Finding Home Chapter 5: School, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

A/N:

Willowwind: ::walks in, grinning::

Escurcae: Hi, Willowwind. How's the cure for writer's block coming along?

Willowwind: ::larger grin:: I think I might have found it.

Escurcae: ::sits up:: Really? What?

Willowwind: I'm not going to tell you, but I can give you a hint….

Escurcae: O.K. What's the hint?

Willowwind: It starts with 'S' and ends with 'ugar'. Guess what it is!

Escurcae: Er…sugar?

Willowwind: YUPS! SUGARSUGARSUGAR!!! ::huge grin::

Escurcae: ::sweatdrops::

Legolas: ::pokes Escurcae:: I told you we should have confiscated her Halloween candy.

Nachzes: NO! Let her eat it, if it'll keep her writing!

Willowwind: Thank you, Nachzes! You're too nice to me!

Nachzes: I know….

Lieh: DDR! DDR! ::dances around::

Escurcae: Yes, Lieh. This chapter has the DDR scene.

Lieh: YAY! Then start the chapter! ::turns to audience:: Own, don't own, etc. etc. blah blah blah. Warnings: Swears, OOC-ness, the usual. Oh, and this is the chapter where this actually starts to be a mary-sue, if you know what I mean. Roll fic!

---

Finding Home Chapter Five: School

"Is she for real?"

"Can't be…."

"Yeah! I mean, nobody's ever beat Tea at DDR!"

"How could she think she'd stand a chance?"

"I dunno…."

Joey suddenly shut up as Lieh finished talking with Nachzes and turned to Tea.

"Warm-up or not?" she asked. Tea blinked.

'Well…she certainly takes this seriously,' she thought. "Uh…sure," Tea responded aloud. "You go first."

Lieh nodded. "'kay." She set her backpack down and unzipped it, removing a CD case from within it. Turning to Tea, she asked, "Standard Kaibacorp. DDR? Works with disks as well as pre-programmed songs?"

Tea nodded, startled. Lieh grinned, looking much like her yami, and inserted the CD.

"Perfect."

Stepping up onto the dance pad, she chose her dance level and selected 'play CD'. Almost immediately, music blared to life. Lieh grinned and began to bounce in time to it on the pad, singing along as the first line of the lyrics came.

"Don't wanna be an American idiot!"

Right;

Left down;

Jump, jump.

"Don't want a nation under the new media!"

Right foot up, left foot right, and jump!

"And can you hear the sound of hysteria?"

Right foot right again, and jump, then switch your legs to left up and right down. Jump!

"The subliminal mindfuck America!"

Everyone of Yugi and co.'s many pairs of eyes were as large and round as dinner plates. Seto had one eyebrow raised, a smirk plastered onto his face.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension / All across the alien nation / Everything isn't meant to be okay / Television dreams of tomorrow / We're not the ones who're meant to follow / Convincing them to walk you!"

Tea winced as Lieh moved to the now much faster beat, hips shaking and arms above her head, her body sliding smoothly from one position to the next with only a short glance at the screen as arrows flew across it. Glancing over her shoulder during a spin, Lieh grinned as she continued to sing, laughing at the look on Tea's face.

"Well maybe I'm the faggot America!"

The flashes of colour from the DDR screen lit up the girl's ecstatic face as he danced, feet moving blurrily fast in the darkened basement over the glowing dance pad as she jumped on the center, and then spun, mouth moving as she belted out one of her favorite songs ::A/N: Lieh: It really is! True Canadian am I!::.

"I'm not a part of a redneck agenda!"

Nachzes smirked and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against a similarly-positioned Haiiro as bright light flickered over her face. Tea's expression was to DIE for!

"Now everybody do the propaganda / And sing along in the age of paranoia!"

Willowwind and Yousei seemed to be alternating between looks of pain at the language and jubilation as Lieh danced.

Left foot, right foot, up, down, centre, and bottom-left….

"Don't wanna be an American idiot!"

Shimmy, shake, flame the stars and stripes.

"One nation controlled by the media!"

Arms over your head – swing 'em wide.

Forward and back, then up-right and down-left.

"Information nation of hysteria!"

Chin raised in challenge, eyes sparkling.

"It's going out to idiot America!"

::A/N: Willowwind: No offense WHATSOEVER was meant to general Americans. All flames will go to Nachzes, as she was the one who wrote that part. And she says that she'll use the flames to burn the White House (again—see Canadian history if you don't get what I mean. Canadians burnt down the White House once before) with George W. Bush in it, so I wouldn't suggest any flames at all.::

The music died off, and Lieh collected her CD, then stepped down off the dance pad, her eyes laughing silently. She ginned at Tea, who was staring at her, shocked.

Lieh laughed.

"Sorry," She said, giggling. "But I just had to do that! I mean...you're American! That was so waiting to happen!" In response to everyone else's confused looks, she added, "I'm Canadian. I half hoped we'd have to sing the national anthem or something in school, cause I wanted to, like, sing 'Oh Canada' instead...." She took a deep breath and grinned around at everyone, stopping at Seto. "Why'd your parents move here anyways?" she asked him. "I mean, Nachzes uses the un-dubbed version, so there you live in Japan, but I know in the dub you and 'Ki-ki are the only Japanese-Americans in the show. And Ryou's British," she added as an afterthought.

Seto twitched.

"'Ki-ki?" Mokuba asked. Lieh grinned.

"My little nickname for you. I like Mokie, too, but I'm waiting for Seto to start calling you that again. So I got 'Ki-ki from that." She grinned again. "I also considered 'Wooden horse', but then I decided that sounded weird." She looked at Seto. "I like your name best, though. 'Turmoil' suits you perfectly, though I like 'Turmoil Fate' better than 'Turmoil seahorse'. 'Tis dumb. Doncha think it's funny that Go—" She was cut off by Willowwind, who slapped a hand over her friend's mouth and smiled at Seto, then dragged the girl away. ::1::

Seto's eyebrow seemed to have taken permanent residence in his hairline.

"So...," Tea said, "are you ready?"

Lieh shrugged. "Eh, whatever. If I can swim for 12 laps straight in a 25 metre long swimming pool I can do another Dance Dance Revelation dance within a space of a minute or two." She rubbed her hands together and bounced up and down on her heels.

Tea blinked. "You swim?"

"Oh yeah. I'm in level 11. I'm gonna try for lifeguard-ship, but I didn't really have the time yet."

"Interesting...."

Lieh shrugged again. "Whatever. The sixteen bucks an hour helps with the bait too."

"...Okay. So, you ready?"

"Oh yeah."

Tea stepped up to the DDR machine. "What song?"

"Ecstasy?" Lieh sounded hopeful. Tea smiled.

"Sure. Your fave?"

"Uh huh." Lieh stepped up too. "You ready?"

Tea grinned.

"Ready as ever, Canadian girl."

The glint in Lieh's eyes was predatory as she bared her teeth in a feral grin. "I always lived a challenge," she quipped. Tea smiled coldly. Both girls turned to face the glowing DDR screens, and Tea's manicured fingernail reached for the start button.

"GO!"

---

Lieh stood in the middle of her group of friends, grinning widely, her face flushed with both exertion and happiness.

"Awesome, Lieh! I can't believe you beat Tea!"

Over with her friends, Tea glared at Lieh, rage and humiliation the cause of her flush, as Haiiro drawled, perfectly audibly, "Oh, Tea's not that hard to beat. Compared to real dancers, Tea's just child's play."

Lieh's giggly laugh rang out. "Oh, come on, Haiiro! Tea's an excellent dancer! With a few more months of practice, she could probably beat me. I don't think I've ever had a more challenging opponent!" She flashed Tea an apologetic glance, but to the other it looked a lot like pity.

'Lieh-White Rider,' she thought, her blue eyes blazing, 'I will get you back if it's the last thing I do to make you pay for beating me at my game!'

---

The next morning, Lieh woke up to something being tossed onto her bed. She sat up slowly, and glanced at the doorway. Seto was standing there, holding several parcels under his arm, identical to the one on her bed. "School uniform," Seto stated in answer to Lieh's questioning gaze, then he left.

Lieh tore her package open, hoping desperately that they had changed the school uniform since she had last seen it. She signed as the clothes fell into her lap. They were the same as they had been on the TV show. Well, it wasn't that bad, it just needed a few slight…adjustments. Lieh put the skirt on, and the blouse, but she left a few of the top buttons undone. She disregarded the jacket (hey, it was pink) and put a blue tie (NOT the standard bow tie) that matched the skirt. Then, after a moment of thought, she braided her hair.

Soon after this, Lieh descended the stairs and make her way to the dining room. She snorted when she way everyone else's "uniforms".

Really, only four people were actually wearing their uniforms: Seto, Ih'kuaren, Silverwater, and Yousei. Everyone else had made some slight…alterations…to their uniforms.

Willowwind and Escurcae had both telepathically changed the colour of some of the articles of clothing. Willowwind had kept the skirt and the blouse, but she had changed the jacket to a blue which matched the skirt. She had completely disregarded the bow tie, just like her yami, and her hair, like her yami's, was in a pollyana. Escurcae had changed her skirt to white, her blouse blue, and her jacket white.

Nachzes had also changed her clothing's colours: her skirt was blood-red, and the previously white blouse was now black. Like Lieh, she had left a few top buttons of the blouse undone, she had left the jacket, and she was wearing a blood-red tie. She had left her hair down.

However, by far the most interesting "uniform" was Haiiro's. By how it looked, he hadn't even bothered to open his package. He was wearing black leather pants, a ribbed black muscle shirt with a collar that looked surprisingly like Yugi's. He was wearing something that looked like it could be a short-sleeved version of the school jacket, only it was blood-red. He had left his hair alone. Haiiro and Ih'kuaren also both had slits in the back of their jackets that they stuck their wings through. (Just for the fun of the story, let's just say that they can make their wings invisible, but not make them disappear entirely.) Lieh glanced around, grinning, and she wondered what the principal was going to say about this….

Twenty minutes later, they were all jammed into Seto's limo, on their way to school.

---

Tea stood a little ways away from Yugi and the gang, unusually quiet. She was still sulking over yesterday's defeat. She glowered as Kaiba's limo pulled up outside the school and people jumped out. Her eyes widened as she saw the attire most of them were wearing, especially that one guy…Haiiro, was it? It didn't matter; he wasn't the only one who was going to get in major trouble because of his clothing. Then, she saw Lieh. An evil grin began forming on her face. She would get her revenge from yesterday's humiliation. But she had to work quickly. Lieh was wearing a white shirt. No jacket. Tea would use the old water-on-the-door trick; old, but still very effective.

None of Yugi's circle of friends noticed when Tea slunk off, determination glowing in her azure eyes.

---

Mokuba saw Yugi and his friends, and immediately made for them, followed by the others. "Hey, Yugi!"

The spiky-haired boy turned around. "Oh, hi, Mokuba! Hi everyone!"

Lieh glanced around at the group. "Hey, where's Tea?"

"Tea?" Yugi looked around. "Oh, she's probably off sulking somewhere."

Actually, at the moment, Tea had just located a bucket, and was now looking for a source of dirty water to fill it with. Suddenly, she stopped. This plan was too risky. She could easily be found out, as there would probably be a lot of witnesses. Besides that, she might not even get Lieh wet; somebody else might get to it first. She needed a better idea. Aggravated, Tea glanced around, and then stopped. She was staring in as school window…at the pool. She slowly went through a new plan in her mind, and, unknowingly, a huge evil grin spread across her face. She loved it. It was foolproof, and, in the end, it would be her word against Lieh's…the teacher's pet against the person who couldn't even follow the dress code for the first day. This was absolutely perfect.

---

Everyone stopped talking and looked up as the bell rang. Soon, students were pouring into the schools, on their way to their lockers. Seto sighed as he saw who took the locker next to him: Lieh. ::A/N: Duh….:: Nachzes was on his other side, and that wasn't much better. The 16-year-old drew out a timetable and glanced at it. L.A. came first. L.A. wasn't exactly his best subject. And math came next…math was so boring in this school. He was at least five grade levels above the rest of the class. ::A/N: Who can guess what fic that stat. is from?:: All in all, this was not shaping up to be a good morning.

---

"Now, to see how much you know, and at what grade level you're at, you are all going to write a story, about anything you like. It's due Friday. You can have this class to work on it. Any questions?"

Willowwind put up her hand.

"Yes…" the teacher consulted her class list, "Escurcae."

"I'm Willowwind."

"Oh. Yes, Willowwind?"

"How long can it be?"

The teacher beamed, knowing that she had found a potential teacher's pet. "As long as you can make it by Friday."

Escurcae's hand shot up. The teacher turned to her. "Yes, Willowwind?"

"Escurcae."

"Oh. Right. Yes?"

"Will this be the only class we have to work on it?"

"We'll see how well you work today. Any other questions?" No hands were raised. "All right. You may begin."

Willowwind grinned at Lieh, who was sitting in the desk beside her. Leih grinned back. They were both thinking the same thing: 'As long as we can? Does she know that three kids in this class are authoresses, and at least one other loves writing? She is going to regret this….'

By the end of the hour-long period, Willowwind was nearing 10 pages of story, while Nachzes (who was by far a slower writer) was done a little over five pages. Lieh had managed to scrape four and a half, though she was caressing them much like Gollum and the Ring, uttering strange 'precious' noises.

The teacher sweatdropped massively when she saw their papers, then proceeded to ask the two SANE ::A/N: If she only knew….:: authoresses how far they were in their stories.

Willowwind grinned as evilly as she could. "I just got past the initial incident."

"I didn't even get there, although I came close."

The teacher ::A/N: We really should give her a name…let's say Mrs. Smith:: decided to leave it at that and NOT give them the next period to work on their stories, reminding herself to give them limits in the future. Everyone else finished packing and left.

Math class was nothing remarkable, as their teacher merely gave them worksheets on algebra, and then left them to do them after a "short" review on how to do algebra that no one needed.

Seto was finished his worksheet within two short minutes. He sat back, wondering what to do with the rest of the period. Annoying Gardener was always fun…but maybe he should try annoying some of the newcomers, to see how they reacted to it. White Rider would just start drooling, he knew, but the others? Seto looked up and saw Willowwind writing on a piece of lined paper, undoubtedly working on her story for L.A. He smirked. A perfect target.

Quickly and discreetly, he wrote a note on a slip of paper, crumpled it up, and tossed it onto her desk.

---

Willowwind started slightly as a crumpled bit of paper landed on her desk. She opened it, and read the neat writing on it:

"Adurois, you're supposed to be working on the worksheets. Weren't you paying attention when the teacher assigned them?"

Willowwind sighed, and tiredly scribbled a response. Then, without looking backwards, she tossed the note onto Seto's desk. ::A/N: Hey, she is half telepath….::

Seto opened the note and read it.

"First of all, my name is Willowwind, not Adurois. And I finished the worksheets while the teacher was giving us that pointless review. Math doesn't take me that long.

P.S. Weren't you paying attention when the teacher read the rules…like the one that outlaws passing notes?"

Seto glowered at the paper, then crumpled it up. Maybe he should just stick to teasing Gardener….

The CEO took a note from Joey to Tea that he had managed to intercept from his bag. He carefully copied the messy scrawl into a note of his own, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto Tea's desk.

Tea opened the piece of paper and glanced at it. It sure looked like it was from Joey…. She read it.

"so, tea, y did u, like, looze to lieh? u suk!" ::A/N: Yes, I know the spelling is terrible! It's supposed to be from Joey, people!::

Tea's blue eyes widened, and then narrowed quickly. She turned in her desk to glare at Joey, who was sitting diagonally back from her.

Joey was just innocently working on the first question of his worksheet, when he felt someone's eyes on him. He looked up, and saw Tea, of all people, glaring daggers at him. He blinked twice, looking very innocent.

Tea continued to glare, until she heard a soft snort come from directly behind her. She turned, and saw Kaiba with his head down on his desk, shaking. Her eyes narrowed further. He was laughing.

She glared at him, and he looked up, still smirking. Her eyes widened as he mouthed, "You suck!"

Tea turned back to face the front, and put her head down on her desk. The only thing that could possibly save this day was what she had planned for lunch….

---

Two periods later, the bells rang, and people poured out of their classrooms, heading for their lockers, or for the doors. Among this crowd, Haiiro could be heard bragging to Nachzes, "The guy behind me in Social class kept complaining that something that felt like feathers kept smacking him in the face. I can't imagine why, of course. And angel-boy almost got caught with his wings in Science. The teacher noticed the wing slits."

"Wings?" Yugi asked. "You don't have wings, do you?"

"Actually…" Ih'kuaren was cut off as Tea ran up to them. "Lieh," she panted, "the school decided to start a swim team, and it's meeting now. I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

Lieh was immediately suspicious. "That wasn't on the announcements."

"They only told people who…have had a lot of swimming lessons. But they didn't know about you. So, I thought I'd tell you, 'cause I think we could really use you on the team."

"I don't have a swimsuit…."

"We're not going in the water. It's just a short talk."

Lieh stared suspiciously at Tea. Would she be the kind to do anything? Not likely. Lieh sighed. "Okay, but his had better be quick."

"it will be." Tea turned to lead the way, and no one saw an evil smirk spread across her face. No one except for one person. And that person was…

Seto Kaiba.

---

Seto was standing near Yugi and his newly-enlargened gang, when Tea ran up. She talked with Lieh for a little while, but, through all the noise in the hallway, he could only catch a few words. Eventually, Lieh nodded, and Tea turned around. As they began walking away, Seto couldn't help but notice that Tea grinned. And Seto did not like the look of that grin.

So, he followed them.

About five steps later, the involuntary part of his mind shut off, and he stopped. Since WHEN did he care about what happened to Li-White Rider?

Oh great, he thought, now I have to think of an excuse.

I…wanted…to…annoy Gardener! Yes, that's it! I wanted to annoy her by spoiling whatever plans she had. He continued in the direction they had taken, but soon stopped again.

In the crowded hallways, he had completely lost sight of Lieh and Tea.

Where were they going? Seto thought back to the words he had caught from their conversation. Come, announcements, lessons, water, and quick about summed it up. Wait a second…water? Seto's eyes widened. The pool.

---

"So, Tea, when did you have this sudden 'change of heart' towards me?"

Tea thought fast. "When…I realized that you're probably having a hard time adjusting to being here, I mean, seeing as how you're not from here. So I thought that it would be easier for you if you had more friends and less enemies."

"I see."

They reached the door of the pool, and Tea held it open for Lieh, thus putting herself behind the other girl. Lieh went forward slowly, glancing around curiously as she did so. She made it to the edge of the pool, then stopped.

"Where's everyone else?" Lieh questioned, turning to face Tea.

"Oh, they…must not be here yet."

"I thought that you said the meeting was starting!"

"Well, I thought…"

"It appears that you thought wrong. I don't have forever to wait. I'm going to go."

In her moment of desperation, Tea grabbed Lieh's arm and pointed across the pool. "Look, there they are!"

"Where?" Lieh turned, and Tea took advantage of this immediately. She pushed Lieh forwards, and then turned and ran a few steps, and she almost thought she heard a clunking noise along with the splash that ensued. She started to turn back to see the result of her prank, when a voice reached her ears. Not Lieh's voice, either.

"GARDENER!"

Tea turned once more, and bolted.

---

Seto ran into the pool area, heedless of the slippery floor. Gardener ran out of the area, slamming the door behind her. Coward. She couldn't even face what she had done. Seto considered chasing her, but decided against it. He had seen Tea push Lieh into the pool, through a small window. He could catch her later. In the meantime….

Seto turned towards the pool, to see Lieh sinking. Not struggling, just…sinking. And the water above her was being tinged strangely red….

The CEO literally ripped off his jacket, ignoring the fact that its buttons were flying everywhere. He ran up to the edge of the pool, kicking of his shoes as he did so, and dived in, vaguely noting a smear of a liquid crimson substance on the tiles….

The water was cold. Not frigid, but colder than Seto had expected. He opened his eyes and looked around, and caught sight of Lieh nearing the bottom of the pool. He dived deeper.

Seto reached Lieh just as she was about to hit the bottom. He grabbed her around the waist and pushed off the bottom of the pool, rising quickly to the surface.

Breaking the surface of the water, Seto gasped for air, his cinnamon hair plastered to his head, school uniform hanging off of his lean frame, now see-through white shirt clinging to his chest. At first, Lieh's lack of response to air didn't bother him, but when he managed to heave her onto the deck of the pool, water streaming from both of them onto the blue tiles, his heart clenched.

Lieh…wasn't breathing.

---

A/N:

Nachzes: ::evil laughter:: BWAHAHAHAHA! AND THE EVIL CLIFFHANGER IS COMPLIMENTS OF…ME! MUAHAHAHAHA! FEAR MY ALL-MIGHTY WRATH! WAHAHAHAH-::coughs:: ::shifty eyes at Willowwind::

Willowwind: IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE A CLIFFIE!!!

Lieh: Yeah, well, you didn't use Yami! What was the point of us bringing him back if you still haven't used him?! Anyways, Nachzes has got the next scene all planned out, so all the readers have gotta do is review, and it'll be posted.

Willowwind: ::seethe::

Nachzes: ::edges out of room::