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“Sure, where do you want to, uh, just over here by the benches I guess?” "By the benches works." Makoto got herself seated and ready to duel, waiting for Peter to do the same before whipping out her trusty deck. She was feeling confident today, even more so than yesterday. "I took lots of mental notes yesterday from tryouts, so there's no way I'm going to make the same mistakes twice!" Peter sat down across from her and pulled out his own deck, wordlessly shuffling it a few times, seemingly lost in thought. He did speak eventually, though. “I might be going a little slow today, actually,” he said. “Just got to make sure I’m not making any dumb mistakes either. You want to go first?” “I’ll take you up on that!” Makoto shuffled her deck, then drew her first five cards… only to realize she forgot to separate the extra deck first. How did she realize this? Why, because of the two copies of Ancient Gear Howitzer in her opening hand. “Whoops. Um… just a sec.” The girl hurried through her deck, pulling out the fusion monsters and putting them aside before shuffling again and drawing a proper starting hand this time. “No problem,” Peter said. “Don’t make the same mistakes twice, right? Surely that’s never happened before.” “It hasn’t,” Makoto huffed. Now then, the duel. “Let’s get this show on the road! I summon…” “So, draw for the turn,” Peter said. “Okay, that’s pretty good. So, uh, I’ll play One for One, discarding Master so I can summon Maiden from my deck, then I can read the card this time” -- he really put an emphasis on those words -- “and send Master to my deck and Maiden to my ‘yard to summon two Blue-eyes, which then, uh, battle, I guess?” Peter nudged the cards forward to indicate their aggression. It wasn’t the same without the holograms of last week, but it was good enough. “Anyway, that’s all I got. Do your worst.” This isn’t good. A little slip-up, and suddenly Makoto found herself on the ropes in what was previously just a back-and-forth slugfest. She had to get back into the game somehow. She needed monsters; an empty field was no good. The girl drew her next card to start her turn, and her eyes widened at what had blessed her with its presence. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over! Since I control no monsters, I can activate Ancient Gear Catapult. It lets me destroy one card I control to summon an Ancient Gear monster from my deck, ignoring its summoning conditions. I choose to destroy my Geartown and summon Ancient Gear Wyvern, whose effect activates and lets me add an Ancient Gear monster to my hand.” The girl looked through her deck, pulling out and showing Peter an otherwise-ordinary looking box reaching into itself for various tools. “And when Ancient Gear Box is added to my hand like this, I can add another machine monster to my hand as long as it has 500 attack or defense points. A monster like Ancient Gear Knight. More importantly, because Geartown was destroyed, I can summon another Ancient Gear monster from my deck. Like this Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon! And just for the extra boost, I’ll be normal summoning that Ancient Gear Knight too.” Just like that, Makoto had gone from an empty field to three monsters. But this still wasn’t quite enough. Peter’s monsters were huge, and at best she could kill one by also letting her own dragon bite the dust. Which was where her newly-drawn card came in. “So, remember all these monsters of mine you’ve been beating up?” “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that.” Putting her finger on her graveyard that had been piling up, Makoto specified “The ones in here.” “Oh, those? Sure I remember them.” “They’re my ticket to winning this now. Specifically this Ancient Gear Golem, because I’ll be using Ancient Gear Factory to bring him back to my hand. And then, I’ll activate Ancient Gear Fusion! If I’m using my golem as a material, it lets me use monsters from my deck as fusion materials too, so by combining this with another Ancient Gear Golem and an Ancient Gear Golem - Ultimate Pound from the deck, we get…” Makoto moved the appropriate cards to her graveyard, then reached for her fusions, putting down just the ticket to victory. “Ancient Gear Megaton Golem! Thanks to being made with three golems, he can attack three times per turn. Which is where this next card comes in. I activate Limiter Removal to double the attack of all my monsters!” An all-or-nothing gambit. Destroying her own monsters at the end of the turn to double their power now. But with power like this, did that really matter? “And then I go all-in on the attacks! How’s that for a finisher?” Peter paused and checked his hand, then his field, then his hand again. “Uh…” He looked over at his graveyard, too, but he didn’t find any help there either. “Yeah, you got me. Nice,” he said and stuck his hand out. “I guess this is where we talk about it or did you just want to gear up for round two? “Oh, no pun intended on the gear thing.” “Gear up…” The pun - completely unintended - seemed to get some gears spinning in Makoto’s head. She looked over her cards, thinking really hard about something. As if struck by a flash of inspiration, Makoto suddenly asked “Do you have a piece of paper I can borrow?” “Uh, probably?” Peter said. He dug through his bag, coming back up with a loose-leaf notebook. “Just, like, a whole page?” He didn’t even wait for an answer, he was already tearing it out. “One whole page please, thank you.” Makoto reached into her pocket for a pen, and immediately started writing some notes down once she had the paper. “While I write some important notes down, let’s talk about the duel.”

"Where, um, where are we going?" "I'm just borrowing this bat," Kyouko reiterated, as she brought this small girl out of the alley and away from her monstrous captor. Back the way she came a short distance while the girl checked her phone, to be greeted at an outdoors table with the sight of that annoying bug. By the looks of things, he was trying to sell a shoe to someone whose foot was clearly too big for it. Not even a pair of shoes. Just one shoe. This was a good time to check her own phone. With all the chaos going on, surely people were talking about it in the entertainment club. Fairly certain you guys noticed it too...dunno what's going on, but this isn't a bad time to get used to Duel Space if you haven't already. Stuff like this, it's pretty much this club's element anyway! I think I just heard a bunch of explosions. Is everybody alright? I'm fine. The club president and I will need to have a talk later, though. Meanwhile, the bug's sale didn't seem to go so well, judging by his customer-to-be walking off without a new shoe. He seemed rather downcast by the sale not going through, until he spotted Kyouko, bat still on her person. "Aha! Value cusstomer! Welcome back! Bat issss to your liking, yesss?" "It's pretty handy. How much?" Kyouko's question was met with stunned silence. Based on his record so far, Kyouko could only assume he was in shock that somebody was actually buying something. "How much am I paying you for the bat?" she asked again. "Hm, hmmm... five!" That's... actually a pretty good price. Really good, actually! Kyouko reached for her wallet, opened it up... no cash. That was unfortunate. Maybe... yes, this girl was probably loaded, based on her gaudy clothes. And it wasn't like Kyouko was asking for a handout; she had every intention of paying back every dollar she was about to ask for. "Have you got some cash on you I can borrow? I'll pay it back before the day's out." "I-what? N-no, I don't have any money." Gabby responded, looking distracted. "Unlucky." Pulling her student card out from the wallet, Kyouko held it out and asked "Do you take card payments?" The merchant swiped the card from Kyouko's hand, looking it over really closely. He held it up in her direction, to verify that the girl on the card and the girl in front of him were indeed the same person. "You look different. Got haircut?" "I dyed it." "Eyesss? Brown, not orange." Is this guy serious? Kyouko pulled her eyelids apart, grabbing one of her contacts and pulling it off. Taking extra care not to drop it, she pointed at her natural brown eye, and answered "Colored contacts." "Hmmmm... ok!" The merchant opened his mouth, and for a moment, Kyouko was afraid he was going to eat her student card like he had with that leaf earlier. Instead, what happened was the merchant merely putting half of it in his mouth for a bit, during which time his eyes began to glow. Just what was he doing? Suddenly, Kyouko felt her phone buzzing in her pocket again. It was a verification text confirming a fund transfer of five dollars, as she learned upon checking. "Thank you for shopping, value cussstomer! Come again!" As Kyouko took her surpsiginly drool-free card back, one question couldn't escape her mind. Just what the hell is this guy? Oh well. "Come on, let's go find that friend of yours," Kyouko said, nudging the small girl. From: Melissa To: Gabriela I'm in Gardner Hall. Men's restroom, second floor. If you see a classroom full of Mokey Mokey, the one closest to that. That was the text the small girl was taking directions from. And by extension, the one Kyouko was following. A non-zero number of additional monsters smacked later, in addition to actually getting there, and the pair found themselves outside a set of bathrooms in that building on that floor. Even in this situation, going into the men's restroom seemed awkward. But it was fine under these circumstances, right? It wasn't like anyone had any ulterior motives; quite the opposite, in fact. And so, Kyouko led the way in, tapping on each of the stall doors with the end of her new bat. "Anyone home? I'm looking for whoever's friends with this runt behind me." A voice called out from the furthest stall, all the way in the corner. It was a girl's voice, and a familiar one, though Kyouko couldn't quite put a name to it. "Kyouko?" the girl said. "Wait, Gabby's with you too?" The stall door opened and she poked her head out (a nice gesture even though it didn't really help with remembering her name). "Oh, thank goodness." she said. "I was so worried." She's also in the entertainment club, Kyouko recalled. Wait... was this the same girl that heard all those explosions? "Everyone's safe and sound, it seems. Had to give one of those duel monsters a few good whacks though, to get your friend out of trouble. Pretty cathartic stuff when it's just a projection, actually."

"This wasn't even the work of a Demon Gate. What a cruel world we're fighting to preserve the order of." "Just preserving order isn't good enough." Not being in a grieving widow's line of sight or earshot anymore felt like a monster of a weight off of Pyrrha's shoulders. The bearers of bad news were supposed to keep their composure in these sorts of situations, and until they left, she was intent on doing precisely that. It felt a lot easier when she didn't have to look someone who had just lost their life's love in the eyes. This was as good a time as any to practice the same motions. Draw arrow. Pull back string. Release. In the direction of her imaginary bow, as she fired her imaginary arrow, Pyrrha tried to envision the thing she hated most in its path. Order wasn't enough on its own. "Peace is also important. Even if we close the Demon Gates and keep the world in order, this sort of thing will keep happening to people who don't deserve it. The world is still crawling with things that cause it, that came from this world. Monsters. Villains. Witches." There was a very special, very obvious drop of venom put into that last one. "Until we deal with those menaces too, closing the Demon Gates will only stop this sort of thing from happening on a worldwide scale. If we want to stop this sort of grief for good..." One final shot. In her mind, Pyrrha could see the target, and watched as the arrow whizzed through the air, planting itself firmly between the eyes of an imaginary witch. "Well, you get the idea."