A/N: Written for the Female Character Appreciation Competition (DMWA), FOTM: Ruri Kurosaki, for the Diversity Writing Challenge (DMWA), d25 – write using the MacGuffin device, and for the 2015 Green Room (Rlt), Challenge #2: write a oneshot inspired by Disney Lyrics (the lyrics that inspired this is Circle of Life from the Lion King).
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The Shields Fall First
Flock of Birds
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It's lucky, Ruri thinks, that they have a card maker on their side. Just the one, because the schools themselves had gone down in the first wave of attacks and only the classes that had chosen that particular day to do field study or the students skipping out had escaped the carnage. And they and the few adults who could duel but weren't involved in the academic sector – or the company who designed and rolled out the cards en masse who also went down in those first few days – were all that was left to form a defence.
She's escaped because her class was at the memorial that day. The card designer escaped for the same reason: the tiny old man showing them the statues of the greatest duel monsters in the world. He's actually a retired card maker, but their survival is as good a reason as any to get back in business. Even if the payment isn't credits or coin but the chance to live a little longer and save a few more lives.
Shun only escapes because he's playing hooky, and it's the first time she can actually be relieved he was. Because her big brother's a strong duellist and there aren't many of those left now. A few others skipping school, or being absent for other reasons. It's not quite scouting season otherwise they'd have been better off but the senior class had started their preparations anyway. That's how Yuuto escapes the first wave. And a few others. But even their decks aren't built for combat. That's why they need more cards, new cards that will evolve their decks – and warp them.
Because none of their decks are made for combat but that's what they need. Fast, aggressive decks, and decks that can defend themselves and not be blown off the field – because there's no time to get them back, otherwise. Her's and her brother's decks are both swarming ones: swarming low level monsters. Now they have to evolve. Clear fields. Remove barriers. Clearing the way to an attack and turning every disadvantage they can seize into an opening instead.
They are all slow to take to the change. Duelling is not a tool of combat. It's been like that since she was born – and even before. But not anymore. Not when they're attacked and barely able to defend. Not when losing a duel means vanished lives and burning buildings. Not when a duel means at least three on one and they're the one that have to struggle through it all, somehow.
They have about thirty students, and most of them are fourteen, fifteen, still growing up. Shun is the only sixteen year old and there are none seventeen. They were all busy with exam preparation and it's led to this.
There are also two teachers, a reporter and old man Rokujiro. And lots of others trying to find a place to flee to or hide.
This is three days in, when Heartland is smoking, when several large buildings have burned and crumbled and a good number of people have tried to flee. But not the ones who lost families to the schools or the company – or even the orphanage that goes down at the start of the third day and that's even more horrible, because an orphanage hasn't got anything to do with duelling, does it? Even though they don't use cards for combat, or didn't, the people who come out of no-where attacking do and that's why they take out the schools and the company first. But the orphanage. That has nothing to do with duelling at all and that's when they know that nobody will be spared, duellist or caught in the crossfire or no.
Except when people start fleeing in abundance, they form a perimeter to catch them, and everyone is left scattered in the city, terrified, looking for a place to hide. And they're whittled down by the day because most of them can't duel and the few who can can't handle that many opponents at once. Ruri finds her class cut in half after the first day, and by three there's only a handful of people still with her. But the perimeter gives them a way. They can form their own battlefront. They can form a defence while a few of them weed out the groups inside. Because it takes a lot of people to make a perimeter. They're playing about now. Thinking there aren't too many left. Looking for sport, or spoils.
But luck or a good hiding place get their group through the first few days, and old man Rokujiro isn't the sort of guy to just sit around. So their decks are armed to do more than stall and make pretty banters and long-winded duels. They know there's no time for that now. They need to be quick. Lethal.
But it's uncomfortable. It's not their decks. Their duelling. And they lose a good twenty before they're able to steel themselves to it. And still they struggle.
On the surface, it seems like such a simple thing. When attacked, one fights back. Phantoms gather against the nightmare. Birds swarm in a smoke-covered sky. But they've had to change to quickly and it's just not in them to aim to kill. Instead they quake in fear. And when they do that, they lose.
Ruri has never been more thankful for her big brother, shielding her from the worst of it. And he's one of the few who pick it up. Because he's a punk kid, some think. Because he's the rebellious sort that was skipping school the day the world crumbled, the sort that picked fights in the yard. Ruri knows it's because she's there, because he needs to protect her and she's more important than her few classmates that remained, than even his own friends, and while that's irked her many a time in the past it's comforting now. And their decks still work well together. She clears the traps and thins the horde. Shun blasts through the monsters after stealing their thunder. She throws in a few pecks for good measure when she can, but Shun does most of the attacking and the two of them can manage like that. But not everyone's that lucky.
Rokujiro keeps on making cards. They're not the most original looking: they're upgrades, mostly, but they get them out of a few more tight spots than they'd otherwise have managed. All of them have Xyz monsters now. Xyz against Fusion. Or that's the idea she supposes. But it's still a problem when they run out of overlay units because Fusion doesn't have that weakness. And the weakness of requiring extra cards to get them out rarely comes into play with their attackers. And the police are no good. Their strict non-lethal policies have led to their downfall now. No guns except for international forces who don't even arrive until the first week's done and only arrive at all because they have a reporter on their side and she has a camera and a terminal and some hacking skills.
But things aren't any easier with them. It was harder because they quickly see Heartland is not worth salvaging. They hear the plans to nuke the city. And they panic, because they've got nowhere to hide, and no way to break through the lines. The Fusion duellists aren't worried at all. They must have a way to escape. Or care nothing of their lives. More likely it's the former though. Even if they're so careless about other's lives.
Now they're fighting under a second time limit. Duelling won't save them from nukes. Hiding might not save them either because they're not sure there's a place deep enough. Their best bet seems to be the school. It's old – was old – and one of the only places that goes deeper than basement parking. But still they try to think of a better place. Tunnels, Shun brings up. Drain tunnels. Why he knows that, Ruri has no idea – or, she does. And it doesn't matter because that's just another one of those frustrating things that turns out to be quite helpful.
And then there are the other things. Getting food. Getting water. Getting medicines – and the hospital goes after the orphanage and they're not lucky enough to have a doctor. And it's tricky getting food. They get as much as possible as fast as possible because otherwise the invaders will get it, and then it's essentially a siege. A siege and a fight all at once. The only time they can breathe is when they wait in terror for the others holding the fort. Water's easier to get because they can't block every tap in town and they don't care to either.
Shun is always careful to keep Ruri close. And when there's not enough people left to indulge themselves and they have to split up because they're both good duellists in their own rights and precious few of those are left to wander about. It's a little archaic, whether Shun has a say in the division of labour or not. The boys go out with the intent to fight. The girls go resource hunting.
Ruri's fetching water one day, carrying a five litre carton because anything less will mean too many trips to the same source and that's too much a risk, and anything more means she won't have a hand free to duel and run if she needs to.
And it turns out she needs to do both those things because a man with a cloak suddenly swoops down, like a bat.
She runs for the fighting, even before she knows she's going to lose, even before she abandons the carton for the advantage of running faster, flipping over debris and ducking and weaving through monsters becoming more plentiful as she draws nearer to the perimeter –
And then her pursuer has vanished and she's in her brother's strong arms and monsters are closing around them from everywhere: mechanical hounds and robots, all bearing guns on them. And her brother's Raid Raptors and her own Gusto monsters are out, tag-teaming because they're strongest like that, and they break through the form and escape, nursing their losses and their wounds and the carton of water Ruri had left behind.
The next morning Shun goes to hunt the man who'd chased his sister and he doesn't come back. Ruri waits three hopeful days before she drops her hope. It's a liability, and losing Shun means she now has to survive on her own. She owes him that, and more: the world if she could give it, except she can't.
Her deck evolves again. It has to be able to stand on its own. Especially against that man with the cloak that had chased her into her brother and who her brother had chased into the horizon.