Notes – Set sometime after Battle City, though not specific. Based on a real Yuugi in my neighbourhood. This is the first story from the previous poll to be posted, since it was the only one-shot included in the poll.
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Anzu Mazaki was walking home from school alone.
Which wasn't an impossible statement, but it was a very uncommon one. She was a person who spent a lot of time with her close friends and pretty much every day they would take the treks back and forth from school together. It just so happened that today she'd had some extra curriculum activities that needed taking care of and she'd stayed a bit longer than the rest of them.
Though she was quite glad of the change of routine, if she was honest. Not because she didn't like walking with the others, but...
Lately things had been different.
To start with it had always been her and Yuugi walking together, for probably as long back as they'd both attended school. They were content but at the same time Yuugi was lonely. He was a bully magnet and definitely didn't find the same sort of ease talking to people that Anzu did. This was why she was glad when Jounouchi and Honda joined their ranks, as much as she was mistrustful of letting Yuugi near them at first.
The four of them became a strong group of friends, and it seemed like their journeys would stay that way forever.
But then Yuugi defeated the former King of Games, Seto Kaiba. Then he won at Duellist Kingdom. Then he won Battle City too. And before they knew it Yuugi was quite famous.
At first it was a pleasant surprise to see a kid run up to them asking for Yuugi's autograph when the four of them were out together, but after a while it was hard for them to get a few feet into a public area without being mobbed by gaming fans who wanted to get a glimpse of actual Yuugi Motou. Just to see if he looked like he did on TV in real life.
She knew that if it was down to Yuugi he'd never let anything get in the way of spending time with his friends, but the fact remained that Anzu got swamped by considerably less people when she walked on her own.
Sometimes she wondered what all these people really thought when they met Yuugi. He didn't look at all like you'd expect a gaming champion to look. She wondered if they knew what sort of person he was on the-
"Yuugi, stop!"
Anzu froze where she stood. That hadn't been anyone she knew shouting. It sounded like a younger boy. Had Yuugi been trying to escape from one of the fans she'd been thinking of?
"Please Miss! Yuugi will get away if you don't catch him!"
She whirled in the direction of the voice but it was already too late.
"No, Yuugi! Look out!"
The next thing Anzu knew she was on the ground with a considerable weight upon her chest. She gritted her teeth at the sudden pain where she'd scratched her limbs before looking up into the face of the largest dog she had ever seen.
"Thank goodness you stopped him! I'm sorry Miss; Yuugi can be quite a handful."
She glanced past the dog towards a small boy who was almost the same height as the creature he'd been trying to walk.
"Did you say... Yuugi?" she asked blearily.
He nodded and replied, "Yeah. Yuugi's my dog. Named him after that guy on the TV. I don't get to walk him on my own very much."
'Yuugi' reached forward and licked her face. She found it very hard not to laugh. Well really, why had they never thought that people would name their pets after Yuugi?
It just possibly wasn't the best suited name for this St. Bernard.
The boy struggled to get the dog back on the leash, mumbling apologises to Anzu who kept saying it was all right. When he was up and ready to go the dog was still barking around Anzu.
"Sorry Miss, I think Yuugi really likes you," the boy said, before finally managing to tug the dog away.
She froze up at that. Surely he didn't mean? Of course not, he was talking about the dog not the Yuugi she knew.
Still, she continued the walk home, thinking that if Yuugi was the sort of famous that got people to name their pets after him then it probably wasn't a bad sort of famous after all.