Carly Carmine's Self-Accredited Guide to Becoming a Turbo Duellist

Chapter 1
Crushed Cars, Crushed Fortunes

When Carly had gotten a call from her editor, asking her to report on a collapsed wall, she hadn't expected the said wall to be where she had parked her car. And she certainly hadn't expected her car to be crushed underneath jagged clumps of brick and mortar.

Her mouth hung open at the sight, camera sliding towards gravity as much as its strap allowed. One tyre had been dislodged and was lying conspicuously in the middle of the road where it troubled no-one; the Public Security Bureau had ordered the offending street closed. Cars and D-wheelers were forced to bypass it, however the partitions didn't stop curious bystanders from creeping closer. Officers were less stationary, pushing back as many people as came forward, but Trudge was used to Carly's presence and she had no such problems.

He also recognised what little remained of her car. Standing behind her as she caught her first glimpse, recognising not the frayed outline of her stray tire but rather the slowly rusting frame coloured in new sky blue paint, damaged by a red streak from when she had skimmed a fire truck in haste. And, judging from a striped sock she could see just sticking out of his pants pocket, he recognised some of her possessions to.

Oh, if Angela were here she would have a field day…and Carly, as usual, would be the butt of those jokes.

'Doesn't look like anyone got hurt.' The Bureau's second in command looked relieved. 'In fact…' He dropped his voice. 'Apart from your car and the wall, there doesn't appear to be any other major damage at all.'

'Just my luck,' Carly muttered to herself. 'My editor is not going to believe me.'

Her brain reminded her at that point why she had come. Her car may be crushed, but she still had her camera and her notepad. And yet, thinking of all that car had been to her, of all the things she had done with it, she found her questions were a little slower in coming and her pen equally stilted.

Still, she had a job to do, and she was an optimist. Her deck had only predicted one bad thing, and it had happened. Surely things couldn't get worse.

'So, did you witness the collapse of this wall or did you arrive after?'

It took a few hours for her car to be extracted from the rubble, and in the meantime the spectators had been briefly interviewed by Carly and long since dissipated. Perhaps that was a good thing; perhaps not. It meant less were there to bear witness to her most recent bout of ill-fortune, but it also meant she was doing nothing productive while she waited around…except collecting a few stray articles around. She had found the pair to the one in Trudge's pocket, however it had a rather large tear in it. Some of her clothes had fared a little better; the hat that Jack had given to replace the one he had lost to the wind needed a good scrub to get the dust out, but apart from that it was fine. Her spaghetti-strap dress on the other hand, her only piece of formal wear, was well beyond her darning skills to repair.

Officer Trudge stayed behind with her, even while the rest of the Bureau had flittered off to other tasks. 'I will have to file a report on this,' he said by way of explanation. 'If only there was some clue of how the wall fell down. The lane on the other side is frequented quite often with Turbo Duellists and nothing like this has ever happened before.'

'Hmm.' Carly thought quietly. 'Any chance of finding out of there was a duel in progress when the wall fell?'

'Not by you sneaking around HQ again.' Trudge frowned reprimandingly at her, and the reporter had the grace to look embarrassed. 'I suppose it is possible a duel had something to do with it; it wouldn't be the first time something crazy like this has happened after all.' The frown came more pronounced as he continued: 'of course, someone simply may not have repaired it properly.' He nudged a stray brick with his boot. 'With a city coming back from the brink of destruction, it's easy to overlook little things.'

'With everyone fleeing, we probably wouldn't have even noticed the collapsed wall,' Carly agreed, remembering the widespread panic that had ceased them upon the descent of the Ark Cradle. Many had taken nothing with them save the clothes on their back; others had taken all they could in order to build their lives up elsewhere if necessary. And for some it had been; the tip of the Cradle had come dangerously close, knocking down skyscrapers and the Dedealus Bridge – which was immediately repaired by every hand that could reach it. Between that, the Kaiba Corporation and the Industrial Illusions Heritage Buildings, everyone forgot that the foundation of much smaller things were just as important as the proud landmarks that made Neo Domino City what it was.

'At least no-one was injured.' Trudge rubbed his brow with a flat palm. 'And apart from your car and the wall, it doesn't seem like anything was too badly damaged.'

Once upon a time, Carly would have responded that that with a: 'whoop-dee-do' and eyes brimming with tears at the misfortune, but that was when she was young, immature and getting nowhere.

Now she was older, more mature…and sadly, apparently still getting nowhere.

Trudge caught her sigh. 'You won't be able to take much,' he said. 'We can drop anything salvageable at your apartment later; I can give you a ride now if you like.'

'On your Duel Runner?' the reporter asked sceptically, looking at the one-seater.

'You'd have to stand on the spokes and hold on tight, but it is doable.' He paused, before adding: 'Of course, if you were unconscious or significantly injured, I'd have you across my lap –'

'Uurgh, no thanks. I'll leave that to Mina.'

The blush told her that Trudge was yet to declare his undying affections to the woman in question.

'Really, how many years are you going to wait?' She raised an eyebrow. 'If you wait too long, someone else will come and sweep her off her feet, you know. Hang on, I'll just look at your fortune and –'

'That won't be necessary.' The officer coughed, looked around discretely and set off to his Duel Runner. Those sorts of questions were never a good idea when a reporter was involved, even if that reporter was a mutual friend. Sometimes, Carly's manner of interrogation left even the closest friend feeling uncomfortable. And it wasn't as though he could order a gag on his personal life. Freedom of the press circumvented that.

Though Carly had long since put her notebook and pen away, and her camera hung limply around her neck.

'If I find anything helpful for your article,' Trudge offered. 'I'll let you know.'

'That would be great, thanks.' Truthfully though, Carly hadn't been thinking about the report she'd have to write. She didn't even know how she'd manage it; her laptop had been in the car and that would be the first thing declared unrepairable. And she couldn't well write the article on a public terminal. Anyone could read over her shoulder, and if any rival reporter got wind of the details…

Not that they were particularly difficult to get wind of. She wasn't working on anything ground-shattering after all. No, that honour went to others who didn't get yelled at by their editor every other day by trying to be considerate…or simply, like in this instance, winding up on the wrong side of fortune. That honour went to people like Angela, who weren't in the industry to spread a smile around the world like her, but rather to drag others down. Especially people like Angela, who Carly had the dual misfortune of knowing since high school…as well as winding up working for the same editor.

The camera hung heavily around her neck as she clamoured onto the bike behind the officer.

'Hang on tight,' Trudge reminded.

Carly, feeling the slightest bit unbalanced, did exactly that.

A breathless ride later, and Carly was back at her apartment. Its cool and barren welcome was enough to tell even a stranger how often she returned there, and that was before anyone tried the phone line or the gas and found both cut. The electricity and water bills were regularly paid though, as was the rent, but she could hardly afford to keep phones connected when she was so often away from the apartment.

Being a reporter might pay well for someone who got to write all of the top stories, but for someone like her who struggled for a square inch in the middle pages, she had to save wherever she could for rainy days. After all, if her editor suddenly decided he wanted to fire her permanently (she had lost count of the times he had yelled the dreaded words to her only to call the very next day and demand she return to the office), she would need some emergency cash to fall upon. Luckily, in the wake of a calmer Neo Domino City, those instances had been reduced, however she had still not stumbled upon the story she had dreamed of writing as a child.

And after meeting Jack Atlas, Carly had been so sure she'd find it soon. That was the whole reason she had stayed on in Neo Domino City…even after Jack left for parts unknown, as did the other members of Team 5D's save Yusei Fudo. Unfortunately, he wasn't too comfortable talking to her about anything work-related and the government had put a gag-order on that in any case. It wasn't as though she didn't understand; she did. She had just known Jack better than Jack's friends.

She took off her shoes, slipping her feet into the slippers she had left by the door: one thing that never left the house. Her camera dropped carefully onto the bed – it wouldn't do to damage it after all – and joined random papers. Scribbled notes from research for old articles. Peoples' phone numbers. Some chips packets. She wrinkled her nose at the last one and collected the foiled packages before throwing them in the bin. She wasn't a neat freak, but she had no desire to let ants infest her bed, even if it wasn't the most frequently used furniture. The kitchen table would take first place in that arms race.

Then she sighed, sat on the slightly dusty sheets, and began going through her old notes. It wasn't as though she could drive downtown to get some more information, or to the railway station to top up her ticket card. The buses had long since made it perfectly clear they wouldn't accept anyone without a valid ticket. The card was in her back pocket out of pure habit, but there wasn't even a sen on it.

She didn't know how she would go about getting a new car…because she would definitely need one. Cancelling old registrations, applying for new ones – and finding a car that was cheap, adaptable to her busy schedule and as reliable as the clock would be no easy task. Her last car had been perfect; she could live in there for weeks if there was a water source nearby…and she sometimes had, on the road in between small reporting jobs in the cities. True, she lived permanently in Neo Domino City now, but there were still projects for which it was more economical to camp out in the back of the car than drive two and from her apartment every day.

But before all that, she would have to call up her editor and explain why she couldn't finish the article in time for the afternoon edition. And that was a phone call she was not looking forward to in the least. There was, after all, one disadvantage of having a city exclusively orientated towards Turbo Duelling: things were impossibly far from one another without a pair of wheels.

The cell phone beeped woefully before cutting off in the middle of her editor's rant, and Carly plugged it into the charger with some relief. Despite knowing he couldn't mean half the things he said – because she was sure the city wasn't in that much of a sorry state that the newspaper company couldn't afford to let go of a failure of a reporter – it wasn't pleasant to hear them so frequently.

Sometimes she wondered why she clung to her job; she got little satisfaction out of it. Most inspirational stories she could write are squashed under gag orders from the Government or the Public Security Bureau, starting with Jack's origins in Satellite when he had lost his title of Duel King to Yusei and going all the way to the truth about the Ark Cradle. That last one, sadly, she couldn't have written anyway, lacking a good deal of information but those involved and who were aware of what happened were reluctant to inform her of any additional details. The things she wanted to spread remained caught between a few people; the rest went ignorant, reading about the next lipstick world famous model Misty Tredwell was advertising, or some other triviality. Not that life was altogether trivial, but she knew enough about the Signers business to know the value of those stories that went unwritten.

The flip sprung back, and she flicked it again. This time the power came on and started charging her cell. It didn't ring immediately; that meant that her editor hadn't tried to call her back. She supposed she was glad; she would have had to answer then…and bear another earful.

She stood up, and her deck flooded from its case, scattering about her. Cursing under her breath (as she often did when there was no-one to mutter about how unladylike it was), she bent down to pick them up. Most had landed face up and in a haphazard pile; in fact, almost all of them had. Two however had fallen away from the others; perhaps the draft from her sleeveless jacket had blown the two closest to the edge from the crowd. One hit the wall and lay on a slight tilt; the other skidded behind her.

She picked up the one near the adaptor first: Unacceptable Result. Surprised, she blinked at the spell, before shrugging and barely glancing at the card near her foot as she put her deck back together. She had never drawn a spell the day her fortunes came true, and as it was, Fortune Fairy Swee had already ensured her the loss of her car and a good deal of her possessions, as well as a vicious scolding.

The identity of that other card, the one that had fallen near her foot, wouldn't have changed anything. And so Fortune Fairy En slipped in with her brethren and was placed back into the duel case.

And then it was back to what to do while her phone charged. Probably work on what notes she had…although it would almost definitely be too late to be of any use to anyone other than herself. Unless she dusted off her old blogging account that was.