Mai Pierce

Charmaine Champagne

Full(er) Summary: During a recent TCM marathon invited by a lengthy flu, I was fortunate enough to catch one of my all time favorite film noirs, Mildred Pierce, starring one of my favorite old-school actresses, Joan Crawford. And halfway through my enfevered brain had a sudden but compelling thought: Mildred Pierce = Mai Valentine. Needless to say, fanfic ensued. The summary for the original movie (which I obviously reccommend) is as follows:

Mildred Pierce (1945) (Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Eve Arden) - After her husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful, but can't win the approval of her spoiled daughter.

So that, but with Yugioh. To that end, I've sort of tweaked all the characters to make them Mildred Pierce-y, and tweaked Mildred Pierce to make it a little more Yu-Gi-Oh friendly. No card games, though. It would be difficult for Mildred/Mai to handle a duel disk in that attractive fur coat. But anyways, that's what innappropriate crossovers are for.

PROLOGUE

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

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An overview of the city at night. Santa Monica, California, in the mid forties. The glamour of southern California, of old Hollywood, is at its peak. It's an era of glitz and glamour, parties and films, champagne and beautiful people. But there's a dark side too. Shady accounting, lecherous studio heads, conniving divas and golddiggers. All is not as rosy as it seems, especially at one particular summer house, which is by daylight a beautiful house on a Santa Monica cliff overlooking the brilliant blue Pacific.

But now it's night. Now is the time when the dark side of everything can come out and wreak havoc with the beauty of day. The Ocean doesn't look so inviting. It's dark, foreboding. Hard. The house is dark. It may be beautiful when the sun shines and people fill its room, laughing and cheering, but for now...it's dark. And the silence...the silence is palpable. And dark.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Six gunshots, loud and clear, shatter the silence and fill the atmosphere with tension. In the bowels of the darkened house, Seto Kaiba stands, shocked, in front of a mirror, his best tux peppered with holes. He staggers forward, his hair flopping into his face, hands reaching forward. He lurches forward, groping for his assailant, before falling brokenly to the floor, his arms outstretched. A shining silver gun falls to the floor by his side, tossed down by an unseen hand. His blue eyes roll up and cloud over. He rolls his head up, gagging with the shock of the four bullets that made it through his skin.

Everything is a haze to the dying man on the floor. In his last moments of life, he squints and looks up for an answer. "Mai?" he slurs out thickly. Reluctantly, his eyes close, and his head drops down. He's dead.

Everything else in the room looks normal. The suede couch in order, the drinks on the coffee table half full of Scotch, the hardwood floors shining beautifully. But there are bullet holes in the now broken mirror, and Seto Kaiba is dead on the floor. A door slams.

Back outside the house, someone gets behind the wheel of a beautiful shining Cadillac and revs the car forward, driving away from the lush house and the nightmare it contains.

And now down to the Santa Monica Pier, a beautiful place full of happy, shining people and booming restaurants. But not tonight. Tonight the pier is slick with water, treacherous looking and black. Lights glimmer off its surface, highlighting the drama of the unhappy, deserted place.

But no longer deserted. A woman walks down this black, lonely road now. She's dressed magnificently for being in such a sorry place at such a sorry time. A fashionable black dress with padded shoulders clings to her gorgeous figure under the billowing fur coat she clutches around her shoulders. A matching fur hat adorns her head, topping an absurd length of flowing blonde hair. The woman's high heels click soundly as she walks down the pier, briskly, determined. Black gloves steady the hat on her head as a chill wind comes and blows her hair back.

There's a full moon.

The woman looks fundamentally distressed. Her violet eyes glitter with held back tears, her lips, slick with red gloss, tremble as she shakily holds the rail separating her from a steep fall to the ocean below. She looks at the moon and the sky. A sheen of sweat covers her face. She's nervous.

This strange scene does not escape the notice of a cop, patrolling his beat late at night. He begins walking to her, keeping a cautious distance, not letting a move she makes escape his glare.

The woman seems to gain control. A strong looks comes over her face. She sets her jaw, bites her lips, and focuses still glittering eyes on the ocean below. She takes a deep breath, grabs the rail, and propels herself forward.

The cop whips out his nightstick and whams it on the rail. A metallic ringing sound fills the silent air. The woman pulls back onto the pier, shocked. She wrings her hands, looking over at the advancing officer. His shaggy white hair hangs long around his face, bangs hiding his menacing eyes as he reaches the woman and glares at her.

"What's on your mind, lady?" he hisses out in a crisp British accent. Not waiting for her to answer, he continues. "Do you know what I think? I think that you had an idea you'd take a swim."

The woman looks at him mournfully, obviously stretched to the breaking point. "Leave me alone," she whispers.

"Ah, but what you've forgotten, my dear, is that if you take a swim," he points his nightstick at her chest. She eyes it with a glare. "Then I'd have to take a swim. Now, is that fair? Just because you feel like killing yourself, then I have to get pneumonia."

The woman tears up. The cop sighs, lowering the nightstick. "Thought never crossed your pretty little mind, did it? All right. Think about it." He sheaths his nightstick and looks authoritatively at the woman. "Now get yourself home. Go on home before we both take a swim."

The woman's mouth twitches. She's on the brink of tears. She wobbles back and forth, as if trying to decide. But finally she lowers her head and walks back down the pier to the mainland, away from the ocean and the officer.

The police officer shakes his head. "One of these says I will stop being so tolerant of these foolish mortals." A gold pendant shimmers underneath the cop's jacket as he pulls out a notepad and begins to file a report.

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A/N: The prologue is kind of slow, but I promise it gets going in the next chapter. This ends my plea for you to stick around. Review if you feel like motivating me to continue, otherwise, happy lurking and I hope to do business with you again real soon!