Usearki's Writing Journal

Title: Marry In Haste
Author: Usearki
Fandoms: YuGiOh!
Pairings: Seto Kaiba/Anzu Mazaki
Rating: Mature/Explicit
Summary: Seto Kaiba and Anzu Mazaki get married after a chance encounter and one whirlwind evening, but the next morning, due to a strange intolerance Seto has, he has forgotten it all. Left to make her own way, how will Anzu deal with this?
Warnings Choose not to Warn. (CNTW is a valid warning.)
Disclaimer: I do not own YuGiOh!
Story Status: 27/??

Back to Chapter 1


Wordcount - 2163

In the Arena:

The next day Anzu awoke in Seto's bed and in his arms. She carefully extricated herself then sat up and looked around, still wondering how on earth she had ended up like this. Then she looked over at Seto and smiled. He was so considerate of her and he had given her an awesome new phone. Although she still felt a little odd about taking it, she had been grateful for it. Her contact details had been transferred over and she had spent a couple of hours working out how to use her new handset and sending several messages to all the people she trusted.

The very first person she had called was her grandmother. Anzu asked about her health, as she still sounded rough and quite breathless, but the old woman had assured her that the doctor was looking after her and she would be fine. Then Anzu had handed the phone to Seto so that he could speak with her grandmother himself and assure her that everything was fine and that he was going to treat her correctly. He had also promised to bring Anzu back to see her and he wished her to get well soon.

She had finally been able to read the reply texts from Honda and Jonouchi. Honda had congratulated her and hoped that she knew what she was doing, but Jonouchi had expressed total disbelief and warned her that Kaiba was not to be trusted. Anzu had assured him that she was being careful and she would let him know if she needed any help. She hadn't bothered contacting her parents after the way they had gone off at her last time. There would be time for that later.

The thing that did bother her, however, was that Yugi hadn't responded to her text giving her new details. In fact he had not sent her a message at all. That did worry her. She didn't want to lose Yugi as a friend. Maybe she could catch up with him at the tournament and hopefully straighten things out. She knew it would be hard for him seeing as she had taken up with his biggest rival, the one who was always shouting about taking him down, especially as they were married. She half wished that she had told him the truth when he came to see her in New York, but it didn't matter, what was done was done. But she hadn't lied to him, it had been complicated. Surely he would be able to appreciate that?

She also wondered how life would be after they returned to Japan. At the moment she was treating this like a kind of vacation as there really was little else she could do, but the thought of what she would do next whilst fitting into Seto's life was a worry in the back of her mind and something they would have to talk about.

Then she felt Seto shift next to her, breaking her from her train of thought.

"Good morning, beautiful," Seto said drowsily, causing Anzu to blush deeply.

"Good morning yourself," Anzu said impishly, giggling as Seto snuggled up to her, placing a kiss onto her waist.

He suddenly dropped the embrace and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Shower, coffee, breakfast," he said, moving to get out of bed.

"Sounds good," Anzu smiled, moving to get out of the bed herself, "What then?"

"Then you can come with me to meet some of my staff and take a tour of the dueling facilities," Seto said. "You do want to see them, right?"

"Of course I do," she said. "I've always enjoyed watching duels. Well.. most of them anyway."

"Hmm..." Seto wondered what she meant by that... but then a few came to mind, like the one where he had won then ripped up Sugoruko Mutou's Blue Eyes White Dragon card – and the one at Duelist Kingdom where he had almost caused Yugi to...

He put that out of his mind, it was long past and she probably didn't hold it against him.

"Apart from anything else, it will let the press get a good look at us being together." He gave a wry smile. "You have to throw them a bone occasionally or they start making up whatever they like."

"I see your point," Anzu said. "I guess I have a lot to get used to."

"Don't worry, I'll be with you," Seto said. Anzu smiled up at him. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

–

And it wasn't so bad. Seto took her around the building, introducing her to the people that mattered. Then he took her to the dueling arena, to see the machines up close.

"Do you still have a deck?" Seto asked.

"Um... yes?" Anzu sounded unsure, "but I haven't updated it in years."

"Do you have it with you?"

"Ye..esss," Anzu sounded even more unsure now, like she knew what was coming.

"Duel me." Seto crossed his arms and looked down at her in challenge.

"But... I haven't played in years and I was never a competitive player. You will beat me in about 2 turns."

"Anzu... humour me," He said, stepping towards her and taking her hands. He looked down at her, an open expression upon his face.

"OK, but I'm sure that some of my cards have been banned from competition in the time since I made my deck," Anzu warned him.

"That's OK, I'll turn the restrictions off for this match. It's not like it's an official competition after all."

Anzu nodded and took the pack of cards out of her bag, passing them over to Seto for him to shuffle. When he was done with that, he passed her his cards to shuffle. It felt strange, holding Seto's cards. They felt... alive... some how. She struggled to stop her hands from shaking, then she passed the cards back to him. He smirked at her then stepped away to make his way to his side of the arena.

Anzu stood there dumbfounded for a moment, then walked over to her part of the arena and stepped up to the podium, starting slightly when it began to rise. Seto was stood across from her, looking confident as usual. She placed her deck in the proper place and took a deep breath as the duel was to begin.

"Who is taking the first turn?" Anzu asked.

"Ordinarily we would toss a coin for it, but in this case, I think we can say ladies first," He smiled at her again as he said that. Not the arrogant smirk that would be evident whenever he was dueling, but a genuine smile, a smile that was just for her.

"Alright then," she drew six cards and sized up her hand. She threw out a fairly weak monster and placed a trap card face down then ended her turn. Then she waited for Seto to begin his turn.

He did likewise, throwing out a weak – for him – monster, and two face down cards. Then he ended his turn.

Anzu drew another card. She still didn't have much that was any good, so she put another monster out, changed the first to defence mode and placed one more face down card. She could not do anything against his monster, so she just waited to see what would happen. She wasn't disappointed.

The next few minutes seemed to pass in a blur. Seto brought out another monster, sacrificed them both to bring out the blue eyes white dragon. It was the first time she had seen one face on in battle and she felt a pull, something drawing her, making her lock eyes with the beast. Even though it was only a holographic projection, she could only stand there and stare at it, unable to move a muscle and she did not know why. The dragon moved as it stared her down, letting out it's burst stream of destruction, destroying one of her monsters. She should have activated one of her face down cards to stop it from doing that, but she could not move.

Distantly she could hear Seto calling her name, but she could not call back. She could only stare at the magnificent white dragon before her, as it seemed to be judging her, possibly finding her wanting.

--

Seto finished summoning his Blue Eyes White Dragon, the mainstay of his deck, then looked across to see Anzu's reaction. She seemed suitably impressed, which was as he expected. He then commanded the dragon to attack, to destroy the slightly more powerful of her monsters, bracing himself for the trap or spell card that was sure to be forthcoming, but... the attack went through unopposed. Anzu's monster was destroyed and Anzu was still staring at the dragon.

"Anzu?" he called over to her. He knew that his dragon was impressive, but surely it was not THAT impressive. She still did not move, did not even acknowledge that he had called out to her. "Anzu!" Still no reaction. "Anzu!"

He was becoming very concerned now. There was no way that she could not have heard him, so he shut the duel arena down. As soon as the holograms faded away, Anzu's eyes rolled back and she dropped to the floor like her strings had been cut.

Seto wasted no time, hitting the emergency call button then jumping from his podium and running across to Anzu's. She was out cold, something that made his heart all but freeze in his chest and his blood run cold, but the instant he touched her, her eyes snapped open and he let out a sigh of relief.

"Anzu, are you alright?" He asked, concern in his voice.

"Uh..." Anzu seemed confused as she slowly sat up. "What just happened?"

"I was hoping that you could tell me," he said.

"I'm not really sure," Anzu admitted, "but as soon as it was summoned, I couldn't look away from the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Then I passed out, I think."

Seto considered this. Could there be something wrong with the holographic projector? Was there something that could cause some kind of trance? It could be bad if something like that were to happen during the tournament.

"Come on, lets get you down from there and then I want the medics to take a good look at you."

Anzu nodded and took Seto's hand as he helped her from the platform. She wasn't about to argue as that had been quite a scary experience and she was still confused and shaken. The medics were quickly on hand and as they checked her over Seto was on the phone, ordering a complete diagnostic on the duel arena and platforms – and to make sure that one of his holographic projections could not cause a trance in a duelist.

Seto went over to his podium to pick up his deck, then back to Anzu's to gather her cards. He looked through them as he was waiting for the medics to finish checking Anzu over. It wasn't a bad deck – for it's time. Of course it was woefully outdated now – as Anzu had told him before they had started – and of course it had no chance of beating his own deck.

"Mr. Kaiba," the head medic called his attention. "As far as we can tell there is nothing wrong with Mrs Kaiba, but I recommend that she takes it easy for the rest of the day and call us back if she experiences any light-headedness or fainting episodes.

"Thank you," he said, then turned to Anzu. "I think we'd better head back to the apartment."

"That sounds good to me," Anzu replied, sounding seriously shaken.

"Your deck," Seto handed it to her. Anzu took it and placed it back in her bag.

"Thank you," she said. "I know it's not a good deck, but it's mine, you know?"

"I know," he replied. "Come on, let's get you back so you can put your feet up. We can come back and finish the tour tomorrow. Then maybe I can take you out somewhere."

Neither of them saw the diminutive figure watching from the very back of the auditorium. Yugi was devastated that it was true, that Kaiba and Anzu were together, but he had just seen everything that had happened in the dueling arena. He could see that the Blue Eyes had judged and then accepted Anzu, even if nobody else there had seen it, and he knew what that meant for them.

He waited until everyone had gone and then he quietly left the room. There was no need for any of them to know that he had seen it happen. It would make Kaiba defensive and Anzu embarrassed if he said anything about it, so he wouldn't, But he supposed he should try to catch up with them before the tournament began.

He knew he would be off his game if he did not get this settled.

On to Chapter 28



A/N - I don't write duels. Usually if I have duels in a fic I do the equivalent of a 'fade to black', so even though this is barely the start of a duel it's as far as I've gone writing one in... forever. And if anything is wrong... eh, poetic license. LMAO.