I'll never ever be the same.
The next morning saw the opening ceremonies of Duel Dynasty, and Ren was up bright and early with the Kaiba boys, despite her strong desire to remain in bed and sleep the morning away like a sound-minded person. She instead eased herself into consciousness with the hottest shower she could manage without melting, and a piping hot hazelnut coffee, care of Mokuba and room service. She had to appreciate the kid in that sense; though she was meant to be looking after him, he really was quite thoughtful and always was looking out for her. She was rather surprised. He could very easily have grown up into a spoilt brat, but couldn't think of a kid his age who was more kind or attentive than he was. He did have a bit of a mouth on him, but he was Kaiba's little brother. It had to come with the territory.
As she sipped on her coffee, she perched herself on one of the barstools in the kitchen to apply her makeup. The perfect vantage point to watch Kaiba prepare for the tournament, much to her chagrin. She found herself glancing over her mirror at him more often than she cared to admit, a smirk pulling at her mouth as she watched him meticulously comb through his deck over and over, making sure all of his little cards were where they were meant to be. And he called Yugi a dweeb? She couldn't help but let out a snort, immediately clapping a hand over her mouth.
Ren cursed to herself, focusing intently on her eyeliner. She had been slowly shooting her mouth off more and more frequently as she got more comfortable around the Kaibas, and she needed to rein it in if she wanted to keep her job. Her mouth had gotten her fired on more than one occasion, and really, this was a job she kinda wanted to hold on to.
But Kaiba was such an easy target! From the way he gloated over every other duelist here, but stuck his nose deep, deep into his own cards when the doors were closed, he was no different from the rest of them. Save for his attitude. And his checkbook. The fact that he was so cocky about his hobby made him absolutely irresistible to Ren. She wanted desperately to tease him, but… man, did she really like her paychecks.
Kaiba finally rose from the easy chair in the living area, sliding the titanium duel disk onto his left arm, clipping the deck of cards into it with a flick of his wrist. He stood with his shoulders back, chin raised, and eyes steely and determined, like he was posing for an invisible camera. Ren bit her bottom lip, trying vainly not to laugh, a mad blush rushing across her cheeks. She didn't think he could get more obnoxious, but in that sleeveless coat and leather pants, boy howdy, he'd accomplished it.
"Looking good, boss." She quipped, unable to resist a grin. "Do you have 'Team Kaiba' buttons for me to wear? I don't want anyone to get confused who I'm rooting for."
He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyebrow raised ever so slightly. "Do you want one?"
Ren paused, her eyebrows knit. "Did you just make a joke?"
Their eyes met and held for a few moments before Ren burst into laughter, shaking her head as she snapped her compact shut, returning it to her makeup bag. "I learn new things about you every day, Kaiba." She grinned, tossing the bag in the general direction of her duffel before taking up her camera bag and slinging it over her shoulder. She was about as ready as she would ever be for this event, and had chosen to fling herself into it headfirst. In addition to making sure that nobody looked at Mokuba the wrong way, her plan was to take as many photos as humanly possible, and she had prepared accordingly. She had on her tightest pair of black "I'm a Photographer" pants, tucked into black boots. She wore a deep plum tank beneath her favorite cropped jacket, her hair fluffy and bangs pushed to one side, though eventually they would likely flop back into her eyes. She felt cute, confident, and most importantly, like a photographer.
"Ready to rock and roll, gents?"
Mokuba grinned, and Kaiba smirked, cocking his head towards the door. "Let's go. The faster I blow through amateur hour, the faster I get my title back."
It was less than two hours into the tournament and Ren officially never wanted to see another Duel Monsters match for the rest of her life. According to Mokuba, this tournament was much like the others he and his brother had attended. Invitation only, two thousand duelists gathered in Tokyo for an elimination-style battle for the crown. Each attendee had been given three pieces of a ten-piece statue of one of the in-game monsters (a kuriboh? Whatever that was. Ren had forgotten), and needed to assemble it in its entirety in order to move on to the finals. If you lost all of your pieces, you were eliminated. Finals were to be held on the fourth day, and run for two days.
Ren was already exhausted.
The first kid to challenge Kaiba had been painfully outmatched, and the duel had ended in less than ten minutes. His next challengers hadn't fared much better. Kaiba had seemed just as bored as Ren was, systemically taking each of his opponents out in fewer than ten moves. He hadn't even had the chance to get any of his prized dragons on the field, and as Ren understood it, that was pretty pitiful. In no time at all, Kaiba had picked up five unique statue pieces and three dupes, putting him just two pieces away from qualifying for finals.
"Huh. He's taking his time this time around." Mokuba mentioned, after Kaiba had finished with his eighth match. Ren gaped at him. This was Kaiba taking his time? "Great job, Seto!"
Kaiba smirked, brushing dust off the back of his hand as he strode away from his opponent. He clicked the eighth statue piece into place, returning it to Mokuba to keep in his tote. "You would think I'd have found someone worth dueling by now."
Ren snorted. "They're probably too scared to just up and ask for your autograph. Give them some time. They'll psych themselves up eventually." SHIT. And there, she went and did it again! She bit down on her bottom lip, willing the sass back into the deepest, darkest part of her psyche and burying it there. 'Be nice!' she told herself. But Kaiba seemed not to notice, and led them back into the city center to search out another opponent.
The center of Tokyo was where all of the action was; in addition to housing traditional dueling arenas, there were also hundreds of shops and kiosks set up, vendors selling everything from food to Duel Monsters cards to collectable items. There were plushies and statues and all sorts of different themed foods – Watapon cotton candy, Kuriboh-shaped taiyaki, and half white chocolate, half dark chocolate Change of Heart candies. It was a regular carnival, exactly the sort of thing that Ren loved to photograph.
With swift hands she set to work, snapping pictures of everything in sight. She fell back a bit from the boys, kneeling down to take a few shots of them walking through the makeshift bazaar. The sun hit them just right and they looked positively triumphant, Kaiba glancing down at his brother with such confidence it was like he had already won the whole damn thing. Ren shook her head and focused her attention somewhere less pompous, taking a few photos of the vendors themselves. She made her way down the line until she reached the end. The last stall was modest: a black awning over a black table, a red and black prize wheel the only pop of color present. Ren lowered her camera, peering intently at the prize wheel. The triangles alternated red and black, but there was nothing written on them, no indication of a prize, or a losing tile, or anything. It just looked like a plain old roulette wheel.
"Hey, Yug! Hold up!" She whipped her head away from the prize wheel only to be met with a friendly wave from Joey Wheeler, he and his crew pushing through the crowd to get to her. She gave a polite wave to Yugi and the rest, turning back to Joey.
"How's it hanging, Ren?" He glanced around, "Where are the brothers Kaiba?"
"They should be close by." She quipped, taking a quick look into the crowd. Though they were nowhere to be found, they couldn't have gotten far. Not with the way Kaiba had been getting mobbed for challenges.
"Gooootcha." Joey nodded. He looked past her, suddenly seeming to notice the prize wheel. "Hey! Is that like one of those Wheel of Fortune wheels? Like you spin it and you win a prize?"
Ren shrugged. "Dunno. There's no prizes on it."
"Not any that you can see, at least!" Ren nearly jumped, a man appearing suddenly behind her in jester's garb, all in red and black. His face was painted accordingly; half black, half red, and he bobbed his head back and forth as if to a tune Red couldn't hear. "What do you say? You want to spin the wheel, win a prize? It's free!" He flashed a dazzling smile, and Ren attempted a smile back, though she feared that it had turned into a confused half-scowl somewhere along the way.
"Ren!" Again with the name-calling. Mokuba and Kaiba pushed their way towards her, finally punching through the crowd to the prize wheel. "What happened?" Mokuba asked, "I turned around and we couldn't find you. What's going on?"
"The young lady is going to spin the wheel and win a prize!" The jester announced, clapping his hands together. "Step on up, don't be shy!"
"No, I'm good, actually."
"No? Alright! I'll go then!" Joey announced, stepping up to the wheel. The jester threw up a hand, stopping the blonde in his tracks.
"No." The jester grinned broadly, rotating his head all the way to the left to stare Ren in the eyes. "The young lady is going to spin the wheel."
Ren's brow furrowed. She was officially turned off to everything having to do with clowns and the lottery.
"Is there a problem, miss? You don't want to win a prize? It's free! No purchase necessary! The worst that could happen is you won't win!"
"Come on, Ren, spin the wheel!" Joey joked, rubbing her with his elbow. "Go first and then I can go."
"Kuroki." Kaiba snapped, arms crossed over his chest. "I have better things to do than standing around waiting for you to play some stupid game. Spin the thing, lose, and let's go."
Ren felt her eye twitch. She hadn't felt so pressured since she had been living in her parents' home. "Fine!" She snapped, grabbing a hold of one of the pegs on the wheel. She raised it a few inches and gave it a firm spin, sending the wheel spinning in a whirling blur of red and black. "There!" She turned to the clown. "Are we done?"
The jester didn't answer, bouncing on his belled toes as the wheel slowed to a halt, landing on a blank red square.
"Well?" Ren quipped.
As she spoke, the rest of the pieces fell away, leaving only her triangle. Suddenly, the word 'DUEL' appeared in glowing white letters, and Ren began to feel her stomach churn.
"Ren Kuroki!" The clown announced, twirling in place, "You have won yourself a duel with our very own Darkness Master Meek!"
The awning collapsed outward, and behind the back wall of the tent stood a man in grey from head to toe. His eyes met Ren's, silver and bloodshot, and her stomach dropped. "Oh hell no!" She shouted, reeling on Kaiba, pointing back towards the man in grey. "That's the fucking guy from the—"
There was a sudden weight on her ankle, and the jester glanced up at her, grinning as he snapped a heavy iron cuff around her leg. She followed the chain she was now attached to across the ground, where it was looped through an eyehook in the concrete, all the way to the man in grey, attached to his own ankle. She whipped her head back around to Kaiba, her heart pounding and eyes pleading. "Get the fucking cops!"
"Now now now, no need for that!" The jester smiled, his voice now sickeningly sweet. "It's just a friendly game! We just want to make sure you stick around to get your prize."
Her eyes never left Kaiba, panicked and begging for help.
He narrowed his eyes at the clown. "What happens if she loses?"
The clown grinned. He shrugged his shoulders.
"What the hell does that look mean?!" Ren shrieked.
"I'm going to get help!" Tristan shouted, turning on his heel and disappearing into the crowd. She looked around at the rest of the group, all of them seeming just as panicked as she was. And she was the one shackled to a twitching nightmare.
Before she knew it, Kaiba had her left arm and was strapping her into his duel disk. "Wait, stop!" She stammered. She tried to pull her arm away, but his grip was firm, securing the device to her forearm and slapping a deck of cards into her hand. She shook her head, lips parted. "I'm not a duelist, I don't play this game!"
"You watched me play with a bunch of babbling idiots all morning. I think you get the general idea."
"I don't know what the I'm doing!"
"It doesn't matter!" Kaiba snapped, shocking her into silence. "If you lose with those cards, you're a bigger idiot than you look."
"Kaiba!"
"It's easy," he snapped, barreling right over her, "It's math. Bigger number wins. You can do math, right?"
Ren scowled, scoffing at him. "Do I look that stupid?"
He leveled her with an even glare. "Go do math. You got yourself into this. Go get yourself out of it."
She took a deep breath, heart pounding as she glanced around at the group. Yugi nodded his head in encouragement, and Tea bit her lip, fists balled at her sides. Awfully encouraging.
"You can do it, Ren!" Mokuba called, clenching his fist. "You can't lose with my brother's deck!"
She nodded, biting down on her lower lip. 'It'll be okay,' she told herself, taking a shaky step forward into the arena that had appeared when the tent had fallen away. She clipped the deck of cards into the duel disk and it chirped to life, unfolding and snapping into place, the console lighting up with an even four thousand life points. 'I'm using Kaiba's deck. Kaiba's stupid, expensive, dragon fetish deck. I can't lose with three Blue-Eyes White Dragons.'
In less than ten turns, Ren's last three hundred life points rolled down to zero as her Blade Knight burst into a flurry of holographic snow.
"Seriously, Kuroki!?" Kaiba exclaimed. He had been snapping orders at her the entire game, frustrated beyond all belief that he couldn't see her cards and make moves for her. She whipped her head around and glared at him over her shoulder. "You fucking lost!?"
"Of course I fucking lost!" She snapped back, her eyes ablaze with frustration. "This game is difficult!"
"There are descriptions of what all the cards do on the cards! You're telling me you couldn't figure out a halfway decent move based on what the cards tell you to do?!"
"Hey, take it easy, Kaiba." Yugi insisted, putting himself between the two raging brunettes. He turned on the clown. "She lost. You'll let her go now, right?"
The jester grinned, and gave the chain a tug. There was a sharp pain in her ankle, and Ren hissed out a curse, dropping to her knee. Blood seeped through her pant leg, slowly pooling on the pavement. 'I'm gonna fuckin' die.' She looked up in desperation, her eyes meeting Kaiba's. Black begin to creep in at the edge of her vision, until all she could see was the piercing blue of his eyes.
And then nothing.