A/N: My entry for the YGO Fanfiction Contest (Season 9 3/4, Round 2). Once again, a pairing I've never written, this time with the added bonus of being written a few hours before the extended deadline! I hope you all enjoy it despite itself.

The phone rang. He could hear it through the walls, thin and barely papered. He sighed dramatically to the empty room.

"Always with the timing, this ol' boy."

He emerged from the bathroom with soap on his arms and a towel draped over his head, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Valon, is that you?"

Valon sighed. "Who else?" He raised his other hand to grind the towel through his wet hair. "Course I know who this is. Who else puts so much work into my electrocution?"

"Your what?"

"Corded phones and wet skin out the shower, Al. It's not a good combo."

Alistair snorted. "Yeah, well. That one's all you, jerk. Corded phones? Where are you staying, some flea-trap just off a timewarp to 1985?"

"It's solidly in this temporal plane, thank you." Valon sat back on his bed and cradled the phone on his shoulder. He picked up a bottle from the nightstand and watched a black dot jump off the lamp. "As for the fleas, well. I don't mind a few roommates s'long as they behave."

Laughter. "You're two pegs short of a completed IKEA desk, buddy. Maybe when we were tramping around the wrong side of the law, but you duel on the up and narrow now! You know you can afford better then that."

"Yeah, but old habits die hard, mate. Besides, always a little more exciting for the young lady. Rounds out my bad-boy image."

Alistair grunted.

"Ah, here it is!" Valon popped open the bottle and splashed its contents on his chest – cologne. "You didn't call just to mock out my standard of living."

"No, but it is always a plus." Alistair's turn to sign. "Valon, are you sure you want to go through with this?"

Valon laughed. "Do you know many men who would go to the trouble of crafting a dastardly plan, then go through with that dastardly plan, then cut out at the last possible moment before seeing any of it come to fruition?"

Valon could almost hear the shrug. "Well, had to see if I could try."

"Why are you worried, Alistair?"

"I just don't wanna see you get locked up. Not for something this stupid."

"Stupid? Ten months of flawless execution disagree with you."

"And the girl?"

"What, her?" Valon's turn to snort. "You aren't seriously worried about her. A little piece of fluff. Necessary collateral damage. The needs of the Valon outweigh the needs of the naïve bitches of the world, if you like."

A brief pause. "Aren't you a little worried there might be a hell?"

Valon laughed, and lit a cigarette. "If there is, I'll take you all down with me."

Valon had run with the wrong side of the law, for a long time. Valon had run on the wrong side of God, for a few years. A green rock in the ring around his neck, a motorcycle roaring between his legs, and he thought that at long last he'd arrived. He was The Man. Power in the underworld. Men would want to be him, fear him, women would want to be with him, lust for him.

And then one day his boss gave him a new lead, and at the other end of a long string of connections he found His Woman. A bad bitch with a mouth to match, insanely beautiful. Women wanted to be her, men wanted to fuck her. She was unconquerable.

Except. Except for when he'd found her, after she'd been knocked down in ways unimaginable. Uniquely vulnerable, he saw his opening, and made his move. He would make Her His.

His plan was working beautifully, until it wasn't.

The underworld that gave him power collapsed. His boss was gone, and so was she. Vanished in a poof of green smoke, leaving a letter and a trading card and a promise, a promise he clung to for months while he straightened out. Doing the honorable thing, earning honest money, trying to become The [New] Man he thought she would want when she'd become The [New] Woman. When she'd come back to him.

But he never came back to him. The [New] Woman found A New Man (no brackets), or should he say, The Old Man. One night he turned on the television and saw Mai Valentine in the arms of Joey Wheeler, a sparkling ring on her finger. The two top-ranked duelists, ecstatic. They'd gotten engaged, just in the sightline of the nearest paparazzi.

And it was then that Valon, The [New] Man about town, turned in on himself and found a bit of that darkness that used to define him. He shed his suit and donned an old ring (with a stone that no longer glowed), and got on a motorcycle pointed at Domino City.

Joey Wheeler, the tabloids said, loved his little sister.

Serenity giggled on Valon's arm, laughing at a brash joke he'd just made.

"Val, you're nuts."

"And you love it, baby." Serenity squealed and jumped into his arms, and he didn't miss a beat. A spin, a kiss, a touchdown. Serenity sighed happily, and he knew he was the perfect long-distance boyfriend he'd been for months.

"You know, Joey'd absolutely die if he found out I was coming to this neighborhood for you."

"A little danger never hurt anyone," Valon said cockily. "At least, no one who's walking with me."

Serenity shivered a little bit. Her dress was thin, and the cold and the thrill were giving her chills. "I trust you," she said softly.

Too easy. "So, Ren, did you manage the other part of our little plan?"

Serenity flashed a smile and patted her purse. "There's nothing I can't get out of my beloved brother."

Valon grinned. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Earlier that night, they'd dueled on the motel roof, Valon coaching a shy Serenity through their first duel together. As a busy college student, she didn't keep her own deck, and so had borrowed her beloved brother's deck and disk. Not that Valon minded. Wheeler's deck was easy enough to beat when his overwhelming, unbelievable, incredibly undeserved luck wasn't manning the wheel.

Then there'd been the dinner she'd cooked, and a glass of wine, and a horrible made for TV movie. They'd made it through, joking and laughing and holding hands. And now his plan was coming to fruition.

A scantily clad Serenity knelt over him, face flushed as she prepared to shed the rest of her clothes. After a quick tussle in the sheets – which he doubted would be all that good, it rarely was with virgins – he'd filch Wheeler's deck and trash his duel disk, ruining his chances at winning the biggest tournament of his year, and walk out of Serenity's life forever. Joey's career would take a hit, and his beloved little sister would be destroyed.

And that would show that bitch for knocking him over for Wheeler.

Valon's eyes glazed over, visions of victory dancing through his mind. He lazily reached up to unhook Serenity's bra. Soon the night would be his. Soon—

What was that on his head?

"Freeze, Val."

His eyes bulged. "Ren?! Ren, what are you—"

"You think I'm stupid, Valon? Is that it?"

"Where did you even get a gun?"

"You think I'm an idiot, that you could just play me against my brother, take my body and leave me? You heard my voice soft and sweet in your ear and thought I was just some naïve piece of fluff ripe for the taking?!" Serenity's eyes were ice but her voice was frantic. She shoved the gun against his head, hard enough to leave a mark.

"Jesus Christ!" Valon screamed. His weapons were off, discarded in his clothes across the room. "You're crazy, you crazy bitch, what are you talking about?!"

"You're the stupid one, Valon. You are. You are if you think you could cross me and get away with it."

"What are you talking about—" Valon trailed off, his desperate voice flagging as he noticed the cards spilling out of his pants' pocket. Flame Swordsman. Time Wizard. Red Eyes Black Dragon.

Fuck. Me.

"Who's crazy now, Valon, huh? The chick with the gun, or the stupid fucking idiot who thought he could play the Wheelers for fools."

Valon's mouth opened, but he didn't hear the words that came out. She was going to kill him. His plan was dead already. He fucked up, this one simple thing, he fucked up. He wasn't The Man, and he wasn't going to get another chance at being The [New] Man. Mai was never coming back. She married Wheeler, and now Valon was going to die at her sister-in-law's hands.

What the fuck had he been thinking?

Serenity got off him, pushing the gun against his forehead all the while. "You disgust me. You make me sick."

"Ren, please…" Valon's voice rang out weak in his ears. "It…it wasn't all bad, baby…"

"Oh, no. Not for me. For a while, there, I really did like you, Val." Her voice softened momentarily. "My brother and sister-in-law, the most important people in my world, tried again and again to warn me that something was wrong with you, that you seemed off to them, that they'd respected you once but that now they weren't so sure. But I liked you anyway. I leaned into your kisses and ignored that you were so detached sometimes and tried to silence Mai's whispers about what you might be planning. But bad, all bad for you, yeah, cause I was just a pawn for you, after all. And it's no fun kissing a pawn, Valon, your heart's never all the way there."

"It wasn't…always like that, I mean—"

"What do you mean, motherfucker?!" Serenity whipped her arm back and slammed the gun into his chest.

Valon shrieked. "Oh my God, get off me!"

Serenity smirked. "You wish." But she acquiesced, lifting the gun.

Valon breathed out, shaking all over. He moved his hand to wipe sweat from his head.

"Not so fast, limp dick!" She squared off, pointed the gun at him, and clicked it back.

Valon screamed again, whipping his hand back down to the mattress.

Once she was sure he was down, Serenity backed up slowly, and sat down in the hotel's one lonely armchair. She poured a glass of wine, slamming the bottle down to the rickety coffee table with an angry pound that made Valon flinch. She slowly sipped the wine. She never broke eye contact with Valon. She never moved the gun.

"Now. Pick up that phone."

After a few failed attempts, shaking with fear and humiliation (were the sheets wet? Oh, god. The sheets were wet.), he managed to grab the phone.

Serenity laughed darkly. "God, corded? What was I thinking, going out with a loser like you." She gestured with the gun. "Call the police." She smiled at the despair in his eyes. "And while we're waiting for them to come put you away – just think, if I hadn't found this gun, your attempted rape might have actually worked – we'll go ahead and give my brother a call. Not enough time for him to actually make it here. Satisfying as it'd be to see him kill your sorry ass again, he's going to be a father soon and I don't want to get him tied up in anything he'd regret."

Valon would have cried if he remembered how. He dialed a 9, and a 1, and then looked up at Serenity.

"I never thought," he said dully. "I never thought, you…"

"Yeah, well," she laughed again through a bubble of wine. "I guess we're all bitches in the end."