A/N: So... I had a little fun with Jounouchi in this chapter. I wrote the end of it first, and when I came back to write the beginning, I was in the middle of watching Code Geass. So I wanted to indulge a bit. Forgive me. You'll get your polar next chapter. I'm having my fun.
Oh, I suppose I should warn about the slew of other OCs, as well. They've got like two lines each. They're not "LOOK I'M MARRYING THE MAIN CHARACTER OCs". They're look, "Jounouchi has a job!" OCs.
Japanese school graduates in April. Battle City started sometime after the gang advanced to the next grade, which would be May. I figure Doom was while they were on summer break, since they were away for so long. (Battle City was only three days, so it could have been a weekend or Golden Week)
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
"Please, sensei!"
"I told you to stop calling me that," Jounouchi growled, glancing over his shoulder at the boys following him down the street.
"But you're our teacher! What're we supposed to say?" the shorter of the two male students asked, circling around.
"I don't care, Tamaki, but something else. 'Sensei' makes me sound old."
"You're not old, sensei!" Tamaki intejected. Jounouchi narrowed his eyes, and the other student rolled his eyes.
"What Tamaki-kun means, Jounouchi-san," he said smoothly, slipping in between Jounouchi and the first-year. "Is that we repsect you, and wish to address you as our teacher."
"Shut it, Kaname," Jounouchi completely ignored the boy's sucking up. "You guys aren't old enough to be drinking."
"But sensei--!" Tamaki cut in again.
"Another word and you'll both fail deck-building!" Jounouchi threatened. Both boys froze, and he smirked. Too easy. Someone really ought to take this job away from him. They hung back as Jounouchi made his way to the bar where he was meeting his co-workers. Jou paused for a moment, feeling sorry for the two.
"Ask me again when you graduate!" Jonouchi finally turned to look at them. "You can wait a few months, can't you?"
Both perked up. "Yes, sensei!" Tamaki chirped.
"Don't call me that!" Jounouchi shook his fist as his students ran off.
"Oi, Jounouchi!" someone called from inside the bar. "Get in here!"
Three years after the magic and millennium items had stopped playing havoc with their lives, Jounouchi was a teacher at a specialized dueling school. His students had bypassed university to pursue a dueling career--anywhere from 18 to 20some year old men and women. He was barely older than the eldest of them. It was the most enjoyable job he could have imagined, and at times the most frustrating. He felt pity for his high school teachers now, with a few notable exceptions. Now that he had experience as a teacher, he knew he'd never forgive threatening a student with expulsion just to let of some steam.
Initially, he thought that he wanted to distance himself from Duel Monsters, but he went back soon enough. When he was the third-best duelist in the world, it wasn't something easily given up. That, and his position gave him unbelievable connections to the dueling world. It was much easier to ask questions about the whereabouts of a certain female duelist when he was a teacher than when he was a dueling celebrity.
No matter how many questions he asked or records he looked into, he STILL hadn't tracked her down, something he was painfully aware of exactly three years to the day after the last time he saw her. Mai was temporarily pushed to the back of his mind, though, while he relaxed with his co-workers.
Jounouchi sat at a round table between three other of his fellow teachers, two men and a woman, champions of Japanese dueling, though all older than him. They were helping themselves to drinks to enjoy--and mourn--the last of their summer vacation. Jounouchi had just finished telling them about Tamaki and Kaname.
"Those two!" Kaguya chuckled, tossing back her sake. "They'll never learn."
"Hey, watch it!" Urabe snapped, ducking her elbow when she put the cup down. "You've had too much to drink."
"Just cause you're not man enough to have anything stronger than beer--"
"You're drunk, woman!" he spat back, and the two started to argue heatedly.
"Speaking of two that'll never learn," Ogata whispered to Jounouchi. He laughed, not bother to hide it. Neither Kaguya or Urabe noticed, caught up in their arguement, though Ogata was sitting between them. "They really ought to just announce the engagement and get it over with!" Ogata continued, raising his voice.
"OGATA!" Kaguya roared, breaking off mid-sentence to yell at him.
"And another thing--HEY!" Urabe joined in, Ogata now cornered on both sides by his angry co-workers.
"But you two are so obvious!" Ogata protested, covering his head with his hands while Kaguya hit him. "Right, Jounouchi?"
"Erm..." Jounouchi hesitated. It was true, Kaguya and Urabe were both in self-denial, despite regularly arguing like an old married couple. Arguing like Jounouchi and another had done, and he presumed would never do again. His co-workers brought up uncomfortable memories of a --no, THE woman he'd rather forget.
"That means 'yes'", Ogata confirmed for the angry pair. They looked to Jounouchi, while Ogata continued, "Just get married already, or I'm going to have to return the engagement gift I bought!"
"Y-yeah," Jounouchi chuckled, reaching for his glass to save him from talking further. Ogata and Urabe kept talking while Kaguya rolled her eyes.
"What, not drinking!" Kaguya leaned in next to Jounouchi, deciding she'd had enough of the other two men arguing with each other.
"You know I never drink," Jounouchi replied after putting his empty glass down.
She snorted, reaching for her own cup. "You don't know what you're missing." Jounouchi said nothing as she downed another helping of sake. "So!" she continued as she slammed the cup down. "Who's the girl?"
"What?!" Jounouchi spluttered. Kaguya grinned.
"I knew it."
"There's nothing to know," Jounouchi protested. "You're just trying to get the focus off of your love life." He nodded to Urabe.
"Not you too!" she cried. "Ugh! Ogata! See what you've done?" She leaned across the table again, leaving Jounouchi to sit and try not to think about Mai.
Nearly on cue, someone sat down at the bar behind him and started a loud conversation. Not that he wasn't intrigued by the inner workings of co-worker relationships, but the strangers were more distracting. They started a boring conversation about local sports. Perfect. Best thing to take his mind off of romance.
Then one of them changed the subject. "How's things with Kujaku?"
Jounouchi forced himself to pay attention to his co-workers. It was a common enough name. It had nothing to do with him. Or her.
"...dumped her."
Kaguya said something, and Jounouchi replied. See? He wasn't paying attention to those other guys. Not one bit.
"...so then I said, 'Mai'..."
Jounouchi was instantly listening to the other man's conversation. His head was telling him to mind his own damn business, but his heart was telling his head to shut up. His friends continued talking around him, oblivious to him.
"She was cheatin' on you?"
"Nah. Just thinking..."
A waiter passed in between Jounouchi's table and the men at the bar. He strained to hear the rest. It came intermittantly, like a badly tuned radio. It briefly occured to him that this might be a sign to NOT listen to things that weren't his business. It also occured to him that he hadn't seen Mai in three years and had already gone through enough hell trying to find her that a bit of eavesdropping wouldn't hurt.
"...she wouldn't... totally obsessed..."
"...likes him that much?"
"...talked about him..."
"...why..."
"...dueled together..."
The waiter moved off, just in time for Jounouchi to catch the last bit.
"Duelist? What's his name?"
"Hey, Jounouchi?" His friends had noticed him staring at the backs of the two men at the bar, but Jounouchi didn't care. Three years he had spent trying to find her and the answer was in a bar in Domino? He was lucky he could still hear over his heart pounding.
"Jounouchi--"
Jou was out of his seat before the man could even get out his given name. He pulled the man's chair around.
"What the--!" he stopped suddenly, eyes wide. "Hey... you're..."
"What did she say about me?" Jounouchi asked desperately. His whole table, and the guy's friend were staring at him, but he didn't care. "What... where is she?"
"Told you there was a girl," Kaguya whispered to Urabe and Ogata, who chuckled softly.
Suddenly, the dormant television in the corner blasted to life. Jou, and half the occupants of the bar, looked up to see the bartender turning the volume up. An urgent news broadcast had interuppted the normal everyday garbage that the barkeep liked to show. A woman was standing on the edge of a building, too close to the edge to be anything but suicide.
"...standing on top of her apartment building, presumably to jump..."
The patrons of the bar murmured anxiously, and Kaguya gasped. Well, it was too bad, whoever it was, but there was nothing to be done about it. Jounouchi ignored it, and turned back to the idiot in front of him, to get information for something he still could do. Takeru, however, was still fixated on the grim broadcast.
"N-no way," he mumbled. "That... that's her building..."
Jou looked from the TV screen to a stunned Takeru. The fact that Mai HAD BEEN IN DOMINO THIS WHOLE DAMNED TIME was blinded by the fact that she was apparently about to kill herself. He grabbed the front of the idiot's shirt, and hoisted him out of his chair.
"What the hell did you do to her?!" Jounouchi shouted. Takeru looked terrified.
"It wasn't me, I swear," he stammered. "I just... I mean, I broke up with her, but... that's nothing to... to..."
"Apparently it was!" Jou yelled. Ogata called his name somewhat sternly; none of them had ever seen Jounouchi this angry before. Jounouchi ignored them all. It had been three YEARS, and this idiot had driven her to... THIS?!
"Hey, what was I supposed to do?" Takeru said defensively. "She was obviously in love with you, what, you expect me to just stick around?"
"Well you--wait, what?" Jounouchi said, backtracking. "Mai was what?"
"Well, she never said it, but it wasn't that hard to tell," he spat. "She wouldn't shut up about you. I sure as heck wasn't going to stick around while she waited for you to burst in the door--where the hell have you been? She thinks you hate her."
Jou stopped listening about halfway through and was contemplating punching Takeru in the face when the TV distracted him. He looked up it, at the shadowy figure on the top of the building, barely visible through the shaking camera.
"It might not be her," Takeru offered, following Jou's gaze. Jounouchi glared at him, and threw him back down in the chair.
"You idiot," he growled, and he sprinted out the door, towards the apartment building.
A/N: Gasp! Oh noes! Is Mai going to kill herself? You'll have to keep reading to find out! But while you wait, review, and guess what will happen!
"...threatening a student with expulsion just to let of some steam" - In volume 1 of the manga, there is a teacher, Ms. Chono, who honestly takes pleasure out of randomly searching her students and then expelling them. She found Honda's puzzle-declaration-of-love in Miho's desk and threatened to expel Honda, Jounouchi, and Yuugi. Then the other Yuugi turned the puzzle into a penalty game, and all her makeup fell off and she ran from the room screaming "I'll get you for this!". Seriously.