Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: From a Friend
Friendship: Asuka, Juudai
Word Count: 2,140||Status: Complete
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Feedback: All forms eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Summary: Asuka and Juudai don't always understand each other. But there's something they both get without a problem: how much the cards mean to them both.
Got it. Got it. Can't use it. I should give that one to Junko. Got it. Can't use it. Asuka flipped through the cards from one of the packs she'd bought, a faint wrinkle of irritation on her lips. Nothing in there that she could use and a good portion of them she already owned multiple copies of. Rebuilding her deck would be so much easier when Industrial Illusions released the next booster packs. That couldn't happen soon enough for her.
A faint plop caught her attention and she glanced up to spy Juudai seated on a rock near the side of the lake, fishing pole in hand. She stopped and watched, little sparks of curiosity trickling through her. How can he do that? Despite knowing that he did it, seeing Juudai, active, energetic Juudai, sitting with a fishing pole still surprised her.
Yet sit there he did, his expression calm and somewhat focused on the lure floating a few feet away. She wondered where Shou and Kenzan were; they usually stuck near him like glue, after all.
"You can sit down if you want. It's a free rock." Juudai didn't even look up from his line, and Asuka knew for a fact that she hadn't made any noise. For that matter, her shadow wasn't even falling in the right direction for him to have seen it!
Yet he knew she was there.
Still, why waste an invitation? The rock was big enough for three people and she settled beside him, wishing her skirt were long enough to tuck under her properly. "Hi, Juudai." It wasn't the best of conversational openings but she'd never been good at those anyway.
He tilted his head to look at her. "Did you get anything interesting?" He nodded toward the cards in her hand and she followed his glance before she answered.
"Not from this pack. Mostly ones I already have. But I bought a few more." She didn't open them just yet, though. Instead, she dropped the unsuitable ones beside him so he could see if he wanted to. She wasn't surprised when he leaned over and fanned them out with one hand, gaze flicking from name to name.
Apparently he found nothing more interesting there than she had, since he shifted his attention back to his fishing after only a few moments. "I haven't bought any new cards for a while." There wasn't any regret in his tone, just a simple statement of fact. Something about that wrenched at her heart, and without thinking about it, she tugged two of the four packs she still had remaining out of her pocket.
"Here. You can have these." She held them out to Juudai, who glanced down as if he'd never seen booster packs in his life. When he didn't take them, she pushed them closer to him. "Don't make me make you!" Her eyes narrowed, glaring at him, and she was almost certain she saw his lips twitch before he reached for them.
"Thanks, Asuka." He set the pole down and tore open the first pack, anticipation gleaming in his eyes as he did. He tilted the cards so she could see them as he did, and she bent over to see what they were.
Nothing very spectacular met their gaze and Juudai closed up the pack with a small twitch of disappointment. "I'll show these to Shou and Kenzan. I think Kenzan might like a couple of those dinosaur cards. I don't think he has them."
Just as Juudai reached for the second pack, his fishing pole jerked back and forth and he whirled around to grab it. Asuka watched as he struggled briefly, jaw set, eyes bright and eager, as eager as if he anticipated a good duel, before he pulled a fat fish out of the water and snatched it off the hook still twisting and flailing. "That's going to make a good dinner!"
Asuka brushed off a few drops of water that landed on her skirt and peered at the struggling fish. "Is that why you fish so much?" If Osiris Red were really that low on food, maybe she should speak to Principal Samejima.
"Not really. I mean, I like to eat!" Juudai grinned as he slipped the fish into a pail kept ready for successes. "But the food at Red's good enough without that."
Given her few experiences eating there, Asuka wasn't entirely certain she believed him.
He didn't wait for her any answer from her before he spoke again. "But I know what it's like when you don't have any food. Last year, when I came back from..." His voice trailed off and his attention dropped down to his deckholder before he looked back up at her, hints of confusion clear. It only took a moment for her to make the connection.
"Right, I remember." She knew what he'd said at the time about having traveled into space to meet his Neo-Spacians, after all.
"Right." Juudai nodded, setting another worm on his hook and casting it back out. "Well, I didn't eat a whole lot then, because I didn't have anything with me. I tried fishing once in a lake, but I didn't even have a pole or a hook." He shook his head in remembrance. "About all I could find were some berries most of the time. Kept me going, at least."
Asuka'd never heard him speak about this part of his adventure and a part of her heart warmed to hear it. "We were all worried about you then."
"I was worried about me too!" Juudai laughed, head tilted back, sounding so much like a carefree boy again. "Man, that was rough. If I hadn't met the SAL monkey again, I might've starved. But he gave me some bananas." He rubbed one eye and shook his head. "I was so hungry then I was hallucinating."
If Asuka met that monkey again, she would make sure to give it all the bananas it could stuff itself with, she decided. "So that's why you like fishing?"
"Pretty much. See, once I got back, I decided I wasn't ever going to get hungry like that again, and the best way I could figure to do it was to learn how to fish right. So that's what I've done." He gestured toward the pole. "I've gotten pretty good at it, I think."
She wasn't going to argue. She'd seen the results of his efforts more than once, even if this was the closest she'd been to them before.
Juudai reached down and picked up the second pack, opening it with a quick jerk. Again she leaned forward, thoroughly curious as to what it might hold.
"Oh, this is a good one!" Juudai gestured to a monster card and she took a better look at it.
Hail Cyber. Level four, thirteen hundred attack, fifteen hundred defense.Asuka smiled at the effect, which caused an attacking monster to lose three hundred points from its attack. She could already envision ways it could fit into her deck.
Juudai tugged it out and offered to her. "Here." She stared at first in confusion. "Come on, Asuka. It's a great card for you." He pushed it toward her just as she'd pushed the packs toward him and she reached up for it.
"Thanks." She genuinely hadn't expected to get any of the cards from the packs she'd given him, and her lips curved upward into a warm smile. "Thank you very much, Juudai."
He shrugged, turning his attention back to the fishing pole stuck in the dirt beside him. "Everyone needs to improve their deck, right?"
"Right." She tucked it into an inner pocket of her jacket and pulled out her own last two packs, now even more curious to see what she could find there. Some part of her wanted to find something that Juudai could use in hisdeck, to repay giving her Hail Cyber. She broke open the first one and skimmed through it, noticing a couple Elemental Heroes there. Nothing new, though, just Burst Lady and Bubbleman. But seeing them gave her hope that perhaps the second pack would have something suitable.
Juudai took a quick glance down and she caught a smile at the sight of the Heroes. He wasn't the only one who played those -Edo Phoenix had made that quite clear- but he was the best one she'd ever seen, the one who had the strongest bond to his deck. His deck and the spirits in his deck.There were times she envied him that closeness. Not that she didn't care about her own deck, but Juudai and his took it to a whole new level.
She broke open the last pack and fanned it out before her. Most of them were cards she'd seen before or which couldn't do any good in her deck or his. Bitter disappointment bit the back of her throat as she set them all down one by one, hoping that on a second glance, she'd find something else.
Then her attention truly fell on one trap card and she picked it up to read it. Astral Shift. He could make an attack on one of his monsters an attack on himself and draw a card. There were plenty of situations she could imagine where that could come in handy. "Juudai?"
"Hm?" He hardly looked up from his fishing until she called his name a second time. "What's that?"
She offered it to him. "Yours. I think you could use something like that." It reminded her of her own favorite Doble Passe, really. Sometimes taking a hit to oneself was the best way to get a strike in on an opponent.
He tilted his head downward at it, then looked back up at her. "Are you sure? It could work just as well as Doble Passe does in your deck." She smiled at the echo of her own thoughts and shook her head.
"I'm sure." She offered it once more and this time he took it. He read it over one more time, then pulled out his deck and tucked it inside.
"Thanks, Asuka." The words were simple but heartfelt, the way Juudai always was.
She set aside a few of the cards she thought Momoe and Junko might want to look at and put the rest into a stack with the discards from Juudai's packs. "If Shou-kun or Kenzan-kun want any of those, they're welcome to them." None of the others would match the decks of anyone else could think of offhand.
Juudai nodded, picking his pole up again, and she shifted back, watching as the lure bobbed up and down in the water. She wished she could find the right words to say so much, but no words wanted to come to mind. I wonder what he's going to do after graduation. Everyone else's thoughts turned to further education or finding a job, but she hadn't noticed Juudai making any particular plans.
"What do you want to do, Juudai?" She wasn't even sure why she asked, but she was more curious than she wanted to admit.
"You mean after we leave here?" Juudai glanced up toward her and she nodded. He looked back at his pole, a thoughtful tilt to his head. "I've had a few ideas, but nothing I've made up my mind on yet. The Pros...I used to want that, but I don't think it's really me." He made a face and shook his head. "I'll figure something out. We've still got time."
Somehow, the thought he hadn't thought of it didn't surprise her at all. "Why wouldn't you like the Pros? I'm sure there'll be a lot of strong duelists there."
He smiled, just a small one, but a smile all the same. "After hearing what they're like from Manjoume, I don't think I'd like getting up at six in the morning every day for the rest of my life." He shuddered, perhaps a little more than strictly necessary.
I think there are other reasons. Maybe she'd ask another day. For now, though, she glanced at the time on her PDA and muffled a sigh. "I've got to go. Ayukawa-sensei wanted some help in the infirmary and I promised her I'd be there."
"See you around." Juudai waved at her, then glanced at his fish pail. "You don't want fresh fish for dinner, do you? I can get another one, no problem at all."
Asuka considered it before she shook her head. "No, thanks. I'm not really in the mood for fish tonight." She scrambled to her feet and brushed herself off. "But maybe tomorrow?"
"It's a deal." Juudai waved as she started down the path and Asuka smiled to herself, already looking forward to tomorrow.
The End