Now that the characters and their dilemmas have been set up, it's time to set up the tournament itself. This chapter is mostly a big infodump establishing the antagonists of this book, that being the other competitors. As well as bringing a good number of the protagonists together. This is the first time that John and Sarah have competed against each other in a major tournament like this, where their potential careers and their reputations depended on the outcome.
There is some John and Karen stuff at the start, too, but otherwise, there isn't much to this one.
There is some John and Karen stuff at the start, too, but otherwise, there isn't much to this one.
Chapter Four
Competitors
Our bus arrived in Philadelphia the day before the tournament was set to begin, and we were put up in a hotel only a few blocks away from the local stadium that was being used to host the event. Apparently the city was using a football stadium, outfitted with a few Duel Disk arenas. Far less interesting than the Kaibaland arenas that I'd dueled at in the past, which had been designed specifically for Duel Monsters. Karen and I could actually see the stadium from our sixth floor room, including a portion of a large banner which advertised the tournament in big block letters.
"Do we have an itinerary for the tournament yet," I asked Karen, as we unpacked, knowing that Pegasus would be most likely to forward it to her out of all of us.
"No," Karen answered. "The tournament committee has been extremely lax. According to Teacher's most recent email, we don't even know how many teams are competing, or if it's for sure single elimination."
I heard a quivering in her voice, and I turned toward her, to find her sitting on the edge of our bed, her hands clenched tight.
"You're nervous?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she admitted. "It's been such a long time since I've dueled in a tournament. In front of people. The stuff that I did, that I used dueling to do, it still haunts me. Fighting someone like Richie, someone who I have to fight, that's one thing. I can remind myself that I'm fighting for my life, and I'm able to ignore the guilt that I feel for a while. But this, this is just a game. I'm worried that I'm going to choke and cost us the whole event."
"You can't choke, though," I told her, smiling. I sat down next to her, and put my arm around her. "You aren't capable of choking."
"I have before," she argued.
"Not for a long time," I insisted. "I'm serious when I say that you might possibly be the strongest Duelist that I've ever even known of. And you've overcome so much. You're clearly one of the strongest people that I've ever met in general, too. There is no one I respect more. No one I have more faith in."
"I have before," she argued.
"Not for a long time," I insisted. "I'm serious when I say that you might possibly be the strongest Duelist that I've ever even known of. And you've overcome so much. You're clearly one of the strongest people that I've ever met in general, too. There is no one I respect more. No one I have more faith in."
She laid her head on my shoulder, "I feel the same way about you, you know."
I smiled appreciatively, but her words had surprised me. She'd seen the darkness inside of me first hand. I honestly didn't know how she could still be so comfortable around me, let alone want to spend time with me, and have faith in me. The others I could understand. They just thought that the other me was my powers going out of control from time to time. It was something that I'd learn to control eventually, no big, but Karen, she knew better. She'd quite literally been in my head.
But having her there with me, after all I'd put her through, helping me to become a better person, refusing to stop believing in me, it made me feel like I could do anything. It made me want more than anything to just put my life back to the way it had been, to put my Darkness back where it belonged. I decided then and there that that was something that I would do, if not for myself, then for her.
We woke up early the next morning, and got showered and dressed for the competition. I didn't do anything special, allowing my hair to dry where it might, and slipping on an old white t-shirt with faded black sleeves, and a worn pair of jeans, with my new black jacket over top. It was similar enough to my old overshirt that, even if it was still uncomfortable, the weight was familiar, and comforting. As I finished dressing, Karen finished as well.
Rather than one of the blouse and skirt combos that she'd taken to wearing lately, Karen had decided to go for a blast from the past. She was wearing an old pair of skinny jeans with faded, barely-visible Sharpie markings on them, a pink spaghetti strap top, chucks, and the same denim jacket that she'd worn on our first official date. I couldn't help but stare as she straightened her jacket, attached her Duel Disk to her arm, and then looked over at me with a cheeky smile. "How do I look?" she asked, placing her left hand on her hip, and holding her Duel Disk up in a ready pose.
I smiled back at her, "Amazing, as usual."
"Good," She replied, "amazing is exactly what I was going for. We need to get going. I just got a message from someone at I2 while you were in the shower. He should be here by now in a car, waiting to drive us to the arena."
"Is it one of the drivers from the bus?" I asked, only mildly interested.
"I guess it would have to be," Karen answered.
I picked up my own Duel Disk, which was in its current default form: the blade-shaped device which I called the Dark Disk. It wasn't even the Neo Dark Disk, made from a Duel Academy Duel Disk, anymore, but the original Dark Disk. I'd gone out of my way to send for an original Duel Disk from home weeks ago. It only felt appropriate that I restart my career with a Duel Disk of the same type as the one that I'd used to fight my first professional duel.
In fact, now that I thought about, as far as I could remember, this Duel Disk was the same one that I'd received from the Checker Township Game Center on that day, when my original Duel Force had dueled and defeated Christopher Johnson and his team. That duel had been the start of all of this. Our quest for the Souls. Our many duels against dark forces. The prestige that had drawn the attention of our most recent enemy, Damien Curran. Thinking about it, it was kind of surreal.
I strapped the Duel Disk to my arm, turned to Karen, and said, "Okay, let's go." We walked side by side toward competition for the first time in a long time, and it felt good.
By the time that we had reached the car, Thomas and Ria were already there, waiting for us. They were kind of leaning on each other, acting all cutesy. I didn't really get why they worked as a couple. They were my friends, but I sometimes found both of them grating in their own ways. You would think that they would annoy each other, but for some reason, they just worked. They made each other better in a way that I sometimes wondered if Karen and I did. It was a thought that made me less happy to see than two of them that I usually would be. I actually frowned a little before stopping myself. Of course, Karen just had to be looking at me at that exact moment.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," I replied, forcing a smile.
"You nervous about today?" she asked, opening the car door, letting Thomas and Ria in first, and then slipping in behind them. It was a convenient question, because to answer it, I wouldn't even have to lie.
"Yeah," I told her, "I'm just a little worried."
I didn't specify what had me worried, hoping that Karen would make the logical assumption that I was nervous about the duels themselves, and I let her. And of course, I was worried about the duels. They just weren't all that I was worried about. I climbed into the car and sat down beside he with a smile and a nod, and rode to the stadium in silence.
The car pulled up to outside of the arena only a few minutes later. The four of us unloaded from the car, Ria and Thomas surging ahead, hand-in-hand, toward the building as a crowd of future spectators filed inside. I smiled in the wake of their enthusiasm, and offered Karen my hand as well. She looked momentarily surprised, pleasantly so, and took it, and the two of us walked briskly after our friends.
The immediate interior of the stadium was packed. People were shuffling through to the thousands of seats inside, from which they could comfortably watch the action soon to come. I looked around. Usually at a major event like this one, someone would be present to lead competitors inside. We were pretty early, but there was no way that we were the first competitors to arrive. I expected to see someone.
"Any idea where we're supposed to go from here?" Ria asked, with a little sideways frown.
"That's a good question," Karen remarked, as I chuckled. Then something caught Karen's eye, "Oh, I bet he knows."
She gestured, and we followed her gaze to see a young man with slick, well-groomed dark hair, wearing a snappy business suit. He was wearing a badge that marked him as a liaison to the competitors, but didn't include his name. And he didn't introduce himself. So I decided to call him snappy. Snappy rushed over to us and asked, "Team Illusion?"
"That's us," I confirmed.
"Right this way," he said, turning and gesturing for us to follow him. We did so, and soon found ourselves in an employees only section off of the entry area. We were taken through the bowels of the arena, and out onto the stadium floor where a series of collapsible booths, like the ones that you might see housing businesses at a festival, were set up in a semi-circle facing four smaller, and one larger, Duel Disk arenas. The largest one was in the center, and would likely be reserved for a later round of the tournament.
There were sixteen booths in total, each marked with a sign bearing the name of the team meant to inhabit it. As of the time of our arrival, only twelve of those booths were occupied. The first booth read Team Pixie. The team housed within was made up of five pretty girls with dancers' builds, wearing glitter make-up and glossy outfits that were color-coded pink, yellow, blue, green, and orange. The second booth read Team Bulldog, and contained four linebacker type guys in black shirts topographed with red wolves with bulls' horns.
In the third booth, four guys and a girl stood around in punk style ensembles, lounging against the booth walls, tossing a little Frisbee around. They were apparently called Team Extreme. I rolled my eyes. The fourth booth was empty, but the fifth booth held the first team that had a look of being mildly dangerous. Their booth read Team Banish, there were only four of them, all make, and they were wearing pretty regular-looking clothing, along with these ridiculous-looking visors with red lenses.
They didn't look special. In fact, they looked pretty silly, but over the years I'd learned to "see", using my Soul of Darkness, the aura around people, giving me a good idea of how much energy they had within them, and how much potential they had to use that energy to will their own fate to change. This aura is known as a Duelist's Aura, and while the Duelist's Auras of these four were not particularly impressive, they were large enough that this team could be a threat if their strategy was good enough, or they were particularly lucky.
The sixth booth was empty again, but the sign on it read Team Pressure. The seventh booth was occupied by three girls and two boys, all dressed as vamp goths, all acting as disinterested as they could. Their sign read Team Bad Blood. The next booth, labeled Team Rough Seas, housed another heavily-themed group. The four of them were dressed like modernized movie pirates. It made me smile.
The ninth booth, the largest and most cushy-looking (marginally) was the next empty booth. I didn't even have to look to tell that this was the booth meant for the returning champions: Christopher and Jen, and the rest of Team Beatdown.
The four-person teams in the next two booths were fairly average looking. The first of them, Team Cyclone, was made up of two guys with dark hair, a shorter guy with blond hair, and a red-headed girl. The second, Team Paradise, was made up of two guys and two girls who were all a few years apart in age, at most, and shared similar facial features and sand-colored hair, making me wonder if they were siblings. Next was Team Elements, a five-man team in legit uniforms, themed after five of the six Duel Monsters attributes: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Darkness. A few years ago, they would have made for a great theme match against my Duel Force. This made me smile again.
Then my smile faltered as my eyes fell upon the group in booth thirteen. Their Duelist's Auras were huge! Comparable to any member of my team, and some of the enemies that we had recently fought. They were each wearing layered robes with low-hanging hoods that made anything except their heights difficult to discern. Their sign read Team Fear. They stood around, completely still, showing no interest in their surroundings, until my team and I walked by. They turned at once to look at us. I stopped and looked to each of their shrouded faces in turn, shooting them my best smug face. As strong as these four were, they were guaranteed to do well in the tournament. I hoped that my team and I would get to fight them.
I didn't notice the next team as I rushed to catch up with my team, but I learned later that they were called Team Hope. I didn't mind that I'd missed the chance to size them up once they were soundly defeated in the preliminary round by Team Fear. Which seemed appropriate somehow. I did, however, make note of the seven-person team in the penultimate booth. They were all standing around talking, looking away from the stadium center, so they didn't see or hear us approach.
I smiled wide, and I said, "Well, would you look at this. What do we have here?" I stood there, with my hands in my pockets. Karen stood next to me, and Thomas and Ria stood dramatically just behind us. The Duel Force turned to see who had spoken, and Sarah returned my ear to ear smile, planting her hands firmly on her hips.
"Brother," She said simply, doing her best to sound melodramatic. Tucker stepped forward and fist-bumped me over her shoulder, and Amanda and Kris waved.
"Sister," I said back. I could feel competitive pressure building between us. Her Duel Force and my Team Illusion were entirely separate entities, and yet it still, after all this time, didn't really feel that way, even if I didn't recognize Sarah's newest team member, the cute goth girl standing close to Jenna. Our teams had never met as enemies, and even though I knew my sister well, and had a pretty good idea what she might have planned, but I was still excited to test our leadership styles against each other.
"You're late," Sarah told me, gesturing to the empty booth just past hers, designated for Team Illusion.
"Not the latest, though," I told her, turning and leaning against the outside edge of her booth and looking back at the others. "There were a couple of teams still missing. Team Pressure in booth six, and another one earlier on."
"Team Sinister," Sarah added, "in booth four." She held up her smart phone, "I did some research into the teams. Just now. And all of these guys have made at least one appearance at other tournaments. But Team Sinister is brand new. Based on their name, though, they seem pretty confident in their abilities. I'll laugh if they get wiped out in the first round."
"I hope the two of us make it pretty far before we get paired up," I told her, as the rest of my team entered our booth, and started talking across to the rest of the Duel Force. "In fact, I'd really prefer that we got to fight in the finals. That way both of us would get to make an equally big splash. Well, almost equal, anyway."
"Yeah," Sarah replied with a smirk, "it would be great if the Duel Force got the chance to beat the team assembled by Maximillion Pegasus in the finals of a big tournament. It would be way more exciting than beating you in, like, round two."
I laughed, "You think you're gonna beat us? You wish."
We paused, not saying anything for several seconds. Sarah, of course, broke the silence first. "This is going to be weird," she asked, "isn't it?"
"Yeah," I agreed, speaking without an ounce of snark. "We've dueled before, but never in this context. I'm excited, but part of me doesn't want to go through with it."
The conversation paused again, the two of us agreeing silently.
Finally, I turned around to face Sarah, and offered her my hand, "Good luck, leader of Team Duel Force."
Sarah smiled, and shook my outstretched hand, "Back at you, leader of Team Illusion."
I walked away after that, moving to join my team, and Sarah didn't say anything to stop me. We'd said everything that we needed to at that point, at least until our duel came, if it ever did.
Next Chapter >>
Rather than one of the blouse and skirt combos that she'd taken to wearing lately, Karen had decided to go for a blast from the past. She was wearing an old pair of skinny jeans with faded, barely-visible Sharpie markings on them, a pink spaghetti strap top, chucks, and the same denim jacket that she'd worn on our first official date. I couldn't help but stare as she straightened her jacket, attached her Duel Disk to her arm, and then looked over at me with a cheeky smile. "How do I look?" she asked, placing her left hand on her hip, and holding her Duel Disk up in a ready pose.
I smiled back at her, "Amazing, as usual."
"Good," She replied, "amazing is exactly what I was going for. We need to get going. I just got a message from someone at I2 while you were in the shower. He should be here by now in a car, waiting to drive us to the arena."
"Is it one of the drivers from the bus?" I asked, only mildly interested.
"I guess it would have to be," Karen answered.
I picked up my own Duel Disk, which was in its current default form: the blade-shaped device which I called the Dark Disk. It wasn't even the Neo Dark Disk, made from a Duel Academy Duel Disk, anymore, but the original Dark Disk. I'd gone out of my way to send for an original Duel Disk from home weeks ago. It only felt appropriate that I restart my career with a Duel Disk of the same type as the one that I'd used to fight my first professional duel.
In fact, now that I thought about, as far as I could remember, this Duel Disk was the same one that I'd received from the Checker Township Game Center on that day, when my original Duel Force had dueled and defeated Christopher Johnson and his team. That duel had been the start of all of this. Our quest for the Souls. Our many duels against dark forces. The prestige that had drawn the attention of our most recent enemy, Damien Curran. Thinking about it, it was kind of surreal.
I strapped the Duel Disk to my arm, turned to Karen, and said, "Okay, let's go." We walked side by side toward competition for the first time in a long time, and it felt good.
By the time that we had reached the car, Thomas and Ria were already there, waiting for us. They were kind of leaning on each other, acting all cutesy. I didn't really get why they worked as a couple. They were my friends, but I sometimes found both of them grating in their own ways. You would think that they would annoy each other, but for some reason, they just worked. They made each other better in a way that I sometimes wondered if Karen and I did. It was a thought that made me less happy to see than two of them that I usually would be. I actually frowned a little before stopping myself. Of course, Karen just had to be looking at me at that exact moment.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," I replied, forcing a smile.
"You nervous about today?" she asked, opening the car door, letting Thomas and Ria in first, and then slipping in behind them. It was a convenient question, because to answer it, I wouldn't even have to lie.
"Yeah," I told her, "I'm just a little worried."
I didn't specify what had me worried, hoping that Karen would make the logical assumption that I was nervous about the duels themselves, and I let her. And of course, I was worried about the duels. They just weren't all that I was worried about. I climbed into the car and sat down beside he with a smile and a nod, and rode to the stadium in silence.
The car pulled up to outside of the arena only a few minutes later. The four of us unloaded from the car, Ria and Thomas surging ahead, hand-in-hand, toward the building as a crowd of future spectators filed inside. I smiled in the wake of their enthusiasm, and offered Karen my hand as well. She looked momentarily surprised, pleasantly so, and took it, and the two of us walked briskly after our friends.
The immediate interior of the stadium was packed. People were shuffling through to the thousands of seats inside, from which they could comfortably watch the action soon to come. I looked around. Usually at a major event like this one, someone would be present to lead competitors inside. We were pretty early, but there was no way that we were the first competitors to arrive. I expected to see someone.
"Any idea where we're supposed to go from here?" Ria asked, with a little sideways frown.
"That's a good question," Karen remarked, as I chuckled. Then something caught Karen's eye, "Oh, I bet he knows."
She gestured, and we followed her gaze to see a young man with slick, well-groomed dark hair, wearing a snappy business suit. He was wearing a badge that marked him as a liaison to the competitors, but didn't include his name. And he didn't introduce himself. So I decided to call him snappy. Snappy rushed over to us and asked, "Team Illusion?"
"That's us," I confirmed.
"Right this way," he said, turning and gesturing for us to follow him. We did so, and soon found ourselves in an employees only section off of the entry area. We were taken through the bowels of the arena, and out onto the stadium floor where a series of collapsible booths, like the ones that you might see housing businesses at a festival, were set up in a semi-circle facing four smaller, and one larger, Duel Disk arenas. The largest one was in the center, and would likely be reserved for a later round of the tournament.
There were sixteen booths in total, each marked with a sign bearing the name of the team meant to inhabit it. As of the time of our arrival, only twelve of those booths were occupied. The first booth read Team Pixie. The team housed within was made up of five pretty girls with dancers' builds, wearing glitter make-up and glossy outfits that were color-coded pink, yellow, blue, green, and orange. The second booth read Team Bulldog, and contained four linebacker type guys in black shirts topographed with red wolves with bulls' horns.
In the third booth, four guys and a girl stood around in punk style ensembles, lounging against the booth walls, tossing a little Frisbee around. They were apparently called Team Extreme. I rolled my eyes. The fourth booth was empty, but the fifth booth held the first team that had a look of being mildly dangerous. Their booth read Team Banish, there were only four of them, all make, and they were wearing pretty regular-looking clothing, along with these ridiculous-looking visors with red lenses.
They didn't look special. In fact, they looked pretty silly, but over the years I'd learned to "see", using my Soul of Darkness, the aura around people, giving me a good idea of how much energy they had within them, and how much potential they had to use that energy to will their own fate to change. This aura is known as a Duelist's Aura, and while the Duelist's Auras of these four were not particularly impressive, they were large enough that this team could be a threat if their strategy was good enough, or they were particularly lucky.
The sixth booth was empty again, but the sign on it read Team Pressure. The seventh booth was occupied by three girls and two boys, all dressed as vamp goths, all acting as disinterested as they could. Their sign read Team Bad Blood. The next booth, labeled Team Rough Seas, housed another heavily-themed group. The four of them were dressed like modernized movie pirates. It made me smile.
The ninth booth, the largest and most cushy-looking (marginally) was the next empty booth. I didn't even have to look to tell that this was the booth meant for the returning champions: Christopher and Jen, and the rest of Team Beatdown.
The four-person teams in the next two booths were fairly average looking. The first of them, Team Cyclone, was made up of two guys with dark hair, a shorter guy with blond hair, and a red-headed girl. The second, Team Paradise, was made up of two guys and two girls who were all a few years apart in age, at most, and shared similar facial features and sand-colored hair, making me wonder if they were siblings. Next was Team Elements, a five-man team in legit uniforms, themed after five of the six Duel Monsters attributes: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Darkness. A few years ago, they would have made for a great theme match against my Duel Force. This made me smile again.
Then my smile faltered as my eyes fell upon the group in booth thirteen. Their Duelist's Auras were huge! Comparable to any member of my team, and some of the enemies that we had recently fought. They were each wearing layered robes with low-hanging hoods that made anything except their heights difficult to discern. Their sign read Team Fear. They stood around, completely still, showing no interest in their surroundings, until my team and I walked by. They turned at once to look at us. I stopped and looked to each of their shrouded faces in turn, shooting them my best smug face. As strong as these four were, they were guaranteed to do well in the tournament. I hoped that my team and I would get to fight them.
I didn't notice the next team as I rushed to catch up with my team, but I learned later that they were called Team Hope. I didn't mind that I'd missed the chance to size them up once they were soundly defeated in the preliminary round by Team Fear. Which seemed appropriate somehow. I did, however, make note of the seven-person team in the penultimate booth. They were all standing around talking, looking away from the stadium center, so they didn't see or hear us approach.
I smiled wide, and I said, "Well, would you look at this. What do we have here?" I stood there, with my hands in my pockets. Karen stood next to me, and Thomas and Ria stood dramatically just behind us. The Duel Force turned to see who had spoken, and Sarah returned my ear to ear smile, planting her hands firmly on her hips.
"Brother," She said simply, doing her best to sound melodramatic. Tucker stepped forward and fist-bumped me over her shoulder, and Amanda and Kris waved.
"Sister," I said back. I could feel competitive pressure building between us. Her Duel Force and my Team Illusion were entirely separate entities, and yet it still, after all this time, didn't really feel that way, even if I didn't recognize Sarah's newest team member, the cute goth girl standing close to Jenna. Our teams had never met as enemies, and even though I knew my sister well, and had a pretty good idea what she might have planned, but I was still excited to test our leadership styles against each other.
"You're late," Sarah told me, gesturing to the empty booth just past hers, designated for Team Illusion.
"Not the latest, though," I told her, turning and leaning against the outside edge of her booth and looking back at the others. "There were a couple of teams still missing. Team Pressure in booth six, and another one earlier on."
"Team Sinister," Sarah added, "in booth four." She held up her smart phone, "I did some research into the teams. Just now. And all of these guys have made at least one appearance at other tournaments. But Team Sinister is brand new. Based on their name, though, they seem pretty confident in their abilities. I'll laugh if they get wiped out in the first round."
"I hope the two of us make it pretty far before we get paired up," I told her, as the rest of my team entered our booth, and started talking across to the rest of the Duel Force. "In fact, I'd really prefer that we got to fight in the finals. That way both of us would get to make an equally big splash. Well, almost equal, anyway."
"Yeah," Sarah replied with a smirk, "it would be great if the Duel Force got the chance to beat the team assembled by Maximillion Pegasus in the finals of a big tournament. It would be way more exciting than beating you in, like, round two."
I laughed, "You think you're gonna beat us? You wish."
We paused, not saying anything for several seconds. Sarah, of course, broke the silence first. "This is going to be weird," she asked, "isn't it?"
"Yeah," I agreed, speaking without an ounce of snark. "We've dueled before, but never in this context. I'm excited, but part of me doesn't want to go through with it."
The conversation paused again, the two of us agreeing silently.
Finally, I turned around to face Sarah, and offered her my hand, "Good luck, leader of Team Duel Force."
Sarah smiled, and shook my outstretched hand, "Back at you, leader of Team Illusion."
I walked away after that, moving to join my team, and Sarah didn't say anything to stop me. We'd said everything that we needed to at that point, at least until our duel came, if it ever did.
Next Chapter >>
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