Yugi sighed as he slumped against the wall of the elevator. He certainly didn't envy Mokuba for having to stay up on the upper level dealing with sponsors and other business needs before the tournament began in earnest. While his exhibition duel with Mokuba had been completely tame by the standards of the Shadow Games he had experienced through high school, it still left him feeling all too drained by the end of it. Without Atem's presence to lean on, it seemed he just wasn't able to withstand the rigors of Duel Monsters brought to life. He knew this would pass soon- after all, the aftereffects of the duels with Pegasus and Marik had cleared quickly, and those had been much more taxing to him. However, he still was looking forward to getting to rest in the duelist's lounge—and not just for the people who he would meet there.
As the elevator dinged to signify it had arrived on the correct floor, Yugi felt like he had taken a trip into the past. He had been too busy working with Mokuba in preparation for their duel, so this was his first time seeing this room. He had just walked into what looked like an exact replica of the common area of the Battle Ship that had hosted the first half of the Battle City Finals. Still, if the room looked the same, the faces in it were anything but. At the nearest table, Yako Tenma looked up from his tablet briefly and acknowledged Yugi's presence with a nod before returning to work. While Yugi had long since forgiven Pegasus's adopted son for his actions that were driven both by grief and the corruption of the Wicked God Cards, seeing the businessman while suffering from the effects of a quasi-Shadow Game was enough to bring back some unpleasant memories.
Sitting at three separate tables were three new duelists Yugi didn't recognize. The nearest was a blonde man wearing an outfit similar to Kaiba's old blue trenchcoat, although with most of his face hidden in a book Yugi couldn't make out more details than that. Off in the far corner, there was a bald man with a black goatee was busy talking on his phone. Between the two, the last duelist was sitting hunched over the table, shuffling through his cards as he sat by himself. However, while Yugi acknowledged the new faces, the duelists he was really looking forward to seeing were behaving much differently than the rest, as the remaining three duelists in the room were all gathered around the same table and talking animatedly with each other. As Yugi approached the table, the youngest duelist there was the first to notice his approach.
"Oh, it's you, Yugi. What do you both think—do his bangs qualify him to sit at this table? After all, it does seem like it's only blondes allowed." Yugi saw the worry in the 13-year-old girl's eyes and couldn't help but smile back at her in reassurance.
"I'll have my usual scathing comeback later, Rebecca. That last duel took more out of me than expected. The new duel disk worked great, but there are some things about it that probably won't make it into the released product. Not that it was too bad, but still more strenuous than I'd expect in the final version."
Yugi saw the flash of understanding pass through everyone's eyes. Everyone gathered around the table knew exactly what he meant—but also knew that this wasn't the venue to openly discuss what had happened. Everyone here had had at least some experience with the more supernatural side of Duel Monsters, although openly discussing it in public would only have a negative impact both on the game itself and on public perception of their sanity.
Knowing Yugi was fine after his latest duel, the oldest member of the table decided to change the subject. "Speaking of difficult things, I wanted to just say I'm sorry about everything over the past couple of years, Yugi. Both for what I did in California, and for what I must have put you all through when I just dropped off the face of the earth afterwards." Yugi opened his mouth to respond, but Joey cut him off.
"We've been over this, Mai. You don't have to apologize for being manipulated like that. We've all forgiven you a long time ago." Mai sent Joey a glare that Yugi could tell was ready to restart an old argument, so he cut back in.
"Joey, calm down. Everyone has their own process for coming to terms with something like that. I remember the anguish of having someone close to you get hurt because you gave in to the temptation to duel like that. I also remember how hard it is to face everyone after that." Technically they weren't his own memories, but sharing a mind with Atem had allowed Yugi to see exactly what Atem had felt after playing the Seal of Orichalcos. "I'm just glad you finally came back, Mai. It's great to see you again. And Joey does have a point- I've forgiven you a long time ago."
Mai's eyes softened. "Thanks, Yugi. I wish I would have been meet with you sooner, but it took a lot of soul searching and therapy before I was ready to get to this point. I'm not going to let all of that go to waste by not actually apologizing to everyone in person." She paused, glancing around. "Speaking of which, where is everyone else? I didn't get much of a chance to talk about them with Joey last night, so I really have only gotten to hear about how Serenity is doing."
Rebecca quirked an eyebrow at the revelation that Joey and Mai had had some kind of meeting the previous night yet not gotten around to talking about everyone else, but Joey pointedly ignored the teenager. "It's just gotten a lot harder for everyone to find a time to get together. Yugi and I have it easiest since we have the freedom to travel in our jobs, but everyone else has a hard time travelling around. We all get together for the world championships and try to do a couple of other times a year, but usually it's just a couple of us at a time that are able to make it."
Yugi sighed. "At least we've got it better than most. Joey and I still live in Domino, so we can still hang out with Tristan pretty easily since he's just working at the same factory as his dad. It's harder to get in touch with the others- Bakura flew out to Egypt to face some of his own demons and is studying psychology in Cairo, Duke's still living in San Francisco, and Téa's out in New York studying to be a dancer. With all the different time zones, it's pretty hard just trying to get everyone awake at the same time in a group chat, let alone seeing each other."
At this, Rebecca just smirked. "I don't know, Yugi. I'd like to believe you, but ever since Grandpa and I moved to New York I can't help but notice you keep ending up in town about one week out of every month. At this rate, you may as well get your name added to Téa's lease."
Mai found herself wishing she had a camera to immortalize the look on Yugi's face. The King of Games was blushing and sputtering furiously after Rebecca's statement. The older woman smirked and was about to add to her friend's embarrassment when the TV screens in the room that had previously been showing generic messages from sponsors and a story about KaibaCorp's latest charity donation switched to showing images of all eight duelists, meaning the selection for the first match was about to begin. After a few seconds, six of the duelist's faces on the screen went black, with only Rebecca's face as well as the blonde man's being lit. Rebecca nodded and grabbed her deck as Mokuba's voice announced the matchup to the stadium.
"The opening match of the KC Phoenix Invitational Tournament will be defending European champion Vellian Crowler against defending American champion Rebecca Hawkins! Duelists, please come to the stage level."
As Rebecca started walking away, Yugi managed to recover enough from his embarrassment to form full sentences. "Good luck out there, Rebecca—both from me and from Mokuba." Mai decided to add some more helpful information, considering she had started dueling on the European circuit this year as well and thus had a closer knowledge of her opponent. "He may not look that impressive, but his deck is nothing to sneeze at. He runs an—"
Rebecca waved Mai off. "Ancient Gear deck, I know. Once the lineup was announced, I made sure to look into the dueling histories of all the participants. Both for my own advantage, and to do Mokuba a favor and prove nobody was pulling what the von Schroeders did at the Grand Championship a couple years ago. I'm ready for this." With that, she walked away, leaving Mai shaking her head.
"You know, I'm almost jealous of that kid. In some ways, she reminds me a lot of me—she probably had to claw her way up the dueling ladder in the face of people thinking she couldn't, ended up being a champion-caliber duelist, and is still always willing to take you guys down a few pegs when she needs to. Still, she's lucky enough to have made friends with all of you a lot earlier in her life than I did, and from what I remember from out in California she handled getting thrown into the crazy end of Duel Monsters a heck of a lot better than I did." She saw Joey open his mouth as if to argue with her, but on seeing her glare he closed it for a second before responding with what Mai could tell hadn't been the first thing to cross his mind.
"Yeah, she's a great kid all right. Sure, she can drive us up the wall sometimes, but I'm sure if you asked Téa what Tristan and I were like at that age, she'd same the same thing about us." He got a distant look in his eyes as he corrected himself. "Okay, not quite that age. I didn't become friends with Yugi until a year after that, and before I was friends with Yugi I wasn't the kind of person who had friends I could drive up the wall."
This time, it was Yugi jumping in to cut off his friend's self-deprecation. "Joey, you know you weren't that bad. I didn't just make you a better person—I just saw the potential there and you were the one who ultimately made it happen." Joey would have just waved off Yugi's sentiment, but since Mai was here he decided to rehash his argument since it might be something it would help her to hear.
"Yeah, I was the one who decided to be a better person—but only because you saw that better person in me. Since someone else could see him, it made me start to look for him too. Sometimes you need a friend who's willing to look past the bad stuff in order to do it yourself."
Mai shook her head. "Okay, as much as there's some good advice in there, you are laying it on a bit thick with the friendship speech, Joey. You need to take some more lessons from Téa." Just mentioning her name was enough to get the blush creeping back to Yugi's cheeks, and Mai just smirked as she planned her next move. "Speaking of which, what's going on between Mokuba and Rebecca? I can't help but notice something in the way she keeps mentioning him."
Joey looked at her in confusion. "I don't think there's anything going on there. Sure, they're close, but that's just because of some common experiences. They've both been forced to deal with people looking down on them for their age, and have to fight through that in their respective fields. Plus, it's not like any other kids their age went through anything nearly as crazy as they did—so of course they'd gravitate towards each other. They're just best friends."
"Sure, just best friends. Sort of like how Yugi and Téa were 'just friends' on that date before Battle City, and I'm pretty sure someone doesn't fly 6000 miles for a week each month to crash on a friend's couch…" At this, Yugi once again buried his face in his hands, and Mai couldn't help but chuckle. If nothing else, she was starting to uncover a strategy that might give her the edge needed to finally unseat the King of Games.
Rebecca internally groaned as she stuck her hand between the elevator doors, stopping them from closing and letting her get on board with her soon-to-be opponent. However, Crowler wasn't as quick to hide his feelings on the matter, letting out an audible sigh as the teenager boarded the elevator with him. Not one to take anybody's bad attitude, Rebecca planned to use the ride to keep him a captive audience as she made her displeasure unknown.
"You know, there's really no benefit to making me wait to take the trip up. The least you could do is show a little bit of sportsmanship before you end up making a first-round exit."
Crowler merely scoffed at this. "Why must every teenager have such an overinflated opinion of their abilities? It's attitudes like that that make me question why I ever decided to become a teacher. There's no respect, and everybody half your age thinks they run the world. I look forward to teaching you to respect your elders."
Rebecca rolled her eyes. If he was going to insist on treating her like a child, she wasn't going to insist on being the bigger person. "Wow, what a brilliant observation! I'm younger than you! It's not like people have been pointing that out to me for the last six years of my life. Besides, you do realize Duel Monsters is marketed at people my age, don't you? I'm pretty sure you're the odd one out here, Mr. Crowler."
"That's Doctor Crowler. I have a doctorate in dueling, and I deserve to be called by my title."
Rebecca just blinked at that statement. "Okay, two things. First, it's really not that special to have a doctorate—I'm finishing up my thesis right now in fact. Second, what kind of school offers a doctorate in dueling? Sure, I know KaibaCorp was thinking about opening some form of school for the game, but that was for kids. Who decided to create an advanced degree course?"
The elevator doors opened on the stadium level, but Crowler paused for a second as he responded. "Yes, I assure you, three years ago I would have been laughing at the idea too. However, you'd be surprised what steps a government will take after the Prime Minister is killed in a Duel Monster attack." With that, he strolled off to his place on the dueling field, leaving Rebecca stunned for a few seconds before she quickly walked to her place as well. After the Orichalcos mess, she had come to accept that all sorts of supernatural weirdness were drawn to her friends- but it was easy to forget that armies of Duel Monsters had attacked around the world as the prelude to Dartz's plot.
As each duelist activated their Duel Disks, Rebecca called out across the field. "Before we start, I'd like to apologize. It seems I underestimated why you got into dueling. Still, even if I respect you more now, just know that I won't be holding back. Let's have a great duel."
Crowler just smirked. "Oh, I think you'll find even without holding back that you are in quite over your head. Now, I believe I get the first move." He drew his first card before making his opening move. "First, I'll summon my Silver Gadget in attack mode. Now, when this monster is summoned, I can Special Summon one Level 4 Machine monster from my hand. So, I think I'll bring forth my Ancient Gear Knight!" The lance-wielding rusted knight appeared on the field next to the gleaming gadget, but Crowler wasn't done with his turn yet. "Now that I have an Ancient Gear monster on the field, I can activate my Ancient Gear Drill card. This handy spell lets me discard an Ancient Gear card in order to set one spell from my deck. So, I'll discard Ancient Gear Gadget in order to set this field spell and end my turn."
Rebecca frowned at Crowler's opening move. Considering his deck, his face-down card was most likely Geartown, which would let him summon any Ancient Gear monster with one less tribute than normal. With Silver Gadget's ability to summon another Gadget monster whenever it was destroyed, that meant she wasn't likely to be able to clear out Crowler's entire field, so he'd be able to summon his strongest monsters next turn. Since her hand consisted of Solemn Wishes, Diamond Head Dragon, Alexandrite Dragon, Silent Doom, and Strong Wind Dragon, she didn't have anything she could use to get rid of the field spell either.
Upon drawing her Dragon Shield card, Rebecca knew she would have to deal with whatever powerful monster Crowler would bring out. Dragon Shield was certainly a helpful card and playing it this turn would save her some life points next turn. However, with the other cards in her hand it was best to save it for later. "First, I'll set one card face down. Then, I'll summon my Alexandrite Dragon in attack mode!" The jewel-encrusted dragon cast a rainbow of reflected light around the stadium as it roared into existence. "Now, Alexandrite Dragon, attack his Ancient Gear Knight with your Fabergé Flame!"
The dragon's 2000 attack points were too much for Crowler's monster to withstand, and the stream of golden flames melted through the knight, taking Crowler down to 7800 life points. However, this was the last move Rebecca could make, so she ended her turn and braced herself for the upcoming assault. Sure enough, Crowler wasted no time in making his move after he drew his card.
"Now I'll activate my facedown Geartown card! With this, I can summon my Ancient Gear Golem by tributing only my Silver Gadget!" The duel field suddenly changed as a city of cogs rose around the combatants, but Rebecca's attention was more focused on the mechanical giant that had taken the place of Crowler's smaller monster. When Crowler made his next move, however, Rebecca realized just how painful deciding not to play Dragon Shield was going to be. "Now, I'll activate my Mystical Space Typhoon! I get to destroy one spell or trap on the field—and I choose my own Geartown!"
A cyclone tore through the city, sending gears flying everywhere as the town was destroyed. "And now that my city has been destroyed, I can Special Summon any Ancient Gear monster from my hand, deck, or Graveyard. Come forth, Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon!" Crowler's most recent monster resembled a scrap metal sculpture of a dragon more than anything else, but despite appearances it still gave him two monsters with 3000 attack points each. With only her Alexandrite Dragon and Solemn Wishes in play, she was about to lose half of her life points.
Crowler was all too aware of his advantage as he entered his Battle Phase. "I say it's time to teach you a lesson about protecting your valuables. Ancient Gear Golem, crush her dragon with your Mechanical Melee!" The giant mecha's fist was roughly the same size as Alexandrite Dragon, and her dragon shattered into pieces as soon as the punch connected. Rebecca's life points clicked down to 7000, but she used this opportunity to make her countermove.
"Your monsters might stop me from activating traps in response to their attacks, but I can still activate them after the Damage Step. I'll activate my Solemn Wishes trap!" Crowler made a show of shaking his head.
"Oh, really? Do you think 500 life points every time you draw a card will really make much of a difference here? Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon, attack her directly with your Ferric Fire Blast!" The holographic fireball still knocked Rebecca back a few steps, and as her life points fell to 4000 she started to wish the duel disks weren't advanced enough to replicate smells—the acrid fumes of the last attack made it more difficult to focus on making her next move.
Crowler ended his turn, leaving Rebecca to draw her next card. She drew Marie the Fallen One, which would be helpful if she got it into the Graveyard but wasn't much use right now. Still, she had everything she needed to make a turnaround. "Since I just drew a card, Solemn Wishes will give me 500 more life points. Then, I'll activate my Silent Doom spell card to bring Alexandrite Dragon back to the field in defense position!"
Rebecca's life points bumped up to 4500, and her jeweled dragon crouched in front of her. However, Crowler was less than impressed. "You do realize Ancient Gear Golem inflicts piercing damage, don't you? Your dragon only has 100 defense points, so you may as well have not summoned anything if you are relying on that to be your shield."
Rebecca just smirked. "Who said anything about defense? I'm sacrificing Alexandrite Dragon in order to summon my Strong Wind Dragon!" The rainbow-colored dragon was replaced by a muscular blue dragon whose very appearance stirred up a whirlwind. "This dragon has quite the list of handy effects. First, just like your Golem, he inflicts piercing damage when attacking a defense monster. Second, he can't be destroyed by battle with a monster that has the same attack. However, the best effect would be if he's summoned by tributing a dragon—like I just did—he gains attack equal to half of the tributed monster's original attack. So, that puts him at 3400 attack points. Now, destroy his Ancient Gear Golem with Wyvern's Windshear!"
The blue dragon lightly flapped his wings, but the apparent lack of effort wasn't reflected in the tornado that surrounded Crowler's Golem. Gashes appeared all throughout the automaton as the wind sliced apart its rusted body until it was finally destroyed, knocking Crowler down to 7400 life points. With that, Rebecca ended her turn, waiting to see what Crowler would do now that she had gained more of an advantage in the duel. As it turned out, she needn't have worried—all Crowler did on his turn was draw a card, growl something under his breath, and end his turn.
Rebecca couldn't help but grin as she saw her next card. "Well, after I take my 500 life points from Solemn Wishes, I'll activate my Hand Destruction spell card! We each discard two cards, and then we can each draw two cards—which will give me yet another 500 life points!" Of course, the 500 life points were more a fringe benefit of the card—what she was looking forward to were the other things that came from its activation. She discarded Marie the Fallen One in order to set the stage to gain another 200 life points each Standby Phase, and also discarded Diamond Head Dragon which was only able to be summoned from her deck and thus was useless in her hand.
The cards she drew to replace her discarded cards left her feeling even better. By drawing Fire Princess and DNA Surgery, she had everything in place to pull off one of her deck's most vicious combos—although it would require waiting until next turn to pull it off. "I'll set this one card face down, and then have Strong Wind Dragon destroy your Gadjiltron Dragon!" Crowler's mechanical dragon fared no better against the typhoon than his golem did, leaving his field empty and dropping his life points down to 7000. While that still gave him the lead over Rebecca's 5500, she was confident that the tides would quickly turn—after all, her deck was designed to slowly chip away at her opponent while restoring her own life points.
However, when Crowler started laughing after he drew his next card, Rebecca realized she might not have been as safe as she had thought. "You're going to regret activating Hand Destruction, kid. The two cards I had before weren't going to do anything to help me. In contrast, the three cards I have now are everything I need. I summon Ancient Gear Wyvern in attack mode!" The monster was a smaller and less overtly threatening version of the previous Gadjiltron Dragon, though with its effect—and Crowler's current attitude—it was obviously a bigger threat than it appeared.
"When my Wyvern is summoned, I'm able to add any Ancient Gear card from my deck to my hand. Of course, it comes at the cost of not being able to set any other cards this turn, but that's not important when I can add my second Ancient Gear Golem to my hand. This will let me activate my next card: Power Bond! I'll fuse my Wyvern with the Ancient Gear Golem and Ancient Gear Soldier in my hand to summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem!"
This latest monster took Crowler's previous giant mecha and turned it into an even larger mechanical centaur. However, in this case, its physical size was entirely appropriate for its level of power. "This new monster has all of the effects of my Ancient Gear Golem, and it can also re-summon an Ancient Gear Golem if it leaves the field. Of course, that isn't very likely considering Power Bond gives it 8800 attack points. Now, we simply must get rid of that dragon of yours. Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, attack with Ultimate Ancient Drill Break!"
The monster's right arm transformed into a drill that looked gigantic even compared to its own massive size, and Rebecca couldn't help but feel this was overkill for her now tiny-looking dragon. However, once the attack hit it took all of her concentration just to stay on her feet as the shockwave from the attack sent her skidding backwards, taking 5400 of her life points and leaving her with only 100 remaining. To his credit, Crowler at least allowed her to recover before he started gloating.
"Do you see now that you should be careful with the cards you play? I highly doubt whatever you drew combined with the 200-life point boost from the Marie the Fallen One you discarded offsets letting me summon my most powerful monster. Sure, I might lose 4400 life points as the cost for using Power Bond, but unless you can summon something with over 8800 attack points I don't see that making a difference."
With that, he ended his turn, but it was Rebecca's turn to gloat. "In some ways, you're right. There's not a single card or even a combination of cards in my deck that can defeat your monster. Luckily for me, I don't need to beat that monster to beat you—and Power Bond's cost just got me four turns closer to victory." Crowler scoffed at her attitude, but it was time to show him just how wrong he was. Rebecca drew her next card, but the Luster Dragon she drew was ultimately pointless—she already had everything she needed. Her life points clicked up to 600 upon drawing her card, and then in her Standby Phase they bumped up to 800 thanks to Marie the Fallen One. Ultimately it wouldn't matter for this turn, but soon enough the crowd would see how vital that was.
"First, I'll summon my Fire Princess in attack mode. Then, I activate my DNA Surgery trap card in order to turn every monster on the field into a Dragon type!" The sorceress in red robes appeared on the field before the effects of her trap card kicked in. Rebecca always marveled at Mokuba's own touch in the latest holograms. While Seto Kaiba had his favored form of interpretation of what a dragon was—typically a western design, preferably with white scales and blue eyes—Mokuba had decided to take a much broader approach to show multiple different perspectives of what cultures viewed dragons to be. In the case of her Fire Princess, the monster didn't so much become a dragon as she became a dragon crossbreed, with a faint scale pattern to her skin and reptilian eyes being the only obvious draconic attributes. Of course, there were still limits to what one company could program as all the various appearances for each monster, so some monsters didn't get the same treatment. Crowler's Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, for instance, wasn't something that could be easily transformed into a true dragon, so it simply changed to look like someone had grafted the head and wings from his Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon onto the centaur's body.
However, Crowler didn't seem to appreciate the artistic evolution of the game as much as his opponent did. "I fail to see the point of that maneuver. Did you think that Power Bond's attack boost would wear off just because my Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem was no longer a Machine type? And even if it had, your Fire Princess is just a big target. I have 2600 life points left, and I doubt you'll be able to increase your life points six times between now and when I destroy her next turn and inflict over 7000 points of damage."
Rebecca just shook her head. "Well, looks like it's time for a little girl to teach the famed educator a lesson. Since my Fire Princess is now a Dragon type, I can equip her with my Dragon Shield spell card!" Crowler visibly blanched as the dragon shaped armor contorted around the sorceress. "So, now I have a monster that can't be destroyed by card effects or battle, and neither of us take any battle damage from battles involving it. Considering she also takes away 500 of your life points each time I increase mine, and I'm already set up to gain life points twice a turn, you've got three turns left. Of course, you could always just destroy my spell card, but I've seen your strategy. You rely so much on the effects of your Ancient Gear monsters to protect you from spells and traps that you don't run many spell and trap removal cards. Is there even anything in your deck that you could draw to help in this situation?"
Crowler just growled at her. "We'll just have to see, won't we?" He drew his next card, but on adding it to his hand he ended is turn. Rebecca just smirked as she drew her next card—Stamping Destruction—and the boost from Solemn Wishes brought her up to 1300 life points. Immediately after this, Fire Princess twirled her staff and a ball of flame sprouted around Crowler's duel disk, bringing him down to 2100. This lead to Rebecca's Standby Phase, where the spirit of Marie the Fallen One restored her life points by 200 more, letting Fire Princess burn away another 500 of Crowler's life points. With the score now virtually even at 1500 to 1600, Rebecca ended her turn.
Crowler rapidly drew his next card, and Rebecca knew the duel was as good as over. In her years of dueling, she had come to notice there were essentially two types of duelists: those that started playing faster when they were backed into a corner, and those that slowed down in the same situation. In these cases, she had noticed that the duelists who slowed things down had a higher chance of turning the duel around. At first, she had chalked all of this up to coincidence—but then she had met Yugi. Once you took the heart of the cards into play, it would make sense that the duelists who either consciously or subconsciously reached out to their decks would have a better chance of drawing the card they needed than someone who didn't have that connection. With Crowler acting like he was, he wasn't really respecting his deck—which just made it less likely he would get something useful.
Sure enough, Crowler was once again forced to pass on his turn. Rebecca drew her next card, but the Rope of Life she drew was really only important for once again starting Fire Princess's two burn effects that knocked Crowler down to 600 life points as her own clicked up to 2200. While it would be possible for her to play some of her cards, she knew it would be pointless- either Crowler would win next turn if he destroyed Dragon Shield, or he would lose if he couldn't and Fire Princess burned off the rest of his life points.
As she ended her turn, Rebecca couldn't help but be impressed by the level of drama Crowler was putting into his next move. Normally people didn't put that much flourish into a draw unless there was also a world-ending plot hanging in the balance—or if Seto Kaiba was dueling Yugi. It just made the upcoming response to his draw even sadder—after that show, watching the Italian champion practically deflate was really a buzzkill.
"Fine. Seeing as just by ending my turn I'm going to lose before you hit your Main Phase, it seems pointless to do anything but concede the match. I surrender. Just know that this won't happen again. I can guarantee I won't be shut down by a single spell card ever again." Rebecca just rolled her eyes at the attitude, but decided to be the bigger person as she went to shake Crowler's hand. The crowd cheered as the announcer called out, "And the winner of the first match is Rebecca Hawkins!"