Stumbling into Victory 9
Jonathan YukawaBrockton Bay, NH, USA
Sunday mornings at the Yukawa household were peaceful affairs. We weren’t Christian, or of any other faith. My paternal grandparents had been Buddhists before they passed, but Buddhism didn’t mandate a weekly service.
Even if it did, ol’ Grandpa Yukawa hadn’t ever bothered trying to teach us and dad grew up an agnostic, practical sort of man. He was an architect. As far as he was concerned, everything that couldn’t be measured with rulers or scales was too “wooly” to think about. Mom was much the same; for her, faith was something to be discovered alone.
Which made this even funnier to me. It was only now that I’d left home for college that I found “god.” Or, at least, a certain spirituality that came with having a five thousand year old pharaoh in my soul. It was a little hard to remain an agnostic when there was an adorable, black dragon hatchling staring up at me with big, soulful, red eyes.
I resisted for about two seconds before I picked up a slice of beef chuck and slipped it into his eager maw. Was I starting to run low on funds? Yes. Was this supposed to be my breakfast? Also yes. And yet, I regretted nothing. Surely, feeding my ka was just as important as feeding my body.
‘I believe the right word is “sap,”’ Atem observed with dry amusement. ‘You, my friend, are a sap.’
‘Hey, haven’t you heard? One must nourish the spirit as well as the body. Spiritual health is just as important as physical or mental health,’ I replied back, stroking a beard I didn’t have. ‘Ka is spirit. This is the right thing to do.’
‘That really isn’t how this works. Ka do not need to eat in the first place.’
‘Sure, but look how cute he is. His entire face lights up. It’s fucking adorable. See? See?’
‘I see… that you are a sap. As I recall, you were looking forward to making yourself gyudon. Now, you will have just a bowl of rice.’
‘And an egg and a scallion stalk. Throw in some sesame oil and soy sauce and that’s a solid breakfast by itself,’ I told him. But he was right; there wasn’t anything else in the fridge so I’d have to go shopping after meeting up with Alice for lunch today.
‘Suit yourself. Far be it for me to tell you how to spend your money,’ he chuckled. ‘I am surprised, though. You bonded with the Red-Eyes Black Chick very easily.’
I fed him the rest of the raw beef and let him lick the residue from my fingers. ‘Is it supposed to be harder to bind a ka? I mean, I just kinda made a verbal offer, held out a piece of beef, and it just happened on its own.’
‘Usually, yes. Priests in my time took narcotics and meditated for hours or days in chambers filled with incense. Sometimes, they collapsed out of dehydration and exhaustion before they finished.’
‘Huh… As much as I’d like to think of myself as a special little snowflake, could it be the puzzle’s doing? I mean, most priests didn’t have a Millennium Item to streamline the process.’
‘Yes. I underestimated how much help it would be to you. It could also be that you have an exceptional affinity for forging new connections. The puzzle, myself included, would have required something to latch onto in the first place to appear here.’
‘Or, this little guy is a baby and therefore very easy to please,’ I pointed out. ‘I’d bet anything a fully grown dragon won’t be easily bribed with just six ounces of beef.’
‘You would win that bet. However, I must warn you of one thing: You have bound yourself to a dragon. You will influence the young dragon just as you are influenced in turn.’
I took that in stride. ‘Yes, I figured the connection would flow both ways. I mean, Kaiba was very dragon-like. And you’re a scheming spellcaster who pulls tricks out of his ass like you’re a pinata pooping out candy.’
‘I am not a “spell pinata,”’ Atem huffed.
‘Aren’t you? You get beat up, almost lose the duel, then poof! Spell! I mean, there’s the whole Heart of the Cards thing, too.’
‘In any case, you may find yourself taking on traces of a more draconic personality.’
‘Okay, but what does that mean exactly? Will I develop a craving for red meat? Feel the need to kidnap princesses or hoard gold?’
‘I would argue that you already have a hoard of miscellaneous knicknacks. As for anything else, we’ll have to see. It’s not a bad thing in itself. Dragons are possessive and greedy, yes, but they are also known as protectors, decisive and mighty.’
‘You’re right, as usual. I guess it can’t hurt to be a bit more proactive. Mom always said I waffle too much.’
Whatever the case, I was delighted. A ka was a ka; I didn’t particularly care how I bound one, especially one with such immense potential like a Red-Eyes. Not to mention, the little fella was small enough to relax with in my dorm like this.
In my soul, one of the many pedestals surrounding the fountain of my ba had finally filled out. There was the Red-Eyes Black Chick, stood on his hind legs. The statue’s wings were spread outward, as if to capture a fragment of his future self’s fearsome visage.
Absolutely adorable. Maybe this little guy wouldn’t be getting into dogfights with the space pigeon without a lot of help, but that was what a sorcerer was for. Ka didn’t “grow up” like creatures of flesh and blood, anyway. Sooner rather than later, he’d be soaring through the skies and making villains piss themselves.
X
We agreed to meet up at a nearby park. I promised dango, so Alice volunteered to bring lunch. She was like that; she absolutely loathed the thought of owing anyone, even her childhood friend. Although, knowing her, she’d probably grab fast food for us. I still remembered her “experiments” in the kitchen with great fear and trembling.
The thought made me smile. We used to do stuff like this fairly often with our circle of friends. I hung out with the nerdy Asians and orchestra kids, but even we needed to touch grass once in a while. Savin Hill Park, which overlooked Savin Hill Cove on one side and Malibu Beach on the other, was a favorite hangout spot in Boston.
I found Alice sitting at a wooden picnic table. She was a short-ish Asian girl with shoulder-length black hair and a slim figure. Not that anyone could tell as she was. She wore a poofy, white jacket, so thick that she’d probably roll downhill quite nicely. She was thumbing away at her phone, typing out something or other so as to not waste even the time she spent waiting for friends.
Sure enough, in front of her was a paper bag. I recognized the logo on it as the one from that Italian sandwich shop that opened recently. They were well-known for piling high the cold cuts and made excellent pickled hot peppers.
“Yo, it’s been a while, Alice,” I greeted as I sat down across from her. I slid my own bag of dango between us.
She startled a bit, nearly dropping her phone. Her blue eyes, a feature she’d inherited from her mother, widened in surprise. “Fuck, Jonathan! Where the hell did you come from?”
“Across the street. University campus. Boston. Japan. Take your pick. What’s got you so distracted?”
She glanced at her phone, then quickly shut it off. “N-Nothing. I was just writing something for work.”
I blinked at that. I assumed “work” was code for her ABB tinkering. “Work? On Sunday? Lame. You grew up to be a lame adult.”
“And you’re still a lazy, unproductive bastard. Let me guess, you’ve been learning to spin raw cotton into yarn or something equally useless.”
“Heh, don’t be ridiculous, Alice. I already know how to do that,” I grinned happily. I caught the paper-wrapped tube she tossed me. “A sandwich, though? With dango? I hope you know; your ancestors are rolling in their graves.”
“I’m half-white so they fucking get over themselves,” she huffed. “Besides, western food is so much more convenient than Japanese food.”
“You’ve got a point. So, how have you been? Dare I ask what brings you to my little shitheap called Brockton Bay?”
She unwrapped her sandwich and took a messy bite. She chewed like she was pissed at the sandwich. “Fuck, you really wanna know?”
“Given how much shit you gave me for ‘wasting my potential’ here in Brockton, kinda,” I said gently. “Alice, what changed?”
“Ugh… You still remember that? Will you drop it if I say sorry?”
“You don't need to apologize. You weren't exactly wrong. I just didn't mind going for a dead major. I can't say I'm not curious, but if you really don't want to talk about it, that's okay, too.”
She slumped in her seat with a frustrated sigh. “You. You're always like this. So damn nice that I feel guilty if I don't give you what you want. The worst part is that I know you mean it.”
“It's a skill. I was the designated ‘Alice-wrangler’ for over ten years, after all,” I said proudly.
“The fuck do you mean ‘Alice-wrangler?’ I’m not a wild animal,” she growled… exactly like a wild raccoon.
“Olivia would beg to differ.”
“Who?”
“She was the yearbook photographer in our junior year,” I reminded her. “She asked our study group if she could take pictures of us in the library and you almost shanked her with a pair of scissors.”
“Yeah, well… I was really stressed.”
“I remember.”
“Fine, I’ll talk, but food first. This is a ‘three skewers of dango’ kinda talk.”
“Three skewers? Oh my, shit’s serious, then. Take all the time you need.”
So, that’s what we did. We made meaningless smalltalk while we had our Italian subs. They came with little, plastic cups of pickled hot peppers that cut through the saltiness of the meats nicely.
Once we finished eating, I passed her a skewer of dango. There were three to a skewer and had been grilled on the frying pan to give them a hard, crispy layer. Inside, they were stuffed with kinako, roasted soybean flower I got from a Japanese grocer.
Unlike the hanami dango, these were only green and white. The pink coloring was traditionally made from cherry blossom powder, but I couldn’t find any in Brockton. The green, matcha, was a lot more accessible.
“Yesss…” she hissed as she took a bite. The sudden influx of sugar made her eyes light up. “I missed this.”
“I refuse to believe you can’t find dango in New York.”
“Not New York City. Cornell is in Ithaca, four hours away from New York. It’s a basic bitch college town with thirty thousand people, mostly white, young, and stupid.”
“You’re half-white and young,” I replied dryly. Not even I dared call Alice Matsuri an idiot, even if she very much could be sometimes.
“Yeah, well, they didn’t have dango. I bought the frozen shit online and they’re not as good as these. Take the compliment.”
“Fine, fine. I guess I am pretty damn awesome,” I laughed, taking a skewer for myself. I pulled out a squeeze bottle of mitsarashi sauce, a glaze made from soy sauce and brown sugar and thickened with starch. “Here, I kept the sauce separate so it wouldn’t get soggy in the bag.”
“Fuck, yeah. Gimmie.” She drizzled enough of the sauce onto her skewer that the original color of the dango became impossible to distinguish. “So… Walk with me?”
“Sure, Alice.” We stood and began to make slow circles around the park. It wasn’t exactly scenic, but that was fine. She just wanted something to collect her thoughts.
“Okay, so… Cornell…” she began with a morose sigh. “Promise you won’t tell dad?”
“Cornell. And you know I won’t. You didn’t tell my parents about that time I tried to ferment honey in my closet so fair is fair.”
“Heh, oh yeah! Making mead in your closet? You were a fucking delinquent.”
“Lies and slander… mostly…”
“Alright…” She took a deep breath. “So we had this big semester project, right?”
“Right. Did you stab someone? Are you on the run from the law?”
“What? No, fuck you! Ugh, whatever. Some bastard swapped my semester paper with an online article and I didn’t notice it before I turned it in.”
“So you got accused of plagiarism and the professor didn’t accept late work? But why? Was the class graded on a curve?”
“Pretty much. He’s one of those asshole professors who take people failing his class as a badge of honor. I tried to explain it to him and the dean, but they didn’t believe me because I didn’t have any proof,” she said, growing increasingly agitated. “The fucker who took my paper got offered a lab assistant position, too!”
“That’s rough. Sorry that happened to you,” I said with a sympathetic smile. I handed her a second dango skewer. Really, what was the difference between her and my dragon, anyway? They could both be soothed with snacks. “You didn’t do anything you’d regret, did you?”
“I… I almost did,” she admitted quietly. I heard. There were plenty of rumors about the “Cornell Bomber” on PHO, though no specifics. Then, she chirped with a forced smile. “Ah, who cares! I fucking hated pre-med, anyway. As far as I’m concerned, I’m free!”
“Fair enough. I also hate pre-law. That explains why you left Cornell, but why Brockton?”
“I told you, I got a job here. I’m…” Her brow scrunched together, wrinkling her forehead. I could practically see her brain fire on all cylinders to give me an answer that wasn’t gang-related. “I got hired by an engineering firm. You know how I always liked chemical engineering more than biology?”
“I remember. Your dad’s got it into his head that doctors are more prestigious than engineers.”
“Yeah, well, I’m done with that. I’m done trying to please dad. I’m going to live my life the way I want,” she said, smiling.
It was the glassy, fragile smile I’d always been able to see through. She wore it when she was trying to act tough, like when she got beat up in kendo, or when her pet turtle died.
Seeing it now pissed me off. Atem was right. She could be batshit crazy, but even a bad friend was still a friend. And seeing how she was a tinker, this wasn’t everything. I, the transmigrant-me, distantly recalled reading that a tinker was born when a parahuman faced consistent pressure, a problem that had no obvious solution.
I took a deep breath. I wanted to call her on the bullshit, but I wasn’t sure how she’d react. If I pushed, I was sure I could get her to fess up about her powers, but what then? She would probably want to keep me around, maybe even drag me into the ABB in the belief that she could protect me by making me her right hand.
That’d be even more likely if I told her that I was Konami. After all, Lung was a very real, very scary presence that loomed over every Asian in Brockton Bay. Truthfully, joining him without being “asked” was the safest option for an Asian cape. Purely from that perspective, she wouldn’t even be wrong.
The painful truth was that I wasn’t Atem. I struggled against Cricket the other night. One day, I would wield the power to bring Scion to his knees, but not yet. As things stood, I couldn’t protect her from Lung, or from herself. Hell, I wasn’t sure I could protect myself, especially with a certain snake slithering in the background.
So, I held my tongue. Instead, I did the only thing I could. I wrapped her in a hug despite her squirming and waited for her to drop the facade.
“You had it hard, Alice,” I whispered.
“I-I’m fine,” she said, slapping my arm weakly. Soon, she was sniffling and dribbling snot into my jacket.
“You will be,” I promised. “But you don’t have to be ‘fine’ all the time.”
We stayed that way for several minutes. Eventually, with a shuddering breath, she collected herself again. “Yeah… Thanks, Jonathan.”
“Anytime. Seriously, who else is going to keep you from stacking a body count if not me?”
“Oh, fuck you,” she chuckled weakly. We walked along in companionable silence before she spoke again. “So… What’s new with you?”
“I picked up boxing. And tutoring.”
“Liar.”
“And what’s that mean?” I squawked in faux offense. Skipping forward, I brought up my hands and tossed out a quick combination. Perfect form, just like Brian taught me. “See? I’m pretty good, thank you very much.”
She laughed and poked my bicep. “Oh, that, I can believe. It’s the tutoring that I’m calling bullshit on. You hate studying. Such a waste, too.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair. Actually, my student is the owner of the gym’s daughter. She’s in middle school and I’m just helping her with homework in exchange for not paying the membership fee.”
“Wow, really? Is she stupid? What? Seventh? Eighth grade homework? Just fucking let her fail,” she scoffed.
I frowned. This was also Alice. She could be fun, and was definitely “ride or die,” but she was also extremely dismissive of strangers. “Alice, she’s like me, some kind of undiagnosed attention disorder.”
“So? You figured it out. She can too.”
“Because I had help. Besides, free gym, remember?”
“Fine, whatever. You do you, Jon,” she said. Then, more quietly, “Can… Can we do this again?”
“Of course,” I replied, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “Someone needs to keep you grounded.”
X
I returned home after shopping for groceries. Tentatively, I considered today a success. The Alice-bomb wasn’t defused, not even close, but I’d placed it on a low simmer for now.
‘I thought you handled it well,’ Atem remarked. ‘She is a complicated young woman.’
‘That she is,’ I agreed.
‘You know what this means, correct?’
‘That I need to brush up on more Japanese sweets recipes?’
‘That too, but I was talking about your “cape” activities.’
‘I’m not sure what to do about that,’ I admitted. ‘How do I tell her without getting the ABB involved? Any advice, oh wise pharaoh?’
‘You were right earlier: You don’t. It seems to me that if she has already been forcibly recruited into the gang, she only has two paths to freedom: Flee, or…’
‘Or take it over. She could. If she’s cunning enough, an opportunity will come for her to bomb Lung to oblivion, or seal him in a time bubble.’
‘That would be my suggestion, yes. It would be very Kaiba-like, but preferable to being hunted indefinitely.’
‘And that means I need to take care of external factors, people who could potentially interfere with such a thing,’ I muttered. The ghost of a plan was beginning to percolate in my mind. ‘Coil. He needs to go. He’s the one we really have to worry about.’
‘You were always planning on getting rid of him,’ he pointed out. ‘What does it matter if you do so sooner than anticipated?’
‘You’re right. We need a plan.’
‘We have one. It can still work. It’ll just have to be expedited somewhat.’
‘Getting him to take the bait will be a bit of a gamble.’
‘Isn’t everything?’
‘True… Okay, let’s do this.’
‘Hehe, Yugi was like this as well. He would hesitate until a friend was in need. Then, all doubts would vanish like morning dew, leaving only steel beneath,’ he said.
I smiled at the compliment. With a few words, I felt as if I could take on the world; Atem had that kind of effect on a person. ‘I don’t know about that, but fine. Let’s go hunt a snake.’
Author’s Note
Yes, Bakuda canonically has blue eyes. She’s a halfie. Also, Taylor has brown/black eyes. I don’t know where the fanon came from, but lots of people write her as having green eyes? Tbf, it’s not that important, but it’s an odd detail to change up.
Also yes, I am woobifying Bakuda. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done this before? It’ll be fine until she takes over the ABB and kidnaps Jon to be her personal dango-chef.
Also, also, we’re going the gang leader route… maybe…? The Dragon of Kyushu will be replaced by… another dragon, because I’m uncreative.
Animal Fact: The Nile catfish, also called the electric catfish, is a family of catfish that can generate anywhere from 300-400 volts of electricity to stun their prey. Some species can grow up to four feet long, but most are far smaller.
What’s especially cool is that this isn’t some new species. The oldest depiction of a Nile catfish is on a slate palette dating back to 3100 BC. Ancient Egyptians knew about them and used them as the earliest known form of electrotherapy to treat arthritis. Only small ones were used because, while not fatal to a human, a large catfish can even stun an adult.