Chronicles of an Average Joe

[Kenny Bohner]

Well, hello. It's been a while. This is a fanfiction that I've been playing with for a while, a Yu-Gi-Oh! one, and it's set in modern day New York City. Enjoy!
[spoiler= Part One: A Day in the Life]
[spoiler= Chapter One:]
Wow. Talk about pressure. See, I'm in a duel, right? But, not just any duel... this is the one that counts, the grand stage, the big dance, the Mother of them All... the Professional Duelists' Championship... and, this isn't any ordinary Pete out there as an opponent, either... this is Ashton Stiller, who hails from Brooklyn, New York. The reigning champ was like a god to me; he was as big a hero to me as a sumo with a Thyroid condition, as cool as Elvis, Burt Reynolds, Adam Sandler, Superman, Darth Vader, Mike Piazza, or Ozzy Osbourne. And I was in the middle of a come-from-behind win! Plus, I had my ace card, my baby, Lord Shango, on the Field, who was more than capable of winning right here! "So, Ashton," I said, a slight mocking tone in my voice, "Anything to say during your last few moments as champion?" His response was... "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget!" He then strummed into an audible air-guitar riff.

I then realized what had happened; it was time to get up. My eyes fluttered open to "Hotel California," by the Eagles. [i]Friggin' alarm clock...[/i] I thought as I blindly groped my nightstand for the evil contraption. I ended up knocking it to the floor, unplugging it. [i]Well,[/i] I thought, [i]That's one way to do it, I s'pose...[/i] I looked around, on my back, at my room. It really was crap. There was the moldy ceiling, which smelled a bit dodgy, the yellow-ish, peeling wallpaper, the once-white gray carpet, and the unblinded, curtain-less, cracked, half-boarded window at the far side of the room, which was so smeared and dirty that you could barely make out the fact that this was a fifth-floor apartment. All that you could really see was the vague outline of [i]Citi Field[/i], the Mets' new stadium, directly across the street. The only furniture was a third-or-fourth-hand bed, purchased from a thrift store two years ago, with its plain white linens, a make-shift nightstand, which was a few milk crates stacked on top of each other, with a dollar store lamp on it, and where the alarm clock used to be. The only personal touch was a Mike Piazza poster that I've had since Kindergarten, which hung on the door (which I suspect to be the incarnation of Satan). Oh, I hated that friggin' door... it was partially off of its hinges, so, to open it, you really had to put your back into it, and when you did, it made this horrible, terrible sound... it was like the claws of my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Grantier's, fingernails scraping a blackboard from Hell. So, as gently as I could, I tried to open it, and, being Mr. Finesse, it made a sound about like the one I described, mixed in with a [i]Slayer[/i] song, as it crashed to the floor. It not only woke up my roommate and the guy across the hall, but, I'm willing to bet, Adolf Hitler. It was that bad.

My roommate and best friend, Joey Barone, woke with a start from the pull-out sofa. He looked like he'd been through Rosie O'Donnell's underwear drawer, he was so scared. "Dude, Kenny, what the hell just happened?!" He asked, mouth moving at roughly the speed of light.

"Relax, man, that door finally gave out."

"Good-freakin'-riddance, ya piece of crap." Yeah, it [i]was[/i] about time, but I wasn't looking forward to replacing it. "So, uh, Ken, any particular reason you're naked?" I looked down, and remembered that I was only wearing a pair of Coca-Cola boxer shorts. I rushed to the other side of our sprawling, three-room metropolis, to the sole closet. I opened the door, found random pants and my favorite t-shirt, and slipped on the former first. They turned out to be well-worn bluish jean. I then threw on my shirt, a white tee with a hippie smiley face on it. It was so cool. I walked into the living room, which looked a lot like my room, but with a pull-out sofa, and a TV with a whopping 25-inch screen and V.C.R., Joey was already wearing some gray t-shirt (formerly white), a pair of jeans so threadbare and worn that my boxers were a good bit thicker, and some ancient, faded-gray Nikes, one of which was missing a lace, and he was watching [i]Goodfellas[/i] (you know, the Ray Liotta movie?). "Ya 'bout ready?" I asked, leaning my elbows on the back of the sofa.

"S'pose... lemme get something to eat, though." I slipped on some socks and a pair of battered black Converse, put my TracPhone in my pocket, and grabbed my Mets cap... only to find a pair of Joey's boxers in it. Oh, I thought, He'll pay for this... I walked over the aforementioned third room, which was a kitchen-dinette. What a freakin' joke. It sported an electric range top, a three-legged table, which was filled to the brim with junk, two white, Wal-Mart-brand lawn chairs, with free stains, a dry faucet (we just used the bathroom's), and a whopping square yard of counter space, occupied by a mini-fridge with an old boombox on top of it. Joey was sifting through the pile of assorted crap on the table, and he found a box of Pop-Tarts. Satisfied, he started shoving the pastries into his mouth, one after another. I saw my vengeance, in the form of [i]The Blizzard of Ozz[/i], sitting next to the boombox. I set it up to Crazy Train, cranked the volume, and hit play. "ALL ABOARD! AHAHAHAHA!!!!" You shouldda seen it. Honestly. He jumped ten feet high, man. I wish you'd have been there. He proceeded to put me in a fake headlock, saying, "Gonna kill you one of these days..." although he was laughing, too. He handed me my Duel Disk, which was on the chair. He was wearing his already.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot; the reason I'm writing this is that my friend and mentor, Roscuro, recommended that I should. He said it really helped him, out. See, I’m in a Duel Monsters League, here in Queens/Brooklyn, with connections to the World Championships. Here’s hoping, eh?

I looked at my friend. "You know, Joe, your shirt's on backwards." He checked, and sure enough, it was. "How'd you know?"

"No mustard stain." Boy, were we a sight. There was me, standing at about 5'9", with my black-and-blue Mets cap, which struggled to conceal my dark, dude-get-a-haircut mop-top, the stubble of three days' accumulation, a navy-blue, zip-up hoodie, which was unzipped to reveal hippie smiley, my jeans, the black basketball shoes, and my dinosaur of a Duel Disk. Then, there was Joey, who was easily three inches taller, with unkempt, mid-length blonde hair, wild blue eyes, needed a shave equally as badly, had a time-grayed mustard-stained t-shirt, ultra thin jeans, and those flippin' Nikes. He opened the door. "Let's roll." [/spoiler]

[Spoiler= Chapter Two:]
So, we headed out the door. I locked the door behind me, when Joey said, "Toss me the key." I tried to turn around and toss it to him in one smooth, cool motion, but something went horribly wrong, and I fell, sending the key sailing into Joey's stomach. I pulled myself up as Joey bent down to retrieve the key, as we both prayed that no-one saw us. I called the elevator, pretending that none of that had happened. Joey hit the ground button, and the doors came shut. Oy, I hate elevator music. They were playing a Billy Joel song, slowed, with no vocals. It sounded like "Captain Jack."

After traversing the lobby, which was in the same state of repair as my apartment, we crossed from 126th Street over to Roosevelt Avenue, towards Citi Field, which was looming in the distance, watching over Flushing, and, judging by the graffiti, chop-shops, and drug dealers, wasn’t doing too good of a job. Ah, well. We love it, anyways. I mean, what can we expect from our Mets, you know?

The parking lot was buzzing with activity. There were tons of people parking, getting ready for the long day ahead. You see, today we were playing in a double-elimination style tournament, to decide which four Duelists will be admitted into the Professional Duel Monsters’ Circuit, the “Big Leagues”. I fantasized about it a lot… I mean, wouldn’t it be great? Traveling across the world, meeting all sorts of places, seeing all sorts of people…

I digress.

We walked into the stadium, which was very tall, and made of a beige-colored brick, with the Citi logo on the top, followed by white block letters that spell out “Field”, with windows up and down the structure. On the inside, there were a whole bunch of glass doors, with the turnstiles in front of them. I was greeted by a guy in a Nickelback tee-shirt, who wore tattered jeans and a trucker cap that bore the NRA logo. I was geared up for a political/musical debate that would cause us to miss the first half of the day, but Joey grabbed my hand and pulled me through, into the Jackie Robinson rotunda.

Man, it was beautiful! It made me forget about the state of the economy, and the fact that I was an unemployed New Yorker who was trying to rent an entire apartment and support two people whose only feasible outlook was playing a bleeding card game, you know? I mean, there were two grand concrete staircases on either side, with an escalator in the middle, guarded by three program stands, and flanked by two more escalators, all of which were adorned with park lights. We walked up the center escalator, which wasn’t running. I passed by a guy I sorta knew from school, Ray Andretti, who was a year ahead of me. Joey waved, and he nodded. We continued up, and reached the upper level, where there were two flat-screen TV’s, a corridor, and a zillion glass doors. We walked through the center one, into the Caesar’s Club.

The place was even bigger than I’d seen it on TV. I mean, a large part of it was that the tables and chairs had been cleared out and replaced with a regulation Duel Field, but… you know what I’m sayin’. Where we were was tiled with white, and there were the bathrooms right to our right, and in front of us was the beautifully crafted cylindrical pillar, which had a flat screen television mounted on it, and a couple chairs, which a bunch of people were lounging on, and watching SportsCenter, where they were making predictions on the upcoming PDC match, pitting reigning champion, Ashton, along with his protégé, Sebastion Ecuban, from London, against the champions of the Big Apple Tagforce Blowout, which took place in Manhattan a few weeks earlier… Joey and I wanted to join, but his girlfriend, Lisa, brainwashed him into going to the Hamptons with him for the weekend, and he didn’t even capitalize! That kinda made me mad, but, regardless.

The main area, which held the duel platform (which was about three feet tall, twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, outlined with card zones, and had six hologram projectors; two red ones [in the corner] on the red side, two blues ones [in the corner] on the blue side, and there were two command posts on either side with projectors on them… it was all very precise. On either command post, there were card zones, Deck zones, and Graveyard zones, and screens that read out Duelist stats) was carpeted in the same beige color of the outside, a bar on the right, which was incredibly long, and hopping with activity, and the left was lined with windows with field views.

We walked over to the bar, and took a seat between an Italian lady and a Latino janitor with a big, grey moustache and a cigar in his shirt pocket.

Joey saw the bartender and smiled. "Yo, Sam!" he shouted. Sam looked up from the dishes that he had been scrubbing at hearing his name, and he looked at Joey. His face immediately lit up.

"Joseph Lawrence Barone, is that you!?" He was wearing a stained, blue apron with the Mets’ logo (the baseball, not the N-Y), and graying hair, styled in a comb-over.

"Hey!" he said, “How ya doin’?

"I’m good, I’m good… how’s Tony?"

"Eh… when’re we gonna start this bad boy?" Tony was Joey’s estranged father, a higher-up in the "waste management" business. His brother, Frankie, works for him.

Obviously, Sam knew damn well that Joey was making a rather feeble attempt to change the subject, so he announced via a microphone on his shirt collar, "Alright, everybody! We’ll be starting the tournament events now, first match…" he drew a remote from his pocket, and the TVs started to flash, and two faces were generated; mine was the first one, and the second one was… oh, boy.

Paul Finch was a good guy, but a notoriously vicious Duelist, running an all-out attack Deck, using Final Attack Orders, and cards such as Goblin Attack Force. He’s really hit-and-miss, but he did beat Joey before, many a time. He was a big guy, a really, really big guy, who was around twenty years old, with a black beanie cap and long, silver hair, with mild acne.

I walked onto the blue command post, and began to shuffle my Deck. Paul stared right into my eyes, blinking as little as possible, trying to psyche me out. So, I plugged in my Deck, with the words, "After you." [/spoiler] [/spoiler]

[Kenny Bohner]

Oh, and I almost forgot: you're all more than welcome to submit characters to me, if you want to.

[spoiler=Character App.]

Name:
Appearance:
Background:
Personality:
Deck Type (if applicable):

[/spoiler]

Try and steer clear of the supernatural, though, if you would.