Author's Notes: This is the Yu-Gi-Oh! part of a four-part anime fem series. I will be writing four fem stories at the same time - one for Naruto, one for Bleach, one for Fullmetal Alchemist, and one for Yu-Gi-Oh! All my fanfic writing resources will be devoted to this project. It sounds like a lot to take on, but don't worry. I have it all planned and scheduled out. Over the next few days, I will be uploading the first "introductory" chapter of each story.
What do I mean by "introductory?" I mean that any mangaka is, for their first chapter, allowed at least twice the number of pages a weekly chapter would usually have. So the first chapter of any manga is typically separated into two sections. In one section, the main character is somehow introduced. In the second section, the plot is somehow introduced. How long each section is depends on the mangaka.
So for each of these stories, I will be uploading the "character introduction" and "plot introduction" in separate segments. Character introduction comes first, for all four stories in a row. Then we get to plot introduction in the second chapter of each story in a row. In other words, this is the "character introduction" for my fem Yugi.
A few other notes: This story is mangaverse and in first person. Please do give the first person a chance. It's actually my best point of view. Each fem story title is based off of a song, but this entire project title is also based off of a song. The project is entitled Do It Like A Dude, from the song by Jessie J. Warning - if there even is a non explicit version, they'd have to edit out about half the song. With that said, definitely do check it out.
Without further ado, here's chapter one.
Part 4 of Do It Like a Dude
Kill 'Em With Kindness
"The world can be a nasty place
You know it, I know it, yeah
We don't have to fall from grace
Put down the weapons you fight with
Kill 'em with kindness
Kill 'em with kindness
Kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em with kindness
Kill 'em with kindness
Kill 'em with kindness
Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead now"
- "Kill 'Em With Kindness" by Selena Gomez
Chapter One
The bell rang for lunch at Domino High and school slippers squeaked across the floor as everyone swarmed for the classroom door, past roll-top desks, across linoleum, through standard blue-painted door. "Coed basketball," one boy announced, gathering a crowd. "Hey! Muto! Mazaki! You in?"
Me and my best friend Mazaki Anzu looked up in surprise from where we'd been gathering our things together for lunch. "Sure!" said Anzu, long-legged and sporty with short brown hair. "I'm in! That is, if -" She winced and looked over at me, torn, biting her lip.
I smiled wryly. I felt the usual embarrassment that people had to put up with me, though I was a "tough it out" girl - I never let it show. An instinctive rule-follower and people-pleaser, I said, "Sure. Go ahead. We both know I'm awful at basketball and good at solitary pursuits."
"But Kimiko -!"
"Seriously. Go have fun, Anzu." I had always looked sickly, though I had no documented illness. I was small and spritely with a thin face and pale skin, my black hair streaked red in a bun behind me and my wavy blonde bangs messily framing my pallid features. No good for sports.
"Kimiko, you sure?" said the boy, frowning, holding the basketball.
"Yeah," I said, shrugging, feigning casualness. I suffered in silence, always. "Go ahead."
So the class left out the door with a slam and I remained behind. I sighed and slowly sat down, wondering what to do. After a moment, I began taking things out of my bookbag: gaming with a particular emphasis in video games. I paused at the bottom of my purse.
Then I slowly took out a solid gold box covered in hieroglyphs. The Ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus was carved into one side. I set it down before me - and smiled a little, reluctantly, bittersweetly. The puzzle inside this box had seen me through some hard times. For years I'd turned to it whenever I was feeling down, investing a little bit of my heart into each piece I put together.
"Inside this box is something that can be seen yet can't be seen," I murmured, as always soft spoken but this time feeling a bit cryptic.
"Really?! That sounds interesting!"
I gasped and whirled around as the Puzzle was snatched from my grasp. Jonouchi Katsuya stood there, broad-shouldered, messy blond hair falling into brown eyes, totally obnoxious. I glared as he smirked.
"Sitting in here all by yourself with a box, Kimiko?"
"Give it back, Jonouchi," I snapped, red-faced, standing with my fists clenched.
"Must be pretty important to you," said Jonouchi, faux casual. "To get so worked up about it." He'd been looking for something to really get to me for weeks, and he'd found it.
"Jonouchi, you have no idea how much that thing is worth," I said helplessly.
"Come on, man, give it back." Jonouchi's usual friend, Honda Hiroto, had gotten all up in Jonouchi's face. He was thinner than Jonouchi, but taller, with carefully gelled brown hair. Everyone knew he was into violence and pornography, but he had a chivalrous side and it always came out around me. I guess I looked like I was about to collapse at any second. The big violet eyes and drab sweaters and skirts probably didn't help.
"Shut up, Honda. You just want to help her so you can get underneath her skirt," Jonouchi snapped. My face turned very hot and I stared at the floor.
"You son of a bitch!" Furious, Honda made a snatch for the puzzle box and Jonouchi held it out of arm's reach.
"Wonder what's in here, anyway…" he said, backing up and taking a peek inside.
"Jonouchi, we all know this is a gigantic veil for sexual harassment," I said quietly.
"Of you?!" He scoffed and my humiliation increased. "Look, I only bother the busty girls with spunk, alright? Now I'm not out to be the bad guy here. I think you need help standing up for yourself or the world is going to chew you up and spit you back out the other side. I mean, you're a gamer and you're the girl on robotics team. Freaking robotics. Do you know how much that screams 'beat me up'?"
Jonouchi was from the wrong side of the tracks.
"So I'll cut you a deal. You give me one good punch, right across the face. I won't stop you. And then you get your damn box back."
I took a deep breath. "I don't believe in violence," I said in a tone of false calm. "I may be shy, but I believe in togetherness, I don't believe in fighting, and -" My voice was trembling. He cut me off and I swallowed, hard.
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever -!"
"Stupid. Like you." Anzu snatched the box from Jonouchi on her way by as she breezed back into the classroom. "Stop picking on people weaker than you and beat it! Or are you gonna punch a girl, Jonouchi?" she added mockingly, unafraid and tough.
"... Damn nosy woman!" Jonouchi spat, but he left, slamming the door behind him.
"Here." Anzu handed me the box. Then she turned brusquely to Honda with her hands on her hips. "Get out, Honda. It's girl talk time."
"Hey, I was trying to help -!"
"Yup. And there's a porno in your bag right now, and Kimi's not interested. Get out."
Honda rolled his eyes, but left as well.
"I don't think I'll ever be as strong as you, Anzu." I smiled self deprecatingly.
"Eh. Don't worry about it, Kimi." She shrugged and smiled.
"Why are you back in here?"
"Turns out the boys only wanted us to do jump shots so they could look up our skirts," Anzu said flatly.
I winced and shuddered a little. "Is every teenage guy a total perv?"
"Seems that way."
We sighed and sat down at our desks together.
"By the way, Kimiko… what is that? We've been best friends since elementary school, but I've never seen it before."
"It… well, my grandfather got it back when archaeologists were still allowed to keep some of what they found. It's called the Sennen Puzzle, or at least that's what we call it here. It was found in the Ancient Egyptian ruins of the tomb of an unknown teenage Pharaoh. My family runs a game shop full of rare, unusual, and exotic games and puzzles; you've been to the flat above it, right in downtown Domino City. Of course, my grandfather, the shop's owner, had to have the Pharaoh's Puzzle.
"See?"
I lifted the lid off the box to reveal an intricate gold three-dimensional puzzle.
"It can be seen but it can't be seen. I've never finished it. No one has. See, my grandfather sent the puzzle to all the best minds he could find, with only the stipulation that no computer solving was allowed. No one could solve it. They all sent it back unfinished.
"I found it way back on a dusty game shop shelf when I was about seven and have been trying to finish it ever since.
"Everyone else made a wish on it. The people who tried to solve it. This Puzzle's supposed to be magic." I smiled.
"So what did you wish for?" Anzu leaned back in her seat and grinned.
"... Nothing."
Anzu paused in surprise. I smiled down at the Puzzle.
"I have my Mom, my Grandpa, the game shop, and you as a best friend. I have a home, a school, hobbies. I couldn't really think of anything I wanted.
"I bet I'm the only attempted solver who's never asked this Puzzle for anything. Every time I try to solve it, when something's troubling me… I give it a little piece of myself instead."
I looked up from my ponderings and laughed self consciously. "Pretty dorky, right? To get all sentimental over a Puzzle?"
"... No," said Anzu warmly, smiling slightly with a furrow between her eyebrows. "No, I think that's really admirable."
As Anzu and I were walking off campus at the end of the school day, a big hulking hall monitor called Ushio approached us. He had absurdly thick black eyebrows.
"Kimiko?" he said intently, hands on my shoulders aggressively. "Are you being bullied at school?"
"Uh, I - don't want to talk about my personal life?" I said uneasily, shrugging him off.
"Because I could help you - become your bodyguard!"
"I… don't need a bodyguard. Thanks. Let's go," I muttered to Anzu, and we left. "That was weird," I whispered to her as we walked.
"Super weird," she agreed, wrinkling her nose.
I looked behind me and Ushio was staring after us intently with this weird smile on his face. I shuddered, looked forward, and kept moving.
The Kame Game Shop was a little, eccentrically colored building, its upper story swollen like a pregnant woman's belly. Downtown buzzed and walked by just outside. We entered the shop with a jangle of bells. Mom worked during the day, so it was just Grandpa manning the counter amid the shining glass cases full of all manner of strange, colorful games and objects.
"Ah, Anzu. Your bust gets bigger by the day," said Grandpa cheerfully.
"Ah, Grandpa. You get weirder by the day," she returned.
"Anzu and I are heading upstairs to my room," I told him partway up the staircase. "I'm going to show her more of the Puzzle."
"You still haven't given up on that Puzzle?" he began with an evil grin.
"Oh God," I said distinctly.
"What?" said Anzu, bewildered.
"He's going to tell you all about some crazy story -"
"But Kimiko -!"
"About how all the people who found the Puzzle died mysterious deaths -"
"But I wanted to tell it -!"
"And the last one with his dying breath talked about something called Shadow Games, these mythical magic games from Ancient Egypt that decided the loser's fate -"
"Kimiko, you never let me have any fun -!"
"Then he's going to say the hieroglyphs on the box claim the solver gains the power and knowledge of darkness. Because he wants me to give it back. So he can sell it."
"I thought you'd get bored after the first two weeks!" Grandpa wailed. Then he charged, a wild look in his eyes. "Kimiko, give it back!"
"NO! YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!" And I sprinted upstairs with the box in my hands. Several minutes of shouting and roughhousing and running around the flat followed.
For a portly little old guy with a silver beard in overalls, damn my grandfather was fast.
Anzu and I always had fun during times together.
Anzu took ballet classes and I loved electronic music and modern dance, but Anzu could do my kind of dancing too. So there in my room, we laughed and danced around to electronic dance music in our high school uniforms, twisting our legs and our bodies to the pulsing beat, feeling for once sexy, not a care in the world.
Mom came home, stern as ever, and Anzu stayed for dinner.
That was the last day.