From the Set of Yugioh
emeralddarkness

Summery: Ever wonder what goes on… behind the scenes at 4kids??
Rating: PG/K+
Disclaimer: Of COURSE I own Yugioh! No, really! (April Fools! Ahaha…. Don'tsuemeplz)

Right, I hadn't been quite sure if I was ever going to post this, but I'd written it a while ago on a random whim and I decided that I liked it… besides which, it's April 1st. I have an excuse.

So, just to clear up any misconceptions that you might have early on… this is pure crack. Don't expect anything else.

Also, to avoid confusion, I must mention that I've tried to stick only with the names 4kids gave us for this fic. So Yami is simply Yami Yugi, Yami, or 'Pharaoh,' Ryou is called Bakura, Malik is called Marik, Marik/Yami Marik is just 'the evil side of Marik' or something along those lines, Yami Bakura is the Spirit of the Ring….

You get the idea.

Hopefully.

OoOoO

Fanservice Troubles

Yami Yugi looked at the outfit that had been laid out with a somewhat dubious air. "And… explain to me again why I must wear this?"

"For the fangirls, Yami," Yugi patiently explained. "I mean, come on, the English dub really doesn't have that much going for it. Look at us – we all look like a bunch of card game obsessed morons. And fine, we are obsessed with card games in any version you'd care to watch – they just don't make it seem quite so idiotic in the Japanese. But I mean really, after 4kids had finished with it do you know how many of our villains seem to want to take over the world with a trading card game? Honestly; I'd like to meet whoever it is who scripts this crap and give them a piece of my mind."

Marik glanced up from the corner of the set where he was reading over his lines. "If you do manage to find them then be sure to let me know, I want to come along with you and make my feelings on what they've done to my character evident. Preferably with knives. I like knives, you know. They make me feel all tingly…"

"Stop channeling Abridged Bakura!" Yami snapped, glaring over with narrowed eyes – a fact made only more noticeable by the kohl that lined them. Certain members of the cast (read: Kaiba) had in the past used the fact that he wore makeup (a term at which Yami always hissed and glared, as though daring whoever had said so to repeat themselves) to wonder, loudly and repeatedly, if this was a sign that he'd rather have been a woman than a man, or if he was perhaps merely making a gradual transition. It had been rather curious; they'd all stopped such teasing rather suddenly, after coming on set one day with their faces quite pale and hands unusually shaky.

Yami hadn't stopped smirking for a month afterwards.

"He's not Bakura here, abridged or otherwise," Marik argued. "He's never really given a name."

"Fine, but stop channeling him! We get enough trouble from him when he only has the one body!"

"Marik, don't even complain. You're not the one who has to save the world from the unspecified terror of the trading cards. I mean, at least the plot was explained a bit more fully in Duelist Kingdom," Yugi said, almost grimacing.

Marik merely raising an eyebrow in a manner that suggested he could not believe what he was hearing. "Need I remind you that I was the one who was supposed to be plotting world domination with those trading cards? And if you're going to mention plot then why on earth are you bringing up Duelist Kingdom?"

"Touché," Yami said absentmindedly.

"Hey, I never said that it made sense." Yugi shrugged carelessly.

Meanwhile, Yami's thoughts had apparently cycled back to the idea of wearing the outfit that was laid carefully out in front of him… and then become stuck there. "Yes, that's all well and good – still, the fact is that I enjoy playing games, be they cards or otherwise, and this…." He trailed off, clearly at a loss for words, and merely gestured downwards.

Yugi looked at the proposed wardrobe critically. "I really don't see what the problem is – there's lots of gold, which you like, and there's leather, which you also like. I mean, you're the one who started me wearing the collar and…. Weren't you? Or… crap, that's not specified, is it?"

"I don't believe it is," Yami said, sounding thoughtful. "Actually, it seems to be somewhat the reverse – your fashion sense apparently dictates mine, not the other way round."

"Which," the Spirit of the Ring said as he walked in from his trailer, "I still find somewhat unbelievable. Even in the kid-friendly version it's still evident that you are a weak, foolish, naïve-"

"Oh, do be quiet," Marik sighed. "Ignore him Yugi; he's still angry that they won't let him kill anyone."

"You do get to send them to the Shadow Realm," Bakura pointed out quietly.

"There is something fundamentally different," the Spirit of the Ring said, glowering, "in ripping someone's soul from their body by simply sending them to a Shadow Realm and just killing them. There is also something about specifying the methods that I am allowed to use in removing a spirit from its body that limits how evil I am seen, as well as the evil deeds which I am allowed to perform-"

As had become fairly usual, everyone ignored him as he went off on another of his – by now famous – rants, during which he often ended up breaking off into Ancient Egyptian for certain graphic descriptions of what he'd like to do to those idiots who-

"What I never got," Yugi said, talking over the Spirit of the Ring's ranting without thinking about it, "was how that was supposed to be so much better. I mean sure, your body lives and they get to edit out any blood or anything, but honestly! How is having your soul – the bit of you that can't die to get away from the pain and suffering – cast into a realm of eternal torment better than a quick, if painful, death?"

"And not all of the punishments for losing were all that painful, or even necessarily fatal," Bakura commented, wandering off towards the table with all the food. "Well, maybe not that often in the case of my alter ego or anything, but-"

"And they can't even be bothered to give me a proper name," the Spirit of the Ring was saying, "and so how I'm supposed to know who they're supposed to be talking to-"

Once again, the evil spirit was more or less universally ignored. "Exactly, you see?" Yugi folded his arms and huffed. "It just doesn't make sense."

"All right, fine, but if we could please get back to this thing that I'm supposed to be wearing. Yes, it's leather, but… ankh earrings? Yugi, you don't even have your ears pierced!"

"Don't worry about that, they're clip-ons!" The spiky-haired youth sounded ridiculously cheerful. Yami picked one of the aforementioned earrings up and examined the back – indeed they were.

"Somehow," he mused as he looked at the clasp, "I'd have thought that would take away some of the appeal."

"Since when would you know? You don't have your own fashion sense here, remember? You go off of mine."

"And since when do you wear earrings, clip on or otherwise?"

"Shut up. Listen, they won't look like they're clip-ons, it's just that way so that I don't have to get my ears pierced! Ok? Is everyone all right with that?" Yugi, it appeared, was becoming frustrated with his fellow cast members. Then again, such an attitude was certainly reasonable. After all, he seemed to be the only one around here really trying to make things work. The Spirit of the Ring just complained, Marik was fairly sarcastic about everything, Bakura… well, he didn't do much of anything, either on the show or off of it except wander around and generally look confused, and Yami… well, Yami usually seemed to mean well, but also frequently seemed confused by the turns that events took around him or else would just outright refuse. He was, perhaps, more proud than he had any right to be. Or, at the very least more proud than was helpful to himself or anyone else – having once been a Pharaoh, he probably was well within his rights to be proud. Still, sometimes it was such a pain…

"And how could anyone even think that I don't set a certain style of my own after a few of the flashback scenes to Ancient Egypt-" Yami was muttering distractedly, still playing with the earring.

Yugi sighed unhappily. "Listen, I'm sorry about that, but could you please just put the thing on? I mean, come on. I'd do it but I can't because seriously, no one would care about me wearing an outfit like that, I'd ask the Spirit of the Ring but he'd probably try to kill me – or send me to the Shadow Realm or whatever it is that he does – (and he'd probably need a different costume too, though… I dunno, maybe he could make it work) and Marik just won't do it. Plus, the colors are wrong from him. Now, if it was blue or purple or something instead of red then maybe he could, but-"

"-with silver!" Marik cut in.

"Yes! Fine! Anyway, if it was something other than red then maybe he could do it, but the fact still remains that you have more fangirls and we need a wider audience range."

Yami looked up. "Kaiba, couldn't he do it? He's got a lot of fans, hasn't he?"

Yugi gave the Spirit of the Puzzle a somewhat disbelieving look. "If you think that you could convince him, be my guest. There is a reason that the only shots we've managed to get of him are ones where he's tied up or when he's posing with his precious Blue-Eyes and even those weren't exactly a walk in the park, let me tell you. When we run out of chloroform and can't find someone to just jump him it takes WEEKS of begging and bribery and special considerations and Peanut M&Ms-"

"I didn't know he liked those."

"-and even then most of the time he won't agree."

Yami sighed, somewhat resigned. "Speaking of being tied up… must I?"

"Oh come on, it's just a chain. It's not even restrictive!"

"It's the principle of the matter," Yami muttered.

"It's your own fault; if you didn't dress like a bondage slave then people wouldn't expect it of you!"

Yami remained looking discontented for a moment before slowly smirking, then glancing over at Yugi. "Wait – wouldn't that make it your fault? Given, I mean, that I merely dress as you dress over here and-"

"Oh jeez!" Yugi yelled, his last few threads of patience breaking. Again. Honestly, it seemed that just as soon as he managed to start to pull everything together again something would come along again and- "Listen, I don't control the fan art! I don't control anything! I'm just trying to make this work as well as I can and a few people trying to help me would be nice every once in a while! Yami, I don't care! Put the stupid thing on, get the stupid picture done, and then you can go back to wearing your normal clothes!!"

Yugi had never exploded often, but this whole arrangement was beginning to change that. Honestly, it was enough to drive a tortoise into a frenzy.

"Yes, sir," Marik said from across the room, and Yugi glared at him too for a moment, before he sighed and gave it up, letting his small shoulders slump somewhat pathetically.

"Look, I'm sorry, but won't you please just put the stupid thing on and glare for a little while? You don't even have to smile – go ahead and look angry. They like that look for you just as well as – if not more than – you smiling. Don't ask me why, I do not know."

"If you ask me, I'd call it somewhat disturbing," the Spirit of the Ring said, still in a bad temper.

"Yes, well I didn't ask you. Yami, please?"

Now the thing about Yugi – be he dubbed in English or Japanese or merely drawn in the manga – was that he was very difficult to resist when he really wanted something. Much as Yami could pull off 'regal' and 'bad-boy' and many other things Yugi would never be able to, the only character on the show that could compete with Yugi for 'cute' was Kuriboh.

And no one said no to Kuriboh.

"Come on, please?"

Yami wavered and finally fell. "Oh all right. I suppose as long as they don't expect me to look pleased about the situation-"

"Certainly not!" Yugi said cheerfully, bouncing back to his old self again. "Just no sulking please!"

Yami muttered a few phrases in Ancient Egyptian to himself as he grabbed the outfit which had been laid out on the table for him and then stalked off, while behind him Yugi grinned.

OoOoO

Abridged series FTW, btw. Wanna see more?