A/N: Hello, people of FF! It's been years since I wrote for this archive, so I figured what better time to sneak up and post a sister fic to go along with This Town Ain't Big Enough? I read the original story in November when I was feeling pretty down about my NaNoWriMo project, and I guess things just went from there. I wrote this entire thing last minute before my new semester started and it's about thirteen or fourteen thousand words and five chapters, which I'll upload over the course of the next week or so.

Quick disclaimer: THIS IS A SEQUEL FIC. You can probably get the gist if you haven't read the original if you really wanted to try, but I recommend reading it (even though I wrote it in high school, apologies in advance lol). There will be a rating change when I upload the next chapter due to drugs, Mariku's mouth and some lime; no lemon. Lastly, I do not own YGO.

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Chapter 1: Fatal Flaw

Ryou didn't often come home crying after his shift was over. It was only an entry-level management position at a fast food chain, and most would agree the job was made for a twenty-year-old college student who happened to charge too much to his credit card on occasion.

That night, however, he bawled like a hungry baby with clueless parents.

Everything that could have gone wrong, well, did. Someone forgot to rotate the beef when the previous order was received, so a good chunk of the supply had to be thrown out. Of course, Ryou was the one who discovered it and had to fill out the paperwork. He had a crew member call and quit over the phone ten minutes before his shift started, and another who was stuck at home with the flu. An hour before close, the district manager popped in with no warning to 'see how the night was going' (Ryou had a feeling he was disappointed, regardless of what excuses there were for the place to be in shambles on a boring Monday of all days.)

All that was part of the issue, but those were problems Ryou was perfectly capable of handling. He could make food quickly and accurately while taking drive through orders at the same time. He could answer the new guy's barrage of questions while simultaneously setting the store up for the next day. Trying to be the two missing coworkers as well as the shift lead felt akin to spreading butter with a fork, but it was doable. He could ask his supervisor to explain to the district manager about the horrible night and all would be forgotten in a few weeks.

Those things; they were child's play. Ryou was wonderful at his job. He cared about his workplace much more than the average fast food employee, so the small things didn't bug him even when they did pop up all at once. If anything, they made the time pass by faster.

And though he realized that, some problems were just out of his hands. At least, that's what Malik insisted when the poor white-haired young adult came home with a runny nose and a waterfall of tears.

"There was this woman," Ryou said between sniffles, when his roommate had asked what had gotten him so worked up. "She was so mean, Malik. I don't think anything I could have said to her would have changed her attitude."

The woman was the real issue. She was a drive-through customer, and he had taken her order. She was a bit snippy to him over the headset, but most people weren't very polite when ordering fast food, so he didn't think much of it.

When she got to the window, Ryou noticed the person taking the payment was taking longer than usual to finish the transaction. The line of cars was wrapped around the building and bursting out of the parking lot, so he tried to get closer to listen for an issue he could help with. He ended up catching the tail end of the most dreaded thing someone like Ryou could ever hear from a customer:

"Hey, she wants to speak to a manager," said his coworker, a skinny high schooler with pink hair and a no-fucks-given kind of attitude. She always chewed gum while she worked no matter how many times management told her it was unsanitary.

Ryou tried his very best to keep his face neutral, but he felt his eyes widen a bit with the terror roiling inside him. He took slow steps to the propped-open window, forcing his features to mold into a smile he hoped reached his eyes.

"Yes, ma'am, how can I help you?"

The woman didn't smile back. "I want to run my card as credit, not debit. You need to show this girl how to do that so I can pay."

Ryou felt himself visibly relax a little, even though the woman's tone was far from friendly. It was an easy issue; or so he thought. His voice was cheerful as ever. "Well, I'd absolutely love to do that, but unfortunately our machines don't let us choose the way the card is entered. If it's a debit card, it has to be run as debit, likewise with credit. I'm really sorry, but if you'd like we can tack on a chocolate milkshake at no charge for the inconvenience."

The woman's face was the epitome of unamused, her head tilted down to reveal a double chin and a terrifying glare that lasered through her bangs. She spoke with the grace of a redneck at a gay pride rally.

"Let me tell you why that's bullshit..."

Ryou felt his smile melt away as the woman began to yell at him using vulgar language whenever possible, causing the customers inside the building to stare. His coworkers had also stilled, listening to the awful exchange.

After about thirty seconds of verbal abuse, Ryou gave up on trying to calm her down and shut the window. He turned his back on the customer and walked straight back to the walk-in freezer, feeling tears burning behind his eyelids already. The cold was unforgiving, but at least he was alone.

The pink-haired girl came to the back after a few minutes to tell him the lady had asked for his name upon receipt of her food so she could "call corporate and tell them about the awful experience she'd had".

"Don't worry, man. I didn't give it to her. She was a cunt," said his coworker, popping her gum loudly. It echoed through the freezer and just reminded Ryou of why exactly he was a terrible shift lead; no one listened to him.

That was how he told the story to his three housemates, Malik, Mariku and Bakura. The latter two looked mostly disinterested in hearing about Ryou's dreadful day, but Malik paid attention and commented when necessary, such as an angry huff when the villain of the story, double-chin lady, was introduced.

"She doesn't know your name, so what can she even do?" the tan teen comforted, patting Ryou on the head.

Ryou sniffled loudly to eliminate a rather persistent string of snot threatening to drip into his mouth. His tears had subsided after offloading the story, but his eyelashes stuck together in the corners of his vision, reminding him of the terrible night for hours to come.

.

One week later, Ryou was asked to resign from his job.

"She wrote the CEO of the company, kid, and you were the only lead working that night," said his store manager, who was a middle-aged man. He was a recent divorcee and displayed multiple symptoms of alcoholism. "If you don't want to risk having a fire on your resume, you should just look for another job. I hate to lose you, but it's probably the smartest decision on your part."

Ryou nodded, his stomach sinking at the thought. He truly enjoyed his job, and leaving it was not something he was ready to do. But at the end of the day, he wasn't going to work at a place where he was no longer wanted, so he emailed a letter of resignation on the spot to his store manager. He sent a carbon copy to his district manager just because he was angry and wanted to go out with a bang.

Ryou's idea of a bang was not the same as others, who might have considered pranking the crew by ordering seventeen boxes of toilet paper for next day shipping just because he knew they'd have nowhere to store it.

...Which he may or may not have done, too. (He did.)

Revenge gotten, the white-haired student still found himself slumped over dejectedly in his seat that night at class. The teacher droned about math equations Ryou had already learned how to solve while the Brit chewed his lip relentlessly.

"Ryou!" The whisper was hardly that, and many students looked around to find the source of the noise. Unsurprisingly, Ryou looked up to see Mariku turned fully toward him.

Statistics was the only class the two had together. It was held every Wednesday and Friday at 4 P.M. and the two usually carpooled since Ryou didn't own a one. He saw no need in poisoning the city air even more when public transportation would usually suffice.

Though they were sitting right next to one another, Mariku still spoke in his awkwardly loud whisper. "Are you still depressed 'cuz you got canned from your job?"

Ryou gasped at the implications of his roommate's question. Louder than he meant to, he replied, "I didn't get fired!"

"Whatever. Is that why you're all mopey?" Mariku ignored the teacher, who had turned around to shush the pair.

"I guess, yeah," Ryou admitted, using his finger to trace a knot in the wooden table they shared. "I just really liked my job, that's all."

"No, you didn't," Mariku argued, scribbling notes down with terrible penmanship. His lilac eyes shifted from the board the teacher was writing on, to his notebook, then back to Ryou. "You hated that place and you know it. You came home crying enough."

"I didn't! That was only the one day last week, you liar." He knew it wasn't right to call people liars, but Ryou was an honest person.

"Crying over it once sounds like enough to me," the broad Egyptian retorted, and he was right. The Brit had walked right into that one.

The pale twenty-year-old sighed and looked down at his own portion of the desk. Mariku's notes were coming along much better than Ryou's, but he'd probably just end up copying them later. Not that he needed to; he was easily more gifted in mathematics than his tan classmate, who wasn't really talented in any studies at all. The only reason he'd decided to continue to attend college after the first semester was because Ryou begged him to keep up with didn;t particularly care, he told himself; it was just the right thing to do to encourage one's classmates.

Right. It was only because he wanted to be a good friend. (The ecstasy he felt when Mariku had rolled his eyes and agreed to sign up for a semester or two more begged to differ, but that was a story for a different time.)

By the time class released, the sun had set over Domino and the two students were assigned a very unfair amount of homework to truck through. Thankfully, the drive was a long one, so Ryou spent most of it filling out some of the assigned study guide using the light from his cell phone.

"Anyone ever told you you need to chill, Ree?" Mariku's voice sliced through the other student's concentration.

"Yeah," he replied, his pen halting only briefly before he finished the equation he was working on. "You, every single day."

"Maybe you should listen, then," said the Egyptian. "Like, go get laid, or something."

Ryou's eyes widened in surprise at his words, and his pen halted a lot longer this time. He gripped it tightly in his pale fist. "Don't insult my integrity."

"It wasn't an insult," Mariku shrugged, and he meant it. He knew Ryou was not one to hop in bed with the first willing guy without any reason. "It was supposed to be advice, but if you'd rather we could just skip the part where I give you terrible advice and we could play Mortal Kombat all night."

The broader young man's words were lined up perfectly with their arrival back home. Mariku pulled into a parking space and eyed Ryou for a response.

"Why bother? I'm going to kick your ass."

"You couldn't beat me even if you chose Ermac," the Egyptian challenged.

Ryou scoffed. "Because you're going to choose Ermac. Overpowered or not, I'll still win."

"Prove it."

And prove it, he did.

Ryou laughed loudly, tossing the Xbox controller to the other end of the cheap sleeper sofa as he cheered for his own victory. It was multiple victories in a row, actually, but he had lost count of exactly how many. Thankfully, Malik and Bakura were out doing what they did best; wreaking havoc on the citizens of Domino as their villainous alter egos, Lynx and Fatal Flaw (Malik had changed his villain name once the duo became infamous in the city, since hundreds-too-many jokes about the name 'Fast Fist' began to pop up for obvious reasons).

Mariku glared at his pale counterpart, holding his own controller tightly in frustration. He had to be careful not to break the fragile thing, though, because his own super power had presented itself shortly after moving into their shared apartment. Mariku blamed it on his new habit of lifting weights every day since the complex had a gym on the first floor. His power was, after all, inhuman strength. Though unrelated to Malik's abilities, he sometimes wondered if the gifts were genetic, too.

"Be careful. Those controllers aren't cheap and I'm out of a job now," Ryou reminded him, eyeing those tensed caramel hands like one might a cat with the family hamster between its jaws.

"I know," Mariku insisted, dropping the x-shaped controller on the couch between them and standing up. He stretched his arms, revealing a good portion of his muscled stomach. "If we're going to keep doing this stressful shit then I need something to keep me mellow. You want some?"

Ryou eyed the small glass bong his roommate had plucked from its hiding place taped underneath the coffee table. He was stuffing the end of it full of what Mariku liked to call the Devil's shrub clippings. The pale student held up a hand to turn it down, but swiftly lowered it. It wasn't often he smoked with his arguably addicted roommate, but he was having way too much fun kicking Mariku's golden behind to let it end.

He knew as soon as he was the only sober person in the room, the night was going to get really weird. Mariku was a handful sober; dealing with him while he was on drugs was a whole other story.

"Just one hit," Ryou agreed. That was the beginning of the strangest, most epic weekend of the entirety of his college years-and it had nothing to do with the drugs.

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A/N: I know, I know. I'm probably about to get a whole lot of people who are grumpy at how I'm choosing to write Ryou. In the original, I made him way too soft. Now, he's older, he's jaded, and he's got a crush on a psychopath. On that note, I hope you guys enjoyed this first chapter. :)