[RM] Hard Work

[northwind_gale]

Title: Hard Work
Author/Artist: Northwind Gale, a.k.a. Artemis Ignitan
Rating: K
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: 5D's is not mine, loves. Otherwise I'd be writing storyboards, not fanfiction.
Summary: Martha always said that hard work was necessary to get anywhere. Jack can't help but feel that it's wrong. Written for ygo_5ds's Retroactive Momentum Challenge!

Hard Work

“You won’t be able to get anywhere without doing some old fashioned hard work. This is especially true in Satellite.”

Jack remembered those words. Martha took every opportunity she had to instill them into him, Yuusei, and Crow.

During reading lessons, when she’d set down old heavy tomes in front of them and make them work together to read it, and one or more of them would complain, earning them an ear tug and a tongue-lashing.

During daily chores, when one of them would whine about how hard it was to push the plunger up and down in the toilet bowl, or to scrub the floor behind the toilet so fungus wouldn’t grow, or to clean the cracked mirror so that one could see their (twisted) reflection in it clearly.

She’d even bring it up during bedtime stories, telling them fables about how some guy or another managed to marry a princess or slay some huge beast simply by working harder than the others and getting special rewards to achieve their goal as a result.

Things couldn’t be that simple, Jack thought. If it was, then tons of people in the Satellite wouldn’t even be there, they’d be out in the city, living a decent life. All their working, what did it get them? Nothing more than a clean, broken-down house in a dirty old trash heap that would get dirty again the very next day.

Hard work got them nowhere in the Satellite. Not when they did their chores or read their lessons. Not when they picked up cards and started dueling. Not when they met Kiryuu, and through his ideals, managed to “win” control of Satellite, only to lose it straight afterwards when they fell apart.

Only when he was approached by the clown-like man who told him all he needed was two specific cards in the palm of his hand did his life change for the better.

And change it did…with a single trap and a trick, Jack snatched away the results of Yuusei’s “hard work” for his own.

Now he was here, living the life of luxury, living the duelist’s dream at the top of the world, defending his “well-earned” title.

And yet, he was restless.

He never fought people that were worthy of dueling him. They were all weaklings, easily defeated, where it got to the point that he’d play with them for the sake of “entertainment.” All those who knew how to fight, who knew how to struggle for what they wanted…

…they were all back in Satellite. Working hard. As they always did.

Sometimes Jack wondered if one of those hard workers would manage to work their way through and defeat him.

Ironically, Jack found himself wanting that, some sort of justification. Which way was right? His way to the top or the fables that Martha always told him?

He wanted to know.

So when Yuusei came to challenge him…he felt that his answer would come to him in that duel.

And so, they faced off.