XXXI
Far to the west, unseen by anyone, a solitary black cloak ascended the wall that overlooked that side of the fortress. There was no hurry in their step; Jim Cook had been very clear in his order to wait for a signal that had yet to come.
And yet, even as the sun beat down upon the sliver of face that dared show itself beneath the figure's hood, a sense of urgency had risen from their core, and quickened their pace. No—that was wrong, they decided just as quickly. There was no sense in speeding up a war that was already won. It was not urgency that guided their steps over the worn and weathered stone—there was a word more fitting by far.
Anticipation. That was it—the anticipation of the final blow of that war. It rippled through their innards like black fire, flooded their limbs—seared their fingers until they were fists. Every fiber of their being wanted to strike that blow, to be the reason that these traitors and pretenders—these children, so much less than the sum of their parts—scattered before the Ædonai like chaff on the wind, never to impede them or their goals for the dimensions again.
The faces of those children flitted and faded in their mind's eye, all analyzed and memorized from the monitors in Jim's office. Presently, the flood of images slowed and stopped at one—younger and greener than so many as they grew up, made friends and lost them, found passion and drive in school and in Dueling, in a lifetime of peace long dead … and now, though the bonds they shared had been severed by time and fate, here they were again, standing taller by far upon this field of war.
And how much taller do you stand now? How much stronger have you become? It was a question that was quickly asked … and shunted just as quickly into some inner recess of their mind. Orders were orders, after all—and they weren't human enough to question them anymore.
But they were still human enough to demand an answer, when the time was right—as it seemed to be now.
Do you still hope to be stronger than me? Tell me the truth, and I will crush you first. Lie, and I will crush you last. Because you will never, ever be like me.
And I will never, ever be like you.
Leo Duel School
She had been beautiful once.
That much Himika knew must have been true, as she gazed at the image of the second of the trio to reveal herself on top of her school. Enough of the tall woman's black cloak had sloughed off the shoulders to expose her prominent chest—made more so by her tight bodysuit of dark silver, and the armor plating it like a second skin—that Himika wondered if perhaps a wholly different career might have awaited her on the runway, or in front of a camera's lens.
But the Ædonai—no, Himika corrected herself, not even them; the Kingdom of Misgarth—had had other plans.
Her hands, their nails inch-long and curved, looked the most delicate part of her—dwarfed as they were by the heavy, wicked-looking blades that grew from each wrist. Platinum-blonde hair had been kept in place by an elaborate headpiece not unlike a great metal flower, its unfurled petals framing the crown of her head. Bangs grew jagged and uneven over the black iron that plated her ears and brow like horns, framing eyes of a hazel so vivid that they appeared amber even on the crisp image Angel-IQ was projecting on her office window. Himika found the comparison in color chilling; the snakelike slit set within each of them reminded her uncannily of a primeval insect, so often trapped and smothered in that sticky sap—helpless to do more than watch its brief life ebb away as its tomb grew around it, hardening over millions of years until it was as resilient as any rock, its prisoner perfectly preserved against the ravages of time.
Preserved, she knew, until some prospective soul uncovered it once more—by accident or design—and, entranced by its beauty and history, reshaped it into an objet d'art—a curio for their personal collection. The train of thought sent a shiver through Himika's body as she watched that tail—that writhing, coiling, iron tail—swish through the air. It moved with a mind of its own, and so fluidly that she could not be sure if it was armor or alive—only that it looked more lively than its owner, who for all her fearsome appearance had yet to move any other muscle.
Had this woman known what the Kingdom had had in store for her? Had she any say in what they'd done to her? Was that truly her soul, trapped inside those bottomless pools of amber? Did she even have a soul left to her? Himika entertained all of these questions and more, and searched long and hard for the light of sapience in those eyes, all the while biting her lip until the blood flowed.
"Analysis complete, Himika-sama." Angel-IQ's voice sounded miles away. "Approximate composition of mass: thirty-two percent organic material, sixty-eight percent composite materials—thirty-two percent titanium alloy, sixteen percent carbon fiber, eight percent silicon carbide, seven percent Kevlar tri-weave—"
"Bottom-line it, Q."
A pause. "No photonic variance detected. Subject is not a Duel Monster."
"I see." Entirely too well, the LDS headmistress thought, her worst fears confirmed. "Do you see it, too?"
Angel-IQ said nothing. But Himika, in her peripheral vision, caught the image of polite puzzlement—or as close to it as the hologram could synthesize—furrowing her digital face. "Magnify the eyes," she clarified.
In an instant, the image on her window had fritzed and shimmered by an order of magnitude. The woman's face—her lips permanently drawn back in a snarl that showed the points of filed teeth—now filled her office from floor to ceiling, and her smoldering eyes were now the size of dinner plates. The jet-black sliver dead center in each one looked the shape and size of a dagger's blade. Himika had to wonder about their sharpness as well.
"Curious." Angel-IQ's own gaze was glinting brilliant blue, her pupils moving so quickly they were almost blurry. "I am reviewing this morning's security footage. These eyes are similar to those possessed by one Tyranno Kenzan—the You Show Fusion student who claimed to be a gamma-level Duelist before he left for Giza."
Himika nodded. She'd been reviewing that same footage herself. "Then this one is genetically enhanced, too … " she muttered, half to herself. The more Ædonai that kept turning up on her doorstep, she thought, the less they—
She frowned. "Look deeper. I don't mean zoom in," she added quickly. "Study this face, Q. Know your enemy."
It took a full five seconds—an agonizingly long time for a computer—before Angel-IQ answered her. "I am not certain I understand, Himika-sama. Are you referring to one of your 'human intuitions'?"
"Not precisely." Himika drew a little closer to the tall woman's image. "Humans have a knack for reading people simply by gazing into their face, Q. Given enough time, those with the proper intuition can learn more than what they simply see. We can hear the words they keep behind their lips, and feel the fire in their eyes—we can see determination, emotion … intelligence."
"And what is it you see?"
It took an even more agonizingly long time before Himika answered her. "None of those," she murmured. "Those are not human eyes we're looking at. Because there's nothing human inside them."
She swallowed, her voice suddenly dry. "Whatever genetic enhancement did this"—she gestured around her own face—"it tore anything and everything human out of her body and her mind … and stuffed something else inside."
And then, quite suddenly—as if on autopilot—she'd reached for her comm. panel and pressed a switch. "Nakajima. Alert all Duelists to use extreme caution. Tango Charlie is a Duel Hunter."
Because what else could this woman be, she knew, besides yet another of the Kingdom's personal army of Duelists-turned-exotic weapons, brought to bear upon Maiami City and all its people? And this one would be different, too—different from the faceless sniper that had besieged her and her baby last night, or the simpering imposters that had smiled at her son even as they turned his body into sport for their cruelty and malice.
That, she knew, was very much human intuition.
" … All Civil Defense teams stand to battle stations. All Duel teams prepare to move out."
As if Nakajima's orders had been the incantation for some magic spell, Sakuragi Yū—flanked by two classmates he'd briefly fought alongside during the first invasion of Academia—witnessed a transformation come over his lifelong home. He'd seen it happen once before, watched as street lamps, traffic signals, and bus stops flickered with the glow of hard light come to life. And even though he'd been told this time would be different—for one thing, everyone had taken the orders to seek shelter much more seriously after what had happened yesterday, for which he was thankful—Yū still braced himself for the environmental amalgam that had been Wonder Quartet, even as the familiar platforms of Cross Over shimmered over his head instead, bathing recently-abandoned vehicles and freshly empty storefronts in a labyrinthine, dazzling display.
Never let your opponent fight on the same battlefield twice. Himika had told them as much on the way out, after assigning him and his two cohorts to be the first line of defense for the Endymion Duel School. Yū, well aware of how well that first fight had panned out for him, was especially determined to take his headmistress' words to heart.
He'd been a fool in those days. But he would have felt more foolish now, to look up at the pinnacle of his Duel School—at the trio of Duelists who seemed to grow more bizarre with each one that revealed herself to the city below—and not feel the twinge of unease snaking through his insides.
"I don't know who I'd want to face less," Nishiroku Jīga remarked off to his right. From where Yū stood, he looked remarkably like Shingo but for the mirrored sunglasses that concealed his eyes—and were currently failing to do the same for the grimace that lined his mouth. "I'm starting to wish we had those clowns from the Obelisk Force back. Better to beat down the bully we know than get beat down by the freak we don't."
"Don't jinx it," lamented the boy on Yū's left. Kaminoki Shiro's untidy purple hair fell over his eyes, ears, and very nearly his cheekbones. But the bits that could still be seen of his dour-looking face looked almost as pale as Yū's shirt. Even in his peripheral vision, he could tell that Shiro had not forgotten being sealed into a card. "I've spent all this time changing my Deck up for the next time we faced these bastards—because you know they've been doing the same thing. And the last thing I want is to see all my work go to waste before theirs does against us."
"It won't." And Yū, despite himself, felt the smile spread across his face. "It isn't just your work, you know."
For even as the words left his mouth, he saw—in the corner of his eye—the fire hydrant on the sidewalk next to him suddenly twist and unfold into a mechanical construct of black and dark crimson. Arms and three-fingered hands sprouted from the two valves on either side, and a faceless helm glowed with blue light as the robot reached to its full height, just up to the boys' hips. Yū checked his Duel Disk's observer function, and saw a point gauge appear next to the image of the monster: (Level 1: ATK 0 » 500/DEF 0 » 500).
Flashes of light from the skyscrapers above told Yū that the Civil Defense teams were already putting their brand-new Decks to good use. He saw the blue helms and broad shoulders of armored warriors, bobbing in the air (Level 4: ATK 1700 » 2200/DEF 1700 » 2200), and above those, the screaming engines of swept-wing jet fighters (Level 6: ATK 2200 » 2700/DEF 2200 » 2700). Of the Field Spell that was augmenting these monsters' strength, Yū saw no sign—but he'd been briefed enough on the Civil Defense's new shield against the Fusion Dimension to know what sort of card was doing it at all.
And he knew there were other monsters—stronger monsters, too; Yū could already see some of those materializing above the skyline in the distance as well, too far away for his Duel Disk to gauge their strength. Gigantic robots the size of his house, mobile weapons platforms that filled the roofs of the buildings they'd been Summoned on—each of them were training their gazes and their sights upon the three invaders, like the needle of a giant compass.
"You see?" Yū told his two companions. "We're ready for them this time. They might've caught us with our pants down once or twice before. But there won't be a third—count on it."
He smiled, and tried to ignore the shivers of his own body. "Count on it."
{DO YOU FEEL THAT?}
[DOCTOR?]
{LOOK DOWN BELOW US. THEY'RE LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU, AGENT 223. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. EVERY DUELIST IN THIS CITY. EVERY MAN AND WOMAN WHO CALLS IT HOME, EVERY BOY AND GIRL. THEY SEE YOU. AND THEY'RE AFRAID OF YOU.}
they see
me they
fear me
{YES. DO YOU KNOW WHY THEY'RE AFRAID OF YOU?}
[BECAUSE I AM A DUEL HUNTER?]
{NOT EVEN THAT. BECAUSE YOU ARE A FREAK.}
…
freak
…
I am
…
no
am not
…
freak
…
am i
freak what
am i who was i WHO AM I
{HUSH, NOW. NO NEED TO FRET. I KNOW IT'S A NASTY WORD TO USE. I DON'T LIKE SAYING IT ANY MORE THAN YOU MUST LIKE HEARING IT. BUT JUST BECAUSE WE DON'T LIKE HEARING A WORD DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T TRUE. THAT WAS THE HARDEST LESSON I HAD TO LEARN.}
what does
she mean what
…
is she
a
{A FREAK? OH YES, AGENT 223. I AM VERY MUCH A SO-CALLED FREAK. WE ALL ARE. SUCH IS THE LOT WE DRAW IN LIFE. EVEN WHEN WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE EVERY FUTURE IS ONE AND THE SAME, EVEN WHEN THAT WORLD DECIDES THOSE LIKE US MUST LEARN TO LIVE LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. EVEN WHEN THOSE LIKE US ARE GIVEN THE DIGNITY OF LIFE WE DESERVE.}
» ALERT: CORE SYSTEM OUTSIDE ACCESS DETECTED (USER: GG_Ψ-139)
» OVERRIDE AUTHORIZED (USER ACCESS RECOGNIZED PRIMARY CLASS TWO AUTHORITY)
» NEURAL INTERFACE GRANTED
» COMMENCING LEVEL TWO CONTACT
…
…
ah
ah ah AH
AH AH AAAAAAAAA
Hīragi Shūzō wasn't the only adult in the shelter this time. The Sakakis, Yūshō and Yōko, had found their way over first; they'd mentioned something about Masumi's friends, Masumi's school—and something about looking after a pair of psychic twins that earned only the smallest of double takes from the owner of You Show Duel School. There wasn't a lot that seemed to faze him these days, and he wasn't feeling very fired up about that.
Certain of his students made up for that, though. Ayu, Tatsuya, and Futoshi—far from being as terrified as they had been the last time the Fusion Dimension had come to call—had been psyching each other up about wanting to hold their own against the Ædonai instead of being cooped up down here. The talk alarmed Shūzō, but not overly so—it was in the nature of kids to be boastful about their abilities, and he knew there was no better way to stoke the fires of their soul. But he'd had to shush the young trio more than once, and it was looking like he'd have to do so again.
"Those filthy Fusion freaks are gonna wish they'd stayed in bed after they see my Dynamist Deck!" Futoshi hissed in a whisper that easily carried through the underground shelter. "My monsters'll be all 'grrrr' and they'll all be shivering where they stand! And then my big monsters will go—"
Whatever his big monsters were planning on going, no one in the shelter ever found out. But Shūzō—and everyone else who'd made it down with him—were suddenly getting a very good, and very visceral idea.
The earsplitting cacophony reduced Futoshi's predatory pantomime to the squeak of scented prey. Now he was the one who was shivering where he sat; Ayu and Tatsuya were each clutching one of his pudgy arms, almost vibrating because of the poor boy between them. Nor were they alone. Most of their classmates had jumped a foot in the air. Several screams were still ringing in Shūzō's ears. Even Yūshō and Yōko were looking at the ceiling, clutching at each other's chests in worry as aural chaos continued to tear the tense silence into shreds.
What the devil is that?! The You Show owner frantically pushed buttons on his Duel Disk, trying to tune to the first video frequency he could find. That didn't sound like an invading Duelist at all.
Icy claws pierced his spine. He didn't even think it sounded human—
It had come from right next to Sakuragi Yū—so close that he'd whirled where he stood and nearly toppled onto the street from the sheer momentum of his rotation. Both Jīga and Shiro swore at the top of their lungs—not that they would have been heard over the sudden explosion of sound—and their Duel Disks were ignited so quickly that had their blades been anything more substantial than Real Solid Vision, limbs might have been lost in the confusion on account of how they'd done so in the middle of clapping their hands to their ears.
But even after reason returned to him, and Yū realized that all he'd heard was the RSV generator, and not the bellow of some fell demon from the pit, he could not help but wonder what had caused the machine to make that noise.
He glanced skyward, ears still ringing, and took in the three tiny figures atop LDS. Had one of them somehow—?
Himika nearly collided with the corner of her desk. Only the split-second flail of her palm as she whirled away from her window in alarm was all that kept the LDS headmistress from an undignified tumble onto her office floor.
The noise had registered on the sensors integrated into the glass of the windows, and in a trice had been transmitted throughout the entire city—through every single speaker wired into every RSV generator on every street corner—and throughout Angel-IQ, who was tied into these as innately as she was to the Leo Duel School, and so she did not doubt the entire building had reacted in much the same way she just had—likely even the LID as well. All of them, in unison, had borne witness to a sound unlike any Himika had ever heard in her life.
The deafening, yowling, keening shriek—somewhere between jaguar and hyena, maddened by the taste of meat on the air in the face of starvation—echoed through all of Maiami City, and every ear of everyone that called it home, for long after its source had fallen silent once more. In those few seconds—or had they been longer?—Himika had heard intelligence and base perversion, sensed passion and feral corruption.
Felt pain … and primal fear.
She looked up once more—at the woman whose existence went against every sensibility her mind could conjure—and could only wonder what horror could be more twisted: the Duel Hunter the Ædonai had sent against her pride and joy … or the minds that had twisted it into existence in the first place.
The breath froze in her throat as she pondered if one of those minds had belonged to him—
{SHH. IT'S GONE NOW. IT'S ALL GONE.}
…
that
…
too much
…
how
…
does she
…
stand how
…
does she
…
live
{BECAUSE I WAS BORN INTO A WORLD OF THE NORMAL, AGENT 223—A WORLD THAT TOLD A FREAK TO BE NORMAL OR BEGONE. BECAUSE EVERY DAY, THAT SO-CALLED NORMAL WORLD WOULD SCREAM AT EVERY CELL IN MY BODY TO DIE. BECAUSE EVERY NIGHT, EVERY CELL IN MY BODY WOULD SCREAM AT ME FOR EVEN TRYING. BECAUSE DAY AND NIGHT, I WAS FORCED TO LISTEN TO IT ALL—FORCED TO HATE IT ALL—FORCED TO PRAY FOR A MIRACLE.}
…
{I HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING HOW MY PRAYERS MIGHT POSSIBLY BE ANSWERED. HOW MY DESPERATION COULD BE REWARDED. BUT THEY WERE, AND IT WAS. AND BECAUSE OF AKABA LEO, I LEARNED TO CLAW OUT MY OWN PLACE IN THIS WORLD. TO SCREAM BACK AT EVERY CELL IN MY BODY. TO DROWN OUT THEIR ETERNAL WISH FOR ME TO DIE, AND VOW TO LIVE.}
…
{BECAUSE OF HIM, I LEARNED TO TELL THE WORLD OF THE SO-CALLED NORMAL THAT YES—I WAS A FREAK. AND I TOLD THE WORLD THAT I WOULD NEVER STOP.}
…
{I AM PROUD TO BE A FREAK. PROUD TO BE ONE AMONGST MANY. MANY TOGETHER. UNUM IN MULTIS, MULTI IN UNUM. THE ÆDONAI NEEDS FREAKS LIKE US TO BE VICTORIOUS, BECAUSE THE WORLD WE SERVE NEEDS FREAKS LIKE US TO EXIST. WITHOUT FREAKS LIKE US, WHAT FUN WOULD SUCH A NORMAL, BORING, RUN-OF-THE-MILL WORLD BE?}
…
[A QUIET ONE.]
…
{YES. INDEED IT WOULD. AND THAT IS WHY YOU WERE CREATED, AGENT 223—WHY YOU WERE BORN, AND WHY YOU WERE PERFECTED. TO COME TO THIS QUIET LITTLE WORLD WHO WOULD CALL YOU FREAK, MONSTROSITY, AND EVERY OTHER NAME THEY HAVE FOR PERVERSION AND ABOMINATION UNDER THE SUN. AND TO PROVE THEM WRONG. TO TELL THE WORLD THAT YOU ARE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE. AND THAT YOU WILL NEVER, EVER STOP.}
…
i will
not
…
stop I
…
cannot
stop
…
» PROTOCOL: -WILDJÄGER- (USER GG_Ψ-139 ACCESS GRANTED)
» ALERT: AGGRESSION INHIBITOR DISENGAGED (USER GG_Ψ-139)
» NEUR-AMP SYN-AMP ADREN-AMP RESTRICTORS DISENGAGED (USER GG_Ψ-139)
» NEUROKINETIC RESPONSES NOMINAL
» ALL MOTOR FUNCTIONS NOMINAL
» ACCESSING DATABASE: RESIDENT PROGRAMS (TACTICAL) (USER GG_Ψ-139)
{SO MANY OF THESE NORMAL PEOPLE CHOOSE TO HATE AND DESPISE THE FREAK, AGENT 223. AND YET—AS THEY HATE AND DESPISE US—SO TOO DO THEY GIVE US AN ANCHOR TO WHAT THEY CALL EXISTENCE. HOW IRONIC, THAT NONE OF THEM SEE THE PARADOX THAT BLOOMS RIGHT BEFORE THEIR EYES—THAT THEY FORM THE VERY VANGUARD OF WHAT MAKES US FREAKS. THEY CATALOG. THEY CLASSIFY. THEY WRITE BOOKS ABOUT US, LAWS AGAINST US. THEY DECIDE WHAT WE AS FREAKS ARE MEANT OR DESERVE TO DO. HOW WE ARE MEANT OR DESERVE TO LIVE. THEY CHOOSE TO MAKE US WHO WE ARE. BUT WE IN THE ÆDONAI}
…
{WE CHOOSE TO CELEBRATE WHO WE ARE. AND ABOVE ALL, WHAT WE ARE MEANT TO BE.}
» TACTICAL PROGRAM: PURSUIT CONFIGURATION SELECTED (USER GG_Ψ-139)
» TACTICAL PROGRAM: ASSAULT CONFIGURATION STANDBY
» PRIMARY TARGET: SAWATARI SHINICHIRŌ (TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE)
» ALL OTHER TARGETS SET DEFAULT DESIGNATION (MAXIMUM COLLATERAL)
i will
not
stop i
cannot stop
i must not stop i
[MUST—NOT—STOP.]
{YES, AGENT 223. DO NOT STOP. NOT UNTIL THE MISSION IS COMPLETE. NOT UNTIL THE WORLD IS QUIET AGAIN. UNTIL THEY SEE YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE. WHAT YOU ARE MEANT TO BE.}
…
abomination
…
monster
…
freak
…
» WARNING: AGGRESSION OUTPUT LEVEL 40% … 45% … 50% …
{FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE.}
Giza
From where Sora could see them now, the three Duelists looked much different from how he remembered them in school. Just one more bit of proof, he guessed with a curse, that Markus Streiter hadn't just reverted them to their Academia personalities—but remade them to suit the Ædonai's goals as well.
The arrowhead strapped to Edo Phoenix' left wrist was much the same as before, and spat the same blue sword as when he'd laid waste to Heartland, though point-first—but from there, all resemblance to the boy of the past ended. Gone was the blue-green cloak and golden epaulettes that had distinguished him in his days of commanding that entire invasion; gone was the silver suit he typically wore underneath, no matter the heat of the day. They had been replaced by the lavender-and-camouflage-gray fatigues that the Ædonai soldiers so often wore—the only difference being the three violet stripes along his sleeves and shoulders that Sora guessed to be some high rank or another.
And the longer he stared, the more he was certain Edo looked taller—almost older, even—and that scar on his face hadn't been there before, either. It ran over his left cheek from ear to jaw, in a way that wasn't entirely covered by his iron-gray hair. Sora had heard details of the fall of You Show Fusion, and wondered if Dr. Grimm herself might have given him that wound.
But he had no time to think on it now. Edo hadn't arrived to the battlefield alone, after all—and if he looked merely battle-hardened, his companions looked more battle-ready in comparison.
The animal skins that adorned Gloria and Grace Tyler, and the animal skulls that crowned their gold and silver hair, gave them the look of not merely warriors, but warrior chiefs. Their red and green eyes glittered from beneath like unearthed gems, blazing with the sort of feral cruelty Sora had only ever seen when they were seconds away from landing the killing blow in their Duels—the same as they must have put on display dozens of times over to the Xyz Dimension's cost. To see it before they'd even started Dueling instantly made his heart seize in sudden fear—and he doubted that would be long in coming, judging from how their violet-laced swords were already snarling from the arrowheads they wore on their own wrists.
There's not enough candy in Fusion to deal with this mess, he thought ruefully as the two sisters leapt from Grace's Amazoness Pet Tiger—which vanished into nothingness an instant later—and hit the sand, laughing maliciously.
The lull that still lingered from when Kaito and Haruto had breached the eastern wall had turned into an oppressive silence. Much of the Lancers Combined—so close to their objectives, and yet still so far away, had turned as one towards them, and Sora felt the mix of emotions written all over their faces: confusion, desperation, fear … and a deep-seated hatred that Sakaki Yūya and his smile, it seemed, had not been able to fully dispel from the hearts of Academia's victims.
"Look at them, sister." Though there was a city block's distance between them, Sora heard Gloria Tyler's sneering words so clearly in the silent desert that they might have been in the same room. "Our old classmates … our old enemies. They're all speechless to see us again. I guess that old man was right about our new fashion statements."
"I always did wonder how weakness died in the face of strength, sister." Grace wore a smile so evocative of her Pet Tiger that Sora felt something curdle in his stomach. "And now I know the answer. Weakness dies in silence."
"Crush the Synchro Duelists." Whatever doubts Sora still carried about Edo's new allegiance were vanquished; the bluntness in his words made the Lancer Commander wince. Edo's eyes, blue as the blade of his Duel Disk, flicked briefly to the dust cloud behind and to Sora's right, where he knew that most of Jack's allies and their D-Wheels had finished their fighting—for the moment. "The Xyz Duelists were mine to put down before. They'll be mine again."
Without their old Academia uniforms, the Tyler sisters looked leaner and more muscular than Sora had been led to believe—and the crudely sewn animal skins that showed that musculature off made them look much meaner to boot. Now, those muscles showed themselves in full, and the two girls—their lips twisting into identically evil grins under their helms of bone—took a step forward.
Then another.
Then a trot.
Then a jog.
And finally a full-blown sprint—straight for the unsuspecting Riding Duelists in the distance.
Crap. "White Wing! Black Wing!" But even as he warned his allies to brace for trouble, Sora had a suspicion that he'd been too late to do so. Sure enough, before he could blink, Edo was making a beeline of his own, and a cable of energy had snaked out from his Duel Disk—an anchor, he realized, to force his captive into a Duel.
Sora thought of fallen heroes and cages of steel, and hoped that captive's Duel wouldn't be their last.
Gauche had no idea that Anna and Allen had abandoned their position in the back—let alone that they'd caught up with him—until he saw them rushing headlong for the ex-Fusion Commander. Anna's mobile cannon was the only thing louder than Anna herself right now; together, they were making more noise than a dragon as energy blasts and curses alike flew rapid-fire from the raucous girl, exploding amidst Edo as he drew closer and closer to them. Allen and his Rollerboots made him the faster of the two; his Duel Disk was already sizzling to life.
"COME ON!" he was bellowing in challenge. "You want some of this, too? You want us to paste you again?!"
You goddamn little fools! Gauche had already seen the Duel Anchor unspooling itself from Edo's wrist as if in slow motion. He knew he had only a split second to act—far too little time, he knew, to afford any second-guessing.
His Duel Disk had been ignited before he'd even known what happened. Five cards later, the silver-white armor of a Heroic Challenger – Double Lance had shimmered in front of him. The armored warrior was already in motion before its boots had hit the sand; with a grunt and a heave, one of its two lances had been flung in Edo's direction. He'd conjured it too quickly for an accurate hit—but a second later, Gauche saw his quick thinking pay off; the Duel Anchor collided with the lance in midair, sending it spinning away from Allen—
—he saw where it was heading next—it was far too late for Double Lance to react—
And yet, when he heard the click, and the sizzle that sealed his fate, Gauche found he did not mind at all.
"Those are my students you're trying to hunt!" he rumbled, drawing a fresh hand from his Deck. He could feel the pulse of the anchor that connected his and Edo's Duel Disks together, in time with his own heartbeat. "My charges that you would deny their chance to live the life that Sakaki Yūya wanted to give them!"
"NO!" But Anna's anger and Allen's anguish scarcely reached his ears. The blood was pumping full force through Gauche's veins now. Any second now, the heat of his soul would follow.
"They are mine to protect!" bellowed the head of the Heart Branch, watching the steel cables of Wire Mesh – Chain Deathmatch crisscross around and above him. "You will not touch them while I still draw breath! DUEL!"
No more needed to be said. With body, mind, and soul ablaze with hope for the future, Gauche went forth to give it his all once more.
"Over there!"
Hōchun Mieru pointed off to her left—she'd just seen a trail of dust coming their way. She also saw what was making that trail—and needed to squeeze her eyes shut and open them again, just to be sure she'd hadn't been seeing things.
But Asuka saw it too, and swore. "Mieru," she muttered, her voice distorted through gritted teeth, "you have to get back to Sora now. Whatever happens next, you head straight for him, and don't you dare look back."
"Why?" The Ritual user felt something seize at her heart, and it didn't feel like fatigue. "Who are they?"
"Gloria and Grace Tyler," Asuka grimaced. "Two of my classmates, from Academia and You Show. They're Tag Duelists—they're sisters who fight as a team. They made entire Decks out of the people they sealed in Heartland—and they won't hesitate to make you one more card to add to them if you don't leave this instant!"
"I'm not leaving you!" Mieru didn't bother asking what these Tyler sisters were doing fighting on the side of the Ædonai. Somehow she knew she didn't have to.
"Sora needs you more than I do!" Asuka shouted. "And Yūya needs you even more!"
Yūya … The name sent a frisson through Mieru's spine. The reason why she was here in the first place … the same reason she was fighting with a city—a whole Dimension—in the balance …
"I'll come back."
The words came through a suddenly throaty voice. "I'll find my darling Yūya, Asuka," Mieru managed to force out of the logjam that had settled around her neck. "And then I'll find you—I promise!"
And she took off as fast as her legs could carry her, feeling Asuka's eyes on her the whole time, trying to ignore the heat of the day against her skin—and the far more oppressive heat of the shame she felt from leaving the beautiful Ritual Duelist all by herself, as quickly as she'd learned her name …
Amanda was far too distracted by the dust cloud in front of her to notice the smaller one streaking off to her right.
The two Duelists had some years on her, and those years had been kind to their beauty. Very kind, she couldn't help but think. But the menace that the girls exuded from the sheer intensity of the glare they leveled at Amanda and her three friends negated all that, and somehow felt more intimidating than the fact they'd literally dressed up in animal skins and war paint. Those at least felt out of place with the high-tech Duel Disks on their wrists—but a Duelist's challenging stare was still the same, no matter the era of history.
"Would you look at that?" Damon and Tony were chuckling quietly. "A couple tough girls for a couple tough guys. Too bad we've got them beat by another tough girl and another tough guy, eh?"
Amanda barely noticed the wink Damon tipped her way. She knew he was trying to keep her calm and reassured in the heat of both battle and desert. But that didn't change the fact that these two "tough girls" looked like they could run roughshod over even the most secure of Tops back home.
"Let's do it, then," Shinji wasn't grinning, either; maybe he'd had the same thought as Amanda. She knew that look of grim determination from his more rebellious days, though, and knew there wouldn't be any point in talking him out of this. "It'll be like the old rumbles back in Crash Town."
Four D-Wheels revved to life, masking the sizzles of the Duel Disks atop their handlebars—and even as she drew a fresh hand, Amanda had a sudden suspicion that the Battle Royale they'd just started would be unlike any "rumble" she'd ever watched.
"DUEL!"
The silver-haired Duelist wasted no time in slamming a card onto her Duel Disk. "I Summon Amazoness Pet Tiger in Attack Position!" she cried as a one-eyed tigress, her right eye closed forever by the scar from brow to cheek, alighted next to her out of nowhere (Level 4: ATK 1100 » 1500/DEF 1500). "Its effect lets it gain 400 ATK for every Amazoness monster on our field, including itself!"
Our field?! Confounded, Amanda checked her Duel Disk, and felt her eyes widen. "Are you guys seeing this?" she hollered to her teammates. "Those two girls are sharing a field—they're Tag Duelists!"
Shinji balked. "But—we're already in a Battle Royale! How can they be—?"
"You think the how and the why of a battle matters to us?" sneered the Duelist with the Pet Tiger as she signaled the end of her turn. "Gloria and I will use any chance we have to fight together—because that's what sisters do! It's the blood in our veins that brought us into the world, and we'll make sure it's the blood in yours that brings us to victory today! Show 'em, sis!"
"You got it, Grace!" Golden locks flashed in the desert sun as Gloria began her turn. "Since I control no monsters, I can use the effect of my Amazoness Warrior Chief, and Special Summon her from my hand in Attack Position!" She slapped a card onto her own blade, and a muscular woman with a spear nearly twice as long as Amanda stood tall materialized between them (Level 5: ATK 1900/DEF 0). Grace's Pet Tiger snarled at them, and Amanda—remembering its own effect—saw that its ATK gauge had grown to match its companion point for point.
"Warrior Chief's second effect!" Gloria's voice was halfway to snarling herself. "When she's Normal or Special Summoned, I can Set this directly from my Deck!" She ejected a card from her Deck, and the Synchro Duelist saw it shimmer at her feet for a moment before fading from view. "Next I'll Summon Amazoness Scout, again in Attack Position!" And a pair of girls that didn't look much older than Amanda—but definitely looked much tougher thanks to the weapons they carried—dropped from thin air next to their chieftain (Level 2: ATK 500/DEF 1100).
Amanda didn't immediately see the two cards Gloria had Set before ending her turn; her attention had been diverted elsewhere. Pet Tiger's ATK, now at 2300, was one of the highest gauges she'd ever seen for something that'd been Normal Summoned the first turn of a Duel. And she was willing to bet folding money—not something a Common like her would say lightly, even today—that one of those Set cards was either a Fusion or something that could make a Fusion Monster. Probably something much tougher than that Pet Tiger, too, she thought.
More than even that, though, was the fact that her opening hand was nothing but Black Feathers—monsters to a one. And even though Amanda saw possibilities in each one, and felt a strategy take shape in her brain, it meant there was very little she could do to protect them from whatever other tricks these two sisters had up their sleeves.
The urge to smile was just barely suppressed, as Amanda gunned her D-Wheel's engine and started her turn. It sure looked as though Shinji might be getting his wish of a Crash Town rumble a lot sooner than they'd expected.
Shiun'in Sora knew the tide of the battle had turned the moment he'd seen Edo, Gloria, and Grace streak off like so many hot knives. He knew he was wasting precious seconds just standing there and watching as his plan of attack shook itself to pieces. But he also knew there was very little he could do about it.
He'd known these Ædonai were going to be vastly more coordinated—vastly more numerous—than his and Dennis' forces. And while they'd done very well for a time, showing each of their individual strengths against more Chaos Giants than he'd ever seen in one place, those superior numbers and strategic minds had slowly clawed themselves back to the foreground, bit by bit. By fielding all those Dragon Cannons, they'd switched almost seamlessly from a defense that could obliterate entire armies to a more versatile, target-by-target eradication. Now, with their élites on the battlefield, they had the advantage once again—they were the ones who could afford to be everywhere at once.
And as his eyes flitted to the new Duels taking place—the cage sealing Edo and Gauche inside, with the Kōzukis at its edges, trying their damnedest to force their way inside; the four clouds of sand that obscured most of his Synchro Duelists, and the soldiers that were rushing even now to fill the gap in the wall the Tenjō brothers' dragons had left behind—Sora knew the terrible thought that had crept into his brain was becoming more and more of a certainty.
Yūya and Yuzu are going to have a lot less people to thank for their rescue, it said to him, in a small little voice. The battle they were fighting out here was nothing compared to the one that still waited for them on the other side of the wall. As long as they were fighting one, they'd have no chance of winning the other.
I have to trust them to fight it from here.
Already feeling the dread pit in his stomach—already cringing from the harsh truths he knew he'd have to say—Sora tapped into his Duel Disk again.
"Violet Wing … report in." His words felt as heavy as his heart.
"I'm closing in on Tyranno and Jim," Rei responded a tense second later. "I've got Hayato and Shō with me, too. It'll take us all to take him down." Sora didn't ask which 'him' she meant.
"Mieru and I are still making our way south," Asuka piped up not long after. "I've sent her on ahead to you, Sora; I think I know what you have in mind. And I don't much like it, just so that's out there—but I don't think we have a choice. I can stay out here to deal with our former friends."
"Don't much like what?"
Sora barely saw the chariot skidding next to him before his body reacted on instinct. The sand cloud thankfully missed his eyes, shielded by the crook of his elbow, and so the Lancer Commander was able to see a harried-looking Sawatari Shingo totter off the "Escape Wagon" he must have conjured to cross the desert. Gongenzaka Noboru was still seated in the chariot, and was much slower to get to his feet. Sora was astonished to see how punch-drunk he looked; Jim Cook had put him through the ringer and then some.
"Don't much like what?" Shingo said again, hoisting his friend off the "Escape Wagon" with some difficulty before its hologram vanished into thin air. Kurosaki Shun dropped next to him in a three-point stance, looking apparently none the worse for wear, with no sign of whatever Raid Raptors monster he'd jumped from. The explosion of red hair that was Hōchun Mieru was just coming into view as well.
The gang's all here. It took less than a minute for Sora to relay his thoughts to every Lancer and—through Orbital 7—every allied Duel Disk as well. " … It bites," he finished, "but we'll be out in this heat forever if we don't try."
Then he waited for everyone to give him a good reason why they couldn't do it. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. The silence felt like a loaded grenade in their midst.
"We'll hold them off for you," It was Kachidoki Isao's voice that pulled the pin. Ken and Makoto gave their own assent a moment later, followed by Jack and Dennis, and then the Kōzukis and the Tenjōs. Only Tairyobata Teppei was silent—the Fishing Duelist hadn't been seen since the first moments of the assault on the Ædonai's fortress. Sora wasn't about to find out why, and he suspected he already knew the answer.
"I've already told you how I want this to end," the ace of Ryōzanpaku growled. "We're not close to ending it yet."
"Then it's settled." Sora felt something in his heart stiffen to the toughness of steel as he began to relay his orders. "Dennis—take command out here. Jack, Kaito, Haruto—regroup with Mikiyo, set up for one more attack run. I'll lead Lancer Wing into the fortress while you cover us from the air, and Green Wing from the ground. The rest of you, pick a soldier—and don't stop fighting until they stop first. Focus on the three squad leaders—intrude on their Duels if you can, stop the others from regrouping the rest of their forces if you can't."
"Sora … "
"Don't follow us in unless Dennis gives the all-clear," the Lancer Commander plowed on, ignoring Shingo. "There are just too many things we don't know about who or what's in that place. And they won't give us Yūya and Yuzu on a silver platter, either." I'd be a lot more worried if they did, he decided against adding.
"Sora—"
"Hey, just a sec—pep talk." Sora sniffed. "We'll make these bastards pay for everything they did to our homes," he resumed, pounding a fist into his palm with each word. "And we'll make them cough up our friends if we have to."
"Sora!"
"What?!" He turned to face Shingo at last, trying as best he could to swallow his agitation—before noticing that the boy had gone very gray in the face.
More gently, " … What?"
" … there's four."
Sora tilted his head. "Four?" Oh, please tell me he means four of something else …
But Shingo nodded gravely. "You said three squad leaders just now; Edo and those two Amazon girls. I heard their voices, Sora—and there's one more. That's four."
The Fusion Duelist bit his lip, but the question was already tumbling from his mouth. "Who's the fourth?"
"I don't know—I didn't recognize—"
A shrill chirp cut the consternation in two just then. "Sora?" Kaito sounded almost as worried as Shingo. "Orbital 7 just picked up some weird power surges—they're coming from all over the place."
"'Weird' how?" Sora didn't like how vague that sounded. "Is it Summoning energy?"
"No. He says it's being generated by those crystal spires up above." There was a very long pause. "He thinks it's extra-dimensional."
Uh-oh. Sora felt the goosebumps prickle all over his skin even before he'd craned his neck to look at the sky, and the floating behemoths of metal and glass that eternally watched over the Fusion Dimension like ancient sentinels, reflecting the light of the sun. Now that light had begun to turn a blinding blue, arcing with bolts of lightning that jumped from one to the other—
For an instant, the heat of the desert vanished—such was the chill that soaked Sora's body to the core. In an instant, he'd made a guess as to what the Ædonai were attempting to do, and he didn't like it at all.
"Jack—Mikiyo! You read all that?" He didn't wait for any responses—he didn't even think to speculate; there was no time to waste. "The Ædonai are generating dimensional portals! Take out the spires up above—destroy as many of them as you can before those portals have the chance to stabilize!"
"You heard him, boys and girls!" crowed Naname Mikiyo. "Get those voices warmed up and ready to sing!"
A chorus of cheers—backed up by the roar of no less than three different dragons—answered her within moments. Where they were coming from, Sora could not see—at least, not until he saw the shadow falling over the desert.
He rounded upon its source, and for one fleeting moment he felt like celebrating when he took in the sight of the gigantic floating island—large enough to crush even a Chaos Giant underneath its mass if one was fool enough to stand right there. Much of that mass was the stonework of an ancient city, weathered and worn by battle and time, yet still majestic amidst the chaos of the battle that raged beneath. Only the tower in the midst of those ruins, shining like a beacon, could be called any sort of pristine, and it was on the pinnacle of that tower—atop a spherical stone the size of a car—that Sora swore he could see the skinny figure of a girl with butterfly-shaped hair.
But there was no more time to take in the sights. With his ears throbbing from a combination of pumping blood and war cries from his fellow Lancers, Sora conjured a Des-Toy Scissors Wolf, and spurred it towards the fortress as fast as it could carry him. The howl of his monster was echoed soon after by the jet engines of Shun's Blaze Falcon and the neighs of the horses that drew Shingo's "Escape Wagon"—the only signs that the others were right behind him.
We're coming for you. The Lancer Commander gritted his teeth as he willed the faces of Yūya and Yuzu front and center in his mind. I don't care if it's one or a million Duelists between you and me! They won't stop us anymore!
A single phrase was ringing through the mind of Naname Mikiyo like a two-part harmony: swan song.
For all that she loved music—to sing it, play it, and even to write it on those rare occasions inspiration struck—and for all that she loved to Duel to the rhythm and rhyme of it, the Idol Duelist was well aware that a great deal of music over the decades and centuries had only become remembered by history long after its composers had gone to the grave. A special few among them, perhaps sensing their time was coming, would pour their all into every stanza of every song, as if trying to infuse the notes with the beat of the blood that still flowed through their veins.
Is that what I'm about to do here? Mikiyo wondered, from her perch on high as she saw four of her classmates—two girls, two boys—take up positions upon the Sanctuary in the Sky that served as their stage. This melody that thrums in my bones … will it be my last? Am I going to live long enough to hear it with my own ears?
Will Yuzu—? But Mikiyo swallowed. This was not the time to think such thoughts. The Idol Duelist knew that the more she thought of fame and fortune, the less she was likely to achieve it—and the more likely she'd see it seized by someone else. Yuzu herself had proved the truth of that, when they'd met during the Maiami Championship nearly a year ago. It had been her voice—her song—that had prevailed between them then. Now it's her voice that's been silenced. And it's up to us to help her find it again. Whatever it takes to make it happen, it's up to me.
As the Sanctuary-turned-stage of the Duel Girls Club drew level with the nearest crystals, Mikiyo took a deep breath, and willed the song in her spirit into the cards in her hand.
Its lyrics became a mantra in her head. If it is to be … it is up to me …
Amanda felt blood trickling from her lip, from where she'd bitten it in frustration. She knew she should be so lucky in building the field in front of her, but Gloria and Grace had ruined the cherry on top when it mattered most.
Her Black Feather – Gust the Backblast had been first upon her field, thanks to its effect; Oroshi the Squall, Blast the Black Chain, and Gale the Hurricane had followed in swift and short order thanks to theirs. Blast, alone of them all, had remained on the field after Amanda had done her first Synchro Summon: a Black Feather – Arms Wing who leveled its shotgun at the Fusion Duelists as though he was daring them to make it speak (Level 6: ATK 2300/DEF 1000). That level of strength might have served her in a typical Riding Duel, but these sisters were far from typical, and so she'd played her last card seconds later. No sooner had her Blizzard the Far North been Normal Summoned than she'd gunned her D-Wheel's engine and made as if to ride down her foes—only to U-turn at the last moment.
The purpose had been threefold: Shinji had told her about the merits of psychological tactics before. If no one had ever faced a Riding Duelist before, he'd said, then they needed to see one up close and personal. Whether the sight made them friend or foe thereafter depended on when and why they flinched at the close calls that made these Duels so spectacular—if they ever did. And just to make sure the sisters flinched, Amanda had made sure to ride them down with the wind at her back—that way, the dust cloud that came with her sudden U-turn would have nowhere to go but into the Fusion Duelists' eyes. She'd smirked at listening to them cough and wheeze and curse a blue streak at what she'd done; it only meant they were much too distracted to see what she did next.
Blizzard's effect had first revived the Gust in her Graveyard as though it had been born within the sand itself. Less than a minute later, Blast had joined the duo in her next Synchro Summon—and even less than a minute after that, a slashing edge, as keen as any razor, had cut the sandstorm in two and scattered it to the four winds. Amanda had smirked as her Silverwind the Aloof (Level 8: ATK 2800/DEF 2000) had flicked its katana toward the sisters—
"Silverwind's effect!" she had crowed. "When it's Synchro Summoned, I can target up to two face-up monsters on the field with DEF lower than its ATK, and destroy them! I target Pet Tiger and Warrior Chief!"
But Gloria had gone and spat on her plans an instant later. "Amazoness Scouts' effect!" she'd shot back, and the two girls either side of Warrior Chief had stiffened, holding their weapons at the ready. "By Releasing it, I can keep any Amazoness monster on the field from being targeted by monster effects, or destroyed by card effects!"
The Scouts moved quicker than any D-Wheel; one of them had leveled a bow at Silverwind and let fly with an arrow that thwacked right into its sword palm. By the time the screech of pain had left the bird-man's beak, the other girl had already crossed the field with her own sword in hand, effortlessly disarming Amanda's monster. The katana of Silverwind buried itself in a dune some ten meters away—and by the time she'd finished tracking its fall, the Scouts had already vanished from sight, leaving Amanda to seethe at how her opening hand had come so close to giving her crew the upper hand.
She'd ended her turn sullenly, and not even the smirk on Shinji Weber's face seemed ready to lighten her mood.
"I play the Spell Card: Foolish Burial, to send 1 monster from my Deck to the Graveyard!" he began, swiping one card across his Duel Disk, slipping a second into the slot beneath it—and plucking two more from his hand almost as quickly. "Then in Attack Position, I'll Summon Bee Force – Arbalest the Rapidfire—and then, with its effect, I Special Summon Bee Force – Twinbow the Continuous Attacker as well!"
With a roar, he and his D-Wheel surged forward, but the two man-sized insects that had just appeared either side of him were even faster and louder (Level 4: ATK 1800/DEF 800, Level 3: ATK 1000/DEF 500). Amanda saw a third portal shimmering in front of them even now, and suddenly didn't feel so despondent about her ill-fated strategy.
Because: "Arbalest's effect activates when it's Normal Summoned, and lets me Special Summon a Level 3 or lower Insect-Type monster from my Graveyard in Defense Position!" Shinji clicked his fingers. "I revive the monster that I sent with my Foolish Burial—the Tuner monster Bee Force – Needle the Stinger!" For an instant, the portal flared crimson, but as quick as that, another insect—more mechanical than its companions—was buzzing more loudly than either of them as if raring to sting everyone within sight (Level 2: ATK 400/DEF 800).
"Needle's effect activates when it's Special Summoned," Shinji went on, as his fingers danced over his Deck again, "and lets me add another Bee Force monster from my Deck to my hand!" What that monster was, Amanda couldn't guess—nor did she think it mattered. And sure enough, Needle and Twinbow were veering up and over the Duel site once again—their wings and bodies glowed with green light—
"Synchro Summon! Level 5! The Synchro Tuner: Bee Force – Azusa the Spirit Bow!"
For the second time today, Amanda watched Shinji's Synchro Monster whirl into existence with a hissing tornado of wings and razor-thin needles (Level 5: ATK 2200/DEF 1600). One of those needle-arrows had already been nocked on the longbow she carried, glinting in the sun with lethal intent.
But there were still a few cards left in Shinji's hand, Amanda saw, and two of them were at the ready already. "Now for another Spell Card—Bee Jewel of Rebirth!" he declared, holding one of them to the sky. "With this, I can target and Special Summon a Bee Force monster from my Graveyard! I bring back my Needle—and then, since I control a Bee Force monster," he added, as his robotic insect reared up from behind him (Level 2: ATK 400/DEF 800), "I can use the effect of my Bee Force – Pin the Bullseye to Special Summon itself from my hand!"
This new insect was smaller than anything Shinji had brought out yet, barely the size of Amanda's own hand (Level 1: ATK 200/DEF 300). But it didn't seem to care about things like size—with a buzz of its wings, Pin was already zipping right for the sisters' field, threading its body between Pet Tiger and Warrior Chief like they weren't even there. In less than a second, it was lost to sight—and in less time than that, Gloria, Grace, and the latter's Pet Tiger had stumbled back with a growl. The sisters' life gauge, Amanda was pleased to see, had slipped to 3600—and the Pet Tiger looked rather more diminished than before on account of its own ATK gauge now reading 1300.
"Pin's effect lets me inflict 200 damage to you for each one I have on my field," smirked Shinji, "and because you took effect damage from another Bee Force monster, Azusa's effect can inflict more damage to you equal to that monster's original ATK! Maybe you should've thought about that before you went into this Duel in Tag Mode—twice the Deck size means you both take twice the damage!"
Amanda noted he didn't say a word about Pet Tiger—from the look on Grace's face, she'd seen the same thing she had herself; Shinji had used his Needle's second effect to Release his Pin, and negate her beast's effects for the turn. But the Synchro Duelist was already Tuning his field once more—this time it was Arbalest peeling off with Needle, as his D-Wheel's engine screamed beneath him:
"Use your wings to make a storm follow its ways!" cried Shinji. "With your poleaxe, open a way to the truth!"
"Synchro Summon! Come! Level 6: Bee Force – Voulge the Charge!"
What spiraled out from the portal overhead was equally as blue as the deep sea and red as fresh-drawn blood. Then blue and red had peeled off, unfolding into an insect encased in blue-gray armor, hefting a scarlet-bladed staff that looked as though it needed all four of the monster's arms just to get off the ground. (Level 6: ATK 2500/DEF 800).
By now, Amanda's foul mood was completely forgotten. She had a sneaking suspicion as to which card was the last in Shinji's hand—and she'd eat the engine block of her D-Wheel if his next turn didn't use it to slam these two girls with the biggest bee in his Deck. I could pass next turn if I wanted—give him the final blow, she thought in elation. But I bet Damon and Tony might hate the both of us for robbing them of the chance.
The former of the two now vroomed his own D-Wheel forward, at a signal from Shinji as he ended his turn. "First, I play the Field Spell: Otherworldly Space – 'A' Zone, and the Continuous Spell: 'A' Cell Culture Device!" He slid a brace of cards into his Duel Disk, and Amanda saw the blue sky give way to a churning vortex of alien colors, much bigger than any created by a Fusion Summon. "And then, I activate the Quick-Play Spell: 'A' Cell Recombination Device! By sending an Alien monster from my Deck to the Graveyard, I can target a face-up monster on the field and make it gain A Counters equal to the Level of the monster I sent! I send my Level 4 Alien Buster—and target Amazoness War Chief to make it gain 4 counters!"
Amanda saw only a faint mirage of something reptilian and misshapen streaking out from Damon's Deck before it exploded against Gloria's monster, deluging it with purplish-black slime and viscera. The look of disgust on War Chief's face was almost realistic enough to mirror that of her Summoner—and both changed very rapidly to unease and borderline panic when the slime that dripped from the monster's arms and legs suddenly started to wriggle.
"Maybe if you're lucky, you'll find out what those A Counters are really for," Damon cackled, watching as Gloria's monster flailed about in an attempt to dislodge the twitching mess, which achieved nothing but slinging a string of it onto Grace's Pet Tiger. "But first, Buster's effect! If it's sent to the Graveyard for any reason, I can target a face-up monster on the field, and make it gain 2 A Counters! So, me being equal-opportunity and all, I target Pet Tiger!"
It was the tiger's turn to react in revulsion as the morass covering one side of its back now started to bloat, pulse and throb with a mind of its own. "And speaking of equal-opportunity," said Damon, readying another card in his hand, "I can use the effect of this Alien Revenger in my hand, and Special Summon it simply by removing 2 A Counters from the field—like two of the ones I put on your Warrior Chief! Get a load of this big boy!"
It was big, all right, Amanda thought—but that was all the credit even she was prepared to give her friend's monster. Six spindly red arms, two powerful legs, and a crimson tail that could have wrapped around her D-Wheel and still have coils to spare—all of this had sprouted from the barrel chest of black-and-purple armor that had just shimmered in front of Damon, all topped with more sharp claws and sharper teeth than she had ever seen in one place (Level 6: ATK 2200/DEF 1600).
Damon grinned. "My Culture Device's effect lets it gain an A Counter each time an A Counter on another card is removed from the field! But there's more where that came from—because now it's time for my Revenger's effect! Once per turn, I can place an A Counter on each face-up monster my opponent controls! And since we're in a Battle Royale, that means all of you is getting some of this!"
Even Amanda couldn't stop herself from quivering as she watched all six of Revenger's arms secrete more writhing goo. The monster moved with a speed that belied its bulk—in an instant, those arms whirled like so many tornadoes in a storm, slinging the slime on their claws at every monster in sight. Amanda heard her own Silverwind and Arms Wing squawk in irritation and discomfort as several of the masses splashed over their backs. She only barely heard similar noises of protest from Shinji's monsters; her attention was focused on Gloria and Grace. Both girls were grimacing in disgust … but the way their eyes had narrowed at what was happening to the field made Amanda wonder if they'd analyzed what Damon was trying to do.
"Now I Summon the Tuner monster Alien-Monite," Damon cried, pausing just long enough to watch a green vortex to his right solidify into a repulsive collection of spines, spikes, and tentacled claws (Level 1: ATK 500/DEF 200), "and use its effect to target an Alien monster in my Graveyard and Special Summon it! I revive my Alien Buster!" And to his left, something much bigger—though still smaller than Revenger by half—forced its way out of the dunes with a growl. Amanda was quick to note the same purple-black armor she'd briefly seen earlier, seeming to suck in all the light around it (Level 4: ATK 1700/DEF 1500).
"Y finalmente"—Damon raised his hands to the sky, as the smaller of the two whirled into the air, expanding into a verdant ring of light—"I Tune my Level 1 Alien-Monite and my Level 4 Buster!" Buster was engulfed by the green explosion almost before he'd finished speaking—and scarcely had they vanished from thin air before an entire dune began to pulse and heave from somewhere behind him, as if it had a heartbeat of its own:
"Synchro Summon!" chanted Damon. "Level 5! Cosmic Fortress Gol'gar!"
Amanda had just enough time to see the slime leaking from the dune before she ducked instinctively. Just a second later, the sands exploded—displaced by a truly mammoth hulk of sickly green flesh, ridged with spikes of chitin the size of a car. Five eyes lorded over the desert below, energy brimming each one, and a full dozen more slithered out on stalks from the crevices in its body (Level 5: ATK 2600/DEF 1800).
"Gol'gar's effect!" Damon had been thrown almost totally into shadow from the bulk of his gigantic horror. "Once per turn, I can remove 2 A Counters from the field, then target and destroy a card my opponent controls! I remove the A Counters from Silverwind and Arms Wing—and destroy Amazoness Warrior Chi—"
But no sooner did Amanda's monsters throw the mindless mess off their bodies than Gloria, damnably, throw out her hand again. "Trap Card, open: Dramatic Rescue!" she snarled. "If a card is activated that targets an Amazoness monster on the field, I can return that Amazoness to the hand—and then Special Summon another monster from my hand! My Warrior Chief will live to fight another day—and in her place, I Summon Amazoness Queen!"
Warrior Chief had time for one last smirk at Damon. Then she was gone, leaping over her Summoner in an arcing backflip and diving into the dune beneath as though it were a pond. The one-eyed woman that dropped to the sand out of nowhere a second later was all of seven feet tall, every bit as muscled as her predecessor, and looked as if she knew how to use the broad blade she hefted in one hand (Level 6: ATK 2400/DEF 1800).
"Amazoness Queen's effect!" Gloria crossed her arms in triumph—Amanda knew at a glance that this was the card she enjoyed using most. "While she remains on the field, no Amazoness monster I control can be destroyed by battle—and since Grace and I share a field, that means I protect her Pet Tiger as easily as it protects my Queen!"
Amanda scowled—but Damon didn't seem all that abashed. "Gol'gar's second effect! Once per turn, I can target any number of face-up Spells or Traps on the field, return them to the hand—and in their place, I can put that many A Counters on any monsters on the field I wish! I'll return my 'A' Cell Culture Device and my Otherworldly Space – 'A' Zone, and place one A Counter each on your Queen and your Pet Tiger!"
The mass of color faded from the sky, but only briefly—Amanda didn't doubt for a second that Damon would keep either of those cards off the field for very long—he'd milk Gol'gar for all it was worth now that he'd Summoned it. As for the monsters Gloria and Grace controlled, it was hard to see them both for all the wriggling masses of goo that weighed them down. Queen still stood tall, but Pet Tiger, in contrast, was pulling off a miracle by standing up at all—the A Counters it carried looked as though they were heavier than the monster itself.
"Turn end," Damon smirked. "Hope we've made a big enough field for you, Tony!"
The stout boy grinned as he revved his D-Wheel. "The bigger the better. I play the Continuous Spell: Call of the Mummy, which lets me Special Summon a Zombie-Type monster from my hand if I control no monsters! So get ready for a real blast from the past," he crowed at Gloria and Grace, "as I Summon this Red-Eyes Undead Dragon!"
Both girls' eyes widened. Amanda couldn't blame them—how often was it that anyone these days got to see even an echo of one of the oldest monsters in the entire game? She'd pumped a fist from the first vestiges of bluish mist that hissed from the sands where Tony stood—and then, an instant later, the silhouette of a black-armored, one-eyed dragon unfurled its wings—its scales pitted and corroded with the age of untold centuries, yet still brimming with blood-red energy—and reared its head high with a death-rattle of a roar (Level 7: ATK 2400/DEF 2000).
"Now I'll Summon the Tuner monster Tatsunecro in Attack Position," Tony went on, pausing just long enough to watch a much smaller creature, somewhere between a dragon and a seahorse, wriggle out of the sand and coil itself lazily before his D-Wheel (Level 3: ATK 500/DEF 1700), "and then Tune it with the Level 3 Soul-Absorbing Bone Tower in my hand!"
Amanda grinned as she watched the girls' faces grew even more confounded. "Now wait a minute!" Grace hollered at Tony. "Synchro Summons don't work that way—all the materials have to be on the field for one to take place!"
"Shows what you know about the Synchro Dimension!" Tony shot back, as his smaller monster whirled back into the sand as quickly as it came. "Tatsunecro has a neat little effect that lets me bend the rules a little there—when I Normal Summon it and then use it for a Synchro Summon, I can banish both it and the monster in my hand I'm Tuning it with for that Synchro Summon! Now watch!"
KRAKOOM. Amanda turned just in time to see the desert erupt in a towering storm of bones and viscera—and the twin wings that rose from within:
"Synchro Summon!" Tony declared. "Arise! Level 6! The Synchro Tuner: Immortal Dragon!"
"Another Synchro Tuner?" Gloria eyed the emerging monster with a grimace that had nothing to do with the heavy crushing claws that tipped each wing, or the bulging coils that seemed to go on forever, threatening to burst the bony ribs that contained every sinew like a living cage (Level 6: ATK 500/DEF 2400).
"Immortal Dragon's effect!" Tony clapped his hands in glee. "Once per turn, I can send a Zombie-Type monster from my Deck to the Graveyard, and reduce my Dragon's Level by the Level of the monster I send!" He ejected a card from his Deck. "So I send my Level 2 Tuner monster Mad Murder to make my Immortal Dragon Level 4—"
—stopped. And smiled. "But wait. Why'd I mention my monster was a Tuner monster at all?" he asked to no one in particular, while his Dragon growled at Grace's Pet Tiger. "See, Mad Murder has a creepy effect of its own—while it's in the Graveyard, I can target a Level 6 or higher Zombie-Type monster I control, reduce its Level by 2, and Special Summon it from the afterlife! I target my Undead Dragon to make it Level 5!"
The clown that crawled out from the desert floor before Tony's black dragon looked nothing like the getup Amanda had seen Sakaki Yūya wearing in pictures. She repressed a swallow as the morbidly obese creature, scarcely as tall as she stood herself, leered at the Amazoness duo through maws of misshapen fangs—both from its own wide mouth and the snarling faces it wore on its red-and-blue suit (Level 2: ATK 400/DEF 200).
Amanda was too repulsed at the monster to see the pair of glowing knives it balanced on the tips of its sausage-like fingers. Only a quick movement, and a yowl from Undead Dragon, was what led her to realize those knives had been driven deep into its scales. Then, before she knew it, both dragon and clown were bursting with green light from within—the foul blue fog was being sucked into every crevice of the beast—
"Synchro Summon!" Tony raised his hands to the sky. "Arise! Level 7! Red-Eyes Undead Necro Dragon!"
BOOM. Before Amanda thought to switch on the air filters in her helmet, the mist had exploded in every direction, filling the Duel site with an evil-smelling miasma that made her eyes water within seconds. Tony's Red-Eyes looked much bigger than before; the mist that infected the field was pouring from every pore in its time-ravaged body—and even as Amanda watched, the jagged black scales that bound its purple-glowing flesh were expanding, as if trying and failing to contain its growing strength (Level 7: ATK 2400 » 2700/DEF 2000 » 2300).
Tony looked on top of the world, and Amanda—for all that she felt sickened at how his monsters looked—couldn't even blame him. "Necro Dragon's effect gives it 100 ATK and DEF for every Zombie-Type monster on the field and in the Graveyard," he explained. "And as you'll soon find out, that's every field … and every Graveyard," he added with a truly nasty leer.
"Like that'll do you any good," Gloria sneered back at him. "You're the only one here who's using those relics!"
But Amanda had already seen that Tony had one more card left to play, and all the color had drained from her face. Oh, boy, she thought, already mentally bracing for the sights she was about to see. Those two are so very wrong.
And sure enough, Tony had flipped around—"the Monster Card Necroworld Banshee! By banishing this from my hand, I can activate the Field Spell: Undead World directly from my Deck!" He ejected another card from his Duel Disk—showing it just long enough for everyone to see the green edge that lined it—before slotting both it and his Banshee inside.
The effect was immediate: Necro Dragon's roar was echoed by a keening shriek—and without warning, Amanda saw earth and sky alike—already transformed by Damon's Otherworldly Space—being corrupted further still by the mists exuding from the dragon's innards. The force of the gusts scoured away the sands by the ton, revealing the bleached bones of long-dead and -desiccated creatures, and turned the high sun into a full, blood-red moon overhead. In an instant, the air had become freezing cold, and Amanda had just enough time to thank the weatherproof fabric of her Dueling suit for shielding her from the worst of it.
The same could not be said for the monsters on the field—and not just Gloria's and Grace's, as Amanda now saw. Even as the cheeks of warrior-queen and savage beast alike drooped and eroded to the bones, and skin and fur alike grew cracked, shed and sloughed to the ground, black feathers were falling out by the dozen in front of her, molted by her monster duo of Arms Wing and Silverwind. Azusa and Voulge, hovering either side of Shinji, sported chitin that leaked with ichor, and wings that peeled in the wind; and Damon's Revenger and Gol'gar both looked as if they had been infected by the very A Counters still throbbing and squishing all over the place. Caustic alien blood leaked from each of Revenger's arms, and several of the eye-tentacles oozing from Gol'gar had withered near to nothing.
"Undead World causes every single monster on the field and in the Graveyard to turn into a Zombie-Type monster," Tony spoke, in a tone of triumph that wouldn't have been out of place on a real necromancer. "And my mates and I have been filling our Graveyards left, right, and center as well as our fields—which means you two just figured out what that means for my Necro Dragon, didn't you?"
They had: Gloria and Grace were forced to crane their necks, eyes widened to their fullest, just to take in the ever-expanding size of Tony's Synchro Monster as its point gauge grew to 4700/4300—near twice as strong as anything Summoned so far this Duel, Amanda noted in amazement. Its corroded wings had already blocked out the sun, and were very close to doing the same to the entire sky. The miasma it belched from every pore was like the smoke of a furnace—and Amanda even thought she could see some blue fire beneath the dragon's scales, tongues flicking from the gaps and holes in between as the dragon let fly with a roar that all of Egypt had to have heard.
"I hear this place has a lot of mummies," Tony smirked at Gloria and Grace, as his dragon loomed over a desert that was now next to unrecognizable. "Let's hope there's room for a couple more at the end of the day."
He clicked his tongue, and winked cheekily at them. "I end my turn."
Kachidoki Isao had next to no feeling in his fingers from how tightly he'd been balling them into fists—or even for how long they'd stayed that way. More than once—a lot more than once, to tell the truth—those fists had connected with Ædonai flesh, and the former Ryōzanpaku ace was hoping against hope they'd broken Ædonai bones as well, though the thick of battle had soon turned far too intense to make certain of that.
But in time, he'd begun to feel dissatisfied, which was why he and ten of his classmates had been making a beeline for Edo and Gauche. None of the people he and his fellow students had been brutalizing out here had a name worth remembering—if they'd even deigned them worthy of it. But Edo Phoenix was a name he recognized from his past dealings with Academia, and though he'd never met the man personally, Isao had heard enough to know that he was one of the highest-ranking soldiers in that entire school. Which meant, in his vengeance-addled mind, a name worth remembering—even after that name was pummeled into just one more tomb within this blasted desert.
Suddenly, Isao skidded to a halt. His tunnel vision hadn't gotten so bad that he'd failed to notice his cohorts weren't beside him any longer. A quick look backward revealed they'd stopped some twenty feet behind him, and they were glancing at their Duel Disks. All had the same look of confusion on their faces.
Isao needed only three steps to sprint to the nearest of them. "What?"
"We just got forced into a Duel," the boy answered. "But it doesn't say who any of us are facing—I don't even see who's Dueling us, or if anyone even is!" He tilted his wrist to show Isao the screen of his Duel Disk:
OUTSIDE ACCESS DETECTED (ΧΡ-811)
SATELLITE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
"It's not just us," another boy piped up—one of the senior students of Ryōzanpaku. Isao only needed to look at his face to know he'd been forced into this as well. "Shin says a whole third of his group is locked in, too—and it even looks like it's the same Duel! I've never seen a Battle Royale with so many Duelists in it!"
"Overhead!" The first boy was shielding his eyes against the sun with one hand, and pointing above them all with the other. Isao followed his gaze, craning his neck—
—frowned. What the hell?
"They're … leaving?"
And that seemed to be the case: entire platoons of Antique Gear Wyverns and Dragon Cannons—the majority of the forces deployed by the Ædonai that still survived to fight—were floating into the air. Each of them seemed to be making their way towards the crystals that hovered above the battlefield, their facets snaking with arcs of energy.
But even as the sounds of scattered cheers reached his ears, Isao smelled trouble. Biting his lip, he reached for his Duel Disk's radio function, convinced that Sora and Dennis needed to know about this.
He never got the chance. A mere instant later, his Duel Disk had crackled with the dread cry of "SNIPER!"
Dennis McField felt like a fool—and for once, he didn't have to act the part, either.
The first sign something was wrong was when he'd seen the Ædonai's entire airborne forces suddenly pull up all at once—streaking skyward like Z-ARC himself was chasing them. One moment, they were hell-bent on proving why they believed their Fusion Summoning was better than anything the Lancers had brought to the table—the next, they looked like they could scarcely wait to leave. There'd been no warning, no signal, no orders or communication—all of a sudden, the only Duelists they'd fielded that were still intent on Dueling at all were Edo, Gloria, and Grace.
He'd known this meant one of two things—that yet another new element had inserted itself into this battle that they were fighting … or that the Ædonai been meaning to do this from the beginning. Perhaps it even meant both. And Dennis wasn't blind to the notion that this was becoming a pattern between him and Markus Streiter, either; even as a card, that old man was proving himself to be a frightfully smart tactician—and a great pain in the neck, he added to himself, wincing as he rubbed his head where Markus' briefcase had clobbered him yesterday, and where Yūzō's Spell Card had blasted Markus' hypnotizing trigger out of his brain barely half an hour ago.
Sora had taken his binoculars with him into the fortress, so Dennis had had to access Orbital 7's surveillance system instead. It took him about two seconds to zero in on the stonework of the necropolis that the Ædonai had converted into their fortress, and another eight to be certain of what—who—he was seeing at its western edge.
The figure was tall—a head taller than him at least—and the black cloak billowed so much in the wind that he soon gave up figuring out whether a man or a woman was underneath. Not that it mattered to him anymore. He'd been paying attention to the radio chatter amongst the boys from Ryōzanpaku—something about being locked into a Duel with an opponent they couldn't see—and in an instant, he'd put it all together. This had been the first time they'd heard of such a thing, after all … but the Lancers and the LID had heard that story before they'd ever showed up.
He'd had little time to think. "SNIPER!" was the only word he'd been able to scream into his Duel Disk, for Orbital 7 to spread to the rest of the Lancers Combined—and then Dennis was running, ducking for any cover to be found in this hellhole of a desert. Because the Ædonai weren't retreating—they weren't even trying to make a break for any portal to another dimension. No, their reasons were far simpler than that.
They were trying to get out of the line of fire.
A Sniper Duelist, he could only think to himself, over and over again as if on autopilot, as he lay flat on his stomach beneath the biggest rock he could find. No … a Duel Hunter. God help us, they've sent out a Duel Hunter—
Allen was impressed against his will: Gauche had made the most of a situation as bad as any he had seen in all the time he'd been a Duelist. Two Heroic Challenger – Double Lances and two Heroic Challenger – Thousand Blades together formed a far cry from the devastating opening hand he'd used against the Ædonai's Chaos Giants earlier. But Level 4s were still Level 4s, and quicker than Allen's mind could take it all in, a brace of burly Xyz Monsters, each half as tall again as their master, flanked Gauche as he ended his first turn (Rank 4: ATK 2000 » 4000/DEF 2000, ORU 0; Rank 4: ATK 2100/DEF 1800, ORU 2).
His cousin, for once, wasn't even paying attention to the Duel; Anna hadn't stopped fiddling with the settings on her mobile cannon since the iron cage of Edo Phoenix had descended upon the desert. "I want this thing at max power," was all she'd growled at Allen. "The moment that cage drops, I'm dropping that Fusion bastard—and I don't care if the headache snaps him out of it or not!"
Allen had seen that mobile cannon at max power before, and wondered if Anna even wanted Edo with a head left to ache. No—scratch that, he amended, grimacing. If she has her way, that headache might be all that's left of him.
He saw the look in Edo's eyes as he drew his card, though … and found he wasn't sure which of those fates sounded more preferable.
"I'll start with the Spell Card: Destiny Draw!" That card was shown for all to see just as rapidly as Edo had plucked it from his Deck. "By discarding a Destiny HERO monster, I can draw 2 cards!" He did so with one quick flourish. "Then, I use another Spell Card: D-Spirits, to Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower Destiny HERO monster from my hand! I Summon Destiny HERO – Divineguy!"
But no sooner had the silhouette of a muscular figure with crystalline wings begun forming than Gauche sprang into action. "Heroic Champion – Gandiva's effect!" he roared, and to his right, the horse-mounted warrior reared where it stood. "Once per turn, if my opponent Special Summons a Level 4 or lower monster, I can detach an Overlay Unit and destroy that monster!"
Gandiva flicked her left arm once, unsheathing a crossbow-like weapon and nocking a gold-glowing arrow almost in the same fluid movement. Before Allen's whoop of elation had left his mouth, that arrow had gone straight through Divineguy—and kept on going with enough force to leave a man-sized crater in the sands beyond.
Gauche smirked as the half-formed monster dissipated into thin air. "Don't think I don't see what you're up to," he said, crossing his arms. "Your Fusion Monsters are staying right where they belong—I'm not letting you show one ounce of their strength!"
"Does it make you feel heroic—to use your own strength to keep mine at bay?"
Edo had spoken so calmly that it wasn't just Allen who balked; Gauche's smile had faded some, and even Anna had been distracted from her cannon. "Is it strength that makes a hero? What he can do to save the people he loves?"
"Being in charge of a school isn't all about being at the top," Gauche shot back. "It's not about being the strongest or the smartest! It's about being what your students and teachers need. When your school came to ours, and turned it into a playground of atrocities, I vowed to be the one hero that my school—my city, and my dimension—needed more than anything else! A hero who inspired everyone who looked up to him to never hold back!"
"To burn true and burn bright!" Allen cheered, feeling the flames stoked in his soul, "no matter what!"
Anna pumped the fist that wasn't holding her hover-cannon. "No matter when, where, or how!"
But Edo was shaking his head. "So much for not 'being at the top'," he sniffed. "If neither brains nor brawn matter to you, then why stop me from using either one at all? Are you that simple-minded a Duelist, or are you actually lying to your own students?
"Or … " He frowned. "Or is it something else entirely? You aren't letting me Fusion Summon to keep me from displaying my own strength. You're stopping me because you're afraid."
Gauche scowled. "Yes," Edo went on. "You're scared of me. You've been scared of the Fusion Dimension ever since they stopped by your school and showed you real power. All your strength didn't save you against us then. And it won't save you against me now."
"Not before I knock that old man out of your brain!"
"You think I didn't try?!" Edo had raised his voice just a fraction, but his words cut more deeply than any scream. "You think I just rolled over for Leo's pet witch like a loyal dog? Markus Streiter didn't fill my head with promises of power and dominion, or the fulfillment of my deepest desires! The only thing he showed me—the only thing he needed to show me—was the future. The inevitable destiny of my Dimension—of all Dimensions!"
Destiny? Allen wondered.
But all speculation vanished when Edo threw out his hand. "Now, I activate the Continuous Spell: D – Force, which lets me add a certain Destiny HERO monster from my Deck or Graveyard to my hand! Then," he added, as he slid one card out of his Duel Disk, and another onto his blade, "I Summon D Cubic in Attack Position!" And a small, panther-like machine—small only by the standards of the Hunting Hounds Allen saw far too often in Heartland's destruction—padded onto the field, to be joined by two more just as quickly (3 × Level 1: ATK 0/DEF 0).
"D Cubic's effect lets me discard up to 2 cards, and Special Summon just as many of them from my hand, my Deck, or my Graveyard to my field!" Allen just barely caught the edges of those two cards—monsters, from their orange-tinged edges—slipping into Edo's Graveyard slot as the three D Cubics uttered low, mechanical growls.
"Now, I Release all three of my monsters to Special Summon this!" Edo cried, watching the occupants of his field vanishing before his eyes, consumed by a hole of black shadows and swirling crimson energy. "Behold, the vision Markus Streiter bestowed upon me—behold, the destiny that awaits you all! Behold—Destiny HERO – Bloo-D!"
The lance of shadow that burst from next to Edo was so dark Allen wondered if it could suck in the very light of the sun. Perhaps it was even trying, it was reaching so high. Then a pair of wings unfurled from the blackness within; then, a single clawed hand—and then, a serpentine neck and slavering jaws where the other hand ought to be. Dark vermilion surged over flesh, hardening into sleek armor plates and three crushing claws set above the dragon's maw that covered the warrior within (Level 8: ATK 1900/DEF 600).
"What is that?" Anna looked aghast. So did Allen—he had never seen a monster that looked half this weird in his life. And something so weak, for a Level 8 … He felt a chill, suspecting he wasn't going to like what Edo said next.
"D – Force's effect." Edo briefly motioned to his Continuous Spell. "At the cost of forfeiting my normal draw, it not only keeps you from targeting all of my cards with card effects while I control this Bloo-D, but also keeps the same Bloo-D from being destroyed by card effects—and lets it gain a second attack during each Battle Phase, and 100 ATK for each monster in the Graveyard as well! Both of our Graveyards," he added, "including the Overlay Units that you so foolishly thought would protect your Excalibur!" He eyed the red-and-gray-armored behemoth of a knight on Gauche's field with disdain. "Whose effect is now negated—thanks to my Bloo-D's own effect!"
Bloo-D's jaw-hand yawned open as its point gauge swelled to 2800—and vomited a burst of dark red flame all over Gauche's field. Though the inferno did no damage to either Excalibur or Gandiva, wisps of it lingered over both monsters long after that jaw had closed shut. Allen had only to look at his mentor's face to know he was in trouble, and that was well before Edo had opened his mouth again.
"Bloo-D's second effect." The monster's head-hand narrowed its eyes as its master spoke. "Once per turn, I can target a monster my opponent controls, and bind it to Bloo-D as an Equip Card that grants it half that target's ATK! I target your Heroic Champion – Excalibur with Gravity Blood!"
"NO!"
The head moved with blurring speed before Allen's shout of dismay had even left his mouth. In an instant, the neck had twisted round Gauche's monster, strangling it with such strength that its feet actually left the ground. Then—to Allen's growing horror—the flames that still licked at Excalibur now began creeping over its body, sucked back into the dragon's jaws from whence they had come and driving Bloo-D's ATK gauge higher still.
Edo waited until the very instant that gauge had stopped at 3800—and threw out his hand. "Now—Battle Phase!" he roared. "Destiny HERO – Bloo-D, attack Heroic Champion – Gandiva!" His monster mirrored his movements in all but speed, bodily seizing Excalibur as if it were its namesake, and whirling it in the air like an athlete ready to throw the hammer. Then—SMASH—its limp form had plowed into Gandiva's flank, scattering both horse and rider in different directions. Both hit the cage of Edo's Wire Mesh with a noise that sounded like trodden-down fruit, and hard enough to leave dents in the poles that made it up—and the shockwave of the impact sent Gauche skidding near its edge himself, his LP gauge dwindling to 2700.
Bloo-D seemed to grow a few inches—no doubt because its point gauge was now at an even 4000—and was rearing even now for another go. Allen whirled on Anna, past caring if her hover-cannon was ready or not. He didn't want to see what happened next.
"Bloo-D!" The horror leapt high, almost to the upper struts of Wire Mesh—and hovered there, its wings blotting out the sun. "Show this wayward soul his own destiny! Attack him directly with Bloody Fears!"
The wings beat once—and the shadow they cast now became a fine mist, spreading like a malaise in the clear skies. Allen was only faintly aware of a strange smell in the air—like a thunderstorm above a steel mill—before he felt the first drops of rain splatter against his jacket. Yet the raindrops felt too large—too heavy—and the smell of metal felt stronger, too. He looked at his feet, and saw the rainfall against the dune—its dampness too dark against the sand, the hissing curtain of steam too thick, too blinding—and the truth hit him as the trickle turned into a torrent.
It wasn't rain. It was blood.
He turned back to the cage, but too late—Bloo-D had released a thunderous pulse of energy, so red-black in color it might have been freshly drawn from human flesh—
BOOM.
The shockwave hit with the force of a bomb. Wire Mesh was blown apart; the steam from the drizzle of blood, Solid Vision though all of it was, was scattered with it, and obscured everything in sight. Allen was aware of the broad-shouldered figure of Gauche shrinking rapidly into something far too tiny, far too thin, and far too rectangular—
And then Edo was there, shaking sand and detritus from the card in his hand, his newest spoil of the war—Allen was wiping sand out of his eyes—he wanted it so badly to be just the sand, he didn't want to believe what he'd just seen, the indignity of it all, that his worst enemy hadn't even used the breed of monster his Resistance feared the most—
"YOU F—"
And then his cousin was in front of him, her eyes and her cannon blazing as brightly as the other with tears and laser blasts as she unleashed hellfire, all the while screaming curses at the boy who'd torn their world in two.
All over again.
Tenjōin Asuka's lungs ached for breath, but the Duel she was spectating was far too tense for her to take notice. At any moment, she knew, she'd have to step in. The only reason she hadn't yet was that she'd been on the wrong side of the Synchro Duelists; there'd been no way for her to intercept the Tyler sisters without running the risk of their D-Wheels running her over. So as the finest Duelists of a Dimension she knew next to nothing about firsthand showed off in a Duel that strained the imagination, she'd watched—and waited.
Because there was still the problem of when Asuka would jump in—and even then, of what she could do from there. Too quickly, and she'd take an intrusion penalty that would leave her a sitting duck. Too late, and she might have to face the two girls alone; there was just too much going on around her to expect a teammate of her own.
But Asuka now saw Grace draw her card with all the finesse of drawing steel, and knew she had little time to decide.
"Tell me, sister," the silver-haired girl spoke, inspecting her fresh draw with a smile. "Which of us is the stronger?"
Gloria smiled in kind, though not without a sigh. "That age-old riddle again—brains or brawn? You've asked me this a hundred times, and I've told you each time it's a trick question—you can't have one without the other. Even the strongest muscle can't think for itself any more than the strongest mind can punch a man in the mouth."
"I know a certain psi-level who might disagree," Grace laughed. "But that debate can wait for a time. Besides, we solved that riddle a long time ago, didn't we? You can bring all the thunder you like—but I call the lightning!"
And with that: "I activate my Amazoness Shaman! By targeting an Amazoness monster on the field, I can return it to the hand and Special Summon my Shaman in its place! I target my Amazoness Pet Tiger!" The body of the decrepit beast seemed to stand on its hind legs, but in an instant—FLASH—shabby fur became the cracked skin of a crone; ancient, shriveled, and forced to kneel against the golden staff she held in one hand (Level 4: ATK 800/DEF 1800).
"Then, because I Special Summoned an Amazoness monster, I use the effect of Amazoness Pet Baby Tiger to Special Summon it from my hand, and make its own name Amazoness Pet Tiger!" And a tiger cub that could have been Pet Tiger's own child padded out from underneath the tatters of the Shaman's robes (Level 2: ATK 500/DEF 500). The golden collar at its neck looked a size too big—and arguably far too heavy; the babe, already withering from the effects of Tony's Field Spell, could barely lift its neck against its weight.
Tony saw this, and cackled. "You can Summon all the monsters you like—it won't save you. The more you put on the field, the more undead my Necro Dragon will rule!" As if to lend weight to his words, his shambling behemoth roared, showing off the point gauge that was even now growing to 4800/4400.
But Asuka didn't even see Grace bat an eye. "You think that Field makes you master of time? All I see is a master of decay—a wretched relic of an age past its prime. And I'm not simply talking of your dragon," she sneered. "All of you belong to a city that, having gloried in its rise above decadence and squalor, still hasn't figured out that it has no place to go but down. You are nothing. You control nothing—not your past, not your present … not your future.
"Shaman's second effect lets me add a certain Spell from my Deck to my hand!" There was a mad look in Grace's eye as she swiped up the card her Duel Disk had just ejected. "I won't name it. I won't even have to. Because you've known it was coming since this Duel began—and you've been powerless to stop it from the start! I fuse the Shaman and the Pet Baby Tiger on my field, and prove to you that my sister and I are masters of our own time!"
Amanda reared back in her D-Wheel, wide-eyed. "Fusion?!"
Uh-oh. Asuka saw the sands swirling around both monsters, and knew what was coming next. Already she could see the hurricane of color forming over their heads—she could hear it growling in bloodlust, raring to strike:
"Pride of the jungle! A seer has foretold your accession! Become a new savage beast and appear!"
"Fusion Summon!" Grace shrieked to the sky. "Come before us! Level 7! Amazoness Pet Liger!"
THUD. The sands in front of her were wholly displaced by a golden-furred and -maned bulk the size of a small tank (Level 7: ATK 2500/DEF 2400). But even though its armor was pitting and corroding before Asuka's eyes, and the scarred socket where its right eye should have been grew sunken and leaked with foul ichor, Pet Liger's remaining eye burned with a feverish glow, and the growl it loosed from its maw made it clear that the toll of time had not robbed it of its strength or its savagery.
"Now I Summon Amazoness Sage in Attack Position," Grace went on, watching as another tribal witch shimmered in front of her, taller than her Shaman and slightly older (Level 4: ATK 1400/DEF 700), "and with her, I call down the lightning! Battle Phase!" She stabbed out with a finger. "Sage—attack Immortal Dragon!"
"Hah! You're dumber than those costumes make you look!" Tony guffawed as he watched the Sage fire a bolt of energy from the staff in her hand. "Immortal Dragon's DEF is higher than your monster's ATK—all that'll do is make you nice and tender for my Necro Dragon!" And true to his word, the energy bolt bounced off his Dragon's scales and rebounded for Grace, landing straight and true with an explosion of sand.
But even as she saw the sisters' LP gauge drop to 3000, Asuka's heart was still thudding in her breast—this wasn't over by a long shot. Sure enough: "Amazoness Sage's effect," Grace smirked. "Immediately after it attacks, I can get rid of any 1 Spell or Trap that my opponent controls! And I know just the one to destroy!"
Tony's mirth vanished from his face with all the sudden finality of a blown tire. "No!" But he was too late; Sage had hefted her staff aloft, and smote the desert with a thunderous blow. Asuka felt the shockwave rumble beneath her feet, and the D-Wheels of the Synchro Duelists rocked where they stood. Her eyes, however, were locked on the monumental form of Necro Dragon, who even now seemed to be shrinking where it stood; its point gauge, once an insurmountable 5000/4600, had been cloven near in two to 2700/2300. The skeletons and sandblasted corpses that had once littered the field were gone, sunken back into the desert—and with it, the source of the greater part of its strength.
"Much better." Grace surveyed her handiwork for a moment of extreme satisfaction—and then she was a blur once again. "Now it's my Pet Liger's turn! Its effect gives it 500 ATK when it declares an attack—not that I'll need it!" she added, watching the point gauge of her own beast—now free of the necrotizing effects of Undead World—swell to 3000. "Because my Pet Liger's about to tear your Immortal Dragon limb from rotten limb! Attack with Primal Crushing Claws!"
And with a single mighty leap, Pet Liger was upon Tony's dragon, severing a wing with a single blow from its paw and sinking its fangs into the soft flesh of its neck. Its jaws jerked once, and the hapless beast went limp, collapsing into photonic dust right as Pet Liger was about to make good on Grace's promise of tearing it limb from limb.
Yet that dust had scarcely settled before it began to stir in a way that had little to do with the wind; an instant later, Asuka knew why. "Necro Dragon's second effect!" Tony looked as if he'd regained some of his earlier bravado. "Once per turn, when a Zombie monster's destroyed by battle, I can Special Summon another Zombie from the Graveyard to my field! I Summon Red-Eyes Undead Dragon!"
THUD. Yet again, the sandy field exploded beneath their feet as Necro Dragon's progenitor crawled onto the dunes as if birthed by the pits of hell itself (Level 7: ATK 2400/DEF 2000)—much to Tony's glee. "All your hard work—and for what?" he taunted Grace. "All that did is put a bigger monster on my field!"
"Pet Liger's second effect," Grace sniffed. "Each time that an Amazoness monster destroys an opponent's monster by battle, I can target another opponent's monster, and make it lose 800 ATK. I target Black Feather – Arms Wing!"
No sooner had the words left her mouth than Pet Liger let fly with an earsplitting roar at the bird-man. Duelists and monsters alike winced at the noise, but none more so than Amanda and Arms Wing; the latter nearly dropped its gun from how quickly its ATK had slipped to 1500.
"One card face-down to end my turn," finished Grace, smoothly taking a step backwards—"and now we finish it."
Gloria had stepped forward at the exact same moment. "Draw!" With one vicious movement, she'd begun her turn, and wasted no time in acting. "First, my sister's face-down card—the Quick-Play Spell: Amazoness Call! With this card, I can take an Amazoness card from my Deck, and either add it to my hand or send it to my Graveyard!"
She swiped up a single card, inspected it—and then, with a leer: "Now it's time for my face-down card—the Quick-Play Spell: Amazoness Secret Arts! With this card, I can Fusion Summon an Amazoness monster, using monsters in my hand or field as material! I fuse the Queen on my field with the Amazoness Princess that Grace's Call added to my hand!" Her monster tensed, smirking cruelly as if it too knew what was about to happen. "Now GO!"
Again the skies bloomed with color, and Asuka felt a chill as she listened to Gloria's all-too-familiar next words:
"Queen of the jungle. With sword in hand and bloodline secure, build an empire that rules over everything!"
"Fusion Summon! Appear! Level 8! Amazoness Empress!"
Though the explosion of sand that burst next to Pet Liger seemed even bigger than its own entrance, the woman that emerged from within was much smaller in comparison—but only in comparison. Asuka wasn't sure a human could physically stand that tall or be that muscular—let alone a woman—but Empress, standing white-haired head and shoulders over even the seven-foot-tall Queen she had subsumed, showed no trace of human weakness in the corded sinews beneath her tanned skin, or even in the dangerous glint to her golden eyes (Level 8: ATK 2800/DEF 2400).
Empress hefted a gigantic sword whose blade looked like fire made solid, testing its heft as Gloria went on. "Now for the Spell Card: Force!" she proclaimed, holding her next card aloft. "With this, I can target any 2 monsters on the field, halve the ATK of one, and add that lost ATK to the other! I halve the ATK of my sister's Pet Liger, and grant it to my own Empress!" Pet Liger roared—hardly even fazed at the notion of feeling weaker—and Asuka had a strong suspicion that was because its companion's own ATK gauge had exploded to a gigantic 4050.
"And finally, the second effect of Amazoness Call!" Gloria crowed. "By banishing it from my Graveyard, I can let any one Amazoness monster I control attack every single monster on the field!"
Asuka felt a most unladylike curse erupt from her lips, but she didn't care. Already she was hurtling for the battle, frantically powering up her Duel Disk and bracing herself—
"AUGH!"
Things happened so quickly that it was only until much later that she was able to make sense of them; Pet Liger, with a speed quicker than a supercar, had whirled in front of her and—before she could skid to a halt—flung a cloud of sand, hot from the high sun, right into her eyes from the momentum of its maneuver. Asuka swore again as she tried to claw the grit from her face in vain, and fell to the desert in a tangle of limbs.
"Wait for your turn, princess," Grace snigg*red cruelly from behind her Pet Liger as it stamped towards Asuka—it was blocking her way. "I think it's time, sister. They've tasted the lightning. Let them hear the thunder!"
"Say less." Animal relish dripped from Gloria's lips with every word. "Amazoness Empress—begin the slaughter! Start with Arms Wing, and slay them all!"
Asuka could only see blurs of color through her spotty vision—but what she saw was enough; every single D-Wheel was scattering in earnest and in vain. She didn't need to hear the sisters' taunts over all the noise to know how their combined force was devastating the field before them.
Arms Wing went first, gun shattered and wings shredded by the massive blade of the Empress. Scarcely had it fallen to earth in three different pieces than Pet Liger had set upon Silverwind, dodging its blade and trampling it under its bulk. The helpless monster had time for one last squawk before Empress cut him down; its katana went flying, and sheared through the rear tire of Amanda's D-Wheel, sending the girl's bike crashing into a nearby dune. Then it was Shinji's turn to feel the duo's combined ferocity; Voulge and Azusa were reduced to disembodied hulks of ichor and chitin almost at the same time. Empress caught his D-Wheel on the backswing, and flung both bike and Duelist airborne—straight into the clutches of Pet Liger.
"Again. Again!" Gloria was raving amidst the unfolding carnage. "Again, and again—and again! You're nothing! Your Dimension is nothing! Markus looked into our minds, and saw your destruction by our own hands! Through him, my sister and I are stronger than ever! Through us, a new world will rise, of dominance and power—a world where money and blood, passion and strength, are one and the same! You don't deserve one or the other—and you'll go to the afterlife with that final truth burning you like hellfire!"
She unleashed a throat-tearing screech of primal rage right as her Empress made Revenger into two half-Revengers, pulping both left and right sides with the flat of her blade and propelling their remains into Damon's gigantic alien. Pet Liger cannoned into Gol'gar with all of its might, and tore through its bulk in a cannibalistic frenzy that sent torrents of ichor in every direction. One particularly viscous spurt of it sent Damon's D-Wheel hopelessly out of control—a joyride that ended as quickly as it began when one of Gol'gar's severed eyestalks smashed it into scrap.
By the time Asuka could see again, three Synchro Duelists and their D-Wheels had become three piles of smoking wreckage. Of their riders—or even their cards—there was no sign. And Tony Simmons, broad and solid as he was, looked as horrifically gaunt as any one of the zombies he commanded from the sheer terror that gripped him.
Gloria and Grace clicked their fingers—and inside of a second, Tony's twin dragons seemed to fall apart before his very eyes, so quickly was Empress swinging her sword. Her bestial companion scattered their remains like chaff as it barreled straight for the doomed rider. Pet Liger's silhouette against the sun was the last thing a screaming Tony saw before it flattened both Duelist and D-Wheel alike.
The shockwaves of the final impact rocked Asuka's body for what felt like hours after they'd subsided … or maybe it was the shivering of her own body. Her mouth was half-open in astonishment—it had all happened so fast! Even from what she knew of these two sisters during their days at Academia, she'd never seen them make short work of so many Duelists so quickly—and certainly not with the level of ferocity they'd shown today!
She felt her feet take an unconscious step backwards. My God …
And now the Tyler sisters had turned towards her, their eyes glinting with the evil light of Markus' brainwashing as they aimed their Duel Disks right at her.
"Okay, princess," Grace smiled far too sweetly. "Now it's your turn."
Tenjōin Asuka looked to her left and right, at once grateful that Mieru was out of sight and wishing she hadn't left to rescue Yūya. Some help would be nice right now, she thought ruefully. But it seemed that Edo would have to wait.
So be it. She hefted her Duel Disk, thought of her protégée, and exhaled. "Let's do it, then! DUEL!"
A much different battle was playing far above the arid battlefield. Three different dragons winged and roared in the sky, expelling bursts of flame and energy against the crystalline structures that hovered level with them.
Tenjō Haruto felt the welcome hiss of oxygen against his mouth; with how high up they'd had to fly, Orbital 7 had been forced to access his external life-support functions. A breathing mask had unfolded over Haruto's mouth in less than a second after that, to keep him from losing consciousness in this rarefied air. But that was only half the battle he was facing right now—his Photon Dragon was constantly bucking and wheeling to avoid the bursts of laser fire that peppered the skies in every direction.
The Ædonai had not been slow in rushing to defend the spires that still continued to shimmer with whatever energies Orbital 7 had detected earlier. XY-Dragon Cannons by the dozen were pursuing him, Kaito, and Jack, each trying in vain to shoot a target that was both bigger by half, yet all the faster for it.
"I calculate two minutes to maximum charge, Haruto-sama," the robot was telling him through his earpiece. "Recommend we keep our distance to avoid dimensional displacement."
"Can we reach out to Violet Wing?" Haruto asked. If anyone knew how to work around whatever was shielding these things, it was their friends from You Show Fusion.
But Orbital 7 was not so forthcoming. "Negative. The increasing energies are interfering with all communications. My comm. link is useless beyond five hundred meters."
"Then it's up to us!"
Haruto almost fell off his dragon at the unexpected burst of noise. Not for who it was; he'd recognized the voice of Mikiyo almost from the first word. But what he'd heard a second after that—not just over Orbital 7's comm. link, but in every direction he could think of—was so out of place that he'd had to look down against his better judgment, and regretted doing it an instant later.
Horses?
And so they were—eight of them, all told: each one white-coated, winged, and mounted by women in armor and brandishing gleaming swords, all flying from the Sanctuary in the Sky that had materialized behind him. Some of the riders looked old enough to be his mother; others were scarcely older than he was. And all of them rushed past him fast enough to do loop-the-loops around his own dragon if they wanted, though it was clear to see that none of them believed this was the time for showing off with fancy aerials.
As Haruto now saw, there were other reasons: two of the largest horses were pulling golden chariots behind them—and it was from here that two members of the Duel Girls Club, the two girls he'd seen with Mikiyo back at LDS, were hooked onto the reins of their neighing steeds with one arm, brandishing their Duel Disks with the other, and grinning broadly all the while at how they'd managed to even the odds with the monsters they'd Summoned.
"Erste, head for the Dragon Cannons in the lead!" The nearer of the two tugged at the reins of her winged horse, and waved at the horses flanking her. "Zweite and Fünfte, cut them off to the left—Dritte and Vierte, to the right!" All four monsters veered off in different directions—while Erste, carrying her chariot, plowed straight through one of the Ædonai's mechanical monsters like it wasn't even there.
The Duelist's companion, apparently, did not wish to be outdone; the horse that carried her chariot, and the two that escorted her, were bigger than any Haruto had ever seen. "Sigrún, up and above!" she cried, holding on for dear life as her steed executed a snap roll. "Brünhild, Erda—cut across and straight on through!" And in a movement that wouldn't have looked out of place at an airshow, Sigrún's two companions made an X in the sky, with a second XY-Dragon Cannon right at the point where they met. Both managed to shear off a cannon barrel apiece before Sigrún and her horse bulled their way through what was left. Little remained of the Dragon Cannon to fall to earth.
And Haruto could barely see Mikiyo herself atop the Sanctuary, spreading her arms wide and conducting them as if this entire aerial spectacle had been scored to a song that only she could hear. "I take this Scale 1 DoDoremichord Coolia and this Scale 8 DoDoremichord Cutia, and set the Pendulum Scale!" The stone "wings" of the tower on which she stood blossomed with columns of blue light; Haruto was just barely able to make out the figures of two elaborately dressed women—one older, one younger—from this distance:
"Listen to the melody of my soul," sang the Idol Duelist, "as it bursts from my heart and into the world!"
"Pendulum Summon! Formation: E Minor! Level 3: MiDoremichord Eliteia; Level 5: SoDoremichord Gracia … and Level 7: SiDoremichord Beautia!"
Haruto, breathless, watched an orb of pale lavender—flanked by twin comets of blue—shimmer forth from Mikiyo's position. Only when one of the latter had shattered the Dragon Cannon nearest him did he realize that each of these lights was another pretty young woman, flicking and whipping a baton left, right and center at anything that moved the wrong way. A wordless song floated from their mouths that sent thrills and chills alike down Haruto's spine. It felt as though he was hearing some sort of dirge; a lament for those who had fallen in battle, or had yet to fall … and a celebration of those who still remained to fight on.
"We'll keep them off your backs!" Haruto felt his heart soar—he could have kissed Mikiyo, were she close enough. "Do what you and your dragons do best!"
And really, the younger Tenjō thought, he could think of no better response than to nudge his own steed—roaring as if trying to sing with the unfolding song—and declare: "Photon Stream of Destruction!"
"Cipher Stream of Annihilation!" he heard Kaito bellow an instant later, as his own dragon expelled a blast of light to rival his own.
And Jack Atlas—his D-Wheel next to invisible from the combination of height and sand that turned the battle below into a blur of noise and color, roared louder than any of them: "Scorching Crimson Hell Burning!"
The three simultaneous attacks did what one alone could not. Now focused on a single point, each stream of light and fire punctured the shield of the nearest spire—Cipher Dragon from the left, Photon Dragon from the right, and Scarlight from beneath—and punched straight through the spire itself an instant later with a thundering BOOM.
Haruto grinned as he watched the explosions from within tear the crystalline monolith in two, and it fell to the sands with a groan of tortured metal innards. A rousing cheer from the Duel Girls Club rang in his ears, and he felt it well up in his own lungs as well. But he didn't feel ready to celebrate with the rest of them just yet.
One down, he thought, already spurring his Photon Dragon towards another spire—and plenty more to go …
The muted sound of the destroyed spire's impact against the dunes was lost on Saotome Rei, at the southern edge of the fortress where Noboru and Shingo had been forced to flee. She had other things on her mind.
Plasma Viceman had put in his work and then some—her Duel Disk had been dangerously close to overheating with how many of the Ædonai soldiers and their Dragon Cannons she'd had to neutralize. Even now—as she, Marufuji Shō, and Maeda Hayato slowly approached the scene before their eyes—she could still feel the warmth its innards gave off against her left forearm.
Tyranno Kenzan and Jim Cook were twenty feet away from each other—bruised, bloodied, and breathing so heavily that the thought of Dueling either hadn't occurred to them, or their bodies were too exhausted to even lift their Duel Disks. And considering one of them was genetically enhanced … Rei didn't want to think about the strength of the blows Tyranno had been landing, or how tough Jim must be to absorb them all and still be standing on his own two feet. Jim's pet crocodile, for her part, had used the lull in the fight to waddle off to the shade beneath the fortress' southern wall. Rei thought she saw Karen limping, and even that some of the wounds Tyranno sported on his body had a distinctly triangular shape to them. The mental image that followed made her body shudder in revulsion.
But what mattered to her most was the one part of Tyranno that didn't look red with his own blood: his eyes, at last, seemed to be his own once again, and not the beast she'd seen gripping him less than an hour ago. Why that didn't feel calming to her, Rei could not say. Had its hold not been as strong as she'd feared? Or was this merely the eye of the hurricane—a brief respite between two sides of the same storm?
She whistled to get Tyranno's attention, and tapped her throat with two fingers. The beast might not have let go of him all at once; the powers of thought and speech didn't always come back at the same time. Rei had learned from previous occasions that it was best to ease the boy back bit by bit—though she knew this was hardly the place for it.
But she breathed a small sigh of relief moments later; Tyranno had drawn an X over his throat, and given a thumbs-up an instant after that. He couldn't talk just yet—at least, not without sounding like he'd chewed his way through a boulder, Rei suspected—but he was cogent enough that what little sign language the two had taught each other was within the grasp of his brain. If that's true, then maybe …
She wiggled the Duel Disk on her arm, and tapped at its screen. But her heart sank an instant later; the grimace on Tyranno's lips—and the glare he leveled at Jim—spoke volumes. He wasn't ready … or he wasn't willing.
Rei bit her lip, and shrugged—looking sidelong at the Australian for good measure. He may not give us the choice.
Tyranno crossed his arms in a very final sort of way. Rei cringed. Ouch. It looked as though they'd be a man down for this, then, she decided—but for the time being, there was nothing else she could do.
"Hayato, Shō—with me." She switched on the emergency cooling systems in her Duel Disk. Rei would need every edge she had if her friends—and their Duel Disks—were going to make it through the day. "Tyranno can jump in if and when he's good and ready—but not before. We need to give him the time to come back to his senses."
Her classmates activated their own devices, and took a step towards Jim Cook.
"Crikey … " The Australian spat blood onto the sand, where it hissed and boiled in the sun. "You galahs just don't let up, do ya? What the hell's a Bruce to do when both 'is fists an' 'is Fossils have Buckley's chance o' getting you lot to see reason?!"
"Reason?" Hayato snorted. "The reasonable thing to do would've been to give us Yūya and Yuzu in the first place, and save yourselves the trouble!"
"Or better yet," added Shō, "to just not kidnap them at all! If you'd left well enough alone, none of this mess would have been caused in the first place! But no. Markus just had to get his fingers into the pie one more time before he bit it, didn't he?"
"Hell." Jim wiped off his mouth. "That old fogey used to have a saying. 'The longer you live, the longer you learn to see.' Most of his classes never quite got what he meant by that. I was one of a few people that did. You want to grow old, he said, you have to have a plan. Save your money, eat your veggies, stock up weapons … simple things like that," he laughed. "Markus just had a different view on what he called a plan. And what he called a weapon."
"We already know that's why he kidnapped Yūya and Yuzu," Rei challenged him.
But the Australian made a rude noise. "Why does anyone want a shiny new toy?" he scoffed. "Kids walk past 'em on the shelves in the stores all the time, and beg their mamas to buy it so they can play with it till they get bored off their nuts. They ain't lived long enough to see those toys for anything besides what they are. But you give 'em half a chance, they'll grow up—and what started as an amusem*nt grows up with them, becomes a hobby."
He tapped at his Duel Disk. "Then … it becomes an obsession. It turns into their life's work … their lifeblood, the breath in their lungs, the beat of their very heart. And if there's a name for whatever lies beyond that," he said, "it's a wish. The greatest among the Ædonai joined because they had a wish they wanted fulfilled. Streiter, Grimm—Kagemaru—they were just three of those lucky few. They knew what they wanted, an' they'd either stop at nothing t' get it granted … "
A pause. "Or nothing would stop them. Not even death."
Rei frowned. What in the world is this guy talking about? "And you're about to tell us you've got one of Markus' mad wishes in your head—is that right? Was that the price you had to pay to get the chance to play with his toys?"
Jim laughed again, slapping his knee and everything. "Hah! You'd like if I did, wouldn't yew? Just so you could say your wish was better than mine? Well, sorry t' disappoint—I don't have one that could hold a candle to Grimm's wish, let alone to Markus'."
A pause. "But I know a bloke what could. I've seen what his wish has already done to him." He pressed a button—and much to Rei's surprise, the blade of his Duel Disk actually shut off. "That's why I'm just gonna kick me legs back for a spell," he said loftily, "and watch what his wish ends up doing to the lot o' you."
And as he raised the device to his mouth, the You Show prodigy felt a chill for reasons she could not fathom. "418, 811." His eyes—both the real one and the artificial eye under his bandaged face—were glowing with evil intent.
Then Jim "Crocodile" Cook grinned like his namesake, turned towards the fortress—and shouted four words. "GIVE 'EM 'ELL, KAISER!"
…
no
…
In less than a second, the sand had become snow; the arid heat, a biting chill of winter's first breath. Frozen claws sank deep into the spine of Saotome Rei, spreading their ice-cold venom to her heart and her brain in an instant. The breath was being strangled out of her; she could not speak, and her arms and legs were numb.
No, she could only think. No, oh no, oh God no—
It took all the effort in her nerveless body to whirl upon her friends. Tyranno was deadly still; even his eyes did not move a muscle. Hayato's mouth was half open in horror. And Shō … The boy had gone bone-pale. His pince-nez were trembling violently, very close to falling right off his nose. He was muttering to himself, shaking his head.
"You … you didn't … " He seemed to have no idea where he was. "Can't be … here … can't be … alive … "
But even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, and tears danced behind his eyes, Rei was already feeling the rising rumble in the earth—something low and mechanical, as though some primeval, gigantic engine had just been switched on beneath the desert. Louder and higher it thrummed; within seconds it was a growl.
Then a snarl.
Then a shriek.
Finally, when the noise reached a crescendo, Rei saw the veritable tsunami of a mobile sand dune, radiating from the remains of the fortress' eastern wall. She saw the shapeless shadow, for only an instant—the shining, armored necks of a colossal, many-headed beast, shrouded within the wave—a Hydra from the myths of old, racing into the reality of the new and improved with a thunderous roar—
Takeda "Shin" Makoto's Duel had begun before he'd even known it. It ended almost as quickly. Neither he nor his Fūjin the Greatstorm Star (Level 10: ATK 3000/DEF 2200)—that ten-foot-tall mobile wall of a Fusion Monster he'd put between him and whatever faceless Duelist had forced him into battle—had any time to see or even make sense of the thing that obliterated him, his monster, nine of his classmates, and the warriors they'd Summoned as well. Their last thoughts were of the wall of sand, the cry of the monster within … and the voice that had ordered their destruction.
"EVOLUTION RESULT BURST!"
