Day 18 (July 24th): Heart of the Dragon: Envoy of love and justice! Today's prompt is all about Rua/Leo.

Focus: Written by fellow mod EibonVirgo. Bruno is the only one home for Rua to pester.

Characters: Rua and Bruno

Yusei hadn't been home.

Rua had been all ready with his fresh pack of cards, clean and crinkly cellophane unopened, and Yusei had been out.

Crow was napping on the couch. Jack had waved him out of his room.

"Oh, heya!" Bruno craned over, one hand curled around a cup of ramen. Rua had to bend backward in order to look at his face. "Lookin' for Yusei?"

"Yeah…" Rua's shoulders sagged. "I was gonna show him the booster pack that came out today. I guess I should have called first."

"Well, hey! I'd love to see them. Maybe I can help you pass the time while we wait for him to come back."

Rua pursed his lips. "Is it ok if I wait to open 'em anyways?"

"Sure! I don't mind. What do you want to do while we wait? Something fun?"

Rua paused. Something fun, huh?

He never really got the chance to hang out with Bruno. They barely knew anything about each other. And he had no clue how long Yusei would be out. What was something they could do together?

Thus: they were, at the moment, in the middle of the arcade just off of the thoroughfare.

Rua dragged Bruno to his favorite game first: a racing simulator that was really hard to balance on. He was just barely tall enough to reach the floor, and the gaming bike was so heavy that Rua's body weight wasn't enough to keep the machine from keeling to the side and knocking against the platform.

Weirdly enough, Bruno had a fine time staying upright. Rua watched him become, like. A whole different person on the bike. All focused and cool-looking.

Bruno watched Rua play the next game, a zombie thing with a blue plastic gun attached to a long wire, looking partly mesmerized and partly sick. When Rua stuck the toy gun out to him, asking if he wanted to play, Bruno flinched and beelined for some game where lights flashed in a circle around a big neon button.

"So you've never been to an arcade before now?" Rua asked as Bruno weighed a skee ball in his hand.

"Well, I mean… I've never had time! I guess. I can't really remember if I've ever been to a place like this before, but I feel like, if I had, it would feel familiar."

"Yeah, that makes sense." Rua frowned as Bruno tossed a ball down the runway. It bounced off of the plastic guard and dropped harmlessly down into the return zone. "No, no, like this!"

He wound up, slid the ball forward over the surface of the runway, and it sunk into the '50' point cup.

"Not… my best work," Rua admitted.

"Ohhhhh. You have to sliiiiiide it," Bruno said. "Okay, okay. Let me go again."

Bruno sank eight more balls—three into the '100' point cup and five into the '300' point cup—before the machine demanded more coins and spat out a cascade of little white prize tickets.

Bruno counted them meticulously. "What are these… for…?"

"You get a prize at the end! You trade 'em in like money. But you need a lot of tickets to get good stuff. And usually only the gimmicky games like this spit 'em out."

Bruno beamed. "Well. If we don't get enough tickets for something cool this time, guess we'll have to come back!"

Rua grinned back.

In the end, they racked up enough tickets—mostly from skee ball and a duel tournament simulator—for a handful of hard candies each and a couple of plastic glow-in-the-dark spider rings.

Bruno flashed his ring proudly. "I'll cherish this forever, Rua. This. Cheap plastic spider."

Rua giggled and slid his spindly bright green ring onto his index finger. A token of his newfound friendship. "Hey! There's one more game I wanna show you. It's really fun. And you kind of get to make a fool out of yourself."

Bruno raised his eyebrows.

"How do you feel about neon lights and junky pop music? And dancing?"

A/N:

Tune in tomorrow for day 19, Flex Your Canon, a day all about headcanons!