Yay, buildup. And exposition! Two ingredients which make up the greatest of stories. No, but in all serious, it has been literally years since some of these characters have seen each other for an extended period of time, and even longer since they have come together to fight some group of villains bent on hurting them or worse. This reunion is a big deal. Plus, there are, like, three mysterious badass figure reveals in this chapter, and I personally love that particular cliche, so I had a blast writing it.
Next week, of course, is Reaper. Then we start with the big event: The Duel Force confronting The Card Professors. These duels will take some time, so expect a lot of action chapters to come, followed by a kickass final battle, and a few twists that I hope will be genuinly intriguing. So stay tuned! Or whatever people say when talking about written stuff...
Chapter Fifteen
Coming Together
John
“So this is the place?” I asked, looking up at the huge building before me.
“Yes,” Reiko answered softly. She was cowering half behind Max. She did not want to be here, but she was trusting in Max’s ability to protect her.
I studied the building facade. It was a factory at least four stories in height, though it was hard to tell from the outside if it had multiple floors, or if its interior was just very large and open. As I mentioned, the building was massive. I don’t even know how to accurately describe it. It was clearly quite old, and just as clearly abandoned. The windows were boarded up or gone altogether.
The sheet metal walls were rusting and overgrown with vines. I heard gravel crunch beneath my feet, but I couldn’t really see it under the grass and weeds that had grown up everywhere. There were stone stairs leading up to the front doors, which had once been made of glass, but were now completely boarded over. Those stone stairs looked even more deteriorated than the building itself, and I worried slightly about walking up them.
No one wants to trip on their way to the boss battle.
The building was wide, so wide that it would take several minutes to walk its width, but from our position, we could see that it was several times longer. Near the back I could see something that looked like a collapsed tower, maybe a smoke stack. As we approached, I saw a sign above the door, but it was far too faded to read.
“I-It used to be a manufacturing plant,” Reiko elaborated. “I don’t know why it is so far from the road and the nearest town, or why it was shut down, but I do know that after it closed a group took it over and turned it into a place where Duelists could be trained in really harsh conditions. It became infamous, and soon every sane Duelist knew to steer clear, because anyone who sought it out didn’t come back.”
“Well,” said a voice from behind me, “that means I’m at the right place. Christopher said this was where the Dark Factory was, but I wasn’t sure until you guys showed up, too.”
Reiko was surprised to hear a voice that she didn’t know, and looked around frantically. Max ignored the voice, knowing it didn’t belong to an enemy. I smiled, and without looking, said, “Hey, Jen.”
My dark-haired cousin stepped out of the shadow of the building and kicked some gravel absentmindedly, smiling, “Good to see you, Boss, and Max, and girl I don’t know.”
“It’s about time you came out of the shadows,” said Max dismissively, smiling in the slightly creepy way that he does. Jen raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, “I knew you were there.”
“Sure you did,” Jen countered playfully.
“The Card Professors came for you too?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” Jen answered, turning suddenly serious, “and you won’t believe who they sent: James.”
“Former Team Beatdown James?” I asked. I turned to Reiko and asked, “James is a Card Professor?”
“A guy named James did join recently,” Reiko replied apologetically, “but I had no way of knowing that you guys knew him.”
“Wait,” Jen asked, skeptically, “is this girl a Card Professor? Is having an enemy with us a good idea?”
Good ol’ Jen, always over-thinking things.
I was about to assure her that Reiko had proven trustworthy, but Max beat me to it. “Reiko is not an enemy,” he said forcefully. He was so forceful, so emotional, that all of us, himself included, were a little surprised. Reiko blushed, but really that isn’t unusual.
“Okay,” Jen relented, “I believe you. So, what do we do now?”
“Are you kidding?” Another new voice demanded. “What we do is stop talkin’, bust down the door, and stomp some jerkbags to the curb using our wicked trading card skills.”
I smiled again, “You’re late, sis.”
Sarah stepped up beside me and begun studying the building, as I had done. The Duel Force was just behind her. I looked from Jenna, to my cousins Kris and Amanda, and on to Tucker, and I smiled. For some reason that I can’t explain, I’d been silently dreading seeing my former friends and teammates in an “official” capacity again, maybe due to the fact that I was technically a member of a rival team, but in that moment any apprehension that I’d had melted. I’d been dreading nothing. I was just happy to see my friends again.
“Yo, bro,” I said to Tucker, shooting him a fist bump and a high five.
“Cousins,” I said to Kris and Amanda, grinning cheerfully.
Then I turned to Jenna, who I had never let join the Duel Force. She didn’t want to meet my eyes, afraid that I would tell her off for going behind my back and joining anyway. I can’t say I was incredibly happy about it, since Jenna was the first Dueling student that I’d ever had, aside from Tucker kind of, and she didn’t have to fight this fight. It wasn’t her destiny, like it was ours. I hadn’t wanted to risk her getting hurt. Now here she was, and she looked the part. Standing with the others on the cusp of battle suited her.
“Lookin’ good, kid,” I told her. She instantly perked up, “I am good. Things are good. I’m really strong now, and I have magic. I have this,” She pulled a dark metal baton from her high socks, which she was using as a makeshift holster, and she twirled it like an expert. Orbs of black fire surrounded its ends whenever it was moving quickly.
“I deserve to be on this team,” she insisted. “I’ve earned it.”
I looked past Jenna to Sarah, who nodded slightly, smiling. I met Jenna’s eyes again, “Of course you have. I figure you’ve got a story to tell, but I’ll listen to it later.”
I stepped back and looked over Sarah’s newest additions, “I don’t know you two.”
The blond guy, who I immediately pegged as a narcissist, tugged on his silk shirt to straighten it, stepped forward, and offered me his hand, “Name’s Nate. It’s an honor to meet you. Almost as much of an honor as I imagine it would be to meet Nate.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, cringing away from Nate’s hand like it was toxic, or maybe sticky. Apparently this was a common reaction, because Nate wasn’t bothered by it. I gave Sarah an inquisitive look, and she shot me a “don’t ask” look back.
Ignoring Nate, I held out my hand to the other unknown, the pretty blue-haired girl standing next to Tucker, opposite Sarah, so that neither girl could see the other. She glanced around him at Sarah, like she was apprehensive to step into my sister’s line of sight, before finally taking a couple steps forward and shaking my hand softly, “Hi, I’m Frost.”
“Yeah,” Sarah bragged, throwing her arm around my shoulder, “she was all brainwashed and stuff, but my team and I saved her. Well, Tucker actually did the saving, but you know.”
She looked quizically at Max, “Weren’t you there?”
Max shrugged, completely disinterested, “I don’t know, possibly.”
I looked around at our ragtag group, counting, “Alright, there are eleven of them in there, and eleven of us. If we go in strong, we should come out of this okay-.”
“Excuse me,” Reiko interrupted, “but I-I can’t fight.”
“She’s right,” Max agreed. “We don’t know how things will be set up in there. Each Duelist might have to go a separate way, and I can’t protect Reiko from an attack from our mystery man if she and I are apart. She doesn’t fight.”
“One of us will have to take on the daunting, possibly fatal task of fighting two of these card professors at once,” Sarah pondered. “I nominate Nate.”
“No,” I said glumly, making the only correct decision, “I’ll do it. I’ll fight two Card Professors.”
I looked to Max, “Now what did you mean when you said that it might be set up to divide us in there? What do you know about this place?”
“He probably knows about as much as I know,” said another unidentified voice. My heart skipped a beat when I heard it. I whipped my head around, and there was Karen. She’d changed her clothes, and was now wearing a black blouse under a pink leather jacket, and a pair of tight denim jeans. On her wrist was my Duel Disk, with a full deck in it. She carried a second Duel Disk in her left hand. It was an Academy Duel Disk like the ones that Karen and I had been using for years now,
Karen looked seriously at Max, “Did you tell them?”
“I was getting to it,” he replied, “but I imagine that you can describe it better. I never actually participated.”
Karen nodded, and scanned the crowd, smiling at me when she met my eyes, “When this old factory was abandoned after a scandal involving employee deaths, Yami seized it and used the resources of mind-manipulated minions to remodel the entire interior. It’s completely modular, so that virtually any survival scenario can be simulated. More than once, these scenarios led to death.
"Yami would use this place to train his willing followers, and to punish those who showed weakness. Once I hesitated to carry out one of Yami’s orders, the first time I met him, because I realized that people would get hurt if I did. He brought me here and made me fight. It’s how I realized that he was evil. It was because of the strength and defiance that I showed here that, when I confronted him along with Monty and Lawrence, Yami turned my mind and made me his minion. He thought that my skills were too valuable to lose.”
I was a little surprised that Karen was being so forthcoming about something regarding her past, but I was mostly really proud. Since I’d become acquainted with Karen, after her release from Yami, I’d been waiting to see this confident, strong, serious Karen again. She’d been afraid to be this person again for a long time, but I know a thing or two about dark personality traits, and I knew that this Karen still existed somewhere. I’d pushed Karen to bring her back out again more than I probably should have, but that was only because, for years, I’d known that Karen could be that strong person again without losing control, and being who she was under Yami’s control again.
Now, after finding closure with Pegasus, Karen was herself. The difference was obvious, and palpable, and I couldn’t be happier, because this Karen was stronger than me. With her at my side, there was no way that we could lose. I was so happy, in fact, that the horror of what Karen had just told us didn’t set in for, like, seven whole seconds.
“Wait,” I asked, “you had to fight for your life here when you were a kid? I’m so sorry.”
I stepped over to her and took her hand. She smiled at me, and squeezed my hand before slipping her hand from mine, and handing me the spare Duel Disk that she carried, “I’m okay. I didn’t die, and I didn’t end up having to kill anyone.”
She looked up at the building, “My point is that anything could be waiting for us in there along with Richie and Depre and their dumb little gang. We have to be at our best.”
I finished putting the Duel Disk that Karen had brought me on my wrist, watching as it transformed into the blade-like Neo Dark Disk, and I nodded, “Alright guy, let’s-.”
But I stopped myself, and I looked at Sarah, “No, the Duel Force is yours now. This is your show as much as it is mine.”
Sarah smiled proudly, “Alright, peeps, let’s show these guys what it means to mess with us!”
She charged toward the factory entrance, trudged fearlessly up the dilapidated steps, and threw open the doors. The rest of us followed her inside, toward our greatest challenge yet.
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