My first real shot at Mai-Joey in any sense of the word and there's nothing really concrete here anyway. set during duellist kingdom, between Yugi's defeat from Kaiba outside of Castle Pegasus, and the end of the first season. Written in present tense and in the dubbed series but inspired by a scene from the end of the Manga YuGiOh: Duellist Book Eight, standard disclaimers apply.

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Losers and Winners.

She remembers cold Saturday mornings after long nights where she never went home; walking the roads alongside beaches, in the days before she'd won enough tournaments to buy herself a car.

Driving those roads was always more fun than the walking them had been, especially when you pushed the throttle past one-hundred and let your hair out into the wind, like something out of a bad teenage romance novel. It was corny, really, but Mai didn't really care. The speed added something that the cold and walking always took away from her. Adrenaline, determination.

Awareness of success.

Mai knows how to work hard. People don't often believe that (all thanks to the old blonde bombshell effect, she supposes), but what does she care? Real duellists work and fight and scheme. Real duellists take the world by the horns. Everyone's an enemy. Everyone's an opponent. The second you forget that you're already on a downward spiral to hell-knows where.

Mai knows a downward spiral when she sees one, too.

This particular downward spiral comes in the form of spiky hairstyles, occasional bouts of jabbering about love and friendship and all that garbage, too-big mouths, and with high levels of teenage hormones and their subsequent mood swings. In the guise of a kid down on his knees, victory torn away from him in a fight she didn't even see so can't really pass judgement on, and that loser (the tallest one with the blond hair and green jacket, that is) with his hands wrapping around the kid's throat, telling him to get a hold of himself because he was scaring them and…

And obviously Mai doesn't want anything to do with all that.

Especially not the loser parts. Especially not him.

Hands around your best friend's throat, huh? This is the tacky friendship thing that Téa likes to blab on about so much? This is what Mai's missing out on? Some great loss.

She has to admit, though. The kid has some nerve. Taking hold of your best friend by the shirt like that and trying to shake some sense into him. If he ever did that to her she would've pounded him with both fists, even if she were catatonic.

So he loses one lousy duel. Big deal. It's not like the world's about to collapse on him. (And it's not like he has a car in serious need of a makeover.) Mai's brain has to ask itself, deep down, whether or not see would've done the same thing to him if she was standing where Wheeler is right now.

Sort of. Maybe.

She's not all that sure, to be honest. And it's crazy enough not to matter anyway, because Yugi's just a rival to her. More still, he's a rival to the very idiot who currently has his hands wrapped tight around his collar and is lifting him a couple of feet off the ground. Only not doing it because he's angry or impatient or just plain mean –doing it because he's scared.

It's been a while since Mai was ever scared like that. Truth be told, she doesn't even remember the last time.

Again, Mai tells herself she doesn't know what she's missing. Sure as anything she'd never let anyone she knows grip her by the throat like that.

It's ridiculous, really, because having realised just what the freak hosting this tournament was capable of doing, Mai actually felt her resolve about this whole thing cracking just a little bit. She's determined but she's not suicidal. No way does she want her soul locked away for eternity in some piece of card. Not that she really believes in that garbage but still, Pegasus is quite the freak, all the same. And seeing the kid who (she's got to admit it) thrashed her fair and square a few hours earlier, now semi-conscious outside of the castle after losing one lousy duel to get in there, didn't really help.

Still, it's a game she's known people take far too seriously. You'd have to take it seriously to be offering so much money as a reward for winning. Three million dollars… now that was an offer anyone would be hard pressed to turn away from.

And all she has to do to get her hands on it is beat all the losers and go up against a so-called mind reader.

Big deal, right? Mai knows all those psychic-mumbo jumbo tricks. She knows how tough it is to learn them and how incredibly easy it is to trick just about anyone you please into thinking you're some kind of higher power, once you know how. A few splashes of perfume can work wonders for your duelling.

The problem comes, she has also learned, when you start to rely on those tricks to get you through every round.

She's still one of the best duellists out there. And she has the right to be the best. The blond loser with the attitude problem? Not so much.

Really.

He beat her once. Luck, Mai knows, and maybe just a little of her own short sightedness in coming to rely on a bunch of mind tricks. But none of that matters now. She can defeat him easily.

Unfortunately for her, she doesn't actually get the chance.

---

It's the shortie who gets her.

Where does he get that insane-brained willpower of his anyway, Mai would like to know?

He should be thanking her; really, she's the one who all but snapped him out of his own head in a way all that sweet little girl's blathering about companionship and being "there for him" couldn't hope to accomplish. The problem being something Yugi had to face inside of himself, and which nothing outside of him could touch. Something he hasn't realised about himself and the world they lived in and the way it affects people like him. Or any people, really.

Because the real world isn't anything like a card game. The real world is harsh and cruel and by the time she'd surrendered the duel to him, she had a feeling Yugi was starting to get the hang of that idea.

He even looked more serious than he had before.

No biggie, really. So her car was good enough without another make over and she could probably live without those extra bonus cards for her deck. It's not like she didn't let that other girl beat her just so she could hand over those chips and finally snap the little guy out of it, so really, there's nothing to be worried about, is there? Téa was an amateur. One with a tendency to run at the mouthy and come out with things Mai doesn't want to hear about. But an amateur nonetheless. Mai doesn't have to worry about being beaten by her, because it wasn't a real duel anyway, and to be beaten by Yugi... well.

It's easier to lose to Yugi. Easier still to not stick around to watch Joey do the same. Easy to hand over some gold-painted card that she doesn't even need anymore so the kid can go duel for his sister after he goes and loses his own.

Sister. Mai never had one of those, but sometimes, she wonders. That sister being the place where that hair brained loser gets his courage, she can't really help but be curious. The reason he's even here, duelling in this crazy tournament. Not for glory or success, but for a girl who's losing her sight.

Sounds like a bad soap opera, to be honest, but Mai's always been partial to the occasional soap opera.

Still, though, she walks away from this one. She leaves the castle as easily as she came to it in the first place.

At least it should be that simple.

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Of course it's not like she has much choice other than to stick around after the tournament is over, given the complete absence of the boat. How it the name of all hell are they supposed to get off this island, anyway? This is not the place she plans to spend her weekend. One night sleeping out in the open (even if there are suitably fewer creeps lurking around the woods now) is way more than enough for her. Especially not with those lame excuses for showers and the total lack of any other modern facilities.

In fact she's almost considering going back in there. The duelling is probably all but over by now, but provided they'll still let her back in... Surely even Pegasus's place is better than another night out in the woods.

But by the time she's made up her mind to do just that, everyone else is coming out again.

And what do you know, they're all walking, breathing and looking very much in possession of their souls. Heck there are actually more people there than there were a few moments ago. That little dark haired kid who's hopping about and grinning in a way that totally doesn't suit his face, and Yugi smiling, even though he kind of looks like he'd rather fall asleep right where he's standing, Téa… hell, Téa's practically skipping, she looks so pleased with everything, and Joey who…

And Joey.

Who is beaming hard enough to break his face in half.

Mai gets the feeling, really, that Joey's not the one who won in there. Not really. In fact she's sure of it. He's good alright, but she's seen Yugi duelling. Joey wouldn't good enough to take that kid on, even if he were still half catatonic. And Mai knows that she shook the last of that out of him a while ago.

She knows Joey's lost.

That doesn't explain why he's still grinning his goofy head off and pulling Yugi with him as he gets into the copter, though.

And as Mai is watching them, something clicks in her head. Something to do with Téa's lame brain speeches and Yugi's smile and Joey's endless ranting and grinning and occasional bouts of stupidity. Something to do with the white haired kid's strange detachment from everything, even while that other kid who's name she doesn't care about has one arm wrapped firmly around his shoulders.

Because those people there… that ragtag bunch of friends who might as well come from all four corners of the globe… surely they shouldn't be walking together like that. They can't possibly be getting along. They were rivals in there. Only one of them could possibly have left that place with the prize money and maybe even had the luck to have beaten Pegasus himself (which they must have done, really, or else, if rumour is anything to go by, they would've gone like Bandit Keith and not come out of there at all). Surely they can't all be celebrating just one person's victory?

Victory...

Maybe... maybe it doesn't just look like the view of the ocean from a speeding car's windshield.

…Maybe it looks more like a helicopter.

Wait, what in the name of-?

...Kaiba Corp. Uhuh. Of course. She should've figured, really. No way would that jerk with an ego the size of a small continent ever insist on using the same transportation as all the others on the boat. No, of course not, he had to show off and touch down in a helicopter, didn't he?

Still, all those kids seem to be taking advantage of the situation. And Kaiba... doesn't seem too dead against giving them a ride. Must owe them a favour, or something.

Mai stands on the steps of the castle walkway and realises they'll all be alright, either way. After all, they have each other, don't they? A bunch of kids, that's all. Naïve, goofy, and –in the case of a couple of them– kinda crazy kids who still have oh so much to learn about the world and the way it really works...

Mai begins to run towards them and knows fine well she's running right into a spiral so huge she'll probably never be able to get out of it.

She doesn't care.

'Take me with you…?'

At least they see her coming. Not that Kaiba is going to stop and land the flight for her, but she never expected that. Still, would it be too much to get him to drop a ladder, or something? It's a big helicopter, there's definitely room for a little one. Hell, they've got room for the blonds' big mouth up there. Why not her?

And why is he leaning out of the door like that? Doesn't he realise he's going to end up falling to his death? Idiots, the lot of them. Seriously, he's leaning about half out of the copter and if he falls, he takes the kid whose shoulders he's gripping with him and then there'll probably be a chain reaction and…

And out of nowhere, Mai remembers Joey panicking outside of Castle Pegasus. She remembers how scared he was, watching his friend just sitting there like there wasn't a hope left in the entire world. And as she watches, she sees Joey push Yugi back just a little, so he's not quite so close to falling out of the aircraft anymore. Defensive. Protective.

Mai's brain does a double take, even though it's not entirely sure why.

What in the world is up with these kids?

What in the world is she getting herself into, asides from something she's been trying her best to avoid her entire life?

Mai picks up her pace, a little and she sees them let down a ladder, yelling at her to hurry up. Well sure, why didn't they try running in these heels? And oh, good grief, he's actually grinning at her up there. Laughing, even. The nerve of that brat. He actually finds this funny, doesn't he? It's hardly her fault she hasn't run since that hole-in-her-life which she liked to call High School. Some sense of gratitude he has.

Still. It's not that bad a laugh, and it's not one she'd really mind hearing more often. She'll give him hell about it later. For now, however, she decides to just concentrate on reaching out to take his hand, and not falling into the ocean below.

And so long as he kept his goddamned hands away from her throat the next time they were having an argument? They'd probably manage to get by without killing each other. Literally or otherwise.

Mai reaches out, grips the ladder in both hands and holds on, with that dumb, blue eyed, beautiful loser still hanging onto the other end, just as tightly as she is, hand reaching out and ready. Still grinning.

Fin.

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I don't often write Mai (in fact this is my first attempt at Mai centric) so lease let me know if you find anything OOC or anything else remotely unprofessional. Concrit is adored.