Just like I said on my blog, I've decided to continue this fic! Yay! I've just grown too fond of it to let it sit there. A few other reasons exist, but rather than take up time here, I've put them up on my blog (the link's in my profile if you're interested).
"Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is change your pen name," Yami said, watching Yugi very carefully out of the corner of his eye.
"I didn't know! Just let it go, Yami," Yugi quickly said, turning away to cross his arms and pout. It was not his fault! It was the fault of those yaoi-obsessed fangirls. "Sick, twisted freaks," he muttered to himself. Yami overheard and wondered if Yugi was talking about himself.
Yami knew it was really just a mistake on Yugi's part, and a well-meant one, but that didn't stop him from locking his bedroom door every night since that little incidence.
Grampa Moto had come up once the customers had cleared out and had asked what the hell they'd been doing, screaming like banshees and scaring everyone from the shop. The two had still been shrieking and yelling at each other, with Yami having placed his desk chair between them, and the only thing that the old man had been able to make out was that it involved that pesky fanfiction and something called 'yowee.' Solomon had ended up backing slowly out of the door and leaving them to it, 'cause, frankly, he didn't want to know. He really didn't.
Yugi and Yami had spent a few days being weird with each other, but then Yami had finally gotten over the yuck-factor and decided to help solve the problem rather than be a part of it. That was what Yami was trying to do now, solve the problem. Specifically the 'YxY' problem.
"Do you think you'll ever be writing fanfiction?" Yami asked, trying to lead Yugi into thinking up a good pen name.
"Well, no. Mostly I think I'll just be reading and reviewing your stuff." Yugi shrugged, still feeling miffed at how Yami had been treating him over the past week.
"Okay. That means we just won't be putting anything in regards to your writing style in your name. You could always change it later, though I wouldn't recommend it."
"Why not?"
"'Cause, it's annoying to everyone else! If you change your name a bunch, no one recognizes you after a while. The whole point of your bloody user name is for people to be able to recognize you. Ugh. Stupid noobs."
After a moment, Yugi snorted. "Did you just say 'noobs?' Where did you learn that term?" Yugi was pretty sure he didn't learn it from their friends. The only one who would ever call someone something like that would be Joey, but he'd be more likely to just call them a dumbass.
"The Internet," Yami responded in a 'uh, der' tone.
Yugi chuckled a little. "Okay. How did you choose your pen name?"
"I avoided clichés, and thought up something just personal enough that it had meaning, but not so much that it meant anything to anyone else," Yami stated, nodding his head in punctuation.
"What could be personal to both you and everyone else?" Yugi asked, frowning a little.
"World peace? A love for dueling? Kittens?" Yami listed.
"…Uh huh." And, he thinks I'm messed up?
Yami glared over his shoulder at Yugi. "Kittens are very personal, Yugi."
"I didn't say they weren't." Yugi looked away for a moment to gather his composure. "But, wouldn't you consider hair to be a universally personal thing?"
"Yes, but my… our hair is special in such a way that it wouldn't be particularly personal to anyone else. Plus, between the two of us, I'm the only who's been a pharaoh, so my name works out just fine and is unique to me."
While this was true, Yugi still thought that Yami's name was a little… odd. But, he was right; no one else would ever call themselves 'Hair Phar…Oah.' No one in their right mind, anyway.
"That still doesn't help me much with my pen name." Both Yugi and Yami chewed on their bottom lips, respectively of course.
"Well, let's just start eliminating stuff," Yami suggested. He ticked up a finger. "Nothing to do with baby pandas."
Yugi shivered and winced. "No. Definitely eliminate that."
"We could do something in regards to dueling if we can't think of anything else," Yami conceded, drawing a blank.
"Maybe we could take a Duel Monster and translate their name to a different language," Yugi suggested. "Like, take the Dark Magician and translate it to, I don't know, Russian. maybe?"
"Naw. Some girl already did that in one of her fics. Something like Temnyĭ Mag was the end result. But, I looked it up, and it turns out 'Temnyĭ' doesn't translate to anything. Bloody noob."
Yugi gave Yami a considering glance. He seemed to be having way too much fun with his new word.
He sighed, ready to give up. "Let's just pick something so that my current name will change. I can always figure out something later, right?"
"Mm, yeah," Yami reluctantly replied. Yugi could practically hear him thinking, Noob.
'Well, can you think of anything?" Yugi shouted, exasperated. He didn't want to get sucked into this like Yami was; he'd just wanted to bolster Yami's spirits, and this was where it landed him. It was all the fangirls' faults.
"Sorry for trying to help!" Yami shouted back. "It's just that has enough problems as it is without everyone constantly changing their name and their avatar, not to mention the profiles that are so long they could consume the Net on their own, or the seemingly regular "updates" the site makes to itself that only fuck everyone else up!"
Yugi blinked a few times. "Jeez, Yami. If the site's that crappy, why do you stay on it?"
"Because, there's fanfiction!" Yami explained plaintively. He sighed through his nose. "I guess it's really not that bad," he conceded. "But, did they really need to change the layout of the user menu? And, what's with the review replies!"
"Yami, remember, I have no idea what you're talking about yet," Yugi warned.
"I know, I know." Yami waved his hand dismissively. "But, you will."
Deciding that sounded decisively ominous in ways that Yugi didn't want to explore just yet, he leaned over and clicked the edit button next to his deceptively smutty pen name.
"Just wait 'til you publish a chapter and all of the breaks disappear," Yami mumbled into his chest.
"Uh, yeah, I'll do that," Yugi soothed, his fingers typing in what he decided his new name would be. When he clicked the 'Update Pen Name' button, Yami finally came back to himself and just stared at Yugi's newest choice.
"If you don't like it, you only have yourself to blame," was all Yugi had to say in defense of his choice.
"…It's stupid… but, I like it," Yami sort of complimented.
"Thanks."
"No, really."
"I figured I should find something to compete with the ridiculousness of 'Hair Phar…Oah.'"
"Well, at least mine isn't a lie."
"Shut up and deal with it!"
Spinning around in his desk chair, Yami turned around just in time to see 'Duel Noob' angrily stomping from the room.
"Well, he is noob, if not in regards to dueling," Yami rationalized to himself. "So, I guess it all works out. Too bad for him I'm never going to let him change it."
After a moment of thought, he got out of his chair and went over to his door frame, from which he yelled in the direction of Yugi's shut bedroom door, "And, there is nothing ridiculous about 'Hair Phar...Oah!' So, you can just bite me. Noob!"
Thanks for reading!
I thought of creating polls to decide what Yugi's and Yami's pen names should have been, but it was too late by the time I was ready to publish this, and I've never had much luck with polls, anyway. Maybe if anyone shows any interest, I'll create polls for the pen names of the other characters who will be showing up (you can read more about that on my blog).
