Anime-based Azureshipping (shaken, not stirred)
Written in aid of the FST of Doom (no, not the YGO arc -- that's DOMA anyway). Started out as a Seto/Anzu scene list of the Cliff’s Notes-type but since it’s really missing the “notes” it’s more like just Cliffs (you’ll see what I mean). The first few arcs: Duellist Kingdom, Dungeon Dice Monsters, The RPG and Battle City. This section stops just before the Noa arc begins (mostly because that's the one arc I'm not done snarking yet).
Much love and thanks to the wonderful, helpful members of setoanzulove and playthedamncard who wasted their perfectly good time took the time to reply to my post requesting scenes between Seto and Anzu (with optional atmosphere analysis), and especially to praiseofshadows for the mad-ass, entirely-too-funny-for-their-own-good episode summaries and the fanmix that inspired this all.
YU-GI-OH! according to SETO, ANZU and the SARCASTIC PERSONALITY that is actually the REALIST in both of them in DISGUISE
Meet SETO KAIBA:
He’s young, brilliant, rich and a complete asshole with a heart of gold when it comes to his brother and nothing and no one else. Any questions?
Meet ANZU MAZAKI:
She’s your average high school girl with dreams, a crush, good friends and a couple of enemies for spice; and, considering how ridiculous her life gets what with dead men and monsters she’s handling it all rather well, yeah.
THE DUELIST KINGDOM ARC
[a.k.a. In which I realize that you exist but don’t really care ‘cause I have more important things to think about than the idea that I might like you if I had time.]
They go to the same school. They couldn’t care less about each other. Life goes on.
Then the cards come and, voila! We have contact. He thinks she’s breathing too hard over his shoulder and she’s thinking that this guy is proving to be both seriously rich and seriously spoilt.
And then he puts the old man in the hospital and challenges little Yugi who is, at this point, pretty much the poster boy for wimpy-ness. She does her friendship thing in the face (or, more accurately, side profile) of Seto’s prick-ish-ness.
He gets his ass handed to him and she’s glad. Again, life moves on.
She winds up on an island in the middle of nowhere wondering why the hell Mai could find a shower stall in the “wilderness” and learning quickly that her world is more messed up than she thought because, believe it or not, the fate of the souls of some people she doesn’t really care about depend on the outcome of a card game. On the other side of town, he sits at home brooding over his defeat until his company’s stolen, his brother’s kidnapped and he flings himself out a window with a briefcase in his hand and he has an amazingly WTF moment while hanging onto the side of a cliff before playing out his James Bond fantasy regretting only that there isn’t a pretty girl in the series for him to bang yet. And all this is all mutually exclusive so it doesn’t really count, does it?
But then, just when she thinks she about to make it off this godforsaken hellhole of seriously whacked characters, he gets in the way. First it’s the ghost of his “evil” side (Feh, she thinks, he’s still evil) but because there’s hardly any of Seto actually inside that thing, it’s easily taken care of. Mokuba… not so much. He manages to get kidnapped.
Then, because Yugi has the Star-chips he’s being forced to get in order to play a game he’s sworn off and rescue his brother (who is now on the list of people Anzu doesn’t really care about --yet -- whose soul’s fate depends on a card game). He challenges Yugi (because Mokuba doesn’t need this shit and, to be honest, Seto could do without it too) again and she thinks that, at least, this time he’s got a decent reason.
And apparently, that reason means more to him than she thought because he’s standing on the edge of a tower ready to die for it. But Yugi can’t kill him and she can’t let Yugi kill him either and in the end, he doesn’t die but he was still going to do it and she lets him have it.
Your life isn’t something you can just throw away, you know. It means something! She startles him because no one ever told him something like that and meant it and suddenly, she exists.
Dub-wise, “I have everything I need.”
The next time they see each other, he’s barely got the time to notice that their group is in the room because he’s still got a brother to save. And both of them have two questions on their minds: “WTF Funny Bunny?” and “Kaiba-boy?”
He loses in the end because Yugi’s the freakin’ hero of this story (YGO!R is still years away from production) but apparently he really does love his brother. So Anzu tacks his name there next to Mokuba’s on her list of souls that really need to find better hobbies that cosplaying as Duel Monster cards.
DUNGEON DICE MONSTERS & OTHER FILLER THINGS ARC
[a.k.a. This is why God and Seto don’t have tea anymore.]
First, Otogi gets his rocks off by hacking Kaiba’s anti-Jounouchi campaign and apparently Dice-boi has a puppy-fetish that the blonde is willing to comply with which makes Anzu wonder why Kaiba isn’t here to see this.
Then Seto pretends to be Jesus while his little brother makes a really bad attempt at cross-dressing and Anzu doesn’t seem to be anywhere around to get the joke.
BATTLE CITY ARC
[a.k.a. In which the creators ship and don’t ship and can’t make up their minds so maybe this is where Kisara came from.]
School’s out but Seto hasn’t been in a while and Anzu’s getting cozy with Yami who’s getting stressed about being dead and not knowing why and somehow it all comes down to Anzu and Yami out on what is more or less a date. And it would probably not have been a bad date either. But then, you know, Anzu’s life isn’t nice like that and what really are the chances that the one guy she might just have been comparing her date to shows up smack dab in the middle of it looking slightly ridiculous but a lot sexy on every TV screen in her vicinity? Of course, it’s urban Japan so there are screens everywhere. And right when she thinks that that’s as much of him as she’ll see tonight, there’s the helicopter. To top it all off, he gives her this look like she can’t describe when he sees her and she thinks it he might be looking at Yami but then again, he might not be.
Somewhere underneath all the noise from the blades, she’s thinking that either he’ll lose his finger or he’s going to fall off that thing so he’d better be holding on tight to that door and he’s thinking it’s really a blessing he’s not afraid of heights. And somehow, he manages to eloquently issue his challenge and fly off into the distance leaving her and Yami both anticipating so much. Maybe for different reasons.
The tournament is a free-for-all and madmen run rampant but that’s pretty normal nowadays, isn’t it? But there must be some sort of order and Mokuba wants something to do so he gets to play Commissioner of Police for the city that Seto built. Marik is the man who kidnapped the boy who played police for the city that Seto built. And while he’s at it, the psycho grabs Mazaki so Yugi has a reason to tag along because you can’t have a story without the hero present. So Seto’s mightily pissed because, damn it Mokuba, again? But when they get there, she’s managed to get Mokuba out so no, there’s no again really, but now he owes her and that smarts because he hates to owe people and of all the people in their group to start with, why did it have to be her? And then he kinda remembers that it has always been her; she stopped Yugi on the tower and now his pants hems are muddy because he’s just sunk in a little deeper.
He trails (read: gives airlift to) the Dead Guy to the wharf and Mazaki’s there and she’s bloody possessed and he doesn’t like it because there’s got to be a lawsuit for letting people get possessed in the city you rented. The Madman who’s in her head makes the Mutt and Should-be-a-Mummy play a semi-shonen-ai bondage game which is heavily incestuously protested while Anzu straps herself to a chair and Seto vaguely wonders why no one stopped her from doing that in the first place somewhere behind wondering where the hell she shoved that rod. Madman gives the game rules and then pulls out (Seto really hates the way this all sounds like a bad porno and doesn’t want to think about why that makes him grit his teeth and why the thought of what could be done to person who’s been possessed for the past few hours makes him clench his fists) leaving her dazed and confused but she pushes her teenaged angst out of the way to look out for her friends. He looks around and realizes that somebody ought to be fucking looking out for her now.
Eventually the other two have stopped indulging their masochism and forget that they’ve basically forfeited her life but he remembers. He’s prepared, too, and he sacrifices one helicopter and the mint-condition edge of one of his BEWD cards for her sake and they don’t talk about it.
Everyone does as everyone should and makes it to the finals and, for just one night, despite all the plotting underneath, there is a single, brief moment of respite. Of rest. A moment too close to normalcy, perhaps, because what follows is anything but.
The duels begin and she has to ask herself WTF Kaiba was thinking bringing them thousands of feet in the air and then letting them outside. For a suicide/homicide, it had to be one of the most elaborate she’d ever heard of and one of the most effective ‘cause if they didn’t get blown off by the wind and the attack forces of the monsters, the thinness of the air was sure to do one of them in. But he’s proud of it because, homicidal or not, it’s theatrical and elaborate and he likes it.
Then his duel comes around and Isis is a beauty and it makes Anzu cringe to think about comparison and she’s not even thinking about who is making the comparison; anyone with eyes could see that every other female is lacking next the Egyptian. But Seto doesn’t really care because, woman or not, Isis is in the way of his title and he’s going to take her down. She tells him he’ll lose but he won’t. He will defy and deny. He will make his own destiny. It’s an impressive show.
To be Updated