A/N: Written for the GX bingo - the non-flash version, 002 - worn with life's care.
Replacement Clothes
It was unfortunate that clothes wore out faster than cards, that giving clothes a plastic wrap didn't work as well as laminating cards, and that clothes came with the additional disadvantage of getting grown out of - though he would hope that, by twenty, he'll have stopped having growth spurts. His last one had been at eighteen and he'd gotten new clothes then. And a new Orisis jacket.
He kept the old one, of course. It had sentimental value, just like Fubuki had always kept his Darkness outfit. A different sort of sentimentality, of course. Clothes were replaced far more readily than cards, and often that sentimentality stretched to picking something of a similar design or from the same store as opposed to struggling on with the old or an exact replica of it. But they held memories in their tightly woven threads as well. His first Orisis jacket held two and a half year's worth: that time at Duel Academia when he was a child, when he was growing up... And the second one was his time as an adult, watching his friends prepare to take on the world and preparing to do that himself. It also bore the marks of having been in that new and wider world for three years - but now it had too many holes for him to sew up (and he had learnt to, when he found that easier than shopping for a new pair of jeans) and it was rather tight around the shoulders too. The seams kept on opening up.
But it was so difficult to find nice new clothes. And, of course, stores around the world didn't sell Orisis replicas. He should know. He checked at least three different countries, called Edo, Shou, Fubuki and O'brien (the last to see if Pegasus had any ideas.) He had the obvious one. Go to Duel Academia and buy a new one from their store. And visit everyone else while he was at it.
'Because you can't do things the simple way,' said Yubel, rolling her eyes.
'The island store might only have dorm jackets,' Judai pointed out, 'but they have them in like four different designs, and I need new jeans too.'
'Which are also in the store.'
'And come in six different designs.' Which was better than some of the large-scale malls he'd been to.
.
It turned out to be fourteen types of jeans when they actually checked the store, and twelve types of jackets, and that was just in the boys section. Tome-san was still working there too, and was on shift. 'I've made muffins when you finish shopping,' she said with a smile.
Those muffins sounded delicious already...but it didn't solve the clothes issue at all. Yubel wasn't much of a help either, now that they were in the store. The jackets had varying amounts of flare or sleeve lengths...and three were mostly white with a red trim. They'd only had those for obelisks when he'd been at school - but something like that would also get dirty pretty fast.
'Hmm...definitely something with long sleeves,' which cut the selections to a third of the original, but that was about it. And after this were the jeans too. He sighed. 'Maybe I should just tell my mum to buy some jeans and stuff for me.'
'You're too old for that,' said Yubel, rolling her eyes. 'Granted, your servants would order your clothes for you so I guess it's a given you'd struggle here.'
'I guess you weren't one of them.'
'Of course not.'
Judai shook his head. 'Aibou, any ideas?'
Hane Kuriboh appeared and floated around each jacket. 'Not the white ones, huh. Guess they would get pretty dirty.'
Which left three. Funnily enough, none of those were the original style he'd had: the one he'd worn for the first two and a half years. They did have the one he was wearing now though, and a full-length one, and another that came to about the knees and looked more like a trench coat. Though it did look sort of odd.
And somehow, he didn't want an exact copy now that he was here. It would be a new jacket, for new memories. Which left two. Or maybe one. But a full length jacket didn't seem to be the right thing to go back-packing in, and he wound up doing a lot of that.
'Why not get a sleeveless and wear long sleeves underneat when you need them?' asked Yubel.
Judai considered the idea. 'That might work,' he agreed. Which took them to a set of four. One reminded him of Rei's Orisis jacket, and another of Kenzan's. Then there was one with a hood and almost at knee length and a hood was one thing he was often in need of and lacking.
'Finally,' Yubel sighed, when he grabbed that. 'Just grab a pair of jeans and we can go enjoy those muffins and then visit your friends.'
Judai grinned suddenly. 'Grab, huh.' He snatched randomly at the rack and pulled out a pair. They were dark brown, instead of grey or black like his previous pairs, but they went with the jacket. 'Perfect.'
'Judai,' Yubel groaned, when he reached for more identical ones. 'At least get a variety this time.'
'But that makes it harder to shop!'
