Ryik

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Midori Hibiki & Donte
She was in the middle of greeting Haruko's grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Furukawa, bored out of her mind by their glacial elderly conversational pace but smiling politely when she heard a scream coming from outside. She politely excused herself, cALMLY WALK- WHAT THE FUCK.

She had said it out loud without realizing it and cringed as Haruko's grandparents gasped. She turned, forced a smile and told them "sorry! Emergency!" before slamming the door closed and running over while fumbling to get her PDA out of her pocket and contact the campus' emergency services.

She ignored Helena and the ensuing realization that this was her doing and began assessing Donte. He was still conscious, which was a good sign, though his face was twisted in agony. She batted away his hands, which were clutching at his wound and began applying pressure, which elicited a pained groan. She probably should have warned him it would hurt. He grabbed her wrists with his own, which were soaked in blood, but he didn't push them away, knowing better.

She looked up, looking Helena dead in the eye with a withering stare. Donte was an asshole, sure, but this? This was beyond the pale. "Helena Ries."

"W-wait" Donte spoke up, coughing between pained breaths. "This one's... on me."

She gave him an disbelieving look. Donte's a lot of things, and one of those things is a fucking liar. She's already punished him when he didn't deserve it a couple of times before, only finding out the truth later on from someone else's mouth, but every conversation with him about it ends up in the same aggravating four words.

"I ain't no snitch."

It doesn't matter if the true culprits were already punished, or if he got into a fight with them, the boy is incorrigible. She doesn't believe for one second Helena's not at fault here, though. She looked back at her, the same stern gaze locked onto hers.

"You need to promise me that you will come to me or another teacher when you want to duel someone. Have I made myself clear?"

Medics arrive shortly thereafter, putting Donte on a stretcher and loading him into a van. Donte's father arrives just in time to witness the scene and chase after it as it drives towards the academy.

@Darkmoon Angel

Miles
A few nights ago...

The pillar of light was truly awe-inspiring up close. It pierced the heavens with a ray made of spirits - duel spirits, he now knows, which disappeared into the aether behind a black screen of cloud cover. Perhaps more bizarre however, was the man behind it.

He looked back over at the man wearing a black cloak. His only distinguishable features were his stubbled chin and millennium eye, glinting from within the shadows cast over the man's face by his cloak. He was suspicious as hell, but the eye was no fake. His own useless duel spirit could tell him that much, at least. "Why me? Because I'm here at a convenient time?"

The main chuckled and lifted a finger to point at his millennium eye. "Because I can relate to you."

His face fell as he realized the man knew exactly why he was interested in such a dubious offer. Then, he got mad. "Stay out of my head, asshole."

"Sorry, force of habit."

He grit his teeth. This might be a bridge he couldn't afford to burn, or it might be the biggest, most obvious scam of his life. He sighed. "Whatever. Lemme know when you achieve world domination, I'll send you a greeting card to congratulate you." He turned to leave, though as he walked away, the man called out one more time.

"If you reconsider, I'll be camping out by the base of the volcano. Just come find me there."

"..."

List of Ryik's Old Characters

Theme

Name: Arius de Fürst

Setting(s): D&D

Gender: ♂

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Race: Halfling

Background: Sailor

Class: Rogue

Subclass: Swashbuckler

Inventory (at level 1)

Money Pouch containing 10 GP
Armor (Leather)
Backpack
Ball bearings (in a bag) x1000
Belaying Pin
Bell
Candle x5
Clothes (Common)
Crowbar
Dagger x2
Hammer
Hempen Rope (50 ft.)
Hooded Lantern
Flask of Oil x2
Piton x10
Quiver

• Arrows x20

Rapier
Shaped Glass (Trinket)
Shortbow
Silk Rope (50 ft.)
String (10 ft.)
Rations (For a day) x5
Thieves' Tools
Tinderbox
Waterskin

Personality: WIP

History: WIP

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Donte
Donte frowned. Was this girl threatening him? With what? Her wimpy noodle arms? What was she trying to say, anyway? That she was a violently sore loser? Would explain why she's in Slifer, he guessed. In any case, if she thought she could take him, he wouldn't take offense. He did just invite her to pick up a weapon and assault him - it was about as unpleasant as pretending to be a creep, but this was different. "I'm no masochist. I think I'll wait here a bit longer for my old man to get lost. He might still be harassing Ms. Hibiki right about now, and I wouldn't mind spending the whole day here just to be safe." His eyes wandered towards an empty wall as he said this, distracted by the mental image of his father haranguing the poor woman over him.

He turned, making eye contact with Helena, a smirk on his lips and a fire in his eyes. "But if it's a fight you want..." he raised his duel disk. "I'm down to tango." He didn't exactly like to get into fights with girls. It was lose-lose for his rep, but despite what he was just telling Ms. Hibiki minutes earlier, he did like to duel. He wasn't afraid of a brawl either. Certainly not with someone so... waifish.

He didn't peg Helena as the type to get physical, but you know what they say about small dogs. A girl who can't control her temper suited him, he thought.

As an dueling opponent, of course. Better him than some of the wimps he's seen running around Slifer Red. Even if it was coming from Helena, that kimono girl with the glasses looks like she was a single punch away from breaking every bone in her body. Hell, Donte was worried just being around her would give her have a heart attack. It was like watching a rabbit or a hummingbird breathe in and out at speeds that would have a human hyperventilating.

Or was that just because of him?

He frowned, pushing the thought from his mind. "We could duel here and now, without duel disks, though if we do, we'd have to keep any fighting afterward quiet." Normally he wouldn't agree to this - keeping a fight quiet was like trying to keep popcorn kernels from going off in a microwave, but he was a strong, physically fit teenage boy a year older than the rest of his grade level, while she was... Helena. He should be able to stop her from making a racket if she lost all self control. Probably.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Donte

Donte breathed another sigh, this time of relief. "Chivalry isn't dead."

He sat back down, now nonchalantly looking over the cards on her desk curiously. "I'll hold you to that. Fair warning, he doesn't give up easily."

A muffled yell. "IF YOU DON'T COME OUT HERE DONTAVIUS, SO HELP ME."

Donte visibly cringed. What was Ms. Hibiki doing? Just sitting around in her office, hoping he'll go away? He changed the topic, to distract himself as much as the girl. "So, you got a name? I'm Donte, as you might have gathered. You making deck edits?"

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Donte

Donte sighed. He pocketed his PDA and pulled up a nearby stool, having a seat with an elbow on his knee, holding up his head.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Probably not with him. He should probably explain himself a little.

"Look, I've got some... family issues..." His father interrupted him, yelling his full name from outside one more time, clearly angry and audible to everyone in Slifer Red. Donte winced. "The bottom line is that I ain't going nowhere unless it involves grievous bodily harm or immediate expulsion." He waved his hand nonchalantly, like none of it mattered. "Dealer's choice. You can just say it was self-defense or whatever."

He settled back into a glum, bored expression, hand propped up his head. "Another concussion would suck, though."

Xiaolin Showdown: Fight for the Shen Gong Wu!

Can't decide on an element. EDIT: I'm thinking Lightning.

No real preference for temples either, though the backstory I had in mind would favor Omi's, if only slightly.

Xiaolin Showdown: Fight for the Shen Gong Wu!

I'm tentatively interested.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

@Goose Looks good. I agree that Powerload Ogre's gotta go - after that, you can drop them in the character's tab.

I've never really explained it on the forums before so our main two benchmarks for balance are:

1. Set normal monster > pass on turn 1 (usually) won't immediately lose you the game (though it's not necessarily a good play) - mainly just something to measure a deck's immediate swarm against. A lot of the decks in the RP rely on slow starts when they can't draw their combo pieces, and while they're expected to draw them quickly/put up some kind of defense or lose, being able to stall a little helps.

2. Nothing is super difficult to remove; if it's unaffected by card effects, for example, then its attack should be moderately low, and the deck shouldn't be capable of buffing it. Crooked Cook and Libromancer Firestarter are about the upper limit for this, and cards like Left-Hand Shark or I:P Masquerena would require you to limit the contents of your extra deck accordingly. Once-per-turn negates aren't as bad, unless they are also omninegates, in which case they may need the same restrictions. Naturally, other aspects of the deck can easily push them off the table entirely. For example, Libromancer Firestarter, Libromancer Bonded and Libromancer Fireburst aren't allowed in the same deck, since Fireburst would be able to achieve immunity to destruction by battle or card effect, as well as immunity to banishment. I don't want everyone to be forced to run Lava Golem/Kaijus/Effect Veiler/etc. to deal with particularly ornery monsters.

The rest is mostly balancing guesswork.

e.g.

The Libromancer archetype is used in an NPC deck if it wasn't obvious by now. As a modern archetype, it's quite capable of swarming the field. I decided to take out the Libromancer field spell- (among other support cards - amusingly the really good continuous spell was taken out simply because it was making Fireburst hit too hard) -to slow down how much the deck can throw out its ritual monsters, since the rest are generally non-threatening. This wasn't strictly necessary, and I might go with other workarounds if I think of them so I can take out bonded and put Firestarter back in, (relying on several different generic ritual spells is awful) but for now it hit the otherwise fairly modern deck pretty hard and brought it down to a decent level.

Nobody has submitted an anti-fun deck (e.g. burn/mill/exodia) yet but we'd probably be harsher with them, such as Fonda Fontaine's nurse burn deck that doesn't actually have a lot of burn or control cards.

Jon in the NPCs is a temporary exception to these rules mainly because it ties into his character arc, his deck is a (very inflexible) gimmick I really like, and because I thought it'd be cool if there was an unreasonably strong NPC available to duel against. Nobody has dueled against him yet though, so maybe I thought wrong.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Donte
It was such a relief to be out of the line of fire that Donte didn't even notice the girl sitting at her desk until she spoke up. "Oh. Hey."

What was she doing here?

Well, obviously, it's gotta be her room, but he and his father didn't waste much time coming here. It took some time to ditch him, but the bottom line is that if she's here alone, her parents were probably no-shows, which meant he was in the clear. Not as lucky as finding an empty room, but he could work with this.

He stood up, dusting himself off. "-And naw, this is right where I'm tryin' to be right now." He casually took a few steps into the room and started leaning against the foot of the bunkbeds. "You don't need to mind me, though if you do, make sure it's scandalous." Despite sounding like he was coming on to her, his tone was matter-of-fact, and his body language was disinterested. He had said it without even looking in her direction, pulling his PDA out of his pocket and fiddling with it as if hanging around uninvited was a perfectly natural thing to do.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Donte
"I want you to expel me."

"Excuse me?"

He had burst into Ms. Hibiki's room, which doubled as her office, and announced it out of nowhere. "You heard me."

The woman shook her head. "I didn't hear a 'why'."

Donte crossed his arms. "Because I don't want to be here anymore."

Ms. Hibiki raised an eyebrow. "Why would your father send you here if you didn't like dueling? Isn't he a tech magnate?"

"Yeah, yeah, 'hOw CoUlD mR. pErFeCt MaKe A mIsTaKe?' Well, I'm telling you, he did."

"I was just going to ask why he'd go out of his way to send you here if you hated dueling. Don't most successful businessmen like him want their children to 'inherit the empire' or something?"

"Hell no. Maybe when I was a baby and he didn't think of me as a such a fuck-up."

"Donte. Look at me. You're not a fuck-up."

Donte frowned. "Damn STRAIGHT I'm not, so you gonna expel me or do I need to damage school property first?"

A voice rang out from upstairs, interrupting their conversation. It wasn't hard to hear through the walls at all. "DONTAVIUS LORENZO!"

Donte grit his teeth, visibly going into fight or flight mode. "Fuck. Hide me."

Ms. Hibiki shrugged. "You can hide, but I'm not going to lie to your father's face."

"You're useless, then." Donte didn't waste any more time here, bolting out the door as quickly as he could without making a ruckus.

He needed to hide and fast. He was bound to be found in no time in the mess hall, but hey, none of the Slifer Red Dorms actually have locks. He ran into the nearest one, Room 102, shutting the door quickly and quietly behind him before pressing his back to the door and sliding down it.

@Darkmoon Angel