Okay, so- YGO was my first fandom way back in… Middle school? and we could get into the psychology of traumatized baby me and the tropes of the series and the narrative anomalies of a fairly dark manga/anime getting the 4KIDS! treatment but:
Mokuba should have had a Gun.
Kid gets Kidnapped A LOT and until very recently, he and his brother were violent sociopaths and I feel like maaaaaaaaaaaybe Mokuba should have kept a bit of that. Not a Lot. He’s doing much better now, but shit keeps happening to him and a touch of the night comes in real handy now and then, especially when your brother is comprised of equal parts hubris, hyperfixation and (repressed) homosexuality and *somebody* has to deal with this nonsense.
So I think Mokuba should have had a gun. Or Tire Iron Or Distressingly Large Knife. Something.
It wouldn’t alter the plot much- in Deulist kingdom he’s still like what, 11? and he doesn’t know how to use that shit but I feel like he should have been allowed to go down fighting. By the time Battle City rolls around, he’s had some more practice and someone beat it into him that “talk softly and carry a big stick” also means “Don’t let your beloved but extremely neurotic brother know about The Gun”. So it’s just. There. For Emergencies.
Granted, the kid who’s been to basically hell probably has a warped ideaof what qualifies as an “emergency” but hey. It adds something to his character, like coffee in chocolate cake or bolognese.
Here, have an Excerpt from the fic I started writing at 3 AM. The context is that they’re at the island in Battle City part 2, and Prior to this, Mokuba had sucessfully downloaded Noah into a PS3, that he’s currently carrying around like a Purse Chihuahua while he watches Destiny Happen or Whatever:
—
“Mokuba.” Said Noah. It was technically a question but their father had always viewed Interrogative Intonation as Weakness.
“Yeah?” Mokuba replied, a native speaker of Abused Bastardeese.
“Is the clock on this device correct? It says it’s 12:45 in the afternoon.”
“Sure is.”
There was a pause as there was some more dramatic monologing about the unfathomable power of the cards on the dueling platform.
“It is. Remarkably dark out for Luncheon.” Noah tried.
“Oh! Yeah, while you were compling we all got moved into Hell.” Mokuba nodded.
There was another pause as the first speech was rejoined by a second about the Power of Friendship.
“…Hell, you say?” Noah asked, feeling himself go a bit peaky about the exhaust fans.
“Yeah, Don’t worry about it. Either this dingus-” he pointed to the more offensive hairstyle. “-will lose the game and physics will go back to normal, or I’ll beat him with that piece of concrete and rebar and Physics will go back to normal. It’s really just stage dressing.”
Some of the Holographic effects were very loud, causing another pause in the conversation.
“Does this happen… often?” Noah tried, beginning to wonder if he’d made the right choice in leaving his digital hell.
“Not usually until the finals of a tournament but sometimes in the pregame. I got stuck here for a whole weekend once.” Said Mokuba with the casual informative air of an old man speculating on whether this year’s fishing was going to be any good.
“Your remarkable state of calm during the Digital Debacle earlier is beginning to make a lot more sense.” Noah muttered, indicator light blinking sheepishly.
“Yeah, Like, finding out you existed and had been trapped in a videogame was probably the worst emotional gutpunch of the weekend, but that was maybe the fourth or fifth weirdest thing to happen today.”
“Are we including everyone’s hair in that tally?”
“Oh yeah, natch.” Nodded Mokuba, shifting his weight and looking around for somewhere safe to set Noah down. “Sometimes I wish Seto would go back to his old Lime Green hair so he’d fit in with his peers more. Pull up some concrete.” he set Noah down on a flat bit next to a pair of chunks that made a remarkably good child-size recliner.
“What, he took over my corporate empire AND stole my hair color?” Noah asked, trying to sound mock-offended but his real offense crept through.
“When I say Seto had an Identity Crisis I mean he had a fucking Crisis.” Mokuba nodded. They watched another dazzling display of special effects. “I should have brought some snacks.”
So when I say “I sarted this fic at 3 AM” I mean “I started this fic an hour ago while waiting for the washing machine to finish so I could put clothes in the dryer and go to bed” . Also, this fic will probably only exist as a couple of scenes but you can have the other one I wrote in last Night’s Feuge: –
Joey inhaled deeply, hands pressed together in front of his face as though he were praying. “You mean to tell me-” he started, turning his hands to point at Yami. “-This whole time you couldn’t read the cards, you were just remembering what they did 5000 years ago from the pictures?”
“…Is that what all that stuff is at the bottom of the cards?” Yami realized, delighted.
From his place facedown on the couch, Kaiba made an extremely distressed noise. Learning his Fated Rival was *technically* dead was bad enough, if he really was illiterate that would be entirely too much and he might jump out a window.
“Alright, I can’t read this newfangled language of yours-” Yami began to concede.
“nEwFaNgLeD” Seto whimpered, burying his face deeper between the cushions.
“-But you all still use hieroglyphs so I don’t see what the fuss is about!” he grumbled, folding his arms and sulking a bit from where he sat on the floor.
“I promise You, me and my siblings are the only people here who can read those-” started Marik.
“I’m pretty good at them! but only the pre-unification stuff, once they combined the alphabets everything went out the window-” chirped Bakura, looking up from the fifth pint of ice cream he had devoured.
’-Right, you, us, and tartare over there, unless you’ve discoved some really weird linguisitcs cult.“ He nodded, rolling over and grabbing a spoon to join Bakura.
"No! I use them all the time on Yugi’s phone!” he protested.
There was a moment of the most confused silence yet that weekend as all of them sat up and stared at him. He huffed, disgusted, took the phone out of his and Yugi’s mutual pocket, opened it, and began going though the menus on the texting app. Suddenly he held the Phone up to Marik’s face, triumphant. “SEE? All the characters, and a bunch of modern ones too!” he grinned, victorious.
Yugi watched from over Yami’s shoulder as Marik Snorted ice cream out of his nose in shock and rage.
“Oh Dear.” Said Bakura. “Er, those are Emoji.” He tried to explain.
The room immediately errurpted into a cacaphony of outrage, hysteria, disbelief and general mayhem. Kaiba got up just to throw a chair before collapsing face-down onto the couch again.
“IS THAT WHY I KEEP GETTING COMPLETE NONSENSE EMOJI SPAM FROM YOU AT THREE AM??” Joey demanded.
“I sent you a perfectly reasonable request!” Yami huffed. “It says-
-Which OK it was 3 AM but-”
“HEY WHAT THE *FUCK* WAS THAT?” Demanded Tristan as the room errupted into even louder mayhem than before.
I only have the vaguest idea of what’s going on here but this is hilarious
I mean I’m here rewatching the series at minimal volume, eating Ben and Jerrys and wondering if I keep writing scenes out of order and posting them with minimal context for validation, if I might end up with a finished fic. Anyway, have another scene, in which Bakura and Odion wake up during the Virtual World arc and make terrible choices:
