A/N: It's a sleepover. With boys. A man sleepover. I don't even know if guys do this kind of stuff, but in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh, I suppose anything is possible.

Aftermath
on indoor camping and sleepovers

"Okay," Judai said, "what's first? Horror stories?"

"No, thanks," Yusei shot down.

"Karaoke?"

"I'm not sure anyone here wants to hear anybody else's singing voice, Judai."

"I suppose we could always play a round of Duel Monsters…"

"To be honest, after ten years of saving the world with card games, I'm ready for a bit of a break."

"Yu-sei," Judai sighed, "you're ruining the fun."

"I don't understand," Atem said. "Isn't the point of a sleepover just to sleep over somewhere else? What are all these activities for?" He aimed this last question at Yugi, who couldn't answer through his laughter.

"I don't know of a single sleepover in which the only thing people did was just sleep," Judai said, frowning as he considered their options. "I don't even know if we have pillows. Just games."

"Why don't we set up the tent?" Yugi suggested finally. "We're not technically leaving the house so it might help us get in the mood."

"Tent?" Judai looked around for it. "What, you want to set it up inside here?"

"Sure, why not? It's not like we can do this outside." Yugi motioned toward the large window in the living room, which they could hardly see through due to the rain pounding at the apartment outside it. "Judai, don't you still have the tent from that camping trip you took with Johan last month?"

"Uh, I think so. Let me go check the closet for it." He rose and left to do so as Yusei flopped over onto his back on the sofa, releasing a breath of air.

The storm had picked up around seven in the evening, following a few hours of drizzling and a canceled dinner reservation due to the thunder warning. The power fizzled out at eight-thirty and Atem hunted around for a light source that didn't rely on a socket, finally managing to dig out some old fragrant candles Pegasus had sent them as a housewarming gift. Placing them strategically around the room so as to ensure their jostling was kept to a minimum but still ensuring their light spread to all areas of the large living room had been surprisingly difficult: Judai had nearly tipped over two on the television and a curtain almost caught fire.

Yusei had called up to ask when the electricity could be estimated to be back on, and the man on the other line had said they could count on it to start working by ten. That had been two hours ago.

"Found it," Judai said, announcing his return. He walked in slowly, dragging a large mass of cloth, silver rods, and tangled string behind him. "Want to move the coffee table and put this in the middle of the room?"

"How big is it?"

"It'll fit between the couches. C'mon, let's get started."

Atem eyed the cloth, wary. "How does all of that turn into a sleeping area large enough for the four of us?"

"We have to raise it first," Judai said. "Last time we went camping, Johan set it up for the both of us by himself because I was out trying to catch fish." He wrestled around in the fabric and pulled out a small booklet. It was torn in a few places but still looked relatively intact. "Ah, here it is. So I don't know how to do it myself, but these are the instructions. I'm sure we can figure it out."

Atem still looked suspicious but Yugi led him forward. "What's the first thing on the list?"

"Um." Judai dropped the tent and fiddled with the booklet for a moment, trying to find the beginning. Half of a ripped sheet floated toward the ground out of the tangled mass. He flipped a few pages, squinting at the words in the dim light. "Setting up the tarp, I think."

"What's the tarp for?" Yusei asked.

"I think it's to keep the tent clean and to keep out water and dirt and stuff."

"We don't really need a tarp, though," Yugi said. "Not inside."

"That's good, because I think we've lost it," Judai said. "Okay, now we roll out the tent and it says 'locate the door' so we know which way to enter it."

"How to we roll out a lump of plastic?" Yusei said, inspecting the clump.

"In this case I guess it's 'spread it out and hope nothing's ripped,'" Yugi said. He reached down and took a corner of the tent, then started backing up to spread it out.

The fabric rustled against itself as Yugi's corner was dragged to the couches. Yusei reached down and grabbed the side to Yugi's left, laying it out parallel to the sofa he stood in front of. Judai took the corner on Yugi's right, leaving Atem with the last end.

"Rods now, I think," Judai said, inspecting the manual. "Those are in the bag."

"Bag?"

"Or, they would be in the bag if I hadn't lost it in the river while I was fishing. Now I guess they're kind of scattered everywhere."

Yusei reached down and looked for the thin stick-like poles he had noticed earlier. "These?" he asked, pulling out two foot-long rods from underneath the tent.

"Yeah, and we have to stick them together. We need four long poles to hold up the tent, and I think four of these short rods go into each long pole, so there should be sixteen total."

The next few minutes were spent hunting the living room for rods that Judai had either dumped or dropped when depositing the tent. With the only light coming from the flickering candles and the occasional crack of lightening outside the window, Yusei was sure this portion of the tent-preparing process was taking longer than necessary. From the sound of Atem grumbling on his left, he was not alone in his thoughts.

"Why must such a simple contraption have so many – hooks and folds and sti – OW!"

"Atem! OhmyGod, are you okay?"

Yusei looked over to see Atem furiously scrubbing at his eye and realized he had accidentally poked himself with one of the poles. Yugi moved around one of the couches to tend to him while the pharaoh muttered something very low and very unintelligible that sounded like Ancient Egyptian, muttered in the universal tone that indicated when someone was having a good, long swear.

"Atem, are you okay?" Judai said. "Need some ice?" Atem, through he grumbled, shook his head 'no,' so Judai cleared his throat and moved on. "Okay, well, I have five rods over here. How many do you guys have?"

Yusei had found three, so he held his up for inspection. Yugi found four and Atem had also managed to wrangle three others from the mess before his mishap.

"That leaves us one short," Judai said, frowning. "Weird, because we definitely had it last month. Oh, well. Let's put them together, anyway."

Yugi, satisfied that Atem was going to live now that he had stopped rubbing his eye, moved back to his corner and asked, "Are you sure we won't need that last one?"

"We'll be fine." Judai stuck his tongue out, trying to wrestle his sticks together into one long rod. "See, they're supposed to snap together like… that!" With a loud click, two rods fixed to each other and he held it up for them to see. So put four of them together – one will have three – and then we can put them in the tent to hold it up."

Judai handed Atem one of his extra poles and started snapping his together. After putting his own together, Yusei was left holding a pole at least a foot shorter than all of the others'.

"Guess you drew the short straw," Yugi said, grinning, and Atem laughed at the irony. Yusei rolled his eyes.

"I think we stick them in the tent now." Judai had abandoned the manual on the fireplace mantle behind him and looked prepared to finish the rest of the tent without it, which Yusei wasn't sure he was prepared for. "So just – find someplace good to put it, then."

It took five minutes for Yugi to notice that there were tiny flaps sewn into the sides of the tent to insert the rods in. They ran up the side and reached the top, where the rods fastened together in a plastic holder. With lots of grunting and accidental pokes, the four of them finally managed to slip the poles in the tent on all four sides and insert the bottoms of the poles into tiny hooks at the end of each corner.

"Well," Yugi said when the blasted thing was finally starting to stand up by itself, "it's not looking too bad."

Judai busied himself by tying a knot at the top to three of the poles. Yusei's stood shorter than the others, leaving a large gap at the top between it and the plastic holder. His side was bent over a bit, looking rather like part of the tent had caved in.

"What's the next step?"

"I dunno," Judai said, shrugging. "Johan spent a lot of time hammering stakes into the ground to make sure the thing stayed upright, but I don't really want to bother with that. And I think Atem might make me sleep outside if I put holes in his carpet, so I think we'll skip that."

Yusei glanced at his watch and realized that they had just spent an hour putting together a tent in the middle of their living room that now blocked most of the other entrances and exits to other hallways and doors leading to other areas of the apartment. For no purpose whatsoever other than to satisfy their boredom.

"What if it falls over?"

Atem rolled his eyes. "It won't fall over. Shall we get in now?"

"Wait," Judai said suddenly, "which way's the door? Does anybody see it?"

"It's over here," Atem said. He was pressed between the tent and a bookshelf. "So I guess we have to be careful the bookcase doesn't knock over us in the night."

"Let's pick it up and move it," Yugi suggested. With some fiddling and maneuvering he managed to turn his side to the left, which pushed the entrance to the tent more towards the fireplace near Judai.

"Yeah, but now the opening's crammed up against the wall," Yusei said. "Can we move it any further?"

Atem shrugged. "Not unless you want to step into the fireplace to get inside."

Judai stood on his toes to see over the tent to the side opposite him. "Is there any more room over there, Yusei?"

"The backs of my knees are against the couch, so no, I don't think so."

"Oh, well. In we go." He started climbing over to Atem's side and then zipped open the tent – the zipper got stuck halfway, of course – and crawled in. A long whistle followed. "Oh, it's kind of nice in here."

Yusei gave a long-suffering sigh and awkwardly pressed himself against the wall to craw in after him, followed by the other two as they each made room inside the tent. It was a bit nice, and much larger than it had looked from the outside, though crawling was a bit uncomfortable because of all the dirt and twigs that, he suspected, were leftover from its last usage. The plastic cracked and shifted as he moved his way on hands and knees to an empty corner, squinting in the terrible light.

Atem spread his legs out and leaned back against the wall while Yugi curled up in a corner next to the entrance. Judai ended up in the drooping corner with the three-rod pole hanging above him, but he didn't seem to mind. He lay himself down and stretched out, elbow on the ground with a hand supporting his head.

Yusei sat with his legs folded underneath him. He was sitting on something rather uncomfortable that was underneath the plastic. It was probably a remote or gaming console that one of they had forgot to remove before spreading out the tent. To distract himself, he eyed the dim lights from outside the tent. "What if a candle somehow gets knocked over while we're in here?"

"Should we put them out, do you think?" Yugi asked.

"Just in case. I'll go get some flashlights for us instead."

"I couldn't find any batteries for them," Atem said as Yusei started to crawl out. "The flashlights are in the cupboard over the dryer but they're out of power."

"It's okay, I'll go get some extra batteries down in the garage. I can make my way in the dark."

It took thirty seconds to make his way to the elevator, but another forty to feel with his fingers what he thought was the right button to take him down to the garage. The lights over the top of the doors that normally indicated the floor level were out as well, so he stood in silence for a few minutes, listening to the elevator rustle and creak down to the bottom floor.

Yusei stepped out of the lift and was surprised that he could see: glancing around, he made the happy discovery that he had accidentally left his battery-powered desk lamp turned on over at his workbench. It wasn't much, but it was enough light to search by.

He wasn't sure what type of batteries the flashlights took, but he quickly found two packs of extra double As and one of triple, which he figured would be enough. He started to turn back to the elevator when he was done, raising a hand to turn off the desk light.

The garage door creaked.

Yusei sighed. Either he hadn't closed it correctly last time he was down here (unlikely) or the rain was getting into the hinges. Either way, he figured, he should check to make sure it would hold until the morning and wouldn't leak.

He headed over toward the large metal door and tested the chains, making sure they were secure and holding tightly. The spring looked fine and middle guard rail seemed to be in good shape as well.

There was movement outside the windows.

Yusei raised himself up on the balls of his feet, peering to see through the tiny glass panes at the top of the garage door. But it was pitch black outside, and after a moment of looking, he told himself the scurrying figures running past the window outside had been in his imagination.

When he stepped out of the elevator back upstairs, a quiet giggling was coming from the tent.

"Okay, no, shh, he's coming back – "

"I don't think it'll work, he'll see through it right away – "

Yusei took extra care to make sure his footsteps were quiet and unnoticeable as he moved through the apartment to the washing machine and dryer. He slowly opened the cupboard and pulled out two flashlights, inserting new batteries in the dark with nimble fingers. Leaving one on the discarded coffee table in the hallway, he crept back into the living room and blew out one of the candles.

Utter silence from inside the tent. Then – "Did one of the candles just blow out?"

Yusei snuffed out another.

"That was definitely a second one."

There were three more candles in the living room that he took out with quick breaths before sneaking over to the entrance of the tent. Somebody was moving inside it, zipping open the entrance and saying, "Okay, something weird's going on, I'm going to go see – "

Yusei made a face, then clicked the flashlight on and shone it down into the tent just as Judai had fully opened it and was climbing out.

Loud screeches from the boy's mouth made the other two occupants of the tent jump and ask what was wrong while Yusei had a good, long laugh. "I'm sorry," he said a bit breathlessly as Judai rubbed his forehead, embarrassed, and Atem chuckled. "I'm had to – "

There was a sudden thump from outside the building.

Atem frowned. "You guys heard that, right?"

"Yeah," Yusei said, peering at the giant window, but there was nothing to see except rain and wind. He climbed back into the tent slowly and sat next to a corner to the left of the entrance. "Maybe it was just a tree branch falling…"

A crack of lightening flashed outside – for a brief second, it illuminated two silhouettes standing just outside the window, and then they were gone, swallowed up by the darkness again. Inside, the four boys froze.

"…Oh, my God."

"Don't make any sudden movements."

"I'm not!"

"Do you think they can hear us?"

"What kind of crazies would be standing out there in this downpour – ?"

A sudden rap on the glass, sharp and loud. Muffled voices and scuffled sounds.

"What if they're, like, here to kill us?" Judai whispered loudly. "What if they're pretending to be homeless so we let them in but they're actually mad axe men? Or those kind of terrible fans that want to eat locks of your hair and stuff you in their closet shrines?"

"Wait," Yusei said suddenly. "How are they even standing outside our window? It's not like we're on the first floor – we're like hundreds of feet above the ground."

"There's an emergency fire ladder outside that leads to each balcony on every floor," Atem said quietly. "Not many people know about it. They either have to be people that live here or they're around here enough to know about the building's design."

Yugi climbed to the entrance of the tent and poked his head outside, slowly. For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of the rain against the window, but then –

"Wait, hold on," Yugi's voice said suddenly, a bit breathless. A slight pause. "Oh, my God."

"Huh?"

Yugi's body disappeared as he pushed himself out of the tent, taking the flashlight with him, and ran to the door that led out onto the balcony. Left behind in the pitch-black tent, Yusei and the others remained silent, waiting. After a moment fiddling with locks, there was the sound of a glass door sliding open and two people hurriedly shuffling inside. The flashlight's beam was wobbling everywhere.

"Shit, man!" It was definitely Katsuya Jounouchi's voice, as best he could tell. Or at least, it sure sounded like the blonde-haired guy that he'd seen videotapes of from old Battle City footage. "Thanks, Yug, but it sure took you long enough."

"What on earth – " Yugi started to say.

"We got caught in the rain!" another loud voice said – the sound of stomping feed accompanied it, as if their owner were making violent attempts at shaking off the water, and at this yell Yusei frowned. I know that voice. He reached over and peeled down a corner of the entrance flap. From this angle it was hard to tell, but Yugi's flashlight flicked upward for half a second long enough illuminate spiked hair and a short stature, and – yup, sure enough – Crow.

Crow Hogan and Katsuya Jounouchi climbed up their fire escape ladder at one in the morning and were now shivering in the middle of their living room and dripping on Atem's carpet.

"We were minding our business eating over at La Brea – it was free breadstick night! And suddenly the power goes out and they let us stay there to wait it out, right, but it just kept raining and when the restaurant had to close they kicked us out!"

"Yeah," Jounouchi piped up, "so we were gonna walk home but since it's like a freaking hurricane out there we decided to take a taxi. But we'd spent all our cash on the dinner and only had enough to get us to the bank down at the end of this boulevard. The guy kicked us out and then we decided, hey, this is where Yugi and the guys live, so we should go see if they're in."

"We went to the front of the building to ring the buzzer but since the power went out, I don't think it was working," Crow said. "And then we called Yusei's cell because you and Atem still need to get ones and Judai never answers his, but he didn't pick up, either."

"So," Yugi said patiently, "you decided to climb up the side of our building in pitch-black darkness against the wind and rain relying on rusty, slippery metal that's probably decades old to reach our window balcony that we may or may not have been able to see from where we were in the house? That's the most reasonable thing you could think of considering the situation?"

"We didn't exactly have many other options." A loud thump and a grunt – Jounouchi throwing himself down on the couch. A pause. "…Is this a camping tent in your living room, Yug?"

"Oh," Yugi said. "Um – "

"We were having a bit of fun while we waited out the storm," Judai said into the darkness from Yusei's left. "Please tell us you're not here to kill us."

"Kill you – ?" Jounouchi spluttered, then seemed to recognize the voice. "Judai, is that you? You're in that thing?"

Atem, closest to the door, poked his head out and stepped out as best he could, pressed against the wall. "Hello, Jounouchi."

"Atem? Wait, how many guys you got in there?"

"Wait," Yusei said suddenly, remembering something. "Were you two the ones running around outside the garage ten minutes ago?"

"Yusei, is that you?" Crow exclaimed. "Dude, get out here!"

"That might be a bit problematic. I can't see worth a damn and I don't want to step on Atem's fingers."

"I'm all the way over here, Yusei, you couldn't possibly reach. You can climb out if you like."

"To answer your question," Jounouchi said, "yeah, I think we were. We just tried the front entrance and then came around to the back for the fire escape."

"God," Yusei said, and nearly laughed with relief. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"What'd you think we were?"

"I don't know, burglars? Or some sort of new shadow creature, I guess."

"Don't even joke about that," Atem's voice said. There was shuffling over from his side of the corner, then the sound of the zipper as he apparently stood up and out of the tent. "All right, I don't see the point of this now that there are six of us. We couldn't possibly all fit in there together."

"Hell no, man, let's try it!" Jounouchi's voice came closer from outside and the sounds of Atem protesting were cut off by him clapping his hands together. "We fit nine people in Anzu's car last week; I'm sure we can manage six inside this thing. Well, we had to put Mokuba in the trunk, but we made it."

Yusei scooted back as two new bodies shoved their way into the drooping tent. Yugi squeezed in shortly after. Greetings and arrangements were made within seconds.

"Who's this?"

"Judai?"

"Jounouchi?"

"Yeah – "

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for a spot – "

"Here, just on my right – "

"Not here," Yusei said hurriedly, "I'm here – "

"Ouch!"

"Everyone be quiet!" Atem's commanding voice rang out and everyone immediately grew quiet. "Aibou, do you still have that flashlight?"

"Yeah, want me to turn it back on?"

"Please. And if you could place it in the center facing the ceiling, I think everyone would be able to see things a bit clearer."

A few shuffles later and the light flicked on, shivering and shining upwards to the top of the ceiling of the tent. Yusei could now see Yugi had taken his original position next to the entrance with Atem next to him; on Yusei's left was Jounouchi, squeezed next to Judai, who was barely able to be seen under the drooping tent flap, with Crow between him and the pharaoh on the other side.

"So," Judai said after a moment, "we should prank call Yuma."

"Or Kaiba," Jounouchi added.

"Or Jack," Crow said.

"Does anybody even have a working phone?" Yugi asked.

"My cell phone is around here somewhere," Yusei said. "I don't know why I didn't notice it ringing when you guys called before."

"Let me try it again," Crow said, pulling out his own. He pressed a few buttons and they waited, patiently, for the ring –

A faint buzzing sounded from underneath the tent.

Yusei sighed.

"Well," Jounouchi said, grinning, "that answers that. So who do we call first?"

Words: 4099

A/N: I think there should be a self-help show in which Judai teaches viewers how to do various things like set up a tent, cook ramen, and rearrange furniture. Appearances by his helpers Yusei, Yugi, and Atem will be frequent.

This is extra long because I want to thank you guys for reading, and especially sticking through my Potter craze. (I'm better now that I've been accepted into Pottermore.) So thanks!

Next time on… this: The guys open up fan mail. And some of it isn't theirs.