After so much time with John and Karen, and with Sarah and her group, we break away to see what Monty and Lawrence have been up to for the last couple of years. Because, at this point, I've finally gotten tired of torturing these characters, they finally get their due. They have had their off-screen training montage and surpassed their previous limits. Lawrence even feels that he's reached the level of Seto Kaiba. Their magic has gotten stronger. They even get new forms of a sort. I also think this is the fest time that I mention Monty's interest in real life trick magic, a fact which was always supposed to be part of his character, but never came up. Yeah, I'm giving legitimate character growth to Monty and Lawrence. I'm a little surprised too.
And yes, there is a subtext to this chapter. You get cookies and cake if you pick up on it and figure out what it means. Well, that's not true. The cake is a lie.
Aaand my outdated meme quota for the day is officially met.
And yes, there is a subtext to this chapter. You get cookies and cake if you pick up on it and figure out what it means. Well, that's not true. The cake is a lie.
Aaand my outdated meme quota for the day is officially met.
Other Quests
Lawrence
I stood with Monty late one night, in the shadow of a tall building in Venice, Italy, in the city center. At this point in the story Monty would probably go into detail about the stuff we could see, about how charming or exotic the place was or something. He’s the kind of guy who cares about that kind of stuff. I only noticed the people, of which there were only a few. Not enough to be dangerous, not enough to be interesting. It was late at night, which I guess explained it. As I watched a passerby warily as he walked by and fell out of view, I hung up my cell phone and thrust it and my hands into the pockets of my lengthy brown coat.
“Anything?” Monty asked.
“No,” I told him simply, barely bothering to hide my disappointment.
The two of us stood in silence for a couple of minutes. We’d been touring the world for two years now, competing in Duel Monsters events. We’d both known for a while that we weren’t living up to our potential. As strong as we were, we could be stronger. So we’d been competing and growing stronger, and now we were on the verge of attaining a new level. Finally we felt that we were ready to take the next step, and revisit our old mentors, face them, and prove ourselves once and for all. Monty’s mentor would be easy to find. He still lived in his home town and worked most days in his family’s shop, which probably only stayed open these days because of his popularity. My mentor was another story.
As an international business leader, and a relatively secretive and solitary one at that, it was often unknown where exactly he was, or what he was doing. So I’d been calling his various corporate locations trying to locate him, with no luck.
My cell phone bill was going to be huge.
“He’ll turn up at a tournament eventually,” Monty reassured me. “If there is one thing that Seto Kaiba loves, it’s stroking his ego. We’ll keep touring, and we’ll run into him before long.”
It was nice of him. He was willing to put his life, his future, on hold to support me. I looked at him, wondering not for the first time why he stuck by my side. Why were we friends? I genuinely considered us such, and I genuinely cared about him, but it just didn’t make sense to me. Most of our interactions were more confrontational than friendly, and we had little in common aside from Duel Monsters. I watched him watching people in the square, the wind blowing his long, spiky brown hair as he straightened the black jacket that he wore over top of the purple silk vest that he almost always wore. He snapped his fingers and produced a fireball. Not a magical one, but the kind that any skilled illusionist can make. He smiled, “As cold as it is here, I kinda wish I had Tucker’s powers sometimes.”
I frowned, as Monty continued, “Come on, let’s get going. There’s another high profile tournament tomorrow night in San Marino that looks promising. It’s being publicized all over Europe. Maybe he’ll show to that.”
He started walking out into the square, but I held my ground, “No.”
Monty looked back at me questioningly, “No?”
“No,” I repeated, “you’re going to go fight Yugi. It’s time. There’s no reason for you to put your plans on hold for me.”
“Of course there is,” Monty argued, “we’re friends.”
“Which is why I won’t let you put your plans off for my sake.”
“Then you can come with me to see Yugi. We’ll have to pool our magic anyway to teleport so far.”
“We can pool our power from practically any distance now,” I reminded him, “there is no reason for us to be together, and besides, I don’t particularly want to meet Yugi.”
Monty nodded. He knew how I felt about Yugi. How most people feel about Yugi. Monty might have known Yugi for a few months in 1995, before he was Yugi, but to most Duelists, myself included, he was on a whole other level. I might have reached a point where I felt I could face Seto Kaiba, but even he wasn’t Yugi. I just couldn’t help but feel that, no matter how strong I got, Yugi would always be out of reach. Therefor there was no point of meeting him.
“No,” I said, “you’ll go see Yugi, and I’ll go looking in person. There was one location where I got no answer at all. I’ll start there.”
Monty nodded. He could argue more, and probably wanted to, but he knew that I didn’t change my mind once I’d made it up. Still, he looked like he had more to say regardless.
“Alright,” Monty said, “but first there’s one more thing I want to do. One thing that I feel needs to happen before we part ways, before either of us is ready for what’s next.”
He looked my right in the eyes, “Duel me in a serious duel. A magic duel.”
“No,” I answered quickly.
“Come on, Lawrence,” Monty argued, letting me know that he was serious about this, since Monty doesn’t like to argue. “You and I,” he insisted, “are the greatest of teams. The way our play styles complement each other, how well we know each other, we’re practically unstoppable, especially since we started traveling and improving ourselves. Our magics, your Soul of Power and my Soul of Knowledge, are two sides of the same coin. There’s still one way for us to help each other get stronger, and that’s to battle, to allow those two forces to crash into each other and see what happens.”
I was hesitant. I felt that he was right, but the last time that Monty and I had fought, we’d almost destroyed each other as pawns in a monster’s game. I was worried what might happen if we dueled again, and Monty knew it, which was why he’d waited so long to bring this idea up.
Monty must have seen my thoughts in my hesitation, because he smiled, “Come on, don’t tell me you’re afraid.”
“Never,” I scowled.
“Then duel me,” Monty insisted, “right now in the square.”
He gestured toward a well-lit portion of the public area. Reluctantly I nodded, and we made our way out into the square and faced each other.
“Let’s make this interesting,” Monty said, smirking in a showy way. He was as much a performer as he was a gamer. He stepped up onto a nearby bench, and then up even further onto the lip of a fountain. I followed suit, climbing onto a chest-high wall.
“This will be a Shadow Game,” he announced, his arms spread wide, “but a low stakes one. Our attacks will have real impacts, and the first Duelist to knock their opponent down with those impacts will be the winner. Each time we chain a power or effect during battle, the resulting impact will grow stronger!”
By now he was speaking loud enough for everyone in the square to hear, and despite the language barrier he’d started to draw an expectant crowd.
I smiled, “Alright. Let’s make this a good one then.”
We drew our opening hands. I didn’t need to look to know what I’d drawn. I could see in my friend’s eyes that he didn’t either. My Soul was glowing, as was Monty’s. They were resonating with each other, and I could feel my power growing. Monty’s smile was a broad as mine.
Maybe, I thought, this duel won’t be so bad after all.
“My turn,” I declared. “I summon ‘Kaibaman’ in Attack mode,” a visage of the legendary dragon Duelist in armor made to resemble his signature card appeared floating ahead of me, “and I tribute him to summon the ‘Blue-Eyes White Dragon’ from my hand.”
‘Kaibaman’ pulled a Duel Monsters card from his pocket and tossed it into the air above him. A pillar of light erupted from the card, engulfing ‘Kaibaman’, who instantaneously disappeared as the legendary white dragon appeared in his place with a roar, his wings spread wide (ATK: 3000). The crowd around us murmured, and I even heard one of them say, awestruck, “Guardare, la ‘Drago Bianco Occhi Blu’!” Not for the first time, I was proud to own such a famous card.
“I place three cards face-down,” I concluded, and Monty wasted no time retaliating.
“Draw,” he declared, “and I set a card, and summon ‘Skilled Dark Magician’. I play ‘Brothers by Rite’ to halve my monster’s Attack, and summon his counterpart, the ‘Skilled White Magician’ from my deck.”
A sorcerer in dark robes appeared alongside a sorcerer in white robes.
“My Spell resolved,” Monty explained, “and my ‘Skilled Dark Magician’ gains a Spell Counter.” As he spoke, one of three crystals on the dark sorcerer’s robes lit up. “Next, I play ‘Pot of Greed’ and ‘Spell Power Grasp’ to draw two cards, and activate my monsters’ remaining Spell Counters.”
Monty drew again, and suddenly both of his monsters had three glowing crystals affixed to their robes, power rolling off of them.
“This activates my monsters’ effects,” Monty explained, and in a flash of light, his monsters disappeared, replaced by a sorcerer clad in a purple robe and hood, carrying a green staff, and an ornately-armored warrior carrying a huge, bejeweled, single-edged sword, “and they become the ‘Dark Magician’ and the ‘Buster Blader’ (ATK: 2500/3100).
“’Buster Blader’ attacks,” Monty declared, and his monster lunged at mine, our Souls glowing brighter as our battle intensified. I was amused by Monty’s misplaced confidence in the power of his dragon hunter, the one card in his deck with could straight up overpower me. I smiled, “Reveal ‘An Appearance by the Great Dragon’. I remove a dragon in my hand from play to merge its essence with a dragon I control for the rest of the turn.”
I showed Monty my ‘Felgrand Dragon’, and I placed it over top of my ‘Blue-Eyes’. On the field, the legendary dragon was wreathed in a golden aura, ‘Felgrand’’s golden plates growing over ‘Blue-Eyes’’s arms and legs and head, and down his back. He roared, and his power skyrocketed (3000 -> 5800).
Monty looked surprised, but he reacted more quickly than I would have, “Then I cancel my attack by fusing my two monsters together with ‘Flash Fusion’.”
The sorcerer and the attacking warrior were pulled together just before the warrior could meet his end at the hands of my dragon. They merged into a ‘Dark Magician’ wearing an armored version of his robes and carrying a bladed staff, the ‘Dark Paladin’.
“Since my monster still can’t beat yours,” Monty explained, “I don’t attack, and since ‘Flash Fusion’ will remove my monster from the field at the end of the turn, I set two cards, and then use ‘De-Fusion’ to separate him into his base forms before than can happen.”
The armored sorcerer split once again, and Monty’s original monsters returned to the field.
“In that case,” I announced, “I play ‘Card of Demise’ to draw four cards, and then ‘Trade-In’, discarding my second ‘Blue-Eyes’ to draw two more. And I play ‘Silver’s Cry’ to summon it back from the Graveyard.”
“Increasing the Attack of my ‘Blader’,” Monty interjected (3100 -> 3600).
“It doesn’t matter,” I told Monty defiantly, “because I play ‘Polymerization’, fusing the two dragons on the field with one in my hand,” my two dragons merged into a two-headed ‘Blue-Eyes’, a third head sprouting from between its two heads a moment later, “into the ‘Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon’, and I reveal ‘Castle of Dragon Souls’, removing a ‘Blue-Eyes’ my Graveyard from play to increase the Attack of the ‘Ultimate Dragon’ beyond its already insane base level (4500 -> 5200)!”
Mine and Monty’s Souls, still resonating with each other, began to flash and flicker so brightly now that I almost had to look away, the sheer power passing between us shaking the ground beneath us, and the air around us. A castle tower rose up behind me in the distance, shrouded in mist.
“My ‘Dragon’,” I declared, “attacks the ‘Buster Blader’ with Ultimate Burst!”
My dragon’s three heads pooled their extreme power, energy building between them, about to overflow, until even the energy itself was frozen in place by a magic ring that appeared around my monster, holding him in place: Monty’s ‘Spellbinding Circle’.
“No you don’t,” I told him, revealing my final set card, ‘Double Cyclone’. Gusts of wind pierced the magic circle, shattering it, and tore through my castle’s tower, collapsing it, revealing the removed from play ‘Blue-Eyes White Dragon’ inside. My ‘Ultimate Dragon’ continued his attack, and the newly-appeared ‘Blue-Eyes’ swooped down to join him, unleashing his attack as well, at the ‘Dark Magician’.
“My new dragon joins the attack,” I told Monty, “and both of your monsters are destroyed.”
“I won’t go down so easily,” Monty countered. His Soul stopped flashing, and began to outright shine with a bright white light. After a moment, my Soul did the same. I could practically feel the pressure building as the Shadow Game culminated toward a conclusion. There was a pulse of light from each of our Souls, and the glowing of our Souls died down. The pulses crossed, and then passed over our Duel Disks. Monty’s became a book-shaped deck loader, its pages extending from it, magic circles glowing on their surface. My card loader grew larger and wrapped my arm in itself, rather than just a strap, and the field section grew several times larger, becoming an angular, solid thing that with no moving parts. I could still hold it up without effort. A holster appeared on my back. All around us, the crowd cheered.
Monty smiled, “Reveal ‘Magic Cylinder’, reflecting your ‘Ultimate Dragon’’s attack back at you.”
A large trick cylinder appeared and swallowed up the three-headed dragon’s attack, and sent it flying back at me. It hit, just as my ‘Blue-Eyes’’ attack overcame the ‘Dark Magician’, carrying through and hitting Monty. I felt the diminished impact of the re-directed attack, and I was knocked from my place on the wall, just as Monty was knocked back into the shallow waters of the fountain behind him. Our monsters faded, as the two of us picked ourselves up, gazing across at each other, appreciation flashing in our eyes. The onlooking crowd clapped with excitement.
The magic circles on the page-like card field of Monty’s new Duel Disk stopped glowing, and the “pages” folded into the body of the device. I separated the card field of my new Force Disk from the deck loader and spun it effortlessly over my shoulder and into the holster on my back. Now we were ready. Our Souls flashed again, and the two of us disappeared, off on separate adventures, performing one last trick for our new fans.
Card of the Day:
An Appearance by the Great Dragon
Played by: Lawrence
There is really no reason for this card to be here aside from the fact that it is an original card, and I like the art. This is my blog, though, so I don't even need that much reason to put this here.
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