Disclaimer – So very not mine.
A/N – Was waiting for New Years to hurry up and get here. I typed this to pass the time. Written with very little actual knowledge of the Battle City arc between Yuugi winning back Jounouchi's Red Eyes card, and Malik's identity being revealed on the blimp. Darn UK broadcast schedule.
Continuity – Not too long into the Battle City arc; though after Shizuka removed her bandages, obviously.
Feedback – Welcomed and responded to, if you want me to talk back to you.
Fall Into
© Scribbler, January 2005.
She's magnificent.
It's the only word to describe her – all kicked up hair and cocky smile and bodice straight from Ann Summers. In another context 'trashy' might fit better, but here she's nothing less than radiant.
She bares her teeth slightly, and it takes a moment, but Shizuka realises this is a smile. A tight, sharp smile, like the heels of her boots. You could cut yourself on a smile like that; bleed as red as her lipstick.
Shizuka knows she must look kind of gawpy, but it's difficult not to be. By rights, Mai should look beat up and bruised and exhausted.
But there's nothing tired about the way she cants her hips, tips her head back and laughs – a wild and reckless laugh. There's an edge to it, almost like crying, but more of it is exhilarated, daredevil, free. The sound rings across the field, like church bells summoning mourners for a funeral.
For all she's heard her voice, Shizuka doesn't know all that much about Mai. She knows her face, knows that she drives a convertible, knows that she's an experienced duellist.
She knows a little more from what Jounouchi and his friends told her. To them, Mai is a loose cannon – forceful and unpredictable, with loyalties that waver like a politician's the week before Election Day. She's mostly an ally, but her first priority is always herself and her own goals. Yuugi thinks of her as a friend, naturally, but the others' smiles are just as sharp as Mai's – perhaps sharper.
Once, when he was sleepy and Shizuka was using his belly as a pillow and listening to him tell tales of all the things he'd done in Duellist Kingdom, Jounouchi described Mai as the most dangerous person he's ever met.
Shizuka isn't stupid. She knows her brother has met a lot of weird people – a lot of harmful people. She knows he isn't always telling her the full story. She knows that when he wears long sleeves, it's probably to cover up bruises, just like she knows she won't ask where they came from. She knows his knuckles haven't always been so scrubbed clean. She knows he and Yuugi weren't always friends. She knows that he still thinks of her as his baby sister, and she knows that she would feel more irritated by that were she not so desperate to think it, too.
Shizuka knows Mai as a person who saved her, once – a person who would help a stranger on the flimsiest of personal connections. She knows Mai as a person whose likes the sound of her own voice, who always checks her make-up in her rear-view mirror, and whose bluntness is most of her charm. Mai is offensive and smart and too competent not to be taken seriously.
And seeing her out there – blonde, long-legged, built like a Valkyrie and knowing how to use it – Shizuka sort of understands what Jou meant.
FINIS.