Gachapon
"They're kinda cute, don't you think?"
Jounouchi only scowled at the little resin doll. It was small enough to fit between his thumb and forefinger, if they stretched out a little, and glared obnoxiously back at him with disgustingly 'chibified' features. He rocked the doll back and forth in his hand, sticking his tongue out as if the miniature Kaiba Seto was the man himself. Anzu sighed and rolled her eyes as she turned the crank on the machine again; a small ball emblazoned with the KaibaCorp logo fell out. Gently she popped it open with a short giggle.
"Got him." She said proudly, turning to display her new keychain decoration to the blonde teen. He tore his eyes away from his internal argument with the resin Kaiba to look at Anzu's Gachapon catch of the day. As if Yugi couldn't get smaller, here he sat in the crook of Anzu's hands with a smile painted obliviously onto his face. She quickly clipped it onto the top of her phone with her other catches—a small resin Bakura Ryou, a small resin Kujaku Mai, and a generic Rare Hunter charm of a man in a cloak with his face obscured.
The most common one was the last; Anzu had actually tossed several of them. Jounouchi supposed every Gachapon pull needed at least one junk draw but the Rare Hunters seemed like it was in bad taste. It wasn't like anyone was going to get it aside from the finalists. Maybe Kaiba just wanted to mock them, or tout that he had destroyed the organization. Likely without acknowledging their contributions.
He's such a goddamn jerk.
"There are three tiers of rarity for this new 'Best of Duelists' gachapon line, you know.." Anzu rambled on, gently rubbing the small Yugi doll on the head before tossing her phone back in her bag. Jounouchi only grunted in acknowledgement as he shoved the Kaiba doll in his jacket pocket, following after the girl. "The first tier are these generic cloaked bad guys. The second tier is Noted Duelists. The third tier is the Best of Duelists. They're the hardest to get. That Kaiba one is pretty rare, I think, so you got really lucky!"
Don't let him bother you was laced into her tone but he didn't acknowledge it. They had to meet Yugi at Burger World but the brunette had insisted on stopping by the arcade to see their new Gachapon machines. He had told her to just go to Kame Game Shop, since they had the same machines, but she had told him that she wanted to surprise Yugi. Probably why they had spent an hour trying to GET Yugi out of the machine. It didn't surprise him; Kaiba was an asshole but he had to acknowledge that Yugi deserved to be respected as the best of the best.
Meanwhile I'm probably not even in that dumbass machine. Such a prick.
"Hey! HEY! Guys, where have you been?"
Jounouchi looked up sharply; Yugi was running down the steps of the fast food joint with a hop in his step. When he came to a stop in front of them, a smile spread across his face. The duelist just had that kind of a smile; the kind that made you forget what you were annoyed about, shoving Jounouchi's irritation to the back of his head. He grinned widely back, throwing an arm around the smaller teen's shoulder while Anzu chuckled at the sight.
"Sorry we took so long. I had to pick SOMETHING up!" Anzu flashed her phone to Yugi, the small charm bouncing off the back to cast a mirror of his contagious happiness back to his counterpart. Yugi gasped loudly, a blush spreading across his phone when he realized that HE was clasped onto ANZU'S phone of all places. Jounouchi watched in amusement as the shorter teen babbled through talking to her about how nice it was and how good she was at Gachapon while the girl shook her head with a nervous laugh, explaining how long it had actually taken.
"Why d'ya think we took so long to get here, huh?" Jounouchi quipped. "She wanted to get THAT specific one, y'know?"
Anzu flushed. "Shut up, Jounouchi. You're just mad because you only tried once."
"Jounouchi tried too?" Interrupted Yugi, excitement in his eyes. Internally the blonde cursed the girl; he should've known better. Every time he tried to tease Anzu, she brought it back at him tenfold. "What'd you get, Jounouchi? We just got those machines in at the shop, so I haven't been able to try them yet."
"Uh, I didn't get nothing special." He lied, trying to pass it off as he desperately wished he had just tossed the dumb resin keychain. But Anzu said it was rare, which probably meant it was valuable, so he had thought he could hock it to some dumb kid fanboy of the Kaiba Corporation. Whatever money he could've gotten from it didn't really seem worth it now.
"Come on, don't be that way." Anzu scolded, reaching swiftly into Jounouchi's pocket to snag the doll. Ignoring the blonde's protests, she presented the small Kaiba to Yugi. It scowled back at him just as the real Kaiba would regularly scowl at the other duelist. It didn't seem to phase Yugi, though; if anything, he seemed amazed by it. "Jounouchi got the Kaiba one. He's just being a big baby about it."
"Whoa, you got that one on your first try?! That's really lucky, Jounouchi. We got a rarity index for the Best of Duelists Gachapon back at the shop. The highest tier is pretty impossible to get." Yugi seemed to glow with excitement; anything to do with games brought the best of the boy out of his shell. He pulled out his phone to search through the internet, presenting the results back to his friends. They leaned in; it looked to be an index of the full content of the new Gachapon, as well as which rarity tiers each resin keychain doll would be in.
At the lowest tier was, as Jounouchi had expected, was the generic 'Rare Hunter' designs—although they weren't labeled as Rare Hunters, just as 'Hunters'. The second tier was the widest one containing Bakura, Mai, Pegasus, and all of the Ishtar siblings. The final row was outlined in bright gold and emblazoned with the series title, Best of Duelists. The smiling Yugi Gachapon doll sat in the number one slot, while the Kaiba Gachapon doll sat aside it scowling at him from the number two slot. Seemed about right. Jounouchi raised a surprised eyebrow at the third member of the Best of Duelists rank.
Better known as himself.
The doll stood triumphant, a look of self-confidence plastered across the resin facial features. One hand was held out in challenge, a tiny card lodged between the small fingers, with his other arm pulled back with a purposely battered looking duel disk clasped to the forearm. At that point the real Jounouchi's brain just kind of shut off, unable to make sense of his placement—he hadn't even expected to be in KaibaCorp's shitty Gachapon draw, much less one of the top three rarest dolls in the pool.
He sat back with his arms crossed. His lower lip jutted out in thought, and his head tilted to the side to let untrimmed blonde hair tickle his cheeks. Anzu and Yugi watched him curiously, almost cautiously, as the ex-delinquent duelist took his sweet time digesting the paper in front of him. To their relief, a cheeky and broad smile finally stretched across Jounouchi's face—and, Yugi noted with a tinge of worry, his smile was somewhat smug and overconfident.
That….could mean trouble.
"It has been GREAT seeing you guys but I gotta head back to the arcade—"
"Grampa said my friends can get a discount on the Gachapon right now at the game shop."
"….I gotta be heading over to the game shop, it's been a while since we've just popped in and said hi to Gramps! Come on, come on, no point waiting around, don't wanna waste time and money or whatever it is they say…" Jounouchi said impatiently. Yugi rolled his eyes with a small smile on his face as he was pushed in the direction he had come from, exchanging a knowing glance with the brunette girl aside him. Anzu could barely restrain her giggles.
"So, uh, how many of them did you buy, exactly?"
Jounouchi grinned, rocking the little resin version of himself next to his face as he sat on his desk facing Yugi. The triumphant grin on the doll was reflected perfectly on his face. "A lot. I think I got all of them but, eh, don't really care. If you and Anzu want 'em then they're yours. I got what I wanted."
"Yourself?" Anzu asked, eyebrow raised.
"It's more than that. It's—"
The moment that Jounouchi trailed off and locked onto Kaiba Seto entering the room, it all suddenly all clicked together for Yugi and he sunk back into his chair to prepare for impact. The blonde jumped over the desks to skid to a halt in front of the CEO's desk, one fist on his hip and one presenting the resin doll that so oddly seemed to mirror his current confident pose. Kaiba cast a brief glance at the keychain and then snapped his eyes to the face of the shorter blonde in front of him. Yugi groaned; even from across the room he could almost see Kaiba's eye twitching in annoyance.
"Is there something you'd like to discuss or are you just wasting my time as usual, bonkotsu?" Kaiba said distastefully, briefly trying to shove past Jounouchi. The other duelist wasn't having it, moving to plant himself right on the top of Kaiba Seto's desk and ignoring the attention that they were gaining from the class. "Get off of my desk, you mongrel. I don't have time for your idiocy today or any day."
"You put me in the Best of Duelists top tier rank for the Gachapon."
Silence overtook the classroom for several minutes as Kaiba stared down the blonde and his resin toy. If Jonouchi hadn't known better then he would've thought that the brunette duelist was trying to will him out of existence, or burn a hole straight through his skull to get rid of him once and for all. The dark, annoyed look in his eyes definitely spoke that in spades.
It didn't explain the slightest hints of a flush around Kaiba's ears, though.
"…Company mandates." Kaiba finally said, slamming his bookbag down on Jounouchi's middle. The blonde coughed and slammed against the wall beside Kaiba's desk. "When the Kaiba Corporation assembled all their duelist data you ended up being tallied into the third place. So congratulations, a computer data system really thinks you are incredibly talented. It's certainly a pity that computers have such a regrettable margin of error."
"It took me three hours to get this damn thing!"
"You spent three hours at a Gachapon machine. Congratulations. You're even more of an idiot nobody than I had previously assumed." Kaiba said flatly. Jounouchi flushed in embarrassment, feeling the sharp points of the resin doll poking against his hand as he clutched it into a fist. "Get off my desk, Jounouchi. If you want to waste your own time, that's fine, but don't waste mine."
"…You're such a fucking asshole, Kaiba." Jounouchi muttered, finally sliding off Kaiba's desk and moping back to his own seat. His bait went ignored; the brunette only sat in his own seat as the teacher strode in to begin writing on the blackboard with a strained smile on her face. Yugi patted the blonde on the back comfortingly but Jounouchi could only manage a nod of acknowledgement, staring instead down at the confident little doll in his hands.
It looked a lot more confident than he felt right now.
The only thing that managed to take him out of his moping was his battered, barely functional old cellphone vibrating slightly in his pocket. He clipped the gachapon prize to his jacket and flipped open the phone underneath the wood of his desk. The teacher had stopped bothering to tell him to put the damn thing away but old habits really did die hard. It was just a bunch of text messages—from Kaiba Mokuba. The young millionaire had marked them as 'important' but Mokuba did that with a lot of texts that didn't really have any cause for alarm.
Jounouchi found that he got along with the younger Kaiba much better than he did the elder. While Mokuba was, in his own way, a bit of a stuck up brat he still was capable of embracing fun. He had never made it much of a habit to hang out with kids but after Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, the wild haired heir had made it clear that he enjoyed the company of Yugi and his friends whether his brother liked it or not. Ever so often he would ring one of them up about something he was excited about and more often than not it turned out to be enjoyable. And while Mokuba had picked up on Kaiba's insulting mannerisms towards Jounouchi, it hadn't been hard to tell that Mokuba favored the blonde more than anyone in the group apart from maybe Yugi.
It got a small chuckle out of him. At least not all the Kaibas were complete dicks.
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: Hey Jounouchi!
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: I got a list of upcoming card releases for the next fiscal year
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: You and Yugi wanna see?
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: They're in the Simulator already and everything, you can try them out if you want
As soon as the teacher was facing the blackboard again, Jounouchi nudged Yugi and held his phone out to the smaller boy. The joy that spread across his face was just as contagious as usual; he figured he could take that as a yes and brought his phone back under the desk. A small chuckle caught in his throat to avoid being caught—Yugi was not subtle in the slightest. The king of games looked right ready to explode with anticipation at the idea of seeing the new releases. Jounouchi couldn't blame him. Even Kame Shop didn't get the official Industrial Illusions card lists until mandated.
Wheeler [Jounouchi Katsuya]: lol if u could see the look on Yug's face
Wheeler [Jounouchi Katsuya]: u'd think he won the lottery or something
Wheeler [Jounouchi Katsuya]: anyways
Wheeler [Jounouchi Katsuya]: where u want us to meet u
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: I'll send someone to pick you guys up after school.
Wheeler [Jounouchi Katsuya]: 1 of those fancy limos?
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: In your dreams, Jounouchi.
He snickered and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. The kid definitely wouldn't send a limo, but knowing the typical Kaiba brothers procedure, he WOULD send over some fancy hybrid car complete with a chauffeur and a bodyguard. Mokuba was not shy about his wealth like some kids might have been. Then again, as Jounouchi's phone rumbled again and went ignored, the blonde remembered that the boy wasn't shy about many things.
In fact, in many ways, he was way too damn forward for his own good.
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: You should bring Shizuka too.
M-KC [Kaiba Mokuba]: She likes chocolate, right?
Damn cheeky kid.
He had to admit that he was still a little unused to being in Kaiba Manor. He never felt particularly posh but there was something about an army of maids that succeeded in making Jounouchi Katsuya feel like an unwashed heathen. If he didn't know better than he would've assumed that Kaiba had them all greet Mokuba and him at the door just to make him feel out of place. He grimaced at the thought—who did he think he was kidding? That was exactly the sort of thing Kaiba would do.
"Welcome home, Master Mokuba! Welcome to the Kaiba Manor, honored guest of Master Mokuba!" They chorused so loudly that the sound reverberated against the walls of the wide foyer. Instinctually Jounouchi shoved his hands in his pocket, wishing desperately that Yugi hadn't been forced to make the decision no one should have to make: his passion for his hobby versus his passion for his crush. In the end, Yugi had apologized profusely and gone to the movie with Anzu. Jounouchi was nearly certainly they were dating at this point and just keeping it under the table.
It still left him high and dry and feeling awkward as hell standing in the Kaiba Manor being led down the halls by Mokuba. He'd been here before, of course, but always with Yugi or Otogi or even Honda…never solely by himself. It hadn't seemed to faze the younger Kaiba but Jounouchi himself was waiting for his brunette sibling to jump out from behind the corner to throw him out.
"Hey, you got your own keychain doll." Jounouchi blinked; he had forgotten it was even still clipped onto his jacket. But Mokuba was tugging at the small resin figure and nodding approvingly. "That's one of the rarer ones. I have 'em all, of course, courtesy of the manufacturing department. But nii-sama told me it meant more if I got them on my own so I've been cranking the gachapon at the arcade a few times a day just for the hell of it."
"Taking it at a slow pace, huh?" Jounouchi managed a strained grin. "You can have this one if you want. I don't really want it anymore."
Mokuba blinked large, uncomprehending purple eyes at him. "What? This one is hard to get. That's stupid. These things are pretty valuable to the right person, you know. I haven't even gotten it from the arcade yet. That old bastard who runs it told me that its been the rarest drop so far."
"Yeah, well, it don't mean anything." Jounouchi mumbled.
"Jeez, not in a good mood or something?" Mokuba mused, crossing his arms and fixing Jounouchi with that patented look of disapproval. It made the blonde want to roll his eyes. The younger Kaiba may be the more tolerable of the two, but he was picking up on his brother's habits way too much. His expressions were starting to mirror Kaiba Seto's. "You wanna see the design works for them?"
"Huh?"
"Before we look at the cards. You wanna see the gachapon designs?"
"You got 'em on a USB or something? Who designed them, anyways? They did a pretty good job, at least." Jounouchi muttered, holding the doll up towards the window; the soft yellow paints caught the sunlight coming through and formed almost an odd glow about the keychain. He was entranced with it for a moment before he caught the odd, almost confused, look that Mokuba was giving him. "What? What's up?"
"Uh…nothing, just…" Mokuba hesitated; he seemed conflicted on something. "…I think they're in the file library, he usually puts design work in there after the product releases…come on."
Jounouchi wasn't given a chance to protest as the wild haired child grabbed his arm and whisked him down the hallways. It was almost dizzying; Kaiba Manor always was. Sometimes the blonde wondered if it had been built as some sort of maze to trap and confuse anyone with under a million dollars in their bank account. The constantly curving passageways certainly gave credence to his theory. The thoughts were blown out of his head as they stopped in front of a pair of double doors. Mokuba pushed them open with no hesitation to reveal walls and walls of files cabinets.
The blonde stood awkwardly in the disturbingly clean room as Mokuba flipped through the files inside. Something inside him wished he had dumped the gachapon toy. Those things had brought him nothing but annoyance and frustration so far. Finally, though, Mokuba let out a small confident chirp and threw one of the files down onto the white marble floor. His guest kneeled down with one eyebrow raised, pushing the papers away from each other.
They looked like…designs.
Toy designs.
Gachapon toy designs.
The Best of Duelist Gachapon toy designs.
"Seto designed all the prizes by himself. The Best of Duelist collection has something of a pet project of his for the last few months." Mokuba rolled his eyes with a smile and Jounouchi could almost feel the pride radiating off the middle schooler. "He spent so much damn time compiling the data for the collection. Went through a bunch of designs for each of the dolls."
"…That's not what Kaiba said…"
"Huh? Really?" Mokuba cocked his head to the side. "The heck did he tell you?"
"He said that a computer compiled all the duelist data." Jounouchi held up a secondary folder in the designs file—it was easily the thickest of the design folders. The rest seems to have a small collection of about nine or ten prototypes and a final design page. This one, however, was stuffed full of easily thirty to forty pages. The second he tried to pick it up, the paper within toppled out all over the floor. Mokuba let out a shriek and fumbled forward to push all the paper together.
Jounouchi caught all of it anyways.
Meticulous drawing after drawing stuffed together with paper clippings, each one highlighted with abnormally neat written notes. One was covered with a variety of golden yellow sample sheets, another with a variety of simple sketches noting the flow of the subject's face. The strong curve of the nose, the broad smile, the surprisingly sharp and vibrant eyes cloaked under poorly trimmed blonde hair. Several pages seemed dedicated to eyes—each colored and marked precisely with the correct and incorrect colors. Other seemed dedicated to poses—how to properly capture the subject's mannerisms and confidence in posture without removing the warm and open feeling.
He carefully picked up the design sheet marked as the final one and unclipped the doll at his waist, holding it up against the paper.
Identical. Same pose, same expression, same feeling.
Same Jounouchi Katsuya.
Mokuba coughed awkwardly.
Jounouchi managed to slip his fingers in between the papers and pull one out; a very simple charcoal drawing of himself wearing a very irritated expression. He recognized this one; they had been assigned as partners in art class one day and it hadn't ended well. The blonde hadn't even gotten around to doing the portrait assignment and Kaiba had left quickly after his partner obnoxiously removed to stay still, muttering curses under his breath. Apparently he had actually been working on the assignment rather than just bantering.
And for a lot longer than that, apparently.
"Look, Jounouchi, if you could maybe never tell nii-sama that I let you in here that would be…that would be just great, y'know?" Mokuba said awkwardly, just short of stuttering his words out. Jounouchi chuckled a bit, waving the charcoal doodle in his hands back and forth in Mokuba's face. "What? You're gonna tell him? Come on, Jounouchi, don't be an asshole."
"I'll stay quiet if you give me this one."
"Huh?"
"Well, it IS of me, isn't it? So that means it belongs to me, right?" Jounouchi said innocently. From the look on Mokuba's face, the blonde's logic didn't check out—but he still needed to cover his own ass. Finally, he was treated with an exasperated sigh and a nod. "Great! I wasn't even here today, then."
He didn't catch the odd look of contemplation on the other boy's face as he exited down the hallway, and Jounouchi didn't much care either. A broad grin matching the toy clipped at his side now spread his face, confidence sparkling in brown eyes. So Kaiba Seto could say all he wanted that Jounouchi Katsuya was a dud, a loser, a has-been, a moron—but his files showed differently. The blonde had been thoroughly researched and planned for a pet project of THE teenage CEO himself. He wondered, briefly, if he should rub it in Kaiba's face and decided against it.
After all, it couldn't mean any more than the designs and effort showing that he actually did consider Jounouchi not only capable but worth piles of his own effort.
Maybe I'll go get back the rest of those dolls from Anzu…