Gold and Silver

You know, just for the record, I deserve a prize for putting up a chapter of this. I mean, come on, Zane isn't even IN this episode, and since the story sorta revolves around him, I didn't have anything to really work with here...

This is the title of the English-dub for Episode 2. Its Japanese version translates to "Flame Wingman".

Parts of this chapter came from Hidden Eyes Telling Lies by Queen of Briannia. I took the dialogue for bits in the actual show because I really didn't want to transcribe it all. I'm not that kind of person (I got my first taste of it with these new chapters, and by Ra, it was horrible!).

Chapter Two: Welcome to Duel Academy

Kieran sighed, putting aside his thin tweezers from where he'd been using them to tweak a handful of sensitive wires, and turned his attention out towards the ocean, the sea breeze ruffling his golden hair across his face, relenting only where the hair was trapped between his back and the smooth siding of the lighthouse he leaned against. He had finished the paper rather quickly, but he just couldn't get the formula right on his eyepiece, so he was still years away from completing his personal project. He bit his lip, wishing he knew a proper computer genius who had no problems helping him refine his design, but the problem lay in, not that it wouldn't read the cards, but that it wouldn't hide the card names from him if he activated a duel disk other than his own personal one. He could have abided by that except that his duel disk was something that desperately needed to be replaced but that he had to hold onto since he spent every spare yen he could keeping his dream alive by buying spare computer parts, more hard drive space, and little notebooks he would record duels in. Building a proper AI was hard work he hadn't even begun, yet he was already having problems with a simple card-recorder.

Sighing again, he picked up the tweezers from his lap and began moving about a thin yellow wire, glad that Zane had given him the—rather expensive—tool kit for his birthday the year before when he'd first begun work on the eyepiece. Hmm, maybe if he programmed the reader to enact a certain code when a reader on the duel disk itself activated, it would work. Of course, that would make the high-tech e-reader function of his device pointless…

"Problems Kieran?" Despite the suddenness of the voice on a usually-deserted part of the island, he didn't need to turn around to see who it was distracting him from his work.

"Just the same one I've been working on for weeks, Zane," he answered. "If only I had a new disk…"

"Wish granted," the Obelisk replied, pulling Kieran's left hand back from where it was steadying the delicate silver instrument he was working on with its handsome translucent gold screen and returning the appendage with a well-kept Academy disk, yellow. "Happy birthday, Kieran."

"Oh, Zane, it's… beautiful," he murmured, smiling at the sight of the yellow streaks. "How'd you get it?"

The teal-haired duelist shrugged, settling himself down beside the Ra. "Mom and Dad got me a new disk, so I took my old one and traded it out. I would've simply given it to you, but I figured you'd rather have one that matched your color scheme, so I asked Crowler to give me a Ra disk rather than my Obelisk."

"I bet that made his day," the blond remarked off-handedly as he gave the hardware a quick check to make sure he hadn't destroyed something before he put the gutted device back together only to turn to his beat-up old KaibaCorp duel disk, one of the original ones that he had bought thoroughly secondhand, unable to justify purchasing an Academy Disk when he had first come to the school, a decision that had benefited him when he was able to use that money to get the first parts for his scanner.

"It certainly startled him," Zane acknowledged, watching as the other shamelessly tore apart his faithful disk for the all-important disguise chip he'd installed. Sure, the old thing had held up well over the years, but he had to admit that other than a backup, it wouldn't be able to serve him anymore.

He patiently waited for the other male to finish what he was doing, triumphantly plucking the green microchip from the twist of machinery with the tweezers and then reverently taking apart the top of the new disk to carefully insert it into the neater insides. "Huh, this setup looks a little less sturdy," he noted to himself, a corner of his mouth pulling back. "I guess they just don't make 'em like they used to. I'll have to remember that whenever I have some adjustments in mind."

Zane rolled his eyes, already knowing that the Ra'd have designed a better core system for the gift within a month. "So have you seen Syrus yet?" he asked, making small talk.

Kieran gave the elder a strange look. Zane never, never, made small talk. "No, not yet," he answered. "He's going to have to learn how to stand up for himself someday, and if you keep knocking away his self-esteem by 'protecting' him," the air quotes were blatantly understood even if the younger didn't explicitly make the movement, "he'll never learn."

"I seem to recall a certain blond who never really started dueling until he came here," Zane teased gently.

"And I seem to recall that the first revenge duel that blond had was against a certain teal-haired Obelisk… and won."

"Touché," the Truesdale acknowledged. They sat in companionable silence for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of metal on metal as the Ra explored his new equipment before putting it back together. Finally Zane had to clear the air and damn the consequences. "Listen, Kieran, I-"

"I gotta go, Zane," he interrupted, getting to his feet and clipping his eyepiece on. "I wanna watch some of the newcomers duel, and I can't do that if I'm sitting around here, now can I?"

"Wait, Kieran!" he called, but his friend had already run off. Scowling, he glared heatedly at a rock. "I just wanted to talk to you about the kiss…" he muttered to himself, his ultramarine hair shading his eyes. "I wanted you to know that it didn't change anything unless you wanted it to…"

He sighed deeply, staring out at the ocean. First Atticus had disappeared, and now Kieran was running away from him. It was like the universe was determined to screw with his love life and keep him from happiness. Still… at least I got to kiss Kieran before I graduated. If I hadn't done it… I would have wondered what would have happened if I had acted on my feelings for the rest of my life.

Kieran put his pen and notepad into his pocket, finally conceding that the only thing that covered the paper he was supposed to be compiling notes on for the duelists he was watching instead held the embodiment of his current distraction. Zane Zane Zane Zane Zane Zane Zane. He snapped out of his mood when he heard a soft ding in his ear, the one that signaled he had a message. He reached up and tapped a button on his earpiece, causing the gold screen to be covered in the silver text he had preset for a duelist he'd first met a few years back when he was searching around on some online dueling sites. All he had on the other was his username, ForeverHero, and all he had given the other was his own, Magician'sKey. The two seemed to be a similar age and had gotten along so well while exploring the dueling sites that they had exchanged email addresses. Right there in his eye appeared the words What're you doing?

He dug around in his other pocket, pulling out the same PDA he'd received in his first year. Not much, he typed on the screen with a soft touch. You?

It only took a moment for a reply to the message he'd added to the list to appear. I'm inbetween gigs right now.

Kieran bit his lip, deciding that, since he was already planning on blowing off the Ra welcome dinner and going back to his dorm tonight (he kept a lot of his equipment out in the abandoned dorm and was actually one of the few people on campus to routinely venture near the decrepit building), he would unload some of his problems. Hey Hero, can I ask you for some advice?

Of course, Key. I've asked you enough questions myself. ForeverHero had a close friend of his who was a homophobe, which ended up with the other, a bisexual as far as they had shared though he certainly leaned towards males like Zane did, asking for a lot of support as far as that was concerned.

… How do you respond to a gay friend who kisses you when you don't know your own sexuality?

The screen was quiet for a moment, evidence that Kieran had chosen the right person to ask. ForeverHero may not have known him personally, but the other certainly put honest thought into his advice. To be honest, Kieran almost wanted to meet his cyber companion, no matter how dangerous it was in the current situation. No one, not even Zane, knew of his conversations with Hero, and he was content to keep it that way. Do you like him back?

Kieran paused, biting his lip. Did he? Zane was attractive, that he could not deny, and thoughtful. They had been friends a long time, and if there was anyone he could picture at his side, it would be the Cyber duelist. Still, Zane was also a dominating person by nature, and Kieran was more of a protector, something that would often cause friction between the two when they were in close quarters for too long a period of time. 'I don't know' he typed into the PDA, but his finger hovered over the send button, hesitating as he remembered a certain detail. Yes.

Kieran yawned, stretching as he realized exactly how late he'd stayed in the Duel Arena talking back and forth to Hero and entertaining himself with some lesser duels while he waited for the other to come back from some business. He blinked, realizing with a sudden jolt that there were two people on the duel field, a black-haired Obelisk duelist and a brown-haired Slifer. He frowned, berating himself for having missed the duel with the student who was rumored to have defeated Crowler on his first day. Sorry Hero, got to go, there's something demanding my attention right now and I can't ignore it. Without waiting for a reply, he closed down the chat box, focusing on the field.

In front of the brunet stood an E-Hero Flame Wingman, while the ravenet had a facedown and an E-Hero Sparkman that had just been destroyed, the former dealing the latter's attack points as damage.

"All right!" Syrus cheered, and Kieran resisted the urge to wave to the smaller kid, instead focusing on the card that had just flipped up, along with the oncoming explanation from its owner.

"Nice moves Jaden," Alexis congratulated.

"More like lucky moves, you Slifer school scum," this opponent retorted scathingly. "All right, I activate Chthonian Blast! Now, since you destroyed one of my monsters, I can destroy one of yours, and you take damage equal to half of its attack points." The Wingman was burst into pieces, as Kieran watched a little countdown in his eyepiece drop to 550 Life Points.

"Ugh, Flame Wingman," Jaden groaned, shielding his face with his forearm.

"Now I activate the trap card Call of the Haunted! It lets me select one monster card from my Graveyard and summon it back to the field in attack mode. Rise, Infernal Warrior, but he won't be staying on the field for long because I'm going to sacrifice him to summon Mefist the Infernal General."

"Not bad," the brunet, Jaden, commented.

"Not bad?" He smirked. "You're something else, slacker, you know that? Acting all confident, but your lousy monsters won't get you out of this jam," the Obelisk mocked.

The Slifer looked at his hand, saying "I know he's wrong, Kuriboh, because Chazz doesn't know that my monsters and I, we have a bond" as he drew a card.

Alexis looked aside, then back, and Kieran knew what she was hearing. Guards, and lots of them. Eyes wide, he ducked down, slithering along the floor because he knew that, if he could just get to a control panel, he could pass off his presence by claiming to have been doing maintenance on the field, something he had done every now and again as a favor to Chancellor Sheppard. "Uh, guys, we got company: campus security. If they find us all in here we'll be seriously busted." Alexis continued. As the monsters faded, Kieran turned his eyepiece off, tuning out the rest of the conversation in favor of his own breathing. He would have to be stealthy to pull this off, and dammit, he had wanted to see how the duel ended too. The two duelists seemed like excellent additions to his repertoire.

Instead, he took advantage of his concealment to steal out of the arena like a thief, striding back into the woods. He couldn't wait to upload the files into the computer database and see what it generated for the remainder of the decks. When he pressed the button on his earpiece to give the eye a soft glow (slight night vision had been an addition when he realized that it got really dark on the island after dusk and he'd gotten tired of tripping over things as he made his way back to his dorm room from either the forest or the lighthouse with Zane), he saw that he had a message waiting for him from Hero. So? he'd asked, How'd it go?

Kieran chuckled wryly, unable to resist replying to that. You know, an interruption is a beautiful thing.

Zane: ... I'm not even gonna ask.

WHEEE, I HAD A GUEST APPEARANCE IN THIS ONE!

Zane: ...

*smiles* If you would prefer never to again see the character behind ForeverHero until his actual appearance, then I suggest you not leave me a review.

Zane: ...

I'm serious. Don't review and I will have them avoid each other.

Zane: ... Just shut up.

... Kay. I'mma go watch the new episode of YGOAGX. SHADYVOX IS BACK AGAIN, AND I AM SO GLAD TO SEE HIM!

Last edited: 9/25/2011