[color=92278f][h2][center]Claire Turner[/center][/h2][/color]

Domino City was one of the stranger places Claire had stopped off in.

Three years on the road had let her see more of the country than most people ever would; let her spend time in multiple cities from the North of the island all the way down to the South, a bunch of smaller towns and literally everywhere in between. She’d been to enough places to be able to have favourites, to be able to make comparisons and liked to think that she had enough experience to identify the vibe a place gave off within a couple of days of arriving. And Domino City? Something about Domino City was off. The kind of off she usually only felt when she’d spent too long in one place and the nightmares that she was running away from caught up to her. The kind of off that had her checking over her shoulder and keeping a close eye on any shadows she passed. The kind of off that had her keeping a hand on the deck of cards in her pocket, as if the monsters in it might protect her somehow.

Claire didn’t think she was going to be sticking around for too long as a result. She’d finish this little event, which unfortunately didn’t even come with any prize money, stop off at the hotel to check out and then get back on her bike. Honestly, maybe even before then; usually duelling like this calmed her down, as well as giving her a good opportunity to meet new people and get some information about the place she was in. But today? Maybe it was the way the judges seemed to be paying extra close attention to all of the duels or the store owner, or maybe it was that weird lightning storm the night before, but the sense of dread kept building.

Across the table from her, her opponent asked her something that she didn’t hear and she missed an opportunity to activate a trap card when she should have. Her opponent missed lethal anyway, but it was enough for Claire to decide to focus on the duel instead of her worries.

[color=92278f]“I activate the effect of my Siverd in the Pendulum zone to destroy my Metalfoes Combination, to set Parametalfoes Fusion from my deck. Then I activate Metalfoes Counter in response to summon a Metalfoes from my deck and chain the graveyard effect of Combination to add a Metalfoes to my hand.”[/color]

From there the rest of the duel was fairly quick, with Claire summoning two Fusion monsters to bounce their strongest monster with Mithrilium and then Pendulum summoning and attacking for a huge amount of damage with Orichalc’s piercing ability.

Beside her the judge watching their match, an attractive blonde woman with the name tag ‘Valentine’ made a note of her win and moved on to the next pair.That was the first round dealt with at least.