Title: Legally Blond

Pairings: Eventual Puppyshipping (Seto/Joey), past Snareshipping (Duke/Joey). Sideships: Persevereshipping (Duke/Téa), Ardentshipping (Tristan/Serenity), Puzzleshipping (Yami/Yugi)

Rating: T

Words (Chapter 11): 1,584

Author's Notes: I wrote this chapter a while ago, before chapter 7 was even written. I cannot tell you how much I loved writing it or how anxiously I've been waiting to post. I love writing these two, whether they're fighting or not. I have this and a little flirtier scene written out, and another one in mind. Ugh. I'll stop rambling about my love of these two so you guys can read my writing of these two.

Oh, and before we start, since I always try to answer reviews, but I can't answer anonymous ones, let me reply to the two who were anonymous.

Kelly (from Chapter 10): Hey, it was tempting, and I agree, he could totally rock it! But it was just too good not to put him in a dog costume and add the puppy references to puppyshipping. Thank you for your review!

Reader (from Chapter 7): Sorry this took me so long to get to, I just thought of doing this as a way to answer anon reviews. If you're still reading, thank you for your review and nice words. I agree, I think she deserves better, so I do plan on giving it to her...eventually. You'll all see who soon enough.

Joey's POV:

"Wheeler?"

I looked up at the voice, groaning a bit when I realized a little too late who it belonged to. There, looking at me with a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk was Kaiba.

"What do you want?" I huffed out, perfectly content to get back to feeling sorry for myself.

"You're dressed like a dog."

I rolled my eyes. Wow, was he always that perceptive? No wonder he was top of his class, he's a genius! No one else would have ever noticed I was dressed in a giant, embarrassing dog costume!

I bit my tongue from that sarcastic remark only for another one to slip out. "You're dressed like a prick. What's your point?"

He really did, you could tell just from looking at him that his pristine white suit was designer and probably custom made. Must have cost a fortune. Frankly, he looked better in a trench coat. Not that I thought about it or anything.

He let out a breath that on any normal person, could have been considered a laugh, but this was Kaiba, so clearly he wasn't laughing at my insult.

"I just came from an important meeting with a bunch of guys who were dressed quite similarly, like pricks, as you say. So that's my excuse. Are you going to tell me you just came back from the pound?"

I balled my fists but in the paws of the suit, it probably didn't look as intimidating as I'd hoped. "Just fuck off, would you?"

He was quiet for a moment before he sat down next to me and put his briefcase, which I hadn't noticed before, between us. I was about to make a retort about him not wanting to rub elbows with me when he spoke up, giving a question I wasn't prepared to answer. "Wheeler, why are you here?"

I blinked at him for a few seconds. "You mean, like, on this bench?"

He rolled his eyes at me. What else was new? "No, not on this bench. At law school. Why'd you come here?"

I raised my eyebrows this time. "To become a lawyer…"

He rolled his eyes again. If my mom were alive and here, she'd be telling him they'd fall out if he kept that up. "Yeah, no shit." I was a bit surprised, I didn't think I'd be hearing my assistant professor swear in front of me. Never mind when it was just the two of us on a bench. "I mean why'd you pick here?"

"It's the best in the country, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why someone would go here if they got in, which I did."

I could tell by the look on his face that he was trying hard not to burst out with an insult. "But you don't fit here."

"You know what? You can go shove it up –"

He continued as if I didn't say anything. The only indication he even heard me was his voice getting louder. "There are other law schools in the country that you'd fit in better with the people and probably excel at and be the top of your class. In case you haven't noticed, we don't really get street punks around here, even if they are top of their class in university."

"—your ass. Wait, how the hell do you know that?"

"I'm one of your teachers, Wheeler, of course I know your background." He sounded exasperated at my own stupid question, so I ignored the urge to insist he wasn't actually my teacher. "So why'd you pick here? Somewhere with rich, snooty, stuck up, know-it-alls filling every class? And don't give me that spiel about it being the best, I know students who have turned it down or transferred out because they knew they could handle the workload but not the environment."

I bit my lip and looked away. I didn't want to admit the real reason I came here to study, not to him. He had more than enough reasons to make fun of me, though he had surprisingly only mentioned the dog costume once in this interaction. So far. It was embarrassing, in reality.

"My ex goes here, alright?" I tried to say it like it didn't matter, but I wasn't sure why I even said it to begin with. Maybe it was the fact that said ex had just told me he'd still be with me if he didn't think I was so stupid and I was more than a little bitter and hurt, and Kaiba being a jerk wasn't helping matters.

There was a stretch of silence before he scoffed. "You've got to be fucking kidding me." Again with the swearing. Really, a totally unprofessional teaching assistant. Sitting with a student in the middle of the night who was wearing a dog costume and swearing at him.

Actually, that description sounded unprofessional in a totally different way.

"You picked the top law school in the country to stalk your ex and try to get her back? Do you realize how pathetic, not to mention downright creepy, that is?"

I turned back to him, glaring. My hands had once again turned into puppy-paw fists. "Oh shut your fucking mouth, would you? I'm not trying to get my ex back, just show him that I'm not the loser he thought I was, and I can actually do something, and unlike him I wouldn't be bouncing off a cushy trust fund while I did it. But half my professors hate me, he's engaged to some girl who I'm pretty sure he cheated on me with and then may or may not have just been on the verge of cheating on with me, and I'm basically a laughing stock for their prissy friends and all my classmates. So yeah, maybe I am a loser and I should probably transfer or just go home."

I hadn't meant to rant about it, certainly not to him of all people, but the only one I'd really told any of this to was Yugi. I didn't want everyone back home to know how hard I was struggling and hell, Kaiba already did. But now I'd just handed him a license to mock me even more.

"Yeah, you should."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"If you're already about to throw in the towel when your first semester is just starting, then you should absolutely go home."

"What the fuck kind of advice is that?"

"The honest kind. If you came out here to follow your ex around and then cry like a kicked…puppy," at this, he flicked the ear closest to him and I swatted at his hands, "when people don't take you seriously, then yeah. You're not cut out to be a lawyer. It's almost a shame, guess that underdog fire in you was only good for street fights and stalking."

He got up and grabbed his suitcase, beginning to walk away. I grinded my teeth and yelled out to him. "Don't you dare give that smug attitude like you're so much better than me. You don't even know what it's like to be an underdog, you probably got everything you have because it was on a silver platter. If you were so great, why would you still kissing Pegasus' ass instead of making it on your own? You're just a self-centered, full of himself douchecanoe."

The way he was gripping his briefcase handle, I knew I'd struck a nerve. Good. He really was a douchecanoe. "I'd suggest doing your research before talking out of your ass. If you did that, I'm sure you'd be ahead in more classes. Working underneath another lawyer with more experience is something you'd know you have to do in order to gain experience if you were here for the job instead of just this fairytale you made up in your head. I'm currently working under the best there is whereas you're probably going to fail his class."

At that, he began walking away again. What did he even mean do my research? Did he just mean looking up what he had proceeded to tell me? No, I got the feeling there was more I was supposed to know before 'speaking out of my ass' as he'd said.

By the time I thought of a comeback (it wasn't very good, it was mostly just 'Hey, get back here, Rich Boy!') he was already out of my sights. I sighed and decided to slump back to my dorm. No use in staying out here for anyone else to see me and decide I deserved even more mocking than what had already been handed down.

I mean, all things considered, Kaiba could have made a lot more jokes about the costume than he did. He mostly just told me I was pathetic and not cut out for all this. Basically, he said what everyone else did. Rebecca in her condescending way, Téa in her thinks she's being helpful way, Duke in his I'm going to pretend I'm being nice but really I'm passively being condescending way…

But when Kaiba said it, it wasn't any of that. It felt like a challenge and honestly, more of a challenge than when I'd wanted to prove myself to anyone else. He didn't think I should be here if I wasn't trying? Well, fuck him, I'd try and I'd fucking excel, just like I always planned.

No one underestimates Joey Wheeler and gets away with it.

Author's Notes: I hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. We are now about halfway through the movie, but the Puppyshipping spot here was taken more from the musical ("Chip On My Shoulder" anyone?) Watch out for anymore puppy references, they're going to be in reference to that. Come on, you had to know that from the moment I said he was in a dog costume, am I right? You all totally knew. This one and next chapter are both a little short, so I apologize. Next update should be by either Friday the 23rd, or Saturday the 24!