Chapter 7: Life's a Beach...
Leaving the prince in the care of a resigned Dark Magician, the trio of Yugi, Yami, and Ryou barreled out of the Mutou's front door - where a flare of blinding light caught them and enclosed them all in a brilliant white bubble as it swallowed them whole.
(Where it'll spit them out, only the bad-fic knows...)
-o-
Elsewhere...
The Mutou residence had vanished between one blink and the next. What now met Yami's startled gaze was an expanse of blue sky and gentle waves foaming against sugar-white sand broken by the occasional decorative cluster of boulders. Unless Grandpa Mutou had gone on a new reality show called "Speed Extreme Home Makeover: Shoreline Edition" when Yami wasn't paying attention, something strange had happened.
Clearly, this was Shadi's fault. Before the Guardian had turned up with those rotten duplicates in tow, things like this hadn't happened to Yami. Ah, the good old days, when the only things he had to worry about were a crazed Tomb Robber, a duel-obsessed Kaiba, and Yugi's Mom's Ladle. He shook off the nostalgia, which was making him a bit teary-eyed, and growled, "Where am I?"
"Looks like a beach to me," said a laconic voice from behind him.
Yami, who had thought himself quite alone and therefore hadn't anticipated an answer to his question, yelped and whipped around. A few feet away, an unexpected figure lurked behind some tall, wispy grass. "...Tristan?"
"Yo." Tristan waved lazily, then did a classic double-take at the sight of Yami's new clothing. Instead of the duplicate of Yugi's outfit that Yami had been wearing, he was now decked out in tight blue pants, tucked into knee-high black boots, and a vaguely military-styled jacket that was seriously over-endowed in the epaulet department. "Whoa. What are you supposed to be? A parking valet?"
Yami chose not to dignify that with a response. Instead, he glanced again at their surroundings. Sand, surf, and a certain excess of seagulls vindicated Tristan's assertion that they were on a beach. There was, however, a remarkable lack of valet parking service to validate Yami's ensemble. (Tristan, it must be noted, was dressed in perfectly ordinary jeans, t-shirt and trainers, a fact doing nothing to endear him to the Pharaoh.)
As he stood there wondering where Tristan had come from and how the hell they'd ended up on a beach, the gulls' squawking reached a fever pitch. Yami cut his gaze back around to see what had set them off. The gulls, enough to re-enact a scene from a Hitchcock film, were squabbling over a mound of seaweed washed up on the sand near the edge of the water. They pecked at the seaweed fighting for primacy with bobbing heads and beating wings.
Clutching a length of driftwood, a hand erupted from the seaweed and flailed about until the gulls (complaining loudly at the loss of their hoped-for snack) hopped out of reach. Then, a familiar spiky head of hair popped into view.
"Yugi?"
Tristan at his heels, Yami hurried over to find out why his partner was lying half-buried in a pile of stinking seaweed. "Yugi? What are you doing down there?"
"Skiing." Yugi was definitely getting better at the sarcasm thing. He was rapidly mastering the narrow-eyed glare, too, since the one he leveled at Yami actually made the Pharaoh pull up short. Yugi frowned. "Why are you dressed like a maitre d'?"
"I think he's supposed to be a prince," Tristan said, his expression fairly bursting with earnest (and patently false) helpfulness.
"What?" Yugi, who was still lying on his stomach and half-covered in seaweed, gave Yami a horrified once-over. On second glance, the outfit did impart a certain air of "royal scion." It also provided the final nail in the coffin of Yugi's hopes that none of this was what he had feared it to be. "Oh, shit."
"Aibou? What's wrong?"
Ignoring the question, Yugi buried his face in his palms. "Oh, no. No, no, no, no..."
"What is wrong with y-?" Yami, who had knelt to clear away the seaweed, froze. From the waist up, Yugi was naked. From the waist down, he was still naked - but he was a naked fish. Yami gaped at the purple fish tail that began just below Yugi's navel and continued down where his legs should be to end in a wide, translucent fin. "Uh?"
"Dude!" Tristan weighed in, summing up the frantic thoughts pinwheeling through Yami's stunned mind. "You're a fish!"
"I am not a fish!" Yugi shrieked. His crimson face clashed horribly with his new purple tail.
"Sheesh. Mermaid, then. Sorry." Tristan rolled his eyes. Who knew those of the finny persuasion were so touchy?
Though it didn't seem possible, Yugi turned even redder and his voice went up another octave. "I am not a mermaid. I'm a man. Okay, merman. But, still, merMAN."
Tristan made a show of looking him over. "Long hair, fishy fins... a little flat-chested, maybe, but you've got that seashell bra thing, so you sure look like a mermaid to me."
"-man, dammit! I'm a merMAN!"
"You're sounding kinda high-pitched, there, too."
"I am not a mermaid! Do I have to whip it out to prove it?"
"Don't have a coronary, dude." Tristan tried, and failed, to suppress a snicker as Yugi's tail fin thrashed in frustrated agitation. The gulls, which had been hopping back into investigative range, scattered in a flurry of squawks and feathers. "Besides, I don't think you can 'whip out' what you don't have. And fish don't have-"
"Argh!"
Yami decided it was time to intervene, before Yugi had a coronary - or threw a piece of driftwood at his friend. "That's quite enough, Tristan."
"Sure, spoil all my fun."
"I'm so glad my suffering amuses you," Yugi growled, and collapsed back onto the damp sand with a huff.
"Hey," said Tristan, with what could only be called an evil smirk. "I just want to be a part of your world."
-o-
Five minutes later...
"Please tell me Kaiba's a fish, too. Lie, if you must."
"Well, there was something about an 'Undersea CEO'. I think he's supposed to have tentacles, though."
"Doesn't matter, dude. A fish is a fish."
"I am not a fish! I'm a mermai- uh, merMAN. Why can't you get that through your thick heads?"
"Hey, you're the one wearing the bra."
"And I come from an ocean-challenged culture, aibou. We were a bit deprived in the aquatic folklore department."
"I can talk to fish now. I'm going to ask a whale to beach itself so it can eat you both."
"Whales are mammals. Y'know, like you used to be."
"...There are not enough words to describe how much I hate you right now." Stupid mammals with their legs and their walking and their wearing clothes that weren't made of seashells and meant for girls...
"Dude. I'm wounded."
"Keep it up and you will be."
-o-
Eventually, Yami managed to convince Tristan that teasing Yugi into apoplexy wasn't helping them figure out what was going on. Then he calmed Yugi down enough that he wasn't trying to hit Tristan with the driftwood bat and could speak in coherent sentences again.
By that time, the sun was sinking on the watery horizon and Yami was exhausted. He sat down on the sand next to his appendage-challenged partner. "So, what do you suppose we should do now?"
"As long as it gets me my legs back," Yugi said, "I don't care."
"Maybe we just have to follow the story."
Yugi and Yami both gaped at Tristan, who raised an eyebrow at them. "What? I have ideas."
"What do you mean 'follow the story'?" Yami sounded doubtful but willing to be convinced. Yugi was shaking his head again and muttering denials.
"You know, the story you two are apparently starring in." Tristan waved a hand in a gesture that encompassed their surroundings, Yami's princely garb, and Yugi's fin. "Looks like The Little Mermaid to me, with Yugi as the mer...man and you as the handsome prince." He made a moue of distaste. "This is probably the Disney version, since I doubt the badficcers have even heard of Hans Christian Andersen."
"How the hell did we end up inside a bad-fic story?" Yami demanded. "We're not-" An expression of horrified realization crossed his features. "This happened when our doubles ran off. What if we've somehow been drafted to take their places?"
"Then why isn't Tristan a crab or something?" Yugi pouted at his depressingly normal friend, who smirked.
"I'm not popular enough to get written into much fanfic, of any quality." The smirk turned gloating. "The badfic can't touch me."
In Yugi's opinion, Tristan was far too pleased by this turn of events. He swung his tail up and smacked Tristan in the back of the knees, knocking him face-first into the sand. While Tristan sputtered and spat sand from his mouth, Yugi turned to Yami and achieved a full glower for the first time ever. The gulls fled in shrieking terror.
"Help me back into the surf," Yugi commanded his startled dark half. "I've got to see an octopus about some legs..."
