365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Video Calls

12/20/19

Somehow, someway, they'd ended up in a three-way video call between the four of them, Aki, and the twins after a few group chat messages were sent to let the others know their presents had gotten to them safe and sound. Granted, it was a little hard to fit four of them in front of Yusei's laptop, so it was Yusei and Jack currently in front of the camera while Judai and Crow pitched in from a distance away, eating the rest of their breakfast while trying to keep a hungry Pharaoh away.

The cat had eaten breakfast and even gotten treats already too that morning, so he was just being his usual gluttonous self at the moment.

"Is that a tree?" Aki asked, tilting her head slightly at the camera as if it would let her move it to a better angle, "It looks nice."

"Yeah, that's a tree," Jack replied, arms crossed as he leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes, "Didn't even realize we were getting one until it was already here and set-up. Judai and Yusei just went out one day and got it without saying a word to us."

"...It may have slipped our minds," Yusei admitted, causing Aki and the twins to chuckle.

"Well, at least you got a tree! We've got one too, decorating it was fun," Lua said, reaching over to the camera and picking it up for a moment so he could point it towards the other part of their living room where the tree was - it didn't have quite as many lights on it as theirs, but it had a lot more ornaments and such along with candy canes since they could actually use them without fear of a cat eating them.

"I like taking the candy canes sometimes," Luka smiled sheepishly, leaning on the pillow that was in her lap, "Mom always replaces them, hoping we'll somehow eat through our whole stock. They kinda bought too many..."

"Kinda? More like they bought ten times as much as we needed," Lua corrected. Everyone laughed at that, trying to imagine why in the world someone would ever need that many candy canes when they weren't planning a large group even of some sort.

Suddenly Judai thought up an idea though, so to double-check he asked, "So how much would you say you have left?"

"Uh... I'd say about eighty? Maybe a hundred?" Luka replied after a minute, frowning in thought as she tried to figure out a number, "It's a lot, I know. Lua wasn't kidding when he said ten times as much as we needed."

"You could always send them to Martha's," Judai suggested once he heard the number, "I'm sure all the kids there would be happy to get some holiday candy... we need to go pay a holiday visit anyway, so you could always just come with us tomorrow or the day after."

"Oh hey, that's a great idea. The kids'll love that!" Crow grinned, giving a thumbs up above his head so it was in view of the camera, "Come with us, it'll be fun! You're out of school now anyway for winter break, right?"

"Yup! Let me go ask mom!"

"H-hey, Lua wait for me!"

"They're certainly energetic," Aki chuckled, smiling at the screen before letting out a small sigh, "It kinda sucks that I can't come back for my winter break since I need to keep studying regardless, but tell Martha I say 'hi', okay?"

"We will," Yusei nodded, "Anyway, how've you been doing?"

"As well as I can be when I have to study over winter break," Aki joked, not sounding too upset about it in actuality, "Other than that though, I've been meaning to ask - one of my duel spirits told me they got a message from Junk Synchron saying to go visit Starlight Junktion? The message came with a weird device and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything... dangerous, I don't know."

"Ooh, okay, I can explain that!" Judai chirped, jumping up from his chair and startling Pharaoh on accident before poking his head between Yusei and Jack, "It's super simple - the thing has two buttons; one'll open a portal to Starlight Junktion and the other will bring you back to your Rose Garden. Basically, our duel spirits loved playing in the snow so much that they made the place a winter wonderland somehow and then also figured out how to make their own portals to each other solely so they could play."

"The square's now a central hub between all of our group's realms, essentially," Yusei summed up, "You should go visit when you get the time, though if you do tell us - we'll go as well and we can all hang out. We'll even drag Jack and Crow with us too."

"Ha? I didn't agree to this," Jack grumbled, though Judai could see his lips twitching into a barely visible smile, "Not like we can do anything once you do, though, since we don't have your fancy-ass magic."

"It's not magic, Jack."

There was a pause before everyone realized that the twins had not only gotten back, but blankly replied along with the rest of them as a group to Jack's statement, the lingering echo of it fading a bit slower thanks to the volume of several people speaking at once.

Even Jack couldn't help but laugh at it once it really set in that they'd all replied the same exact thing at once.