The Delay

A Oneshot Crack Fic

Yusho stared at Leo Akaba, the man who he spent literally three years trying to see. The man had changed from when he'd last seen him. This man slouched in his throne as if he never left it. His expression was cool and impassive- in other words, bored.

"Yusho Sakaki!" Leo's voice echoed around the throne room, "You're late."

"Leo Akaba." Yusho took another step forward. "You're conquering the dimensions through the use of a children's card game. Duel Monsters is supposed to bring smiles to the people, not this nonsense!"

"I used to agree with you, but alas, it was all too convenient." Leo lazily lifted his head off of his fist and sat up. "So I see you brought my son. I suppose it's only fair since I captured yours."

A screen flashed on to show a tomato haired teen. Yusho's breath caught as he recognized the all too familiar features. It had been so long.

"Father!" Yuya looked just as shocked as Yusho felt. There was a little part of him that broke. Seeing his son three years older made it all to clear that those were years neither of them were getting back.

"Yuya," he reached out to the screen only for it to fade to grey. "You've gone too far, Leo! I see now that mere words will not be enough to convince you."

Reiji stomped a step closer to Leo. A small ray of light now shone on his ankles. "Do you have nothing to say to me, Fa- Akaba?!" His fists were clenched but the rest of him was in a sort of forced calm. The kid behind him whimpered.

Leo rolled his eyes and finally stood.

"Hmph." The man started to shake out his wrist. "I do hope that you don't think I'm out of practice, Yusho. You will find I am just as much of a challenge as ever. You're not walking out of here."

Yusho cracked his neck, "Don't be so sure."

Reiji and Reira readied their duel disks much to his confusion.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not planning on letting Akaba continue to ignore me." Reiji said evenly. He pushed up his glasses, "I've come to tear his castle down."

"We're not dueling, you silly boy. What ever gave you that idea?" Leo shook his head. "Perhaps leaving you with your mother wasn't ideal..."

"Dueling is supposed to be for fun." Yusho explained. "This has gotten bigger than any card game can solve."

Reira squeaked and squeezed his brother's arm. Reiji looked at the boy and gave him what was probably his best imitation of a comforting pat. The action resembled something that an alien watching a robot would try. Then he glanced at Yusho and his father appraisingly.

"What do you have in mind?" His suspicion was cutting. Yusho couldn't help but feel the young man was picturing something unsavory. Perhaps Candyland or Scrabble.

Leo pushed his foot down on a floor tile. The room started shaking and the floor standing between them started to draw back. Something that looked like a table rose from beneath and the floor rearranged itself.

"It should be obvious." Leo chuckled.

Yusho took that as a cue to touch the secret switch on his cane. The wood drew in on itself and produced a flattened disk on one end.

"Dueling is for smiles," Yusho spun his hat away, "Ping Pong is for war."

A/N: So there's been smatterings of worry about ping pong delaying the next episode floating around tumblr. As of right now, I have no idea if the episode will be delayed or not. I sincerely hope it won't be as I'm really excited to finally find out what the heck Leo's deal is, as well as everything else. Like Yuya FINALLY has found his father! Reiji gets to confront his. We find out about the dimensions! Seriously, I can't wait.

So if you're reading this after this whole debacle and the ping pong delay wasn't a thing, that's why this exists. It's not as random as it appears to be. Although, technically I did write this with a fever so... *sigh* why must I write things when I'm sick or tired? Anyways, I hope it was somewhat fun. It's shorter than I like but this is honestly a drababble I wrote on my phone and I think that if I added more fluff then that'd just be unnecessary padding to the punchline.

That being said, in this crackyverse Leo and Yusho were ping pong buddies. The reason Yusho hadn't confronted him until now, even when he finally got to the fushion dimension is that he was waiting for his leg to heal enough for a ping pong match just in case words weren't enough. Leo actually did try to use ping pong for his conquest at first but it proved unsuccessful. Apparently more people play duel monsters throughout the dimensions and it lacked the wide scale destructive power of solid vision holograms. People would intentionally hit the ball far out of bounds and run away when the other player chased after the ball.