IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!! - This is the Yu-Gi-Oh! Yaoi portion of the Shipping List in order. Be forewarned. Some "pairings" will not be fluffy and cute. But they will all, hopefully, be believable. Rating's will vary.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi

Author's Notes: Last weekend I went to a local(ish) anime day at a store. I tied for third place in a coloring contest! Yay! I won an old figure of Armitage III. It's so cool. On another note, lately I've been starting one chapter of one fic and then starting up another and another and another. I just have so much in my head that I want to work on all at once. Have you ever had that happen? I'd like to actually finish something, you know.

- For anyone not in the know, Katsuya Jounouchi is aka. Joey, Hiroto Honda is Tristan and Ryuuzaki is Rex. Oh yea, have you ever played FFXII? If you have, you can just imagine something like their wolves as the pet that Honda and Jou have. That was my thought.

Rating: PG - T

Yu-Gi-Oh! Shipping List #36 - "Strength"

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Bruiseshipping (Hiroto x Katsuya x Ryuzaki)

When Katsuya of the Warrior Tribe had gone out on the hunt at dawn, his partner Hiroto had expected him to return with fish or a beast of some sort for their supper - he had not expected the thing that Katsuya had returned home with, dragging behind him by one leg as if it were indeed to be their food.

Hiroto frowned at the door of their hut, trying in vain to make sense of this strange sight. Katsuya, clad in the traditional skins and paint that their tribesmen wore when making their way through the great forest, dragging behind him not a kill (at least Hiroto assumed it wasn't dead) but a boy.

Standing aside to allow the blonde entrance, Hiroto raised a questioning finger and opened his mouth but was met instantly by a hand, raised to quiet him. Katsuya dragged the boy to the middle of their central room and dropped his leg on the soft carpet, turning back to the brunette with a look that spoke of a long and tiring day. Hiroto sighed and retreated to the cooking pit to ladle the other a bowl full of stew…meatless stew.

Katsuya smiled gratefully, rubbing off some of the orange and brown marks on his cheeks with an arm before taking the bowl and seating himself at their small table to eat. Hiroto sat opposite him and between bites, Katsuya pointed over his shoulder to the youth resting on their floor.

"I caught a seltei but I couldn't carry it along with that." he said, mouth full of the stew. "I'll go back for it when the sun rises if it's still there. It won't have rotted by then."

Hiroto followed the blonde's finger to the unconscious youth. The boy had wild brown hair, dual-toned by a tuft of purple at his crown. His clothes were about as basic as you could get and he wore no paint. "Is he one of ours?" Hiroto asked curiously. "Does he belong to the forest?"

Katsuya shrugged and held up his empty bowl.

Hiroto frowned but refilled the bowl anyway. "We don't have the room to keep him. When he wakes he'll have to leave."

Katsuya merely shrugged again and returned to his food with concentration.

* * *

Hiroto squinted his eyes suspiciously as he watched their "house guest" clean and gut fish in the front yard, throwing the scraps to their domira waiting excitedly nearby, happily wagging its tail at the treat and the attention. There had been a nagging feeling tugging at something within him from the moment he had laid eyes on the stranger; not a boy, they had learned, a young man only three years their junior whose name was Ryuuzaki and that was all he had ever said of himself.

Ryuuzaki had been jumpy and quick to anger when he'd first awoken but Katsuya had allowed none of that, putting him to work immediately and it was as if he simply hadn't finished yet. He kept himself busy, and made his bed on their lawn (there really wasn't enough room in their small house unless they planned on sharing their bed with him too and Hiroto had little intention of doing that).

And the lack of information wasn't for lack of trying either, he had demanded answers of Ryuuzaki numerous times to which the wild youth had always replied defensively that if Hiroto wanted him gone he need only say the word and they would never see him again. But Hiroto never did tell him to go. Why would he? If Katsuya, who was the best judge of human character he had ever known, didn't have a problem why should he?

Katsuya, for his part, seemed to regard the boy as some kind of new fixture. He now had someone else to delegate his work load to, and with their tribe on the brink of all-out war against the desperate outlanders of the Dino tribe of the wastelands, and Katsuya being of their tribe's council, there was plenty of it to go around. In the evenings around the meal, they spoke of all the things they had always spoken of, Ryuuzaki interjecting at sparse intervals that seemed to become more frequent as time wore on. Three weeks he had been there at their hut, eating their meals, talking with them, laughing with them, and generally becoming such a subtle part of them that Hiroto found his own suspicions caused a weight like stones to settle in his gut, a gnawing guilt that, much like the suspicions themselves, refused to leave him alone.

Hiroto turned his attention from Ryuuzaki to the supper in the cooking pot. It wasn't that he was the caretaker of the house or anything, he continually told himself, it was just that if Katsuya were in charge of fixing their meals they would all likely starve or die of poisoning within the week.

"Hiroto,"

Hiroto turned to find Ryuuzaki had readied the fish for cooking and crossed to the doorway to take it from him. He set the large plate on the table and set to work seasoning the meat.

"do you…think your tribe is weak?"

Hiroto turned back, eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean? Of course we aren't weak. Our tribe is filled with warriors ready for battle."

"I don't mean tactically speaking." Ryuuzaki hastened to explain. "I meant…in the way you live. With quiet and…attachments."

Hiroto still did not understand and Ryuuzaki continued carefully.

"It isn't so in all the tribes, you know. Some tribes devote every breathing moment to battle and they don't have fun or feel for each other the way you do. Like if a man dies he isn't mourned and sex doesn't sound the way it sounds coming from your room."

Honda opened his mouth to reply, to tell Ryuuzaki just what he could do with his observations when Katsuya entered the hut grinning from ear to ear and laid a beautifully decorated sword across the table before them. Its blade shone with the colored flames that adorned it.

"Check it." he declared proudly. "It was forged just for me and blessed and everything. I've been given the title of Flame Swordsman. Only one ever exists at a time in all the warrior tribes. If we're ever attacked, I'll lead us into battle! Isn't it great!"

Hiroto gazed in wonder at the magicked weapon but Ryuuzaki looked on it with a look of terrible dread, a look that Hiroto only glimpsed briefly before it had vanished like so much smoke in the wind.

* * *

Ryuuzaki's hair had grown and he gathered it into a lose braid that made the tuft of light hair atop his head stand out even more and made Hiroto smile the more he got used to it. The spring season had passed with only a few scuffles and little movement in regards to impending war. The summer was upon them now and Hiroto's suspicious nature had quelled itself. Ryuuzaki spent more time in the hut, more time around them and at meal time, he helped Hiroto to prepare the game that Katsuya brought in.

Katsuya had taken to teasing him. The world did not revolve around their small hut, he told Ryuuzaki often. He should mingle with the villagers, maybe find a mate or something. Ryuuzaki's answer: "But I'm happy here." He said it so sincerely that Katsuya could not help but tease him a little. It was in the little things mostly; tugging at that new braid whenever he passed, grinning at him like a loon, screwing around with Hiroto in front of him, even swimming with them at the lake he would touch Ryuuzaki under the water until he was paranoid. It was all fun to watch but Hiroto could see the change those small things were making in their…well, it seemed absurd to continue calling him a "house guest", but neither was he wholly there and Honda began to wonder again, with different feelings this time, just where Ryuuzaki had come to them from.

"Why did you guys decide to be together?" Ryuuzaki asked one evening over their dinner, his tone solemn as it always was when he asked sincere questions and, as always, Katsuya had a ready reply.

"Who else could cook me dinner and kick a dude's ass at the same time?"

This statement, of course, led into a long-winded tale which Hiroto had to tell himself lest it be rife with exaggeration and too highly rated at its close as Katsuya tended to tell it. Ryuuzaki listened with rapt attention.

* * *

It was at the height of the summer heat that the alarm rose throughout the village of the Warrior tribe and Katsuya ran from their small hut clutching an already flaming sword and straight into battle.

The Dino tribe of the waste had finally attacked. Their forces swarmed the small Warrior village and every able hand rose to fight back. The smoke from burning homes plumed angrily into the air overhead like a dark cloud marking their bloody confrontation.

Hiroto took up a battle hammer and kept at Katsuya's back while Ryuuzaki looked on with horror. The once green grass of the peaceful village had been stained in red. Fallen mounts and fallen fighters littered the land, hindering those still standing. The Dino tribe with faces painted in beige and black stormed onward heedless of loss or gain, pushing ever onward through the village.

Fingers rose to trace the path of familiar sharp lines but Ryuuzaki seemed rooted to the spot. On the battlefield below the small hill on which he stood, Ryuuzaki could spot the familiar form of Katsuya, the Flame Swordsman of the Warrior tribe, cutting down any who met him with fire and blood. On his face was a smile. He seemed to be talking to Hiroto behind him. Their faces were clean of war paint now, but Ryuuzaki had seen them both wear it and on the opposite cheek he traced the lines he had helped them to paint.

Below, he saw one mounted Dino warrior, riding the saddled intelligent reptilian animals they bred from hatching for war as the man set his sights on Katsuya who was the center of the village's offense and whose attention was turned elsewhere fighting the foot soldiers around him.

Ryuuzaki's feet propelled him forward with no thought in his mind of what he might do when he reached the terrible scene.

"Stop! Stop!" he found himself shouting, screaming, waving his arms wildly, his messy braid flying out after him as he descended into the fray. The mounted warrior's pike was in the driving position and Ryuuzaki had no more time to think than he had to act. He reached Katsuya just in time to shove him to the ground, Hiroto going down with him in the confusion, but not with enough time to fall himself. The straight pike caught him through the shoulder and kept him standing awkwardly.

Katsuya and Hiroto looked back, screamed and yelled but Ryuuzaki did not hear them. The pike was yanked out of him and he fell into waiting arms. More yelling and finally words that Ryuuzaki recognized.

"Rex? What the hell?! You damn traitor!"

The last thing that Rex Ryuuzaki remembered before blacking out was terrible heat.

* * *

Ryuuzaki awoke first to the horrid smells of the burning medicined incense of the healer's tent and later to soft firs and a soothing familiar scent that pulled him into consciousness. Katsuya was hovering near and Ryuuzaki could find only one thing to say.

"You cleaned my face that day." He had never mentioned it, never said anything and neither had the blonde and they had lived with feigned ignorance like that happily but it was time to say it aloud.

Katsuya held up the clawed necklace he had worn on that fateful day he had set out alone into the wood.

"Why?"

As usual, Katusya's response was ready and forthright. "I made a promise once, to someone important, that if I ever came across someone like I did you, that I wouldn't take advantage."

"For honor…"

"No. Because it was the right thing to do."

Ryuuzaki furrowed his brows and tried to concentrate hard enough on the ceiling overhead to keep awake. "I never knew…that living could be this way. Where I come from, the Dino tribe, they don't…they would have killed me where I lay. …I wanted to belong here."

"You do belong here." It was Hiroto's voice coming solidly from the foot of the bed but when Ryuuzaki tried to look, his vision faded to black.

* * *

When Ryuuzaki awoke for the third time it was because he had to relieve himself, likely caused by the wayward leg laying heavily across his abdomen. Upon further inspection, he found Katsuya snoring and spread-eagled next to him laying in the opposite direction. Ryuuzaki wormed his way out from under the leg, mindful of his pained shoulder, and let himself outside. On the lawn, he was greeted by the domira he'd come to like and followed its path back to Hiroto, quartering meat at a table where he'd been feeding the animal.

Ryuuzaki, feeling his bladder could wait, walked with the pet back to Hiroto and stood quietly for a moment before he gained the will to speak.

"What happened … that day?"

Hiroto pointed off in the direction of the village and Ryuuzaki had to walk a few yards in that direction to see it below. The huts and the land were scarred, but homes were being rebuilt and the people had survived. Hiroto and Katsuya had survived. Ryuuzaki turned back, burying a hand in the dense fur of his companion's head as he returned to Hiroto's side.

"We were able to drive them back." Hiroto explained and Ryuuzaki nodded.

No more was said of it. Silence settled between them but it was far from uncomfortable. All it took to wake Katsuya was a ladle beneath his nose and Ryuuzaki smiled as he held it.

It was hard for Ryuuzaki to think of himself as a Dino tribesman, neither was he of the Warrior tribe. Instead, he felt content to belong to one small hut where two men had become his home.

On chill winter nights, Ryuuzaki watched the stars beyond the bedroom window, surrounded by the warmth of firs and limbs entwining around him and could not find the place in his heart where he missed anything at all. True strength, Ryuuzaki had come to learn, was not what he had been taught it to be at all. True strength was the emotion that came from having a home to protect and the times of calm to enjoy it.

Post whatevers: Next up: Keith x Ryuuzaki. Don't expect much in the way of a "pairing" there. As always, if you liked, please review. Ja!