365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

One Last Tournament

11/15/19

"I should probably find another tournament to duel in before the end of the year, huh?" Judai mused, stretching as he stood up from the couch to take a break from drawing. Yusei was assigned another project recently, so he was, of course, busy doing his best to knock as much of it out of the way as he possibly could - in other words, he was on campus right now and currently using the science labs to get as much of the physical testing out of the way as possible. He could do the calculations all at home, but he needed to do the actual experiment first.

"That's probably a good idea. Is there rank decay at all?" Yubel asked, popping out in spirit form for once and stretching as well since it'd been a while. She usually came out with Haou whenever they went to their dimension, which Judai was very glad they could do since it always left everyone in a good mood (spending so much time stuck together was both a blessing and a curse sometimes), but not so much otherwise.

"I dunno, but it'd definitely explain why some pros duel literally every single time there's a tournament they can enter if there was rank decay," Judai replied, shrugging right afterwards and making his way towards the kitchen to get some food since he'd noticed he was hungry, "Though even if there was rank decay, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm mostly just dueling for fun, the prize money and other stuff is just a bonus."

"Bet you'd piss off a lot of them if you said that to them," Yubel snickered, laughing more when Judai pouted at her, "It just means you're much better than them in that way."

"C'mon, you know I don't like saying I'm better than people like that..." Judai sighed exasperatedly, knowing that it would fall on deaf ears just like the last twenty times he'd said it. Sure, it gave him some validation, but he always just felt weird and awkward if he tried to think of himself as 'better' than someone else, in a prideful way and not one that was simple, like 'I'm better at drawing' or 'I'm better at cooking'.

"It's true, though," Haou chipped in, which was what made the whole thing even worse - Haou was of the same idea, but more-so in a 'My descendant, reincarnation, whatever-he-is will obviously be better than everyone else around him' type of way. Granted, he'd cooled down significantly since the beginning and only really brought it up when it was appropriate, but it was still something he did with Yubel when he could.

A meow caught his attention and Judai paused, carefully setting the plate he'd been grabbing down and smiling at the sight of Pharaoh meowing at Yubel. The cat liked Yubel quite a bit and would always do his best to hang out around her if she was out, especially considering how rare of an occasion that could be. Yubel would never say 'no' to him either, so Judai watched as she leaned down and held out her hand, not actually able to touch the cat but having him rub up against her hand like he could anyways.

"I swear, this cat likes the weirdest things," Yubel stated, doing her best to sound annoyed by it but failing completely thanks to the fanged grin on her face.

"Well, he does like spirits and duel energy," Judai retorted, going back to getting food for himself - he wasn't expecting Yusei home for another three hours or so, and it'd already been three. He was hungry and hadn't eaten since that morning at breakfast, and one quick look at the fridge told him that he'd be warming up some left-over stir fry he'd made for dinner last night.

It didn't take long for him to reheat a plate of the noodles and veggies, though before he left the kitchen he dug into the cabinet and got out a few of Pharaoh's treats. The cat was quite happy about that and snatched them the second he was able to, letting him pet him for a bit while he ate the treats. Of course, right afterwards Pharaoh went right up and out the window, clearly wanting more treats or something like that, so Judai just let out a chuckle - Pharaoh would never miss dinner, after all, even if he were in the middle of getting tons of snacks or a similar scenario.

"Alright, time to sort through all these then," Judai said, pulling out his phone and unlocking it, pulling up the tournament list website before starting to scroll with one hand and eat with the other. There were a few interesting ones, though none of them had the 'Pro' tag on them, so they wouldn't really be counting for his rank much, but eventually he did manage to find one that had the tag on it and looked promising.

"'The Official Winter Wonderland Tournament'...? Pros will duel for the grand prize in the Kaiba Stadium, which has been completely decorated from the ground up to be a winter wonderland," Judai read out loud, looking to Yubel for her input - it sounded fun to him, at least, and he popped open more details about it to read over.

"I'd love to be summoned and then bring fire to it," Yubel cackled, approval sparking across the connection before she calmed down, "Anyway, I'm going to go back. Don't forget to tell Yusei when he comes back, otherwise you won't remember until the day of."

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Judai grinned, rolling his eyes slightly but setting a quick reminder on his phone anyway just in case. Going back to reading the tournament details, it seemed to be another where costumes were allowed and encouraged, so he got to work sketching out as many ideas as he could.

Winter wonderland, huh? Judai thought to himself, trying to figure out a few initial ideas to get himself started, So... snowflakes? Definitely blue and white colors, maybe pink and purple depending on what I go with because of fairies and stuff...

"...Be a king," Haou suggested, surprising Judai a bit since he hadn't expected him to help but he was thrilled with the suggestion anyway.

"Ooh, that's a good one. Thanks!"

...Maybe if he dressed himself up regally enough, he could fluster Yusei again somehow. It was a nice thought and suddenly, Judai was ten times more motivated to make this work.