EDIT 08.23.22: Changed Ryuuga to Pinoko's older brother instead of younger.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my OC I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.
"Junk Warrior! Scrap Fist!"
I see now why Rally had so much faith in Yusei. He's a scrapper to the end, all the way down to the cards he carries. He stops near Ushio's smoking D-Wheel.
"I can't believe it. I lost to this garbage..." the guard grumbles.
"No matter what the card is, as long as it exists, it has the power to be useful. You don't have the right to call yourself a duelist when you dismiss cards by calling them garbage." With that, Yusei speeds off. My arms had come to circle his waist during the duel. I don't even know how fast we were going.
Security Guards are typically just assholes with uniforms on. They call us garbage and use whatever excuse they can rough us up. Sometimes it's deserved, many Satellite people really are just criminals who've skirted by so far.
Yusei pulls up on a stretch of highway and dismounts. He's looking out at Neo Domino City across the water. I follow his feet to the rail. I catch the end of a sentence.
Jack? I knew there was something deeper going on there. More than just a stolen bike and card. He was betrayed by Jack. I can sense it.
I lean on my elbows against the rail. "You're not garbage."
"Thanks, but you hardly know me."
"I'd like to. You all seem like good people, better than that Ushio guy. There's a lot of guys like him in Satellite. Better to stick to the known good, if you get me?"
He smiles.
"Pinoko! Come on, let's go see the duel, it'll be fun!"
"Okay, but only one duel. Then we go home. You shouldn't be out so much. Your lungs-"
"Who cares about that? I want to see those rare cards! "
I shot out of bed.
"Damn... Just a dream. Get out of your head, Pinoko. You have shit to do." I roll out of bed, tidying the sheets and moving to the table I set up as counter space. I had refurbished a percolator from the junk last week. It's nothing fancy, but coffee is coffee. I prepare the ground beans and water. The little money I recieved as pay can only stretch so far, though, and it tastes like dirt.
The most expensive thing I own is my computer. The desk it sits upon takes up a quarter of the living space, but it's better than being out on the street. Space is at a premium in Hot Spot.
That night, Yusei had driven me here and let me out with the promise to be in touch. If I ever needed them, I knew where to go. The tunnel system is sprawling, but easy enough to figure out when you were born and raised here. Rocky padded about the one room shed. I put his bowl down with breakfast for him. Just coffee can keep me going for longer than is entirely normal.
I like referring to the place as a "studio rental" in my head. I sat in front of the desktop computer. I had done a lot of work with this darling over the years. Scuffed as she may be, she never let me down. No overclocking on this baby!
I did about an hour's work on the code I planned before work. Seeing what I did just last night had awoken something in me. A D-Wheel without proper code is like a house with no door. It works, but it could be better.
I could make it better.
It's easier to go to work when there's company to be had. It just so happens that Blitz, Taka, and Nervin work at the same plant as I do. We had walked together to make our shifts for the last few days.
"-And he just snatches the purse right from my hands! He actually left me holding the reciept. They wouldn't refund it no matter what, even though they had CCTV footage of it. It happened just inside the doors!"
"Now you're just making up stories."
"Blitz, you don't believe me? Did you see that woman two days ago who-"
"Who trapped you in an elevator and took your stuff? That was nuts, but I don't know how often you can get robbed before it's considered a curse."
Taka nods resolutely. "Purse curse."
I readjust the stack of boxes in my hand. The night I met them, I had been pulling overtime. I need that liquid cooling system on the rack at Shack Radio. Pre-owned means little to me. Everything I own was once another's. Even Rocky likely had a previous owner, since pets just don't make it far on their own in Satellite. The dog was currently at Yusei's place with Rally, who was too young to work at the plant. However Yusei makes ends meet is his business.
I never saw him in the plant, and he was always home when we got out. Yusei didn't plan on staying long enough to hold a job anyway.
"The D-Wheel... The reason we cherish it so much is because of what it represents. It's freedom. That D-Wheel can get us out of Satellite."
Leaving Satellite is like a dream for all of us, labelled as trash, scum, or worse. To be a citizen of Satellite meant you would do anything to get out. Before my brother was born, my dad tried to do that for us. My ma said he flew away. I never knew him.
Rather than being alone in the plant like that night, being around friends is highly preferable. The aimless chatter makes the work go faster. This is normally the case, but today we unkowlingly walked into the clutches of a worse evil than the tedium of our job.
"You know what I can't believe? The amount of trash people in the city dump every day."
"Well, think about it. Where does our trash go? It's not only the city trash we recycle," I protest.
"Don't complain. We need to do this to eat." Taka wobbles a bit while Blitz scolds Nervin. "Hey. Be careful."
"I know."
We set off down the hall, but there is no chance for us to strike up a new conversation topic. Taka suddenly went down, trash flying. The three of us toss the junk to the ground in favor of helping him.
"Are you okay?" Nervin squats next to our fallen friend, in case he needs help.
"Sorry. You tripped over my leg." Three men sat on the bench we just walked by.
Uryu. Scumbag, this was his doing?
Uryu and I had run-ins in the past. He always looked down on me for being born in Satellite.
"You have long legs, Uryu! He should've been more careful."
"Yeah? Maybe you should've been less of an asshole."
"Pinoko! I thought I smelled the stench of garbage approaching. People from Satellite all smell the same."
Blitz wouldn't take the abuse lying down. "If you're so above us, why d'you have those markers on your cheeks?"
Uryu stood from the bench, smiling menacingly. "I'll tell you."
"Blitz!"
"Ow, ow!"
"Stop being such a baby, Blitz! You talked too big to be whining now," I remind him as Rally fixes us up. The wounds are minor, but the sting is on the inside. Yusei sat just out of view, likely tuning up his bike.
Uryu thinks he's so tough. He's not a man, he's a coward. It'd be good not to antagonize him though...
"Laugh it up, girly."
"I'm not. I'm pissed at him too. You know this isn't the first time for me. He's the reason I have to look over my shoulder at work. I guess I, I thought there was safety in numbers. That's one more purse in the void." I had liked that one, too. It was orange with blue stripes, fashioned from canvas. A few tears were shed before I caught them.
"You were beaten up pretty bad..." remarks our friend turned nurse.
Blitz is the one to answer. "Uryu was recently sent here after he caused an incident in the city. He keeps bragging that he's originally from the city and getting into scraps with the people of Satellite."
"He just wants to say he's different from us."
"He is different. He's a dick. Sorry, Rally."
"I'm not a little kid, you know." Despite his shock at the word, he wanted to be one of the grown-ups.
"Hey, Yusei." Taka refocused our attention outside. "How are things coming over there?"
"It's going extremely well!" Rally answered for him. "He achieved the best time ever today!"
"Hey, well done."
"It's all thanks to Rally." The blue eyed mechanic at last voiced his thoughts.
"I also have to thank you! I haven't been chased by Security since that night. Yusei, I'm making you a promise. I'll never steal again!"
Rally was such a bright young lad. Being around him this past month, not to mention the rest of the company, had made life feel worth it again. I feel like there's finally something to look forward towhen I wake up. I hadn't had that dream in weeks before today, a stark contrast to my life prior.
Life after Yusei. It has a certain ring to it.
He'd be going soon, to the city across the water.
"If I find you with hot tech, you'll regret it. I'm proud of you, Rally." I tug the boy under my arm for a hug. Between us, Rocky yipped at the treatment. "Sorry, Rocky."
"I guess there are reasonable people in Security after all." Blitz was in shock.
"It's a fact that a duelist always obeys the outcome of a duel," Nervin adds.
"No. You all weren't around, but he was bad news. If Yusei wasn't with me, I'd have been trudging home without my stuff."
"You say that about everyone," the man I spoke of said with a smirk. "I wouldn't call him a duelist. However, for a dog in a position of authority, he accepts his losses."
Being the least injured of us, I left Rally to care for my coworkers. The thumb drive in my pocket feels heavy as I kneel before the laptop. His placement of it is always the same. He's a well-oiled machine. He'd obviously been doing this kind of work far back enough to be considered a pro. I aimlessy examined the D-Wheels stats, pinging different parts of the system to make sure each part was connected properly.
"Yusei, you're going to Neo Domino soon. Have you been there before?"
"No. I've only seen it from here. You were born in Satellite, right?
"Yeah. Never been any place else. Its gorgeous, the city. I've only heard stories about the place, but my Pa ran off because he loved the city so much. My ma says he was trying to build a bridge and one day he just never came back. But you'll come back. You will come back, won't you? It's terribly boring here. If you don't, the rest of us will go mad without you."
There was no noise from the duelist, as he seemingly lost himself in his work.
"I... I finished that code addition. The one I told you about about yesterday. It should bump that spring back up into working order." Without having the tension of the spring, the D-Wheel was compensating for the axel's slack. "It should fix up nicely." I hold out the thumb drive for him to install.
"Come with me."
"What?" I can't think of how to reply to him at first.
"Come with me. To Neo Domino." He lays his hand over mine, drive resting between. "Go with me to the city."
"I wonder how Jack's face will look." The others were patched up now, free to venture as far as Yusei and I as he finished his tuning job. I had agreed to go with him to Neo Domino City.
"You're gonna duel Jack, right?"
"I'll make him give me back the card. That's all. It's everyone's card." Yusei doesn't look away from the D-Wheel.
"You're right," begins Blitz. Rocky sat at his heels. "Every one of us wanted to meet that dragon."
"The riding duel that Yusei showed us when he hacked into the city was amazing! We learned that in the city, the Duel Disk was developed further into the D-Wheel."
"We were all deeply moved when Yusei created the D-Wheel."
"When that dragon flew, I was trembling with excitement!"
"Our dreams came true!"
"However, Jack was already planning to steal Yusei's D-Wheel and card."
Rally sounds more determined now. "This D-Wheel is also incredible!" I glance up from the optimization program I'm running on the laptop. "It can go through the pipeline in just two minutes!"
"Really? That pipeline is almost 5 miles... can it really do that, Yusei?" I ask.
"I ran a simulation."
"You hacked them again?" Taka shakes his head.
"Security's network isn't guarded well," Yusei responds.
"You can say that agan. Easiest jamming software I've ever written." Yusei turns the computer to the others while I mumble.
"Once a month at midnight, the pipeline is shut down and they run interior maintenance. It takes three minutes for the automatic maintenance to finish before garbage starts flowing again. If I can get through the maintenance hatch before that, I can escape to the outside."
"Yusei, you're... No, I wont say anything anymore. I'll pray for your success." Nervin gives up and waves a hand.
"We found you," sings a voice in the darkness. "We've come to give you our thanks." The two goons he keeps around follow him into the light. Uryu? What is he doing here?
"Due to the commotion this afternoon, we were punished! Furthermore, they docked our pay!" The man with a square jaw piped up, looking like steam may come out of his ears. The third man just laughed.
"Serves you right. I have to get a new purse because of you. I paid for everything in there with wages I earned working at the plant," I growl at the blue haired man.
"There was nothing good in there! It was a waste. It's okay, Pinoko, I'll only beat up your friends this time. I think you can offer me something else, maybe I'll even forgive you for being garbage." He cracks his knuckles, but stops when he sees what's behind me. "Is that a D-Wheel?"
Blitz glares at him. "That doesn't concern you."
Hands moving to his hips, Uryu smirks now, looking like the cat who got the cream.
"It's a waste for a D-Wheel to be in the possession of a bunch of Satellite punks. We can't let it just go to waste... Give it to me and I'll forget all the trouble you caused."
Thats when Yusei stands up behind the bike. "I refuse."
"Oh, so you're the D-Wheeler? No deal? I'll take Pinoko instead. Show me a good time and I'll return you to your boys in one piece, we sweep this all under the rug."
The quietude from Yusei spoke for itself.
"No? Do you know how to duel? Or do you need me to teach you?" Uryu and his friends laugh. "How about you wager them both?
"Yusei, don't battle him." Yusei ignores Blitz, swapping his riding deack for the other swiftly. "Yusei!" He removes his Duel Disk from the D-Wheel.
"Yusei, you don't have time for this!" Taka joins Blitz's plea.
"Hey, if you want to see your friend again, you've got to get going!" I try to help them. Yusei won't budge.
"They laughed at our dream."
A/N: 1. "Known good" is a stupid tech joke. When a component like wiring goes bad, you might replace it during troubleshooting with a "known good" component to narrow down the options of what could be causing the issue. If you replace it with a known good wire and the problem persists, the source of the issue isnt the wiring.
2. Pinging is when you send a bit of information to a device. The return value is the amount of time it took for the bit to get all the way from the terminal to the device cand back again.
3. This may be unnecessary but "Nee-chan" is a Japanese term of endearment meaning sister.
