The Others: The Lucky Ones

Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. All names were changed to the characters of this fandom in order to protect the real people involved in the following incidents.

Warning: Spoilers to The Others series

"Luck never gives; it only lends."
- Swedish proverb

In the years following the War, Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood would be surprised to hear themselves referred to as 'the lucky ones' by their peers. They understand that they aren't the most unlucky of their little group of friends: they aren't Bakura. That guy's life is so freaking messed up that they both unanimously agree that they would never be able to survive if they were in his shoes.

They know that they weren't tortured like Marik or Strings. They aren't orphans like Mako or Mana. They were always able to feed themselves, unlike Mai. They could have an actual relationship with someone, unlike Leon. But they still don't think that they are the lucky ones. Rex and Weevil are convinced that when it comes to Others, there aren't any lucky ones.

When they asked why they were considered lucky, their friends said that it was because they, at least, had each other. They found that a little odd. Marik had his siblings to help him through all that he went through. Strings was whisked away at the first sign of trouble. Bakura had his sister, as weird as she was, and at least she gave a damn about him. Mai had her birth mother. Mako had his neighbours. Leon had his father and Mana had Social Services watching out for her. They had people, too.

So the two of them think that they are considered lucky because they were somehow able to find each other. Out of all the people in the world, Rex and Weevil just happened to have lockers next to each other. Bakura would say that it had to do with something called 'Fate' but that's probably just bullshit. Bakura's been warped by all the stuff he's been through, so they're used to him speaking nonsense.

No, it wasn't something like that at all. It wasn't luck, and it wasn't happenstance either. But whatever it was, it brought the two of them together.

Rex is used to being the guy no one hangs out around. He doesn't have friends; he doesn't even talk to people. He hides the bruises that his father gives him under long, baggy shirts and even longer jackets. The only thing that he wears just-because is his hat. He has a job working at the Lost and Found at the local subway station and took a liking to the hat there. No one had come to claim it anyways, so it wasn't like it was going to be missed.

It was kind of like him, in an oddly metaphorical way. He doubted anyone would ever care about him either if he ended up lost. No one would come to find him.

Rex likes looking at old stuff. He once found a set of records from the 1930s in the back of the store room at the station. He could never get them to play (he didn't have the necessary equipment), but he did like staring at them, at the dust and the scratches and wondering what their story was.

At night, he dreams of events long since past - but they were impossible things. There was no such thing as magic, so why would he be dreaming of Canadian soldiers creating fog on D-Day so that the Allied army could launch their surprise attack?

Rex doesn't get it at all, but then again, nothing really makes sense with his life anyways.

One time, just before his family moved to Seattle, his high school history class went to a museum for a field trip. All the other kids asked their parents for money when they could easily pay on their own, but Rex didn't eat for a day so that he could afford it. He loves museums because he secretly hopes that one day, once he's long dead, his skeleton will be dug up by a team of archeologists and put on display. It's a morbid wish, but he thinks that might be the only way that people would pay attention to him.

He is forced to quit his job when they move. Rex hopes that the Lost and Found in Seattle's subway system is just as interesting. He hopes that his father won't come home piss drunk as much as he used to and beat the crap out of him in the name of stress relief.

He wonders which one is more likely. He thinks it's the former.

Weevil looked like the nerd-type kids that you see in movies all the time. He was short and skinny with knobby knees and elbows. He had sported a bowl cut nearly all his life and had thick rimmed glasses with tape in the middle. His shirts were buttoned up all the way to his chin and tucked into his too-short pants, showing off his granny-white socks.

His role as the school geek was made even more stereotypical by the fact that he was doing the entire basketball team's homework. And letting them cheat off of his tests. And anything else they wanted from him. It was better than getting the snot kicked out of him, he reasoned.

Much better than getting the snot kicked out him. But oddly enough, Weevil always seemed to heal faster than most people. He attributes his enhanced immune system to the fact that he's been clubbed over the head too many times that his body has just gotten used to it all.

It all seems to get worse once puberty decides to rear it's ugly face and hit him upside the head with a mallet, making it very obvious that girls have breasts and that he really likes that fact. He likes to stare, particularly at this one girl who's in her final year of high school. She's Chinese, very pretty, and has long black hair that goes down all the way to her butt. When she laughs, Weevil gets butterflies in his stomach and can't seem to concentrate properly.

He wants to ask her out, but can't summon up the courage to do so. Of course, it might also be do to the fact that he has yet to learn her name. Or the fact that she's three years older than him. Or maybe it's just because he's the basketball team's dog and she had to be an angel. Angels don't date dogs.

Weevil later finds out that he never would have stood a chance either way. Her name is Vivian Wong and she's already taken. By a girl.

He inwardly curses his bad luck, but then realizes that everyone else already knew. If he had asked her out, he would have been made the laughing stock of the entire student body.

Still, it sucks. Why did the hot ones have to be playing for the other team, anyways?

But, as he discovers later, Weevil's problem with Vivian doesn't end just then and there. It comes back to haunt him a few weeks later when someone breaks into his locker and finds his notebook, in which he had scribbled 'Weevil + Angel from math class' inside. The basketball team and Vivian (who knew that the girl was well versed in Shaolin Tiger Style Kung Fu?) corner him behind the bike racks and beat the tar out him. Weevil remembers them dragging him into the gym later, laughing the entire way and hanging him from the basketball net by his underwear.

He also remembers waking up on his front lawn later that night, not knowing how he got there.

Shortly afterwards, his parents start talking about moving to Seattle to get a better job there. Weevil's grateful for the change; he doesn't want to see anyone from his high school ever again. Of course, he wasn't expecting much. It was probably just going to be more of the same.

Rex and Weevil didn't meet each other as much as they stumbled into each other. Both were still unpacking their belongings, which wasn't really that much, and getting used to their new homes when they first came in contact with each other. It was accidental. Really.

Weevil was grabbing something out of his locker - he doesn't remember what, but to this day, playfully blames Rex's actions for that fact - when pain explodes on one side of his head. When the ringing his his ears disappears, he hears copious amounts of swearing, which is quickly followed up by a "Sorry, dude."

Weevil's jaw dropped, turning to face the guy who would later become his best friend and saying, "What did you just say?"

"Jeez, I said I was sorry. Pretentious prick," the guy mutters. "Should have expected there would be assholes here, too."

As he walks away, heaving his bag onto his back, Weevil can't help but stare at him because that was the first time anyone had ever apologized to him in his entire life.

They're in the same science class, as Rex later discovers. The teacher assigns some sort of group project, and he sighs heavily. He does what he always does in these situations: wait until everyone else has a partner and then be forced to do the entire thing on his own. He likes it better that way. At least he won't have to talk to anyone.

And then the words "Do you want to be my partner?" come from somewhere beside him and Rex nearly dies on the spot. He turns and sees the kid that he crashed his locker door into earlier that morning.

"What did you just say?" The words are the exact same that the kid used before, but he doesn't care. No one - no one - had ever cared enough to want to be his partner on a school project.

"Do you want to be my partner?" The kid repeats again, "I'll do all the work, I just don't want to have to work with them."

The kid nods to the laughing jocks who are sitting at the back of the class on a bunch of tables. Rex scoffs, "I can see what you mean. They look like a bunch of dicks."

"Tell me about it," the kid snickers and then realizes what he just did. They look at each other as if they are surprised that the other even exists.

Slowly, Rex holds out his hand, "I'm Rex. Rex Raptor."

"Weevil Underwood," the kid says as he takes it.

"You don't have to do all the work, Weevil. I'll pitch in."

"Okay."

Neither of them stops grinning until there are fast asleep that night.

They have everything in common, right down to their taste in music. It's electronic or nothing at all. They both hate English class with a passion and think that Phys. Ed is stupid. They like science and history and maybe even a bit of math, but it depends on the teacher for the last subject.

Green is cool. Purple isn't. Junk food rocks and vegetables suck. It's apples over oranges, ice cream over cookies, and day over night with them. The only thing they don't agree on is whether or not Paris Hilton is hot. Rex thinks she is. Weevil is weirded out by his fixation with her.

They both have had a crush on a girl that was so out of their league it wasn't even funny. They were both attacked by their classmates because of it. As Weevil recounts his story with the basketball team, Rex gets very quiet. The backs of his knuckles turn white and Weevil thinks the guy wants to run to run up to the team from his old school and do something rash. Something that would probably get him killed. He doesn't want Rex to die, so he stops talking.

Rex isn't used to talking; he's more of a doer. Weevil can talk up a storm sometimes, but doesn't have the physical strength to pull stuff off. He's the brains, while Rex is the brawn. And they decide that they've had enough of all the bullcrap that they've had to put with over the years.

They start a prank war, stealing spray paint from the art department. They splash colour onto the lockers of the people that bother them, that pick on them, or just generally piss them off. They trash change rooms and rip apart backpacks, hanging clothes and books from their insides all around the school. They laugh at their cleverness as their tormentors are forced to run through the hallways half naked to find their missing shirts and pants.

There were times when they cut it pretty close. On those days, the jocks and the other cool kids are three steps ahead of them and Rex and Weevil find themselves in a load of trouble. They hunt the two of them down after school and it's all fists and fury from there on out. But there was this one time when Rex just screamed and punched the biggest, toughest guy on the football team and sent him to the hospital with internal bleeding. They didn't know what to make of that. Rex isn't muscular or strong in anyway, so how was he able to manage that at all?

Weevil whispers to him in solitude about the day when he woke up on his front lawn and not knowing how he got there. Rex in turn tells him about how, sometimes, he hears the grumble of something under his bed before he goes to sleep at night. When he checks, he sees yellow eyes and teeth, but they never attack. They seem to smile gently and then disappear.

But the concrete proof that something is happening to them occurs during one of those too-close-for-comfort moments when they are running away from what seems like every single guy at their school who is over six foot and built like the Terminator. They trap the pair of them in an alleyway and Weevil is sure this time that they are here to kill them and -

It starts off as a low buzzing, but increases in sound until it is all he can hear. He remembers a distinct smell: the scent that old library book give off when you flick through the pages quickly. And then a swarm of insects fly over his and Rex's heads, heading towards the Doomsday army. As they swat at the irritating bugs, lizards start to crawl out of nowhere and bite at their feet and ankles.

Rex grabs Weevil by the wrist and they run to a near by park. They're so tired that they might black out, but somehow they seem to running faster than some of the cars they pass by. Weevil thinks of mothballs as his legs move, but doesn't try to think much about how they seem to be doing the impossible today.

Rex has his face hidden in his hands as they catch their breath on a park bench. Weevil tries to calm the shaking in his hands. They don't speak to each other, but know what is running through the other's mind.

"There is something seriously different about the two of us."

They get the answer to their un-asked question about three months later when, in early October, a strange man knocks on Rex's front door. Weevil is over visiting at the time, which is something they can only do when his parent's are out doing something. Rex doesn't want to risk his father finding out about his best friend and using him as a punching bag, like he does him.

The man's name is Solomon Moto, he introduces himself. For a moment, Rex thinks that he's a sales man or a Jehovah's Witness and nearly closes the door in his face, but Moto asks politely if he can come inside and talk. His mouth does dry when he realizes that the man said "Please" to him. No one ever says "Please" to him. No one except for Weevil.

Weevil comes around the corner at that point and Moto's eyebrows shoot into his hairline.

"Weevil Underwood?" A smile works it's way onto the man's face, "Well, this just makes my job easier."

Moto explains that he is a teacher at a school named Atlantis School for the Gifted. He says that he wants to offer them each a spot in the first year classroom. Weevil rolls his eyes and calls the guy on his scam, "We're kids, yeah, but we're not dumbasses, old man."

But Moto just chuckles, all in good hearted fun, "I don't think that either of you are dumb, Weevil. Ignorant, maybe, of the gifts that you have been given, but not dumb."

And then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of creatures. One looks like a massive Praying Mantis; it had some kind of armor on it's shoulders. The other is a purple, two headed lizard. Rex's jaw drops with an audible crack. Weevil falls out of his chair.

"I found these little guys outside your house," Moto explains. "They're too young to speak our language just yet, but I assume that they were watching over you two, to make sure that you remained safe. Summon creatures are very protective of their Summoners."

The lizard turns one of it's heads towards Rex and smiles. His heart leaps in his chest as he stares at those yellow eyes.

"You," he mutters, not even thinking about how weird it is that he is talking to a - what had Moto called it - creature of some sort. "You were under my bed."

The creature nods, grinning proudly at him. Rex reaches forward and touches it. It lets out a content rumble that almost sounds like it's purring.

The Mantis launches itself at Weevil, but the boy isn't scared of it at all. When it sits on his head, Weevil starts to laugh.

"What - what is this?" Neither can remember who said those words, but it is was Moto's answer that will stay with them forever.

"Boys, you are Others."

They promise each other that this will be their final prank, but they both don't know who they're trying to kid. It's a lovely Sunday morning and Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood are standing in front of the house where the Student Council President lives. She'd been a bit of a bitch to them in the past few weeks, so they decided when Noah (who they both thought was proof that they might actually be living in the Matrix) told them that the PORT could make electrical systems flicker when activated, that they would simply have to test it out on something.

It's a bit of a lame joke to go out on, but still, it's something.

They fiddle with their new phones that they received on Thursday, along with a bunch of other KaibaCorp swag of awesomeness, marveling at the holographic technology. When they finally press the PORT option, there is a dreaded second when nothing happens and they think that this is all just a joke and then - everything's gone black.

And their adventure begins.

Rex and Weevil don't believe in luck. All the things that happened to them before, during, and after the War were all caused by things that are, once you took the time to accept that magic is real, completely explainable. It isn't good luck that helped them survive, nor is it bad luck that made others die. No one is lucky or unlucky - there are reasons for everything.

But they wonder, hugging their jackets to their bodies as a cool wind sweeps through the graveyard on the more frigid then normal summer's day, why it all had to happen. They understand the reasons behind the War, but why - why - did it have to happen like this?

It's the fifth anniversary of the end of the War. Most of the country is celebrating, not understanding just what happened on this day five years ago. There was some slapped together explanation done by the CIA version 2.0 that was broadcast worldwide shortly after the President came back into power and most people believe what was said. But they don't know. No one, except for the Others and Normals that fought for their freedom, know what happened.

As Weevil sits down in front of the gravestone of one of his fallen friends, Rex sounders over to where Bakura is kneeling, passing by Duke and Serenity Devlin who were holding each other tightly and watching their daughter dance amongst the leaves. He remembers the wedding; it had been nice to get the invite.

"Can you see him?" He asks Bakura as he gets closer.

The Necromancer's hair falls in front of his face as he shakes his head, "Leon was an Other. We will disappear after death into the Realm. So no, I can't see him."

Rex takes this as another one of Bakura's mumblings and ignores it, "It's hard to imagine that it's been five years."

"He would have been nineteen," Bakura reaches out and touches the grave of the boy he couldn't save - the boy he'd come to think of as a little brother in the year and a chunk that he'd known him. "I almost died at nineteen."

"We all almost died at nineteen," he remarks. "Or twenty. Or a thousand, considering how old your girlfriend is. Where is The Immortal, anyways?"

"Talking with Kaiba and Kisara," Bakura chuckled. "Turns out that he finally popped the question."

Rex would have made a remark, but a car speeds by as the driver yells something inaudible over the music blasting from his speakers. The guy was probably drunk, coming back from a freedom party or something. Rex stands up and watches the car drive away.

"None of them know," he mumbles. "None of them know why they're celebrating. None of them know just what we did."

"I think they should," Marik said, coming up from behind the two of them, Mana in tow. "Somehow, they have to know."

"I want to write a book," Bakura says suddenly. "About it. About the War. About everything, in fact."

There is a pregnant silence and then Mai offers, "I'll edit."

There's no such thing as luck, but maybe - just maybe - there is something called hope.

Because as he stood there, Rex happened to look over to where Weevil was sitting. The other man was looking back at him and they knew, without having to read each others mind, what the other was thinking.

"If there was luck, the next generation would be the real lucky ones."

"Nothing happens by chance, my friend...No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long."
- Richard Bach

Hello! I would have posted this sooner, but my internet has been very weird lately. I don't know exactly what was wrong with it, but it is alright now.

So, I woke up about a week ago and started to write this story that is about, of all people, good old Rex and Weevil. They don't get enough attention as it is, so maybe that was one of my reasons. To be quite honest, I'm not really sure.

As for the 'epilogue' section at the very end...hmmm, what can be said about it? Duke and Serenity do get married very young in life. About two years after the end of the War (basically when Bakura was finishing up his last year at Atlantis at the age of 21), Duke gets her pregnant and they have a bit of a shotgun wedding. They had a daughter together and, though no one except them knows it yet, another child on the way in that scene.

Yes, Leon von Schroeder is going to play a part in the up and coming parts. I won't admit anything other than he and Bakura get pretty tight. Kaiba and Kisara are getting married. Atem is ecstatic about it to the point when she heard, she did a little happy dance.

As for Bakura wanting to write a book about the War, well, you must have noticed by now the underlined text that occasionally crops up in the story. That's him at the age of 24 writing his memoirs. Also, I don't know how many of you are reading the disclaimers, but you might finds something interesting in there.

On a completely different note, Harry Potter 7 Part 2 is out and it was amazing! Though I cheered at the fact that they kept in Molly's "Not my daughter, you bitch!" line, her fight with Bellatrix was a bit short. Also, Alan Rickman is an amazing actor and deserves a round of applause for being an awesome Snape.

If there are any other questions you have, you know how to get in contact with me. I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatient