365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Struggling with Cover Stories

5/1/19

"Man, why'd you have to have a whole archetype?" Carly complained, pouting down at the paper in front of her as she scribbled out another failed idea, "Making up a cover story for how you two came to meet was the easy part, sheesh."

Judai laughed sheepishly in response across from her, scribbling out his own idea that he'd written down, "Well, it could be worse?"

"Don't jinx us," she replied, pointing her pen over at Yusei, who was busy looking up something for them on his laptop at his desk, "Depending on what he finds, you might not even be in the clear for being here in the first place. You're lucky I caught the little details for you to check."

"Okay to be fair, even if Kaiba Corp. still has records of the contest, how many people are going actually believe that I got these cards back after they were blasted into space?" Judai asked, "Let alone that I was actually born so many years ago when there's so much evidence planted now that shows that I wasn't?"

"It's not the 'regular' people I'm worried about, it's everyone else," Carly retorted, leaning back into the couch as she explained, "I know from experience that reporters and media outlets will take literally anything that could make an interesting headline and then blow it completely out of proportion. Then it can get completely out of hand - conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork left and right, everyone trying to one up each other for views, it can have a huge effect on someone's public perception."

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Judai sighed, slumping forward slightly before forcing himself to stand up and stretch, "Well, let's take a break for now and wait to see if Yusei comes up with anything we need to worry about. More coffee?"

"Yes please," Carly grinned, standing up as well and following him to the kitchen. She stopped and looked around at it, turning to him with a mischievous smile and saying, "I see that Jack followed up on his promise to clean. Thanks for sending me those pictures by the way, I'll be using this story on him for a while."

"No problem," he replied back, his own smirk forming on his face at the reminder of the previous day while he worked on refilling the coffee maker, "I did tell you I'd message you with any interesting stories about him, after all. I figured that qualified as an interesting one."

"If it's good enough to take pictures of, it already more than qualifies as interesting," Carly hummed, leaning on the kitchen table while she waited, "On another note though, Jack got the job."

"Really? I figured he'd have bragged about it the second he got the response," Judai said, blinking at her in surprise.

"Said he wanted to wait until after his first full day there. I'm assuming it's because he's convinced he'll get fired somehow on the first day, but seriously, it's not like he's being forced to socialize with people all day so he'll be fine."

"Wasn't it a hardware store or something he applied to?"

"Yeah, but specifically for doing behind-the-scenes work, not being customer service. He'll be fine."

"Let's just hope none of the people he does have to work with get on his nerves, though," Judai joked, earning a snort from Carly as he finished making her coffee, "Anyway, here - one latte, and look, I even did the fancy little leaf at the top just for you."

"I hail your coffee art skills," Carly stated, rolling her eyes in amusement, "Thanks though."

Judai grabbed a soda for himself and an iced tea for Yusei, figuring that he'd probably be in the mood for a drink as well. When they went back out into the main room, he leaned over Yusei and waved the iced tea right in front of his face with a grin, making sure to touch the drink to his forehead for a second and earning a yelp at the cold for his efforts.

"Damn it Judai," Yusei mumbled, taking the drink from him with a slight glare despite the amused smile that crossed his face, "Thanks, though I could've done without that."

"You've been working for almost two hours straight, take a break now," Judai said, not sorry at all for his actions, "Did you find anything?"

"Maybe, they held a lot more contests than I would've thought they would. They were on a pretty wide-scale, too," Yusei replied, rubbing at his forehead with a frown, "It's actually pretty odd, to be honest. I might look into it more after I find the info you need about your Neo-Spacians."

"Wait, odd?" Carly asked, a slight frown appearing on her face as well in thought, "Why's that?"

"What company has wide-scale contests like that, and overlapping as well?" Yusei pointed out, and Judai could practically see the gears turning in his head again as he tried to figure out what he was missing, "A lot of them were at the same time, though they all stop suddenly in the same year. I probably wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the fact I had to search a range of years because Judai couldn't remember how old he was when the contest happened."

"Maybe they just discontinued doing that kind of stuff? Like, they shifted focus to something else?" Judai mused, though he moved on from the topic pretty quickly, "Well, you can look into it later. For now though, break time! Stop thinking so hard for like, ten minutes you gear-head!"

Carly laughed at this while Yusei gave him an exasperated look - he did obediently crack open his iced tea, though, so that was a win for Judai.