@Ryik“Did you not feel that? It felt like something terrible had happened.” She stopped shaking Rin.
Rin rubbed her eyes. “What happened? Did I sleep through an earthquake?”
“No, or… well, I don’t think it was an earthquake. Kinda felt like a loud explosion happened.” She raced over towards her bed, starting to put on some proper clothes for going outside.
“So Roché set off another firecracker inside? Kind of rude to do that at this hour, but if the dorms aren’t on fire, I think I’ll go back to sleep.” Rin had already closed her eyes. She was
just resting them for a while, though her hunched posture suggested she was ready to pass out again.
Mina shook her head, walking back to Rin’s bed, now wearing proper clothing for going outside.
“No, I don’t think so. I think it came from outside of the dorm. You have to come with me, I do not want to go alone.”Rin made one final bid to return to sleep’s warm and comfy embrace. “What about Professor Sartyr?” It was against the rules to go out at this hour, and if there was something happening outside, it should be his problem, not the students’.
Mina felt that she was not going to convince Rin to join her, though in all likelihood, she would probably just slow her down. She responded with a hint of passive aggressiveness,
“okay, good night then.” She sighed, quietly heading out of their room.
Rin could take Mina being annoyed with her if it meant she could roll over and go back to sleep.
Apparently there were quite a few others who had woken up, though. Among them was the boy she met on the first day, Miles, already speed walking out of the lounge at a brisk, rushed pace.
Noticing Miles heading towards what she assumed was the source of the explosion, she ran after him.
“Miles, wait up.” She was physically fit and easily closed the distance between them with a little bit of jogging.
“Mina? Why’re you- actually, nevermind, you’ve got that dog that looks like a batman villain. Of course you were woken up by it. You come to check out the most literal form of ‘all hell breaking loose’ too?”
“Yeah, I assume that is what caused that explosion.” She nodded her head.
The two walked together. The pillar was closest to the Slifer Red dorms, so it made sense to follow the path for a while until they came to a bend and Miles suggested they get there as the crow flies. They made idle chatter as they walked through the forest illuminated in an eerie sheen not quite the same as moonlight. “So, what do you think it actually is?”
“I don’t know, but I hope it’s nothing terrible.” She was enamored by the light that was coming from the geyser, feeling more anxious as they got closer and closer to the pillar.
“I hope we don’t have to leave the island.”“I doubt it. Even if these white bedsheet-lookin’ Halloween rejects pose a very real threat via hauntings, it’s more likely that this school will continue teaching for around a decade until it’s finally closed down from cumulative student casualties.”
Him saying that did not make her feel any more comfortable investigating the explosion. She worried that something terrible had been released by it.
“I hope that’s not the case. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”As they approached the pillar, they eventually saw a duel spirit wandering the forest. Further on, they could see more spirits congregated in an area around some humanoid figure they couldn’t make out.
Mina and Miles watched the spirits from a distance, hiding behind the trees to keep their presence unknown. Mina wondered if the pillar had released all of them. She felt both sadness and joy at the notion of the spirits being released; joy because they were free, but sadness because they now seemed to be wandering the Earth without any purpose.
Or, at least, she figures they would have better things to do than chill out in a forest if they did have a purpose beyond their inherent nature as duel monsters.
Miles looked up, towards the pillar of duel spirits pouring into the sky. “How long would you say it takes a duel spirit to recover from whatever it is that made them monochrome? The ones from the geyser that have been out the longest are just barely regaining hints of color before they disappear into the storm.”
“I don’t know, but I hope it’s quick. I feel bad for them.” She noticed a monochrome Winged Kuriboh flying above her.
“I wonder what caused that pillar to release all of these spirits.”“Do you think they were helping out their own kind? Look at those ones over there. All of them are fully saturated and ready to bully the colorblind. Their group doesn’t seem to be growing, so I don’t think they came from the geyser, given how many are still pouring out of it. What do you think?”
“Perhaps, or it could be a human that had released these spirits somehow. Perhaps they came from somewhere else? Maybe somewhere on the island?” She thought of different ways these spirits could have convened.
“...Shit. I think we’ve been spotted. We should probably run.”
She noticed the spirits that were now starting to come towards them,
“Shit.” She started running in the other direction. Not looking behind her to see if Miles was following behind her. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, but she was trying to ignore the pain in her chest. She just needed to distance herself from this shitshow.
When she finally felt it was safe to stop and catch her breath, she soon realized Miles was gone. She did a full 360 looking for him, but all she could see were trees upon trees. She called out,
“Miles?” Yelling didn’t seem like the best idea in this situation, but when she got no response, she felt she had no recourse but to try again, louder.
“Miles? Can you hear me?”Nothing met her calls but dead silence. That, and one particularly persistent spirit who she recognized from the initial mob, drifting towards her quite quickly.
Understandably quite frightened by her current situation, she started moving backwards, only to trip and fall onto her back due to an irresponsibly placed tree branch.
“Fuck.” She cursed loudly as she noticed the spirit drawing near.
“Stay back, I'm warning you.” She quickly grabbed a thin stick, waving it away back and forth in a poor attempt to try and defend herself. White Magician Pikeru had finally caught up.
“I’ve finally caught you, human! Prepare to be defeated!” The spirit raised her staff in challenge.
She was challenging Mina to a duel.
How did Mina know this?
Isn’t it obvious?
Everyone knows that all conflicts in this world are resolved through dueling, though the consequences this time seemed… dangerous.
She put down the stick. Her only way through this was dueling anyway. Like hell is she gonna take her chances in a fist fight with a supernatural entity that may or may not be selectively intangible. She stated the
obvious anyway.
“If I win, you have to leave me alone.” She slowly stood up, putting her deck into her duel disk and steeling herself.
White Magician Pikeru nodded with a bright, sunny smile.
“And if I win, you’ll join us!” Mina had a feeling she didn’t want to know what that meant.
The duel started out fairly standard. Mina took the lead as she used Vampire Fraulein to muscle through Royal Magical Library and control the board. She link summoned Vampire Sucker, and was about to clear Pikeru’s board when Magical Dimension followed by Dark Magic Curtain screwed things up. Dark Magician started destroying all of her monsters. The very next turn, Pikeru drew a second Dark Magic Curtain and started making Direct attacks with the pair of Dark Magicians. Although she had paid over 5000 lifepoints to summon them, she now had the lifepoint lead. That being said, they were both low enough that just one good attack would end the duel.
That’s when Mina drew Vampire Red Baron.
By banishing Vampire Sorcerer, she could summon it without tribute. Using Vampire’s Domain, she could bring out Vampire Familiar and use Vampire Red Baron to swap it with a Dark Magician. From there, all she had to do was attack the familiar for game, but since victory was all but assured, she couldn’t help but have a little fun. Using Pikeru’s own Dark Magician to summon Dhampir Vampire Sheridan, she destroyed and stole Pikeru’s other Dark Magician, robbing her of both of them before finally attacking Vampire Familiar to finish the game.
The duel came to a close and Pikeru dropped to the ground, looking like she was about to cry.
Mina was celebrating by jumping and down, screaming in joy as she knew deep down she was not a terrible duelist. After a while of celebrating, she stopped and walked over towards the spirit.
“Alright, I wanna know who sprung you out of that pillar. Also, who trapped you there in the first place?”“W-what? We didn’t come from there! I don’t really know what’s going on. They just told me it was the fault of you humans! It’s always your guys’ fault!” She pouts, trying to seem angry while still crying.
“Our fault for what?” She was confused what what she meant. “And who is they?” She raised a brow at the cute spirit.
“The pillar! The pillar is because of you guys! And
‘they’ are my friends! The other spirits you were spying on! They, uh…” She looks away sheepishly, and not just because of the sheep horns on her scapegoat hat. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention, b-but! They aren’t liars! If they said a human did it, then they saw it with their own eyes! Or whatever they have instead of eyes. Yeah!” Despite being in tears just a moment ago, she begins looking defiant again, as if Mina was the bad guy here.
“And this pillar was made by humans I assume? Your friends could have been seeing things, and didn’t know the context of what was actually happening.” She moved a bit closer towards the spirit. With subtlety, of course.
She shook her head. “Humans are bad!”
“That really does not help with your argument, nor does it give me any good information about what’s going on.” She shook her head in annoyance.“Humans! Are! Bad! You’re all a bunch of meanies!” It was pretty mean to throw someone into a well, after all.
Facepalming. Mina could tell she was not going to get any information out of this brat.
“I guess I'll just have to find someone with more than one brain cell to tell me what is going on.” And with that, she left in the direction the spirit came from, hoping to come across someone who could help her.
Another allegedly life or death battle against a ‘wild’ duel spirit would also be fine. Talking to an idiot child had kind of demystified them for her.
Mina walked further into the forest, keeping watch of her surroundings. She was scared that something worse was going to come duel her. But she kept walking, eventually noticing a floating, glowing human girl being surrounded by some spirits. Rushing into action, she ran over thinking that they were about to do some weird voodoo shit to her.
“Hey! Get away from her you bastards.”As Mina rushed into the small clearing they resided in, the floating girl turned to face her, eyes aglow with spectral energy. With one look, she immediately knew she had made a huge mistake. Stopping in her tracks, she was now regretting her decision to rush in.
“Oooooh shittttt…” She could see she had gotten the girl’s and the other spirit’s attention.
The floating girl spoke in a cacophony of simultaneous voices. “Another human.”
Mina was walking backwards, getting ready to run into a full sprint again.
“Sorry to disturb you, seems like I’ve walked in at a bad time. See ya.” She turned, only to see that she was surrounded by a variety of spirits, all lined up to block off her escape.
“Come. You’re curious, yes?” The floating girl beckons Mina over.
She could tell she was not going anywhere,
“Curious? No. Just looking for a friend, nerdy looking guy. ‘Bout yay high, reddish hair, and a little easy on the eyes.” She stopped walking back when she accidentally bumped into the spirit of Jinzo #7.
The floating girl shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him. Perhaps he went straight for the pillar of spirits.” The girl turned back towards it, staring at it was a mixture of reverence and disgust. “You humans are quite ingenious. To force so many of us into one place is quite the feat. To unleash them upon yourselves? Huhu…” She giggles to herself. With the myriad of voices she speaks with, it just sounds eerie. “I only wish it would kill all of you.”
“Damn it, well it wasn’t me that did it, if you’re wondering.”“Of course you weren’t. The true culprit was quite eager to turn tail, after all. Seems all humans are, once faced with that which they cannot control.”
“Who are you people anyway? Where did you guys come from?” She felt very uneasy talking to the possessed girl.
The girl simply pointed towards the forest, in the direction of the pillar. She could have pointed at the pillar itself, above the treeline, but noticeably didn’t.
“The pillar?”“No. We are but bystanders, abandoned at the bottom of a well. Each of us were condemned for our weakness and left to rot in a pit, never to see the light of day again.” She turned towards Mina. “Now, I think it’s about time we showed you what that feels like.”
She scanned the area trying to find where she could escape from this situation.
“No thanks, I’m good. I just, uhhh… like to watch.”“We didn’t ask.”
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Red Wizard
Chrys
Half Pint
Lucid Dreaming
Izurich
Tim the Yeti
Andreyich
Adamastor
irritablepuc