The is an entire chapter of various characters deciding how they will improve their decks. That's really it. It has some neat things in it, like the first details of what John has planned, but otherwise it is not really my best. Despite this, I think it ends up being necessary for later.
Chapter TwoArrangements Made
I called everyone the next day, asking them to meet me at my house at noon. Jen was the last to arrive, Kris in tow. When Jen saw that everyone else had already made it, she got right down to business, “So what’s this all about, Boss?”
I smiled, “I hope you guys are all free tomorrow, because I used some of my Grand Championship winnings to rent out the opening day of the new Kaibaland Columbus for our tournament!”
They were speechless.
“Tomorrow,” I continued, “we’re going to compete against each other in front of a full stadium, with the action broadcast to the entire nation!”
“R-really?” Tucker stammered. “That’s awesome!”
“This is unbelievable,” said Monty. “How’d you pull it off?”
“All I did was offer to give Kaiba back a portion of the two hundred thousand that he gave me, and another chance to see the guy who beat Yugi duel. He actually seemed to care more about the latter.”
“So everyone in the nation will be able to watch us duel?” Karen asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “isn’t it great! Now you can finally prove what a great duelist you really are.”
“But that’s the thing, John,” she said furiously, “I’m not a great Duelist!”
I frowned, “Come on, Karen. You’re a great Duelist.” I stepped closer to her, “You’ve been playing using someone else’s style for a while now because you’re afraid to change the deck that you’re old mentor gave you. But I know that if you’d just take the time to find your own style, you’d find your confidence again.”
I wasn’t the first time we’d had these conversation, but it was the first time that we’d had it in front of the others. They watched, silently, worried that they were about to witness an argument. Thankfully, things didn't go that way.
Karen sighed, looking away as if deep in thought. Then finally she said, “Okay, but you and I aren’t speaking.”
“He’s right for once though,” said Lawrence to Karen. “You’ve only made, like, two changes to that deck since Pegasus gave it to you.”
She punched him.
“So,” my mom said as she stepped into the room, “does this mean that I’m going to duel on national television too? I don’t know if I’m good enough.”
“You’re better than me,” I replied. She only shrugged.
“I need to upgrade my deck,” said Tucker, starting up the stairs, “I’m gonna raid your extras.”
“How are we getting there?” Monty asked, as usual eager to learn all the facts.
“Bus,” I said. “I got us a charter bus. It’s picking us up tonight at ten at the end of the street. We’re staying at the Kaibaland Resort.”
“How much of your prize do you have left?” Sarah asked, frowning. “I thought you wanted to live off of that until you could get your career started.”
“I have enough,” I answered. “Two hundred thousand is a lot of money, and it’s built a little interest since the tournament.”
“I’ve gotta go pack,” said Jen excitedly, heading for the door, her sister reluctantly in tow. Everyone else stayed for a while. We discussed the details of the tournament. Everyone was excited, especially me. If I won a televised tournament against a group of high level players like my friends so soon after winning the Grand Championship, it would really help to get my career rolling. Dueling is really the only thing I’m good at, and it had been awhile since I’d wanted to be anything but a Pro Duelist. But becoming a Pro wouldn’t be easy. I’d done some reading. Duelists with more experience than me with decks just as strong had been turned down plenty of times before. But even if the odds were against me, the fact didn’t change that I was more determined than I’d ever been. I would make this dream of mine come true, no matter what.
Everyone was gone within an hour or so. My friends were all taking this tournament very seriously, even Rocky. But then again, he’d been taking dueling a lot more seriously since he’d heard about the Duelists Elite. He was either trying to improve quickly, or he was trying to catch their eye. Either way, I was proud of him. He’d always been very laid back to the point that he almost seemed reluctant. It was good to see that he’d finally found some direction. I also got the feeling that he was looking forward to finally testing his strength against some of his team mates. As team mates we’d never really felt right about dueling each other at full strength, but this was the last highlight of the Duel Force. It was now or never. I can’t describe how much I was looking forward to seeing how far my friends, and Lawrence, had come first hand.
As the last of my friends disappeared through the front door and I headed up to my room to pack, I couldn’t help but glace down at the deck box clipped to my belt. I could feel the power of my spirit monster, ‘The Fiend Megacyber’, as well as the manifestation of my Duelist’s Soul, the ‘Great Maju Garzett’. Since the formation of the Duel Force this deck had been at my side in one form or another. I’d fought many powerful opponents with this deck, but I considered my friends to be stronger than any of them. This tournament would be my greatest test yet.
Tucker
After grabbing some of John’s spare cards (something that I do a lot) and heading home, I sat in my tiny little room for hours flipping through my deck again and again. I searched though the piles of garbage and dirty clothes for every spare card I had, laid them out, and examined them carefully, but despite my efforts, I couldn’t find much that I wanted to change. I removed the Asmodians, the Fire Demons that I’d used during the Grand Championship, in favor of some more Pyro-type monsters and support, but otherwise, my deck remained the same. My theme hadn’t changed, but the execution of it had. My friends wouldn’t see it coming.
Karen
I stepped into my room, or rather Kimi’s family’s guest room, sat down on the floor beside the bed, and took my deck apart, laying every card out in front of me. John and Lawrence were right. I needed to change some things around. So I removed the relinquished cards, which had never been my favorites, as well as several others that I realized I didn’t really like, replacing them with some of my favorite cards. I kept the Toons, but at this point at least half of the cards in the deck were ones that I’d picked myself. The Toons were no longer my heaviest hitters. I’d built a new, unique deck with a new, unique strategy.
I’ve already decided, I thought, that I want to design cards, but it’s important to me that I get to fight John again. I want to show him how strong I am. I’ve wanted to duel him again for a while, but I’ve chickened out every time I had the chance, worrying that if I get too aggressive that I'll turn back into the person I was before I escaped Yami's control. But John still sees me as that Duelist, and it’s getting in the way of whatever there is between us. I have to make him see me for who I really am, once and for all!
Sarah
“I don’t even know why I agreed to compete,” said Jenna. She and I were hanging out in my room. I was going over my cards and she was using my Wii Fit to work out a bit. We’d been friends for a while now. In fact I was probably closer to her than I’d ever been to any of my friends, and it was all thanks to the Duel Force.
“Why not?” I asked her, looking up from my unfinished deck.
“Well, for one, you guys won’t even let me join the Duel Force,” she said resentfully, moving her arms in a sweeping arch and stepping up onto the game pad on the floor, “but I guess it doesn’t matter now that the band’s breaking up.”
“No way,” I said, removing the CD that I’d had playing and replacing it with one I’d burned myself, “this team is a good thing. I won’t let it die, even if I have to carry on myself.”
“Yeah,” said Jenna, her eyes lighting up, “yeah! If John does go through with this and he really does break up the team, we’ll take over and keep it going. You can take John’s place, and we’ll rebuild the team with strong duelists that we find ourselves!”
My face lit up as well, “Yeah, let’s do it. We’ll create a new Duel Force and we’ll keep fighting to get stronger until everyone knows who we are!”
Rocky
My deck is a rare type. It’s equally offensive and defensive, a balance that’s not easy to achieve, believe me. Because of that, my deck was due for a serious overhaul. Good defensive cards are hard to find. Most Duelists avoid them in favor of more aggressive tactics, and the game itself reflected that, so single cards that worked in my deck were always hard to come by. I had to find something, however, so as I walked to my house from John’s, I stopped at Wilson’s Cards, one of my favorite places in the world. The owner, Mr. Wilson, was an old friend. I did the majority of my card shopping at his store and I helped out there with stocking and stuff whenever I could, and in exchange he gave me good deals and good advice.
I was browsing some of his older stuff when I came across an old gift box that looked like it’s been put together by Mr. Wilson himself a long time ago. It read “Stone Guardian Gift Box”. Glued to the front was an image of a massive-looking stone creature with huge fists. I felt a strange connection to this creature as soon as I saw it.
I took the box up to the counter. “Hey Rocky,” said Wilson, straightening his inch-thick glasses before wiping down the counter with a damp rag, “what can I do for one of my best customers?”
“How much for this box,” I asked, placing the gift box on the counter.
“Wow,” said Wilson, genuinely surprised, “I’d completely forgotten about that. You can have it, no charge.”
“Really,” I asked, “you sure?”
“Oh yeah,” he replied, “all it does is collect dust, and besides, you’ve helped me out plenty of times. Take it, get out of here, and don’t look back.” He smiled and shooed me out the door. I smiled as I stepped outside.
It wasn’t far to my house. Once I arrived I went straight to my room and opened the box. There were twenty, maybe twenty five cards in it, mostly rock monsters with some pretty scattered effects and Spells and Traps that went pretty well with them. They were decent, but only a few were great. Then I got to the last card, the cover monster, and I saw how all of the cards fit together. I looked at that card, and I knew that my deck would finally be complete. I looked at that card, and I knew that I’d finally found the face of my Soul.
Lawrence
I was lying on my cot in Tucker’s basement. Ever since we’d been freed from the Order, Monty and I had been living out of Tucker’s place. We’d set up a pretty decent little apartment in his basement. Things weren’t bad, or at least not as bad as I was always saying they were. We were left alone. In fact, I don’t think Tucker’s drunk of a dad even knew we staying there. Monty and I had been working and saving up, and we planned on heading off in the fall on a sort of victory tour around the world. After that, we didn't know.
But for the time being I laid there staring at the ceiling. I thought about what John had said to Karen, and what my response had been. She, Monty and I had each learned to duel from one of the game’s living legends. Karen was probably in the process of personalizing her deck at that very moment, and Monty had long since made his deck his own, but I still relied completely on the promotional cards that Seto Kaiba had given me all those years ago. Even though I’d put together a strategy all my own years ago, I’d never had the guts to put it into my deck and use it. I always acted tough, but in reality, things got to me, and what I’d said to Karen was really getting to me, because as soon as I'd said it, I'd realized that I'd been talking to myself just as much. It was time for me to finally use that strategy, the strategy that relied on my own cards, and my own instincts as a Duelist.
Jen
I chose Insect cards for my deck because Insects are the only cards in the game that not only work together, but evolve during game play to suit the situation. Every strategist needs to be able to evolve their plans on the fly, and that’s what Insects allowed me to do at a level that no other cards could achieve. But even as my understanding of the game grew, so did the selection of available cards. Even as my strategies evolved, my deck would evolve. Just recently I’d added a few surprises that gave my deck considerably more potential. It would be almost impossible for me to lose.
I didn't know what I wanted to do after the Duel Force, but being a Duelist had given me a chance to become a strategist, and I liked it. I knew that it was the same for my sister. She often spaces out, just going with the flow, and zoning out during conversations, but in a duel, she was laser focused, and as smart as me. It's part of the reason why I considering Duel Monsters to be so important. Whatever I did next, I planned to continue to explore that strategist aspect of myself. I hoped that this tournament would help me find my direction.
John
I sat in my room and watched TV until eight. All the while I knew that my friends were getting ready for the challenges that they were about to face. I knew that Kimi would be sitting with my mom downstairs, sifting through her deck, and that Max would be testing his deck repeatedly against whoever had the guts to challenge him, looking for weaknesses to correct. I knew that they’d all be ready, and that they wouldn’t let themselves down. For only the second time in these long years we would be dueling for ourselves in a large event. We would be dueling to prove to the world and to each other how strong we really were.
People started to show up at my house at nine o'clock that evening. They didn’t want to risk being late. I looked at my friends’ excited faces, and I felt proud. I could feel with all of my heart and soul that tomorrow I would see the full extent of their strength. I would see the maximum extent of the Duel Force’s power.
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