A Clash of Conflicting Classes

Hello! This is the little tidbit with the disclaimer and the boring intro stuff I want to write because this is my first time posting a fanfic, so if you want to get straight to the story go down to the line.
Anyway.
I'm Tik, the amazing Joey fanatic. No, I do not have a crush on him. I just like the character.
*Disclaimer walks in, hailed by fanfare of trumpets* I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or anything else that is already copywrited by someone else. *Disclaimer bows and walks out*
Now, that wasn't so bad, was it? Good.
As a little note, for those of you who for some reason do not know, Joey's Japanese name is actually a first name of Katsuya and a last name of Jonouchi. The Japanese put first names last, which is why people get confused and call him Jonouchi Katsuya, like I did before I fixed this.
Please review!!!

-----------------------------------------------------

The man stumbled into the apartment, reeking of alcohol and secondhand cigarette smoke. It was nothing unusual. He was currently involved in one of his normal routines. After he was kicked out of the bar in the early hours of the morning, he would somehow manage to get back to his apartment – he called it his, even though he didn’t pay the bills – grab his son out of bed, have some fun, and pass out until noon, when he would wake up with a giant hangover and a temper that he took out on his son when the boy came back from work in the evening. It was all part of a schedule that came back to it’s beginning every four or five days, depending on how long it took him to get some more money for drinks.

The man himself was huge: one of those people whose nickname always tends to be “troll” or “Neanderthal”. And he resembled both accurately, especially when drunk at four AM. He drained the last drops from the bottle he was carrying and burst into his son’s bedroom, one of the few places in the house that stayed neat. He intended on using the glass bottle to wake the sleeping teenager. Of course, the noise he made usually woke the boy anyway, so the bottle would be used for other purposes.

But this time, something was different. Because when he flung open the door, two pairs of eyes blinked open immediately, instead of just the on. And as one blond figure sprang up in fear and recognition, the other raised her – yes, her – head more slowly, shock and astonishment slowing her reactions.


It had started earlier that morning.

The blond boy previously described had been working at the mechanic shop, his full-time job he took on to pay the rent and other apartment-related bills. He didn’t exactly love cars or motorcycles. That was something his friend was into, one of the people he had been close to for a while. But, like most of his other friends, Honda had gone off to collage to get some kind of degree on the subject, while he was actually here, actively participating in it.

His friends. He missed all of them. They were all off somewhere, doing something that he couldn’t help them with, somewhere he couldn’t be. But there was one person he missed most of all, one person he’d felt closer to than anyone else. But he had no idea what had happened to her. After all, she had a nice pile of money and a dream of being famous. What did he have? A drunken father and a dead-end job. He had shut the memories of her deep inside of him. He knew that someone of her class would never stoop to his level. His hopes and dreams in that direction had been silenced.

He sighed as he tried to figure out what was wrong with the car he was lying beneath. He was decent at the job, no doubt about that. He was strong, wiry enough to get into tight places, not afraid of getting dirty, and had a knack for understanding some very complicated things. Most people assumed he wasn’t bright. He just didn’t learn like other people did. If he could feel it, experience it, and see it with his own eyes, then he could figure it out without learning complex scientific principles. He had once been asked how he had figured out a problem in a car, and he hadn’t been able to reply. He just knew, figuring it out on his head.

It was whade hde him the toughest street fighter in Domino City, his unique blend of instinct and learning.

He wished that that would have been enough to get him into the school he wanted to go to, a specialized school for young artists. That’s what he wanted to do with his life, draw and paint and sculpt, not spend hours on his back fixing old Toyotas and Subarus. But what choice did he have? At least he had a job that paid the bills. One less excuse his father could find for what happened so often . . .

He shivered and pulled out from under the car when he saw someone drive up in a familiar-ing ing convertible. Doing his usual quick overview, he was impressed. Definitely not cheap, and very stylish. He wiped his hands on the rag in his apron and got up to greet the unexpected customer.

But he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the occupant of the convertible.


She yelled in frustration as her car began to rattle. It had happened before, and the les-than-kindly mechanic who worked near her house had told her to come back to him if there was trouble again. And now she was out here, in Domino City, of all places, where the strangest things always happened to her, and her car was breaking down.

She had to come to the city for a fashion show. She had finally completed her dream of becoming a fashion model, but she was still on the bottom rungs, working her way slowly to the top as she traveled constantly. But that wasn’t unusual to her.

It was coming here that brought back those memories that she had tried to suppress for sog. Sg. She had always been a loner. When she was young, her parents had moved constantly, making it hard for her to develop true friendships. Her best friends had been paper cards, and they had gotten her a long way, all the way to the finals of one of the biggest Duel Monsters tournaments ever.

She remembered waking up from that horrible nightmare Marik had put her through, to see him, of all people, standing right above her . . . no, not Marik, of course, but him, the only person she had ever truly felt close to. Even during those last horrible moments of the final duel, he had been there, even when she couldn’t see him, helping her, ready to take the force of an attack from an Egyptian God to protect her. Of course, he hadn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t have been living when she woke up from the nightmare. But he had been ready to do it, to risk everything for her. He had been there for her, as more than a friend . . .

But they had been forced to part. After all, at that time they were still technically minors, and they needed to respect their parent’s wishes. He had made it clear to the others that his father wasn’t happy about his being there anyway. She had hoped that, wherever as nas now, he was finally free of that horrible man. She was glad to have never met him, and Serenity had said enough about him that she prayed to never meet him in the future.

That puzzle always crossed her mind. Would she ever find him? She wondered about it, as she often did, stopping and asking a passer-by where the nearest mechanic was. Thanking them and following their directions, she soon ended up at a small place. It was, in comparison to most garages she’d seen, small, but it looked used, which was something the bigger garages lacked. She’d always thought that a clean and neat garage, however big, obviously weren’t good enough to get customers.

As she parked the car, she saw a figure wheel himself out from underneath another car, jacked up and surrounded with tools. The oily person got up and wiped his hands. His head lifted to look at her, and she recognized him. She froze suddenly, the door to her car slamming shut behind her.


“Mai?”

“Joey?”

The two names were whispered simultaneously. The two speakers walked towards each other, starting broken sentences and stammering, unsure of how to react.

“What are you . . .”

“Why are you . . .”

“I work . . .”

“My car . . .”

“No, you finish . . .”

“No, you go ahead . . . “

“Where have you . . .”

“What have you . . .”

They kept speaking and pausing, completely confused and bewildered. Finally, Mai got control of herself and half-ran the rest of the distance between them, hugging Joey tightly, the way they used to do before they’d parted.

“Easy up there, you’ll get your nice dress all oily,” Joey said with a gentle laugh, returning the embrace. Oh, how she’d missed his voice! Street slang and gutter accents were usually considered derogatory terms, but she loved the blend of his voice, especially when he spoke softly like that, with no anger spiking through.

He trembled slightly. He was still taller than her, but at that moment he felt tiny. Here he was, street trash, hugging a rich playboy-magazine girl. He hit himself mentally. She probably doesn’t think about reputation, idiot, the last time you two saw each other, you acted as equals, his little mental voice drawled.

“Joey, what are you doing here? I’d have though by now you’d be off studying somewhere.” Damn, there’s that hurt look in his eyes, she thought. I upset him somehow. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

He smiled slightly, though. “Nah, I work here full-time. But, as much as I’d like to talk right now, my boss would flip if he saw me hugging a potential customer.” He grinned to indicate the joke, hoping he hadn’t hurt her feelings. He saw her disappointed land and hurriedly continued. “Tell you what, my shift ends in another hour and a half, I’ll take you out for dinner, k?”

Mai smiled broadly, but they pulled away suddenly when another voice broke into their conversation. “Jonouchi . . .”

Joey – or Jonouchi Katsuya, to be more precise – flushed slightly at the sight of the older man. “Mr. Melo, please –”

He chuckled good-naturedly. “Don’t worry, Jonouchi, I won’t tell the Volcano-that-is-our-boss back there. In fact, I believe you haven’t had a break for a while now. Fix up your friend’s car, and you can punch out, alright?”

Joey almost jumped for joy. “Thanks, Mr. Melo, I really owe you one.”

“Hey, you deserve a break after tackling that old pile of junk over there. You couldn’t get any of the other mechanics to touch that thing with a twenty-foot pole, much less actually try to fix it up.”

Joey grinned again and turned back to Mai, telling her with a wink that he would continue their chat later. “So, Miss Valentine, what seems to be the problem?”

She swatted him playfully for the fancy title. "The damned thing keeps rattling like crazy. It’s done this before, and the guy told me he couldn’t fix it entirely without ordering new new parts that I can’t afford.”

Joey pulled the hood of the car open with a thoughtful look and began to go through the usual routine of checking the car while asking questions. Mai was slightly surprised at his seriousness, but realized that she had seen a similar determined look in his eyes before. This time it was slightly subdued and sparkled with hints of jokes and laughter, but that was because the broken car was a much smaller deal to him than their lives’ being in danger had been. When he jacked up the car and rolled under it, he came out with a sour expression on his face.

“That jerk. He didn’t need new parts, just needed to fix the old ones instead of smothering them in sealant. This’ll take about half an hour, but then I’ll have to pour new oil through and rinse the system, so that’ll be an additional cost on top of it, and it has to stay here overnight.” He shook his head. “If that idiot had done it properly, it would cost half the price and saved half the trouble. He just didn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he shuffled it off to whoever got to look at the car after he was done with it.”

Mai grinned. “Well, if he had done his job properly, I would have passed you right by. Don’t you think that’s a fair exchange?”

Joey laughed. “Say that again when I give you the bill. Even my privileges here can’t discount you, and all that oil isn’t cheap.”

-------------------------------------------

What do you think? Please review!!!