This is where the reference to the Singapore dub comes in. They gave Bakura a Southern United States accent and I imagined what he'd sound like singing, and it made me think of country music. The musical number in this chapter is the result of switching to a fantasy of the 4kids/Abridged Bakura trying to sing a country-pop song. Yes, it's convoluted, but I needed a "Show Must Go On" type of number that would lighten the mood a little.
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, its Abridged Series, Moulin Rouge (not the book and not the movie), or any of the songs parodied in this story.
(1) To the tune of "Jesse Hold On" by B*Witched.
(2) To the tune of "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga. The parody of this song doesn't correspond to any of the songs in Moulin Rouge. And the scene around it doesn't correspond to any of the scenes in the movie, either. It's inspired by Chicago, specifically "Miss Velma Kelly in an act of desperation." In fact, let's just call it "Mr. Seto Kaiba in an act of desperation."
(3) To the tune of "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. Because it shares a chord progression with "Paparazzi."
-O-o-O-o-O-
Bakura ran a finger over his giant hoop earring. This was going to be a long week.
The show opened in six days. Yami still had fits of "reincarnation-induced" narcolepsy at the worst possible times and, in addition to that, they still had no idea how long he'd be with them or if he might "walk through the doors to the afterlife" again. Come to think of it, they didn't even know why or how he came back.
Yugi still kept forgetting the pivotal line in the final scene yet could recite the rest of his lines in his sleep. This was much to the annoyance of Kaiba, who was especially irritable because of Duke's constant pestering. Joey and Tristan were having bouts of melancholy because they had to ignore each other and because one of them was dying for real this time. Duke insisted on bringing Noah to rehearsals, who exchanged dirty looks with Kaiba while Mokuba planned to spend a lot of time practicing the songs in their bathroom so he didn't have to hear their screaming and the subsequent complaints from their tenants with mutant hearing.
"Break a leg" was fast becoming less of a good-natured saying and more of a threat around the Black Dragon Theater.
"What would Florence do?" Bakura thought. He tweaked a white tendril against his giant hoop earring. "That's it! He'd stab Duke and steal the money! Wait, that's a horrible idea." Bakura reminded himself that the acquisition of the money to buy Kaibaland was the first and last time he'd steal without the help of the ring spirit. He racked his brain for another solution.
"I've got it." Bakura whipped out a banjo and plucked at it while singing:
"Show him your hand, let him win the duel
With his pair of dice and rules."
He picked up the pace and was backed up by fiddles, guitars, and the familiar synthesizer that had been present in all the random musical numbers thus far.
"Riding aimless on subways-
No, the tube, it's the tube, yeah, the tube.
Oh, wait; we no longer have a train.
It was derailed and everybody wailed."
In the changing room, Joey put on his green jacket, singing:
"Give me a hand dat can win dis duel,
Or a pair of dice, wit' Duke."
Joey closed his locker to find a note stuck to the door. In neat cursive, it read, "Don't buck the establishment yet. Play the Duke's way and nobody else gets hurt." He didn't bother to remove it, but he did chuckle at the fact that the letter b's looped below the lines, looked like f's, and gave the note an entirely new meaning.
Bakura revved up his banjo for another chorus:
"Oh, let me be strong
From dusk 'til dawn, and on, and on, and on.
Oh, let's sing a song
'Til we're gone, and on, and on, and on."
Bakura launched into an electric banjo solo. His white hair exploded out of a blue gingham bandanna that suddenly appeared on his head. Yugi made record scratching sound effects with a zipper and a playing card.
"Hmm, needs more…something," Bakura thought aloud, continuing to pluck at the banjo in a less energetic manner. Chorus ladies dressed as pink desert elephants in pleated dresses skipped across the stage, jingling cowbells.
Joey trudged down the streets with both hands in his pockets. The few people on the streets were huddled around trashcan fires. He passed an abandoned storefront with a massive crack in the window. Through the hole and the dirty glass, he saw a group of young men, hunched over a makeshift duel field. Two figures stirred on the mattress behind the group. As he walked by, one of the two figures turned around, and Joey and Kaiba stared each other dead in the eye. Joey turned away and continued to Tristan's apartment.
"Every single card I drew
Was for you, but dey blew, so I'm screwed.
Oh, yeah, forget love, go get dat chedda.
Don't let me be a giant epic fail!"
The group of duelists stared out the window at Joey as he gesticulated madly at the sky while singing. They followed the sound of the music and turned to Kaiba, who shrugged and shoved money into his trenchcoat.
Back at the Black Dragon, Bakura and the players continued their hip-hop hoedown. Currently, Yugi spun on his head, Yami riverdanced around him, and Bakura sang:
"Give him a hand, let him break the rules
With his pair of dice, you'll duel."
Joey took a deep breath and marched toward the Kaiba manor apartments in a sudden burst of energy. He wasn't long for this world—why not go down dueling? Screw Duke's rules, they had a revolution!
"Oh, da show must go on.
From dusk 'til dawn, and on, and on, and on.
I won't be a pawn
In dis song, and on, and on, and on."
Joey stopped on a patch of grass and sang the finale:
"Oh, like Donkey Kong
It is on, and on, and on, and on!"
Rex crawled out of a cardboard box and yelled:
"Hey! Get off my lawn!"
"Just hold on!" Joey scratched his neck sheepishly and moved to the steps. (1)
Back at the theater, Bakura went to calm down at his desk. Who knew a hoedown took so much energy? More importantly, how did everyone, even the non-dancers, manage to do it with such synchronicity when it was completely spontaneous? And where did they learn the music to a song none of them had ever heard and come up with lyrics? Where was that music coming from, anyway? And how exactly did an electric banjo work?
Come to think of it, that'd been happening a lot lately. No wonder rehearsals were going so smoothly; everyone was getting practice with these impromptu musical numbers.
"What exactly was that?" Yugi asked in the hallway.
"I'm not entirely sure." Yami adjusted his kilt. "But I get the feeling we shouldn't question it."
Bakura sank into his chair (as much as one could sink into a hard seat) when the door swung open and Kaiba charged in. Before Bakura could ask what was so urgent, Kaiba reached inside his trenchcoat, pulled out a wad of cash, and shoved it at him.
"Here. It's insurance."
"For what?" Bakura flipped through the stack. All tens and twenties; which duelists had Kaiba been soliciting?
"In case Duke backs out after last night. He's getting impatient; he asked about moving our deal to the last rehearsal instead of opening night, but I told him he should've thought of that when he signed the contract." Kaiba rummaged through the closet next to the observation window until he found a blond wig that was straight out of 1987. "Are you going to lock up tonight?" he asked.
"I suppose. Where are you going?" Bakura asked.
"To keep Duke in check," Kaiba said and walked out the door.
-O-o-O-
"Are you sure this is a good idea, Seto?" Mokuba nervously adjusted the bag that held his keytar and stared up at the looming manor. The walkway seemed to stretch for blocks in front of them. Oversized dice hung from the streetlights in front of the property. A neon sign on the porch spelled out "DUKE" in large blue letters, lighting the front yard up like the medicinal joints Joey had been smoking. A few cardboard boxes, no doubt former homes of former duelists, lay tossed in a pile under the porch. The dogs that chewed them up guarded the pathway.
"This is our last chance to convince him to let us keep the holographic elements," Kaiba answered as he adjusted something in his pocket. He put on a pair of hologram-emitting fingerless gloves and shoved the gates open. Like clockwork, the Duke's dogs sprung up, snarling and snapping. Kaiba flashed them a wisdom teeth baring smile and widened his eyes to look like a doe on coke. The dogs wilted and dragged themselves away, whimpering hoarsely.
Mokuba jumped when Kaiba turned to him with that expression on his face. "Don't worry. I won't do anything too crazy."
Mokuba followed his brother into the house past the dice-ridden lawn. He really wished Seto had worn his trenchcoat; the fact that he was willing to be in public in a green plaid corset over a purple shirt wasn't a good sign.
"Duke sure has a lot of mirrors," Mokuba commented as they walked down the hall. A video camera perched on the frieze and craned as they walked by. The sound of Kaiba's boots against the checkered floor ricocheted down long corridors.
"And I'm sure some of them go both ways." Kaiba eyed the surveillance cameras that followed them down the hall. He stopped in front of one, looked up at the camera protruding from the mirror's surface, and leaned in close, cupping his hands around his eyes. "Oh, hi, Duke."
A mirrored door to the left of them opened and Duke poked his head out. "Right on time." He beckoned for them to enter and the brothers walked into the green and purple paneled sitting room.
"I see you like looking in mirrors, too," Duke said, leaning back in his purple easy chair at the end of the table. Mokuba sat down at the other end and unpacked his keytar. "Is Little Brother going to be watching, too?"
"He's helping me with negotiations. I'm going to get right into it, if you don't mind."
Kaiba turned to Mokuba. "Just play the chord progression, and I'll do the rest." He flipped a switch inside his pants. He sauntered to the table, in time to the beat. Mokuba played the chord progression on his keytar while Kaiba sang.
"We've had some routs,
But there is no doubt,
We're no clueless fools,
We all see it is true,
Ever since the Fall,
Every shot was yours to call."
Duke sat up, intrigued. His eyes were puppets and Kaiba's swirling hips held the strings.
"You have the means;
Without you, we're bust.
But all of our scenes
Could be much more than just
A homage to dice.
Come on, Dukey, name your price." Kaiba whipped off his black pants.
"Big brother, are you high?" Mokuba almost fingered a wrong key in his shock.
Kaiba continued to sing while twirling around just his shirt and corset, black and silver briefs, and boots. He interspersed the dance with the high kicks they'd been rehearsing.
"Come on, play a hand, and duel me down until you stump me.
Play your card and trump me.
I don't want another duelist, treat me right and I'll be
Your lover, lover puppy.
Wouldn't it be nice?
The moment when I roll your pair of dice?"
Duke was pretty sure this wasn't how a negotiation with Kaiba should ideally go, but how could he resist that thrusting pelvis?
"Dukey, I'm so shameless give me a just a chance and I'll be
Your lover, lover puppy."
Kaiba turned to Duke and stood still. "You could expand your empire. Why stop at dice? Conquer card games, then virtual reality, then…the world." Kaiba's eyes gleamed like their neighbors' tinfoil hats. Mokuba nervously turned up the bass knob on his keytar.
"Sounds, um, interesting," Duke said, looking down at Kaiba's legs. Kaiba was carrying those extra thirty pounds surprisingly well.
"You could use holograms to spread that powerful, sexy image all over the world. I can show you, if you let me." Kaiba spun around and launched into the second verse.
"I'll be your guide,
Your man on the side.
Domino's in the dark
But we'll soon make a mark,
I'm willing to bet
We could be a triple threat."
Kaiba jumped up on the table and continued to gyrate madly.
"Card games return.
But that ain't our concern.
We only care why
Players pick up the die.
They bask in the light,
From the holographic sights." Rainbows shot from the silver holographic patch over Kaiba's pelvis as he thrust his hips.
"Oh, dear god, just why." Duke's jaw dropped.
Rainbows and lasers shot from Kaiba's hands as he waved his arms around like a windmill and continued to sing.
"Let the holograms erase their ground in reality.
Feed your sexuality.
With the Kaiba brothers, you'll go far if you let me
Be your lover puppy.
Let me blow your mind.
I promise you, we'll never get behind." Kaiba swished his own ample behind. A pinwheel spun over the holographic patch in his underwear.
"We'll never be aimless, lay me down, undress, and I'll be
Your lover, lover puppy."
Duke's eyes started to lose focus when Kaiba donned a blond wig and continued in a much-exaggerated Brooklyn accent:
"We could draw hands, give da dice a roll.
Slap, slap cards on my body like a pro.
Oh, Duke, we'll have so much fun;
Get spastic 'til da risin' sun!"
The wig flew off after a particularly energetic neck swivel. Duke gaped at Kaiba's ability to stay on rhythm while acting like one of the feral cats on the street. Holographic flames shot out of the patch on Kaiba's underwear, their shape echoed in his now wild hair. Duke retreated slightly at the flames' reflection in Kaiba's eyes. Kaiba threw himself down on the table and began convulsing while singing.
"Sanity be damned, I'll break you down, get up on me;
Make me your lover puppy!
Never mind my brother, he's old enough; he's eighteen!
Lover, lover puppy!"
Duke edged his chair away as Kaiba sat up and dragged himself across the table towards him, singing:
"I am so inclined
To never stop until your butt is mine!"
Mokuba put down his keytar and headed for the table.
"Nobody would blame ya if you broke down and bought me!
Mokuba, get off me!" (2)
Mokuba dragged a kicking, squirming Kaiba off the table. "I think that's enough," he muttered. He held Kaiba back while he packed up his keytar. Kaiba paid him no mind and continued to shout-sing, even as the music faded out.
"Don't stop our dealing!
We'll be dancing on the ceiling!"
"Seto, you're screaming." Mokuba whispered sharply. He grabbed Kaiba's pants, draped them over his keytar bag, and walked out the door, pulling his brother behind him.
Duke could only sit, frozen, as Kaiba's retreating voice reverberated off the halls. "We may win; we may lose! But I was born to screw the rules!" The singing degenerated into hysterical laughter and incoherent shrieking. (3)
Duke shook his head, hoping to restart his broken brain. "Syphilis is a hell of a disease."
-O-o-O-o-O-
The giant hoop earring totally isn't the Millennium Ring. Really.