergy symptoms only for nothing to show up. “Hey, so how long did the Duelist Kingdom boat ride take?”
"Uh... they slept right? Like one whole night I think. And the actual island is more of a camping thing so we should prep for that."
"What do you mean, we keep a whole storage room with random shit already prepared just in case for bullshit like this." Rai said, leaning over the edge of the couch with a shit eating grin plastered across his face. As the couch was lowered down two steps though, he was basically on his knees to get the effect right.
“...Well played.” Ash also meowed appreciatively, thought that may have instead been because Kat got distracted and stopped petting her.
“Well whatever the case if we win we're putting all that money into Industrial Illusions and Kaiba Corp right? That's just a good investment since the stock price will balloon once Battle City is announced.” Rai said, standing up from leaning over the edge of the couch and walking around to the stairs into the lowered den to hop onto the couch again.
"Oh yeah, sure. Maybe be careful considering the whole Situation at the end there with Mr. Platinum Blonde and Bitchless - I dunno how much of that fiasco will end up in the public eye but I also don't remember how that arc ends in general. We should probably go back and rewatch it, actually... might help." She managed to free her phone from under the kitty finally, returning to the website she vaguely remembered her friend Oliver mentioning once - he actually played the card game competitively, so it's probably a solid resource right? "Dueling Nexus" seemed safe enough save for the ungodly amount of ads.
"Even if Pegasus's dirty laundry of being a psycho gets out the stocks are still gonna fly to the goddamn moon, worst case is we get fucking rich and just buy a private jet to get out of Domino," He said, moving a hand over to pet the cat without having to worry about hives springing up all over his body for once. "Now what though?"
"…I was talking about Marik, but that too I guess. Lotta crazy going around." She glanced back at the fridge. "I was gonna deckbuild, but… does food sound good? We got meals for days, so."
"Fuck it food sure, we got anything for the demon cat we brought with us still?" It was a blatant usage of their new shared narrativium powers, a light prodding to enhance the cat so that they didn't have to deal with most of the downsides of a cat this opinionated. "Because there's no way she's a normal cat," He continued, clearly assuming his words to be any kind of subtle in the slightest.
She raised an eyebrow, but decided to roll with it. "Uh, should be fine with just the kibble and treats in the cabinet. Smarter than most cats, sure, but she's not picky about what types of food she gets at least." She gently nudged the furball out of her lap, eventually freeing herself from Kitty Prison, but could have sworn that Ash was… pouting at her? Huh.
"At least we were smart enough to know not to let her get into the grimoires, we don't need an opinionated yuumi clone here and all." Rai got up off the couch, picking up the cat in a funny manner and bringing her over to the kitchen. Checking under one of the counters on the main counter island and grabbing one of the slightly expensive cans of wet cat food. Having to go back and grab four more of them once he saw a kitty death glare being tossed at him by the floofer sitting pretty on the countertop. "Fuck, I said opinionated…"
"She's always been like that," Kat chuckled. "She's a smartass, but she's a sweetheart beneath it all. And smart, too, little shit knows how to get what she wants."
"Only reason she's stopped speaking to us is she knows if anyone else hears her they'll force her to do person things, like file taxes, and get a job." Rai easily clipped open the cans of food and dug them out into a human person bowl with a fork, immediately assuming that even attempting to use a pet bowl would result in multiple perforations in his flesh. (He was correct.)
Ash growled, sounding suspiciously like "stupid fucking IRS" before digging into her food. Kat side-eyed her for a second, unsure if she'd heard that correctly, before finally getting up from the couch. "Gods forbid she has to pay taxes, I barely know how to do that."
"Fuck… We have to learn how to pay taxes…" he sighed, "Oh well, tax evasion it is. We could probably just duel the tax man to get out of paying at this stage of world obsession with a children's card game."
"…I don't know how to feel about the fact that you're probably right." Kat rummaged through the fridge, grabbing a couple tupperwares to reheat. "Speaking of. I still need to figure out what I'm gonna run with, considering we're going to a stupidly important publicized tournament and I don't feel like getting my ass kicked on live TV or whatever. We're the underdogs, seeing as we have no prior standing, and if we're stuck here I'd like to at least be considered decent."
"From the way our narrative powers are shaping up, being the underdogs here basically guarantees that we'll make it to the semi-finals at the bare minimum. That's just how it goes you know?" Rai brushed the soft fur of the demon cat as he spoke. "I don't even know what kind of deck I run, but I at least hope the monsters I have are cool and epic rather than soft and cute, though some can slip in here and there I don't mind."
Ash leaned into the pats, while Kat raised an eyebrow, plating the food and putting it in the microwave. "There are plenty of adorable little critters that can kick absolute ass, y'know. Marshmallon, for example. Or Yugi's Kuriboh combos. In fact, there are entire archetypes based on being Little Guys that are actually really good in the meta. Hell, most decent archetypes don't even look very monstrous!" She paused. "Though, this early in the show, most of those less intimidating monsters are wildly underestimated…" Gears were turning in her head, but she was interrupted by the shrill BEEP indicating their food being done.
"Well there's the Michael Wave, waving me over to collect the Michael." He picked up the steaming hot bowl of food with his bare hands. "This thing is like 200 degrees and I picked it up without feeling anything."
"That would be the temperature resistance," Kat said absentmindedly, glancing at her phone again. A certain Fairy deck from a fanfic she'd read ages ago came to mind. "Marshmallon, huh…"
"Immunity, never say resistance when you can get away with not having to deal with jack and shit." Placing the bowl of food down on the countertop, a small squeaking sound caught both of their attention as it seemed the bowl was essentially superheated enough to cause a bubble in the foot of the bowl. "Well, you might have fucked us over if we ever wanted to just take a hot tub dip in a lava stream, but it seems that steam explosions are going to be no-selled from now on."
"Probably explosion-explosions too. And fire. Lava would be a stretch anyway, I feel. Also, I'm still not eating that yet." Immunity be damned, mouth burns are no fun.
"No duh explosions too, shockwave immunity, paired with more durability we could get exploded off the side of a building and stand up just fine. Terminal velocity for us is lower than the amount of energy needed to actually hurt us and all."
"Not that that would even matter, considering we can fuckin' fly," Kat smirked. Hopefully, this would all work out to where they could actually pull off a bunch of insane feats. Probably necessary considering they're trapped in the Soul-Stealing Card Game Anime.
Immediately after that statement, the both of them felt a cramping sore pain in their upper back and right at the end of their tailbone. The simultaneous hiss of Ow startling the cat into finally paying attention to them once more as the sister got a mean glare from the brother. "You did it again."
"Godsdamnit," she muttered, realizing that Those Were Wings And A Tail, Weren't They. "I did it again."
