Yet another story with my biker boys has come forth (and this is actually set during DOOM). I had to fulfill a request given to me by Alister's Girlfriend. She asked for this recently, and after much debate I finally hit upon an idea and off I went. Plus, it was the Fourth of July. I had to do something...

All right, disclaimers for all the newbies: Non-yaoi, and I is owning nothing of Yu-Gi-Oh! except plot, my biker boys, and Seto Kaiba...what, I'm allowed to dream, aren't I?

All flames will be fed to the Killer Rabbit and you may receive a visit from said creature.

Go ahead and read now.

"Valon, are you sure you rigged these correctly?" asked Alister pensively, eyeing the haphazard selection of precariously rigged fireworks uneasily.

The brunette nodded. "O' course I am, mate. Don' you 'ave any faith in me at all?"

"…Do you really want an answer to that?"

Valon scoffed, his cerulean eyes lit up mischievously. "Aw c'mon, loosen up a bit, will ya? 'S'not like I'm gonna blow up the whole bloody temple. If you don' wanna watch, then go stick your nose in a book or summat."

The two DOOM soldiers were standing inside one of the seldom used halls, slightly smaller than the Great Hall they congregated in and barely larger than the Soul Room. Their location was chosen based on its proximity to the roof and its wide, sprawling balcony; the roof was too sloped to venture out on, and therefore they were forced to launch their fireworks from a window.

Of course, Alister was re-thinking that strategy after he saw what Valon had done.

The redhead had no idea how on earth Valon had managed to procure so many fireworks at once, seeing how as they rarely ventured from the temple unless on a soul-collecting expedition. Alister had a lingering suspicion that the Australian had gotten a hold of the explosives on their last mission, back in May; Valon had disappeared briefly and then reappeared with a suspicious looking bundle.

"Does Raphael know you have these?" he asked tiredly, not really expecting an answer.

He certain that the tough-looking man did not; the blonde had taken it upon himself to keep a close eye on the teenager in general, mainly because Valon was the one who always managed to land in some kind of trouble.

And after staring at this rig, Alister felt justified in saying he knew why.

Valon had apparently decided to rig all of the explosives (all seventy of them, if he had to wager a guess) to one main fuse. Said main fuse went to all of them, and Alister was not too terribly pleased to discover the brunette had used what looked to be a haphazardly built, enlarged version of a drying rack to accommodate them all; a good wind would knock the contraption over and the fireworks would end up everywhere in the room. What made matters worse was the fact all of the fireworks were professional grade— Alister wondered where on earth Valon had gotten the money to pay for them all.

"Valon, do you honestly think that this is safe? Why not launch these outside?" asked Alister, his gray eyes narrowed slightly.

"'Cause the last time I tried, Dartz spazzed out. 'e was convinced I would blow the temple sky 'igh and made me get rid o' 'em all."

"Really? When was this?" wondered Alister, his curiosity piqued. It was an interesting image to think about—Dartz rarely 'spazzed' about anything.

"Couple o' Christmas' ago, I reckon. Anyway, there isn' 'nough room t' launch all o' 'em out there; I'd 'avta set 'em off one by one, and tha's no fun a' all."

"Gee, I wonder why. Hmm, let me think on this for a minute… oh yeah. Because it's safer," retorted Alister sardonically.

Valon stuck his tongue out and lightly cuffed Alister's shoulder. "If you don' like it, don' watch."

"Interestingly enough, I want to see how this turns out. And besides, knowing what you're doing with objects that, when they go off, sound like bombs reassures me greater than being startled out of a sound sleep and thinking I'm in a warzone."

Valon grinned and pulled out the lighter he had lifted from the kitchen earlier. He lit the fuse and sat back on his haunches, watching the little tongue of flame rapidly travel to their final destinations. "Well, mate, 'ere we go!" he cried, eyes lighting up in delight.

Fate, sometimes, can be a funny thing. She can be watching events unfold and decide to let them occur without any interference, or she can choose to let things go drastically wrong and events can descend into mass chaos.

It turns out that Fate was bored today.

At the moment that the fuse was halfway down to its destination, Raphael happened to open the door to the hall. He had been searching for the pair of them under Dartz's request; they were needed for a briefing of their latest assignment. Three seconds after Raphael opened the door, the wind current generated by opening the door went through the spacious room and hit the fuse, accelerating it faster than it was intended to go. With roughly five seconds to go before the fuse lit the fireworks, a strong breeze from an oncoming storm front hit Valon's crudely-made launchpad and it fell over.

Guess what direction the wind was coming from?

Raphael, Alister and Valon all swore afterward that the contraption fell in slow motion on purpose, and as it came to rest facing them Valon had enough time to look at his associates and say in a weak voice, "Oops."

Then all Hell broke loose.

With a loud shriek that was intensified by their numbers, the fireworks went off, some of them flying upward to collide with the ceiling and explode in dazzling and varying colors, while a few actually made it out the window.

Unfortunately, most of them ended up flying at the three bikers, and they soon found themselves doing a very unique way of playing dodgeball.

"Valon, what on earth were you thinking?" yelled Raphael, barely managing to sidestep a sparkler before ducking his head to prevent a large rocket from colliding with it.

"I told you that this wasn't safe!" snapped Alister, forced to leap in the air to avoid a low-flying firecracker that was hissing and spitting madly as it flew past him.

The brunette was not paying too much attention—his jacket had just caught fire and he was in the middle of stop-drop-roll to put it out.

It felt like ages before the last firework exploded in a burst of color and smoke, and the aftermath was then assessed with a semblance of suppressed calm.

Not only had Valon's jacket caught fire, but his hands were burned badly when he had grabbed a rocket from midair that had been on course to collide with Raphael's face and his hair was even more unruly than normal. The left side of Alister's hair had caught on fire at one point, hence the smell of sizzled hair, and his clothes looked in fairly bad shape. Raphael had sustained several small burns and his coat had also caught fire, as had one of his eyebrows. All three of them were streaked in soot and they smelled strongly of burnt hair and gunpowder.

There was a very long pause while they took in the other's appearance before Valon sheepishly shrugged and said in a weakly enthusiastic voice, "Happy Fourth o' July, fellas."

The three of them stared at each other for one last moment, and then the older two bikers rose to their feet, picked up Valon by the arms, and silently marched him out of the room. They walked down the stairs, straight past Mai—who looked utterly alarmed (no doubt because of the fireworks)—and Dartz, who looked rather alarming in his fury. But the two bikers kept on walking, ignoring everything until they arrived at the front gate, where they promptly dropped Valon on the ground.

"Aw, c'mon fellas—!"

"You are sleeping out here tonight."

"Raph, you can't be serious!"

"Does it look like we're joking? We aren't letting you back in until we are confident you won't do stupid things like this again."

"Alister, I'll be out 'ere forever—"

"Good night, Valon."

"But—!"

SLAM!

Valon found himself staring at the now shut gate to the Orichalcos temple and it took him a moment before he realized that his two partners had locked him out off his home. He stared at the door for one more long moment before he sighed heavily and looked up to the heavens.

"Maybe I should wait awhile before I set off the rest o' the fireworks…"