A/N: This is my NaNoWriMo for the year. It's also something I've wanted to write for a long time, because let's face it: there is a lot of badfic in our fandom. If you would like to submit a fanbrat—I mean, a character, please fill out the form enclosed in this chapter. (Seriously. Give me your characters. Anything from well-rounded OCs to the biggest Mary-Sue is acceptable. Please note that I'll interpret the registration forms however I see fit.)
Thank you very much to HereWeGoOnceMore for the beta and for submitting the first character, even though she has absolutely no time. Love you!
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! The original OFU belongs to Miss Cam, and I'm not claiming the idea. Casey belongs to me, and Aurora belongs to HereWeGoOnceMore.
Casey Mardoll was having the greatest daydream ever.
At least, she thought it was a daydream. It felt pretty real, but she was pretty sure that Marik Ishtar wouldn't be climbing through her window anywhere but her imagination.
Then again, if it were her imagination, he would be shirtless.
Mmm. Shirtless Marik.
"Hey. Hey, you!"
Casey blinked at Imaginary Marik, who had managed to make it through the window and was now sitting on her desk.
"Well, hi there, sexy," she purred. Or tried to purr. It came out as more of a strangled whisper.
She was working on that.
Imaginary Marik raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, all right. Look, I have some questions for you."
"Shoot," Casey said, yawning. Damn, how late was it? She'd gotten so caught up in her story about Marik's little sister who saved the world and—
Imaginary Marik (who was really starting to seem not-so-imaginary) pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and stared at it.
"Uh… were you just writing a Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic?"
Casey looked at her computer screen in surprise. "Well, yeah. I have this really great fic going, but I haven't updated it in, like, three days. I'm so behind schedule."
"That's nice. Here."
Imaginary Marik handed her the piece of paper. "I'm going to need you to fill this form out."
Casey took it with a frown. This was definitely not Sexy Dream Marik Ishtar. This was, like, some other form of Marik Ishtar that she wasn't sure she liked. As much.
Well, he was still really sexy.
"Who exactly are you?"
Imaginary Marik looked at his watch. "Uh, Marik, I think. For now. I don't know, you fanbrats have a ton of names for us. Anyway, hurry up, I don't have all night."
Casey looked at the form, picked up a pen, and began to write.
Official Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfiction University Application
STUDENT
Name: Casey Mardoll but you can call me Kaja
Sex: With Marik please. ;) Lol Jk. Female
Age: 14
Species: Human- probably ;)
If human, country of origin: America
Brief Physical Description: Grr I need to lose weight in my butt. But I have a nice tan! And blond hair and brown eyes.
Do you have any fears/phobias/anxieties you feel we should be aware of? Snakes! Ew ever since that episode where one bit itty bitty Marik. Its okay Marik I'll hug you!
Have you ever attended an OFU? No what is it?
Choose ONE luxury item to take with you: My millennium bracelet.
RELATION TO CANON
Do you know anything at all about Egyptian mythology? (Besides what you "learned" from Yu-Gi-Oh!?)Well I've seen The Mummy a couple of times.
Have you read the manga? Lol no
Have you seen the anime? Yes well not all of it just the parts with Marik.
Subs, dubs, or original Japanese? Dubs I don't like the Japanese voices
Have you seen Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series? Omg yes! Screw the rules I have money!
To what extent does Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series influence your own works? All my stories are based off of the abridged series. LK is GOD!
Do you use dub names or sub names? Dub
How do you refer to the Yugis? Yugi and Yami. And I guess pharoah for ancient Yami
The Bakuras? Ryo, Bakura, (or Florence lol) and… Thief Bakura? I don't know… I don't think about him a lot even though he is sexy.
The Mariks? Ok this is getting old. Marik and Melvin
Favorite character(s)? Why? Marik because he's sexy and he has such a tragic past :(
Favorite pairing(s)? Why? Puzzleshipping because they're so cute together! Also thiefshipping! It's canon!
Least favorite character(s)? Why? Tea OMG she's such a bitch. And she's all friendship obsessed its so annoying. Also Mai because she's a slut.
Least favorite pairing(s)? Why? Anything with Tea. I hate her.
YOUR WRITING AND READING
What genres do you write/read? Romance and humor and hurt/comfort. Also poetry.
Have you written for Yu-Gi-Oh! before? Yeah, duh its my fav show.
Do you like slash? Yes! Omg Marik is such an uke lol.
What about het? Eh maybe if Yugioh had any good girls
What about femslash? Is that where you turn one of the guys into a girl? Yeah, its ok.
Genderbending? Didn't you just ask me that?
Do any of your fanfics actually contain Duel Monsters games? No cuz they're boring.
Do you have a good working relationship with your beta reader? Lol beta what's that?
Are you a beta reader? No, seriously what is that?
How long is your fanfiction dot net profile? Um idk a few pages?
How much of that profile is copy/paste stuff? (Be honest.) Lol like most of it cuz I don't have anything good to say about myself.
Do you have an OC? Describe him/her: Her name is Kaja Ishtar and she is Marik's little sister. She wears the millennium bracelet which is a special item that was created later and it has all the powers of the other items. She can tell the future and she found a prophecy about herself that says she has to stop her older brother from becoming evil so she duels him and beats Yami Marik and falls in love with Ryo Bakura on the way.
MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS:
Yami or Yugi? Ummm Yugi. He's a baby panda!
Abridged or Original Series? Abridged!
Which Millennium Item? Well my OC wears the millennium bracelet so I guess that.
Blue Eyes White Dragon or Red Eyes Black Dragon? Blue eyes. Its so cute! I want one for a pet.
Téa/Anzu or Mai? Ew neither.
Do you have opinions on Season 0? What's that?
Joey/Mai or Joey/Kaiba? Puppyshipping ftw.
Bakura—evil or misunderstood? Misunderstood.
Are you here for learning or for smexy Egyptian duelists? Ahahaha do I have to answer that?
By signing this form, I (name), verify that I do not hold the Official Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfiction University or any of its staff or affiliates (a collective henceforth referred to as "OYGOFU") responsible for my injury, eventual or present insanity, death, or banishment to the Shadow Realm. In addition, I recognize that even if I try to take legal action against OYGOFU, OYGOFU's lawyers are more than capable of literally crushing me in any court on, in, adjacent to, or off Earth. By signing this form, I verify that I will complete my training at OYGOFU on pain of, well, pain. I will be unable to leave, even if I want to, because I am the one who signed (most probably without reading) the contract that said that I would stay the duration of the curriculum no matter what. Let this be a lesson to me. I hereby renounce any rights I may hold under my own country's law and give OYGOFU permission to do whatever the heck it wants with me, no matter how unpleasant it will definitely be.
I will not write Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction again until I have completed my training and received my diploma. (Mostly because OYGOFU will not let me.)
Sign here:
Thanks for selling us your soul!
Sincerely, scrambled-eggs-at-midnight (Course coordinator)
Casey didn't bother to read the fine-print (who cared?) and signed her name at the bottom before handing the form back to Marik.
"What exactly is an OFU?" she asked, but Marik was already climbing out the window.
"You'll find out tomorrow," he said.
Whatever it was, Casey hoped it had internet connection.
She had to finish this fic.
"Gooooooood morning, everybody!"
Casey groaned and smacked her hand around stupidly, looking for the evil alarm clock. Urgh, when had she set the damn thing to wake her up to the radio?
"It's a sunny day… somewhere, anyway! But for us, the sky is full of great billowing clouds that are probably the manifestation of evil itself—pleasant, right? It's a balmy ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit outside—twenty-six when you account for wind chill! Oh, and did I mention the dragons flying around my bedroom? I gotta tell you, it's kind of—"
Casey finally succeeded in locating the alarm clock of doom and chucked it blindly away from her, hoping to get the horrible, treacherous machine of pure evil away from her poor, unsuspecting ears before it drove sleep away entirely. God, what time was it? She had had the freakiest dream ever, and—
Wait, had her alarm clock just said something about dragons?
"OUCH!"
Casey bolted upright in her bed—which turned out to not be her bed at all, as the sheets on HER bed were not this… this thing that was masquerading as a color.
And she wasn't alone.
"Where am I?" she said. "Who's there?"
"Vell, I'm not about to explain anything to you after you hit me in the face vith an alarm clock!"
Casey peered through the semi-darkness to see a glowing figure sitting across the room from her and dragging a brush through massive amounts of hair.
"What the—who the hell are you? And why are you in my room?"
The girl with the hair tried (and ultimately failed) to raise one eyebrow. "Is that vhere I am? Your room?"
"Um. Actually…." Now that Casey thought about it, this didn't look like her room at all. Where were her massive piles of stuff scattered across the fuzzy carpet? What happened to the slightly-torn-but-still-cool canopy that hung over her bed? Where were the posters of Marik hanging on the walls?
As a matter of fact, where were the walls? All she could see was what looked like purple mist drifting where there very well should have been solid blue-painted plaster.
"I'm not sure this is my room."
"Vhat tipped you off?"
Casey frowned. "What exactly is that accent?"
The girl in the corner huffed. "I am Aurora von Schroeder, a vampyre from Transyvlania. Who are you?"
"Um. Casey Mardoll. From Michigan." Casey'd never known it was possible to pronounce a spelling variation.
"And you have no idea vhere ve are at all?"
"Not in the slightest." Casey was pretty sure that she could safely determine that this was not her room. After all, she didn't usually keep "vampyres" in her corner, and her walls were not made of creepy purple smoke, and her sheets most definitely were green and not evil-looking.
So, yeah. Not her room.
"I suggest that ve leave this room and venture out to find vhy I am not asleep in my custom-made coffin," Aurora said, tossing her hair dramatically behind her shoulder. It didn't work so well, since it was mostly a tangled mess at this point. Apparently, butt-length hair wasn't really all that practical.
Casey brightened at the thought of getting out of this room. "Okay," she said, "sounds like fun! Let's go!"
Aurora shoved her hair up into a make-shift bun, and then Casey opened the door and led the way out into a long hallway.
She was surprised to see a number of other people milling about, closing doors behind them and yawning into their hands, all looking equally confused.
"What the—?"
"Attention, fanbrats!"
"What was that?"
"I think it's coming from those speakers."
"Welcome to your very first day at the Official Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanficton University! Hope you liked that wake-up call! If we do our jobs right, your stay here will be as pleasant as ours—meaning not at all! If you would please follow the bouncing puffballs to the auditorium, we would be ever so grateful! If you choose not to attend this very important meeting… well, hopefully you have enough brains amongst you to figure out that that's kind of a sucky idea. Au revoir!"
Casey gaped. "Wait, what?" Then she remembered her dream from last night.
"So… it was real," she heard another student mutter. "Damn, and I didn't even ask for Yami's autograph."
What exactly had she signed herself up for?
Casey looked at Aurora. "So… to the auditorium?"
Aurora nodded. "I guess ve have no choice."
Together, they made their way down the hall, pushing aside confused fangirls as they went.
Eggy grinned and stared at the massive crowd gathering in the auditorium. "This is going to be awesome."
"Um, miss?" Roland said. "I don't quite know how to put this, but…"
"Yes?"
"You. You forgot to put on pants."
Eggy looked down. "Oh, so I did. Be back in a sec."
Roland sighed.
"Okay! Attention!" Eggy shouted into the microphone (no longer sans pants.) There were shouts of pain as the speakers crackled. Eggy waited until everyone had quieted down, then waved at the students.
"Okay, hi there," she said. "Welcome to the Official Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfiction Academy, or, as it will be referred to from now on, OYGOFU. This is a place where all you little fanbrats are going to be given the wonderful opportunity to learn how to write decent—or semi-decent—or at least half-way plausible—Yu-Gi-Oh! fanficton."
In the audience, Casey leaned over to Aurora, whom she had attached herself to out of sheer unwillingness to be alone, and whispered, "Who the heck is this chick?"
Aurora shrugged.
"My name is scrambled-eggs-at-midnight, but that's kind of a mouthful so you can call me Eggy," Eggy continued, "and I'm your course-coordinator. Any and all complaints should be directed towards me, where they will be ignored or laughed at. Don't bother trying to complain to the headmaster, since you will probably never get to see him ever."
Eggy looked down at her notes. "Uh… this guy next to me is Roland, who I have borrowed from Kaiba to be my personal bitch—I mean, assistant. Behind me are your teachers, who are being hidden from your sight so that you won't stampede them."
"Are the teachers—?" Casey started to ask, but she was cut off.
"Yes," Eggy said, "the staff is made up of the Yu-Gi-Oh! cast."
There were shrieks of delight from the audience. Eggy banged on the podium until the room was relevantly quiet again. "Thank you. Now, this year is going to be very hard for you. You are going to experience torments unlike any you have ever felt before. But! Don't worry. We will make you into decent writers. It can be done!" Eggy clutched her chest dramatically. "I know this because I, too, was once a fanbrat."
"You still are," someone muttered from backstage.
Casey's head snapped up. "Did I just hear Bakura's voice?"
"Haha, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Eggy said. "Anyway, I was a fanbrat, but I changed my ways, and you can, too!" She grinned. "Man, I love giving pep-talks. Actually, this year's gonna suck. Sorry. Now, your schedules have been placed in the rooms you woke up in. All your shit's there, too. Now flee, fanbrats, and welcome to OYGOFU!"
