Disclaimer: I don't own YuGiOh in any sense.
A/N: As with all my stories, there is no update schedule at all.
This chapter ended up getting split in two. This is basically the first half.
-LeviTamm
"I've never seen a deck work like that before."
...I listened in as the spectators continued talking amongst themselves.
If they didn't want me eavesdropping they would have walked further away. Or talked quieter.
"It was like his entire deck was built to do just one thing. Leaving no room for versatility. Yet everything still fit together. I don't know how to explain it," the same guy continued.
"I've never seen anyone do that much in one turn before either. I couldn't even follow it all."
The rest of the spectators listened in, as the guy continued to narrate his thoughts.
"Every time I thought I understood what he was doing, everything would just change. It was impossible to predict just how it would all come together in the end. It was exactly like those guys that we faced earlier. They totally overwhelmed us with the sheer number of effects that they could link together."
"They planned out their moves so far in advance that it bordered on inhuman."
Wow. These guys must absolutely suck at this game if they called that inhuman.
I've seen what a truly skilled player could do before, and I'm not one of them. I had met this Yugioh… guru at that tournament I competed in a while back. He had had an encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much every card effect in existence.
That guy had been a monster.
...Probably got beat up a lot in school though. Which sucked. That guy would do some great things in the future, I was sure of it. While those bullies would go on to clean the toilets at that guy's company.
If the universe had any sense of karma, anyways.
These people… if they ever met someone like that, they would probably call him a god. They should have picked him for this.
"He was throwing his own monsters into the graveyard without a care, too," the guy with dark blue hair and the black coat chimed in.
Oh? Was that a slight note of disgust I sensed there?
Nerd.
Nobody cares about sending shit to the graveyard, nor should they. Generally speaking, if half of your deck wasn't in there on your first turn, then your deck needed some improvements.
"And he had all of those powerful monsters, but he never even tried to attack with them. He didn't even enter his first battle phase before he won."
...I did know the guy who spoke there though. Yusei. Mr. 'Kneepads'.
I finally looked away and stopped paying attention to them. I could still hear them, but I couldn't tell who was speaking anymore.
"It really was fast. I dont think I've ever seen a duel where someone did that many things in one turn, either."
"He just kept going. Kept summoning and summoning again, using his previous monsters to bring out the next ones, all so he could get that Galaxy Wave thing to fire again."
"He didn't bring out those monsters to use their effects to win. He brought them out so that Galaxy Wave could keep shooting."
"It was just a massive loop to get it to fire again and again. He couldn't beat Quasar, so he didn't even try. He just went around it."
Couldn't beat Quasar? How insulting. I chose not to try. That doesn't mean I couldn't...
"It had all been planned out."
"But did you notice?"
"Notice what?"
"That strategy, that could have been used on anyone. It didn't even matter what his opponent had out. He would have won on his first turn no matter who he faced, or what they had. As long as those cards were in his hand, the duel was over the instant Galaxy Wave was out. If he had gone first, his opponent never would have even had a turn."
"Against that deck, I don't know what can even be done to stop it."
"Its structured that way. He came at this duel from a completely different perspective."
...You know, this was kind of awkward actually. Why were they talking about me as if I couldn't hear them?
Also… I failed to see why what I did was worthy of a lecture, or commenting of any kind for that matter. It wasn't particularly impressive.
The spectators continued.
"He didn't even try to summon any signature monsters like Yugi's Dark Magician, or even Yusei's Shooting Quasar Dragon. He built his entire deck around Galaxy Wave, a spell card rather than a monster."
"So what you're saying is, instead of filling his deck with monsters that support each other like we do, his core strategy was to get Galaxy Wave out, and get it to just keep shooting. All he cared about was summoning those XYZ monsters no matter what they were or even if they supported each other or not."
"Exactly. He selected monsters for his deck that could summon out more monsters, not monsters that helped each other out. That's why we kept seeing totally random monsters show up out of nowhere."
"This guy… I thought he said he didn't play Duel Monsters, or that he hadn't in years, anyways. He didn't even know what a duel disk was. But he's probably the most dangerous duelist to face that I've ever seen."
"That duel was brilliant."
"His opponent didn't even stand a chance."
…
These guys would get wrecked by the ten year old kids in my world at this game. I was sure of it.
"You…"
Suddenly, Mr. Villain started speaking.
I turned to look back at my former opponent.
My emotionless face was in place again, and I just stared.
Idly, I noticed the chatter from the spectators start to die down, as they listened in to what my opponent had to say.
"How did you…"
…
How did I what? Spit it out.
…
"There's no way you could have defeated me! I had Shooting Quasar Dragon! One of the strongest monsters ever!"
…
Wow. What a sore loser.
...Also, Quasar was a piece of shit.
I just stared at him instead of replying out loud. Because I knew it would piss him off.
...
It sure did, and he started screaming and raging, too. With all the might of a rampaging toddler.
I watched in minor amusement for a while, before suddenly, a ball of light appeared next to him.
Its appearance seemed to snap him out of his rampaging toddler mode, and he suddenly looked panicked.
"No! I can't lose them!"
It took me a moment to figure out what was happening, but his cards were disappearing.
He was frantically trying to grab them, but they were disintegrating and slipping through his fingers.
"No, no, no, no, no!" He shouted, and flailed around in a futile attempt to grab them, but they slipped away, floating into the sky.
I thought they were going to vanish entirely for a moment, because why not? The day had been weird enough already, why not a few extra impossibilities?
...But they collected into a ball in the sky instead, and then, weirdly enough, they floated over to me.
The ball of light floated right up to me, and out of curiosity, I reached my hand out to grab it, palm up.
Abruptly, the light vanished and I felt a weight in my hand.
...
Cards.
There were a hell of a lot of Yugioh cards in my hand right now. Leo did mention that the loser of one of these duels, lost their deck…
So, I guess that's what was happening here.
…
They weren't my cards, but I was a pretty curious guy, so I started flipping through them.
Junk, junk, junk, junk... hey, Quasar was in here. The shitty version though… The one I just beat.
...
Wait a minute.
I was supposed to be fighting back to back duels right?
With these cards, I had another idea for my next deck. I couldn't use the same one against the next guy, because he would side in a shitload of cards to specifically counter my last strategy.
And I played this game online every now then, which meant I had experience using cards that I didn't actually own a physical copy of. I knew how to play certain strategies online, that I didn't have the cards for in real life.
One of which, I could actually do now with the new cards in my hands.
I'm sure the spectators wouldn't mind too much if I borrowed some of their shit. If they did mind, then they could go and fuck themselves because I was going to use them anyways.
"Leo!" I abruptly shouted.
...
Well, it wasn't really a shout. More of an abrupt command.
...And holy hell was she still gloating?
She had been going on and on ever since I won that last duel and stopped paying attention to the peanut gallery.
...And I had just interrupted her as she bragged on and on about how awesome I was in that irritating as fuck, prissy tone of hers.
What a fucking loud mouth.
...She was really starting to grate on my nerves. I didn't show it in my expression though.
"Wh-what is it?" She asked, seemingly startled at my sudden command.
"Bring me my case, please."
…
It took a moment for that command to register, and she seemed confused for a moment, before it suddenly clicked.
"R-right! I'll be right back!"
Then she ran back into the weirdly placed house that we had just been in a few minutes ago.
…
Weirdly placed was certainly the right description for it, too.
There was just this pristine house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles and miles of wasteland. Some of which, was on fire still, from whatever the hell happened before I got here.
Then there was this arena right next to it, seemingly built for the sole purpose of having duels.
It was about half the length of a full-sized olympic soccer field. And there were two podium type things on either end for the players to stand in.
And it was meant for just two people.
...
It was such a contrast to the way Yugioh was played in my world.
It was sardine-life back in those tournaments.
The guy right next to you always smelled like shit, too. No exceptions. And everyone was just packed into the building.
There were two types of players too, at least that I had noticed in my short experience playing competitively. There was the guy that thought he was way better than you, and who walked around making fun of people for literally anything they could think of, like those who didn't have a fucking play mat with them or some shit. And then there were the cool guys who were just there to have fun.
Nobody here seemed to be like either of them, though.
Everyone here was super serious about all of this all the time.
It was serious business.
...
Leo returned a moment later with my case, and handed it to me.
I grabbed it with a mumbled 'thanks' and popped it open.
...
In my last duel, I had lucked out a lot.
I had drawn all the cards I had needed on my first turn. Which was actually a pretty strange occurrence now that I thought about it.
I had tried to abuse the hell out of the 'no forbidden list rule', and had thrown in triple Pot of Greed, triple Graceful Charity, and triple Upstart Goblin into that deck. And I hadn't drawn a single one of them that whole game.
Yet, I had still managed to get everything I needed.
It was all luck.
...
If only Leo hadn't have brought the wrong case here…
I would have much rather had a more reliable and consistent deck. But they were all in my other case. If I had had that, I would have had my Lunalights, or I could have even built a Madolche, or a Cyber Dragon deck.
Maybe even a Kuriboh turbo deck… That would have been fun to mess around with.
That is, assuming of course, that I wasn't using my Exodia Makyura deck. That deck won duels automatically on the first turn essentially.
...
I was personally, a fan of the more troll-ier decks that everyone else hated dueling against. My opponent's reaction when I ripped out an Exodia deck, and just started drawing cards like a game of Solitaire was way too hilarious to pass up.
...But pretty much all of my other decks would have been more consistent than my last deck was.
But since I didn't have those at the moment, I was stuck using gimmicky OTK's. Decks that there's no way in hell I could win a match with back in my world.
But here, people only played single rounds apparently, leaving no opportunity to side in any counter strategies against their opponents.
...Which meant that these gimmicky OTK's were actually pretty damn effective.
Especially against people who shit their pants when they saw a Quasar come out...
I had plans to use a different OTK deck this time if I had to duel someone else right away, and I was just finishing up building it now.
"I've never seen you play like that before…" Leo finally grumbled out, sounding irritated.
…
And here we go again. What the hell was this going to turn into?
...Why the hell was she even still next to me?
But… I humoured her.
I could feel that this conversation would quickly spiral into an argument, and I began mentally preparing some lines for it in advance.
"Play like what?" I asked.
She was about to respond, but she was immediately interrupted by one of the villains on the other side of the field.
"I hope you haven't thought that you can leave here." One of them suddenly stood up and activated his duel disk.
Hoh? I've been sitting here building a deck right in front of you. Did it really look like I was leaving?
"We can't let you leave with those cards." Another one stood up and activated his duel disk also.
…
Interesting.
A two v one?
"Wha-! No! He's not going to duel both of you at once!" Leo shouted in concern.
...
Leo's against it?
I tipped my hat down.
...It's decided then.
She continued.
"He has no reason to-"
She was immediately interrupted by the sound of my duel disk activating, and me accepting their challenge.
"Duel," we all stated simultaneously.
...
I had to beat eight of these guys? It would be quicker this way. Also, in a lot of cases, having a teammate was detrimental and actually decreased your odds of victory. They were shooting themselves in the foot with these rules.
Teammates often roadblocked each other by clogging up the field with monsters that didn't cooperate with each other.
"Wha-!"
...There was that trademarked Leo-squawk again. It was a little higher pitched this time though, and had a tinge of hysterical outrage to it.
But wasn't she supposed to be a cat? What the fuck was she making noises like that for?
I glanced at her.
...
Clearly, she wasn't too impressed with my actions. In fact, that was an understatement.
She openly glared at me for a few moments, looking beyond frustrated at the fact that I had just flat out disregarded all her concerns without a care.
She was clearly ruffled, like a dog who had had all of its fur aggressively rubbed in the wrong direction.
Her teeth clenched, her fists were white knuckled, and she looked like she was trying to burn a hole in me with her eyes.
...I stared right back with my emotionless, unimpressed face.
Then she started fuming, and went on another tirade. Trying to lecture me about being reckless or some shit. Steam was practically shooting out of her ears.
...I of course, wasn't listening at all.
I had immediately tuned her out the instant her word hole had opened and started flapping.
...
This would be an interesting duel, I thought to myself as I stared blankly and unfocused into the void of space between Leo and I, as she nagged on and on.
If I could get the combo rolling, this would be an easy win, though it would get a bit technical and complex. If I couldn't, I'd lose unbelievably quickly. But if I did lose, from what I've been able to tell, the only cards I'd lose would be the ones I'm currently using.
So I'd still have the deck I used last duel for the most part if I lost, as a backup. I'd just really be losing the Pot of Greeds, Graceful Charities and Upstart Goblins that I had transferred over to this new deck… which would be a setback, but not impossible to recover from.
...And I'd lose the spectator's cards again. The newly liberated ones. And that would actually be pretty funny.
How would they react to that?
...I bet it would be hilarious.
But I wasn't actually entirely sure if that was how it worked. Some of those cards I had just won and sided into my next deck weren't in my opponents last deck as far as I could tell. Maybe it wasn't as simple as losing makes you lose just your deck, but instead makes you lose everything. All of your cards. That would actually suck if it were true...
Or maybe you would just lose all the cards you had won off of others in this weird tournament.
The rules that Leo had explained earlier had been pretty vague.
"...Are you even listening!?"
For fuck's sake, just shut the hell up Leo. Nobody cares.
I clenched my jaw, and put my trolling mask in place again.
...
If she wanted to be noisy, then I'd give her something to be noisy about.
"No," I stated bluntly.
She squawked again in outrage at my unexpectedly direct reply. But before she could respond, I interrupted her, speaking directly to her face.
"Man, if only you weren't splattered with chocolate milk stains everywhere, your argument may have actually been worth listening to. But since you're covered in stains, smell like dairy products, and look like a crusted rag, it's clearly the case that your opinions have no value anymore."
I continued.
"Also, you're a woman. Therefore, you have no idea what you're talking about, and everything you have to say should be immediately dismissed as uninformed garbage."
Oh yeah… this would do it.
If this didn't piss her off royally, I would have to pull out the big guns.
"So be silent woman. My opponents and I are having a conversation."
I finished my obviously absurd explanation in the lingering silence with a voice full of conviction.
"Men are talking."
…
Holy shit she looked pissed now. It almost made me smile.
Hook line and sinker, she fell for it.
Her eyes had widened in fury during my explanation.
...
She tried to say something in response… but nothing came out.
Then she tried again… and then seemed to change her mind.
I had completely shut her down.
I watched her facial expressions pretty closely during this as well, and they went through this crazy and elaborate process. She looked absolutely furious at first, but the instant I thought she was about to blow her stack, she just sort of deflated and looked incredibly self conscious. Then she just sank into what looked to be a depression, looking completely lost.
Her glare had melted, and she avoided my gaze, looking down and to the side in attempt to avoid any sort of eye contact.
...
She clearly had no idea how to even react to what I had just said to her. Evidently, she had never faced such blatant misogyny before.
...Not even the trolling type that I had just used on her. The type that didn't even try to be serious or defensible in any form and was used primarily for shock value, and to fish for reactions and outrage from people who took themselves way too seriously and needed to be lowered a couple of notches.
...
She deflated and looked at the ground in a manner that looked so pathetic and made her look so miserable that I actually sort of regretted saying that a little bit.
Did she actually think I was being serious? I just wanted to piss her off. Not make her super depressed.
I felt a bit like shit, now.
...But then I remembered the fact that she had kidnapped me without permission, and also without checking up on my dog first.
That quickly flipped my view of the situation right back around again.
If I hadn't fed him an hour or two before getting kidnapped, he would have gone without food until either I returned from wherever the hell I was now, or my parents made it home three days from now. Whichever came sooner.
She could have unintentionally starved my dog with her negligence and that sort of pissed me off. It was in fact, one of the main grudges I've been holding against her this whole time, and it was the main reason why I've been going out of my way to give her such a hard time.
My dog was a bit of a fatty, and he would have made it through something like that just fine, but that wasn't the point.
I didn't even really care all that much that I was brought here. Certainly not as much as I was making it seem, anyways. I had actually been pretty bored, and this situation was certainly interesting if nothing else. I was just really trying to make her feel as guilty as possible using that as a convenient excuse.
My dog though... She had crossed the line there.
...
So it was good that she was upset, I decided.
That's what happens when you decide to kidnap someone, I suppose. It was what she deserved.
"Why?" She finally asked with a defeated tone.
I responded immediately.
"Why what?"
"Why do you hate me so much?"
Interesting how she has to ask a question like that. It isn't obvious? She can't even make a guess?
"Why do you think?" I asked.
"I didn't mean for this to happen, okay! I was only trying to help!"
"Yeah? Help who?"
"Everyone!"
"Horse shit. Clearly not everyone. You certainly aren't helping me."
"I didn't have a choice! Thousands of people's lives are at stake here, and you were the best!"
"The best? Says who?"
"Says me!"
…
"I see. So you thought I was the best, and decided to bring me here yourself, huh? There's your answer right there then. We could have talked. You could have chosen to not kidnap me. It's clear that your subjective standard about what's good, is shit. That's what caused all of this."
...Mostly because of my dog though. But I decided to leave that part out.
"You should have picked someone better," I finished.
"There aren't any duelists better than you!"
Wow. What the fuck? I thought I was pretty clear earlier when I said I sucked at this game.
"Bullshit. I'm a terrible duelist. I quit a long time ago."
"You've never lost!"
I blinked.
…
"What?" I asked.
And seriously… What the hell was that about? She can't be serious.
"You've never lost a duel before! Out of everyone in your world you have the most wins, while having never lost before!"
"That's such bullshit. I've lost plenty of times."
"When?! Name one time!"
Seriously?
"There was that time where I… Okay. In that tournament where I…"
I stumbled on my words as an example eluded me for the moment.
"Where you what?" Leo pressed. "Where you won every single match right until the end?"
...
"...Okay, I did win that tournament," I eventually admitted. It was true after all.
"You were undefeated in that tournament!"
"...But I played plenty of informal matches earlier that same day," I explained. "I didn't even use you and the Lunalights in all of them either. I remember bringing my Madolche deck there too, and that deck was incomplete and was a piece of shit at the time as a result. I definitely got my ass kicked there. I had to have."
"No you didn't!" She denied. "You beat every single duelist who ever challenged you whether you were using me or not! The only occasions you have ever not won, were the times that you drawed your opponent."
"There's no way that's true at all."
"It is!"
"What about all of my online duels? I've had to have played thousands of them by now. I've been playing for years."
"And you've never lost any of them!"
"What the hell? How can you even attempt to make a claim like that? That's like, 2,000 games."
I continued.
"Things don't work like that. There's no such thing as a duelist that has never lost unless their brand new at the game. I've screwed around with so many random ass decks over the years that I had to have lost at least once somewhere."
"At least once," I emphasized. "I've probably lost dozens of times. Hundreds even."
"Name one!"
Thick-headed...
"You're missing the point…"
"Name one time!"
...
"Just because I can't name a time off the top of my head at this moment doesn't mean it's never happened."
"Now who's talking bullshit?! What kind of duelist can't name a time they've lost?!"
"Me, apparently. Why is that surprising? Do you remember what you had for breakfast exactly 301 days ago? No? I thought not. You probably couldn't answer that question if it were just two weeks ago."
"And how could you even make that claim anyways?" I asked. "You haven't even seen all of my duels."
"That doesn't matter! I know that you've never lost!"
"How?"
"Because I didn't pick you to come here!"
How was that even relevant? Also... was she serious? I could have sworn that she had said: 'we summoned the best duelist,' earlier. Emphasis on the 'we'. Which naturally made me assume that she had been directly involved in the decision.
"You didn't?" I asked.
Then how did I get here?
"No!" She exclaimed. "I was as surprised as you were that we ended up getting picked to help out everyone like this! The details are long and tedious to explain, and I know you hate those types of rambling explanations, but basically the method used to bring you here selected the best duelist. Nobody knew who that would end up being."
Sometimes… rambling explanations were important. I might have to get some more details out of her soon. This story was weird.
"I ended up getting called a few hours ago for this, which meant that you had been picked," Leo explained.
"So someone else picked me then, is what you're saying?"
"No!" She denied. "Nobody specifically picked you. They picked the best duelist, and you just happened to be it!"
"That's some pretty vague criteria. How do you determine who the best is? If it's about the win-loss ratio, then what about all the people who have never played the game before in their lives? They've never lost."
"Best is defined as the person that has the most matches won out of all duelists who have never lost," she explained.
...I had to roll that explanation around in my head a little bit to make sense of it.
'The person that has the most matches won out of all duelists who have never lost.'
...
I thought over those words a couple of times, before it made sense.
"Okay," I said. "That makes a little more sense now, but it's still bullshit. There's no way I'm that guy."
That was also a stupid way to select the 'best duelist', in my humble opinion.
"You are, dammit! What would it take for you to finally believe that!?"
…
You know? Now that I've really been thinking about this… I really couldn't think of a time I've actually lost. Granted, I don't remember most of the duels I've ever played, just the ones where crazy or hilarious things happened, but still.
I couldn't remember a time off the top of my head. A lot of close calls, but I couldn't actually remember one where I actually ended up losing.
But that was crazy… I had to have lost somewhere. What would the odds be if I literally had a perfect winning streak? That would be comparable to winning a couple of back to back lotteries in terms of probability.
...
"Holy shit," I said in realization. "Have I seriously never lost before?"
"Yes!" She cried. "That's what I've been telling you this whole time!"
"Okay," I said, settling in for a lengthy explanation. "Even if that's somehow true it isn't due to skill on my part. It's totally random. The way that you defined 'best' there, ensures that there will always be someone to fit that criteria. At minimum, someone who has only played a single game in their life and won, could theoretically be that duelist."
I continued.
"If you lined up all of the people who have ever played a game of Yugioh on Earth, you'd end up with a shitload of people."
I was basically going to explain a variant of the coin toss experiment. The one where a million people guess what side a coin lands on and everyone who guesses wrong sits down, and where the remaining people continue to the next round, repeating until only one guy is left who guessed correctly a shitload of times.
It was guaranteed for that guy to exist, but to be him would take an astronomical stroke of luck. I was basically that guy in this situation, if what she was saying was true. And she was trying to claim that it was somehow skill related for me to get there.
"...Then if you asked every one of those people who have played less than 10 matches to sit down, you'd still have a bunch of people. Probably thousands at least. Then you could ask everyone left standing who has ever lost a game to sit down, and you'd still be left with a handful of them, many of whom have gotten where they were totally by chance. People who had gotten extraordinarily lucky."
"They would have all had to win even the first game they ever played when they were still learning the game," I said. "And they would have had to just repeatedly face off against really bad players their whole lives. Or people that were at least, worse than them. Or unluckier anyways."
"By probability alone," I continued, "there have to be cases like that out there considering the sheer number of people that play this game."
And by a similar argument, there had to be people out there who had played hundreds of games and lost them all. Even if they had tried their hardest in every one of them.
"But the point is, out of all the people left over at the end in this thought experiment, you could just grab the person who was still standing that had the most wins and-"
"And that person is you," Leo interrupted.
"...Wow. Okay. So I basically won some sort of stupid lottery without ever noticing, and now I'm here. A shit lottery. One that gives whoever won it a bucket load of shit to deal with. To swim in. To eat. Neat."
"Stop saying that!" She complained. "It wasn't luck at all! You're incredible! The greatest duelist that I've ever seen! I couldn't have asked for a better master if I was free to choose a new one myself! You're as close to perfect as it's possible to get!"
What the hell was up with her glorious view of me?
With one look at her face and I was able to tell one thing.
...She was absolutely serious. What the hell was she idolizing me for?
Why?
"And I'm your deck spirit!" She continued. "I can't bear it when you're mad at me! When you hate me!"
There were tears in her eyes now.
...Great.
"So just please tell me what I have to do to make things right!"
"I know you." She claimed. "I know that this situation must have seemed crazy and unbelievable at first. You've never been exposed to magic, or anything at all from my world before, but is doing this really that bad? You're literally saving hundreds of thousands of lives by doing this! Do you really not want to help?"
"That's not the point," I replied. "You kidnapped me to get me here, and now you're attempting to guilt trip me to make me stay. If you had walked up to me and just asked, this whole thing could have been avoided."
"Really?" She asked skeptically. "If I had just walked up to you and asked nicely you would have agreed just like that?"
"I think you seriously underestimate how easily stupidity reflects off of me. As ridiculous as this situation is, I've heard weirder stories."
I really have.
...She had no idea.
I cleared my throat.
"On a top ten list of stupidest things I've ever heard of in my life, this entire situation in general is not even ranked," I explained.
"There aren't any time travelling aliens around. There aren't any man-eating television screens. I have even heard a story once about a fire breathing dragon going on a quest to have sex with a Volkswagen Beetle."
Rule 34 was absolutely true and she had no idea. And I think that every single one of the spectators of my last duel falls under it, Leo included.
Maybe not the anonymous villains or me because we weren't famous, but only because of that. Absolutely everyone else there… Yugi, his friends, Kaiba, Mr. Kneepads and his friends, and everyone else… they all probably had entire websites in my world dedicated to them that would make them vomit in horror if they ever stumbled across them.
And incidentally, dragons and cars were involved there as well.
The specific model of the car was actually important in that story, as the dragon had very refined, and particular tastes. Not just any car would have sufficed.
"This scenario," I said, "doesn't even register as a 5 out of 10 for me on the stupidity scale. I have become absolutely desensitized to it all."
That was what happened when you became a denizen of the internet.
"Someone like you couldn't surprise me with a story that is too ridiculous to consider if you tried," I explained. "My mind has been conditioned against absolutely anything you could ever come up with."
"It would not have taken much effort at all to convince me of something like this. Especially considering you're a weird cat lady with a sword fetish who loves playing Duel Monsters, and you physically exist in front of me to demonstrate these things first hand."
"Wha-! Weird Cat Lady?" Leo interrupted, objecting to my description of her.
I paused my explanation for a moment after hearing her response..
…
'So… you're not going to object to anything else I said? Just that bit?' I wondered, as we continued to look at each other for a couple of moments.
I eventually broke the silence again.
"...Also you can fly. Or hover at the very least. That alone would have done most of the work on the road to proving your case."
"Is that really the reason?" She asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Is that really the reason why you hate me so much? That I just didn't ask you properly? How was I supposed to know how you would have reacted?!"
"Well you've been stalking me for one…"
"That doesn't mean I can read your mind!"
'Ha.' I let out a singular, unenthusiastic laugh within the confines of my own mind. She totally didn't deny the fact that she was stalking me.
But...
"… I suppose that's a fair point," I conceded.
She may be a crazy cat lady, but maybe mind reading was a bit too much to ask. She clearly didn't know me very much at all then, if she thought that it was necessary though.
…
"So… is it?" She asked hesitantly.
"Is it what?"
"The reason! Please just tell me already, I can't take this anymore!"
Fine. Might as well tell her, then.
"No," I replied.
"Then tell me why! Please!"
"You left my dog behind."
...
"...What?" She asked after a lengthy pause, clearly baffled.
Clearly, she hadn't expected me to say something like that.
"You kidnapped me," I clarified. "By doing so, you might have put my dog in danger without a care. Who do you think feeds him?"
There was a moment of outraged silence as she processed what I just said.
"Do you really think that I would forget that!?" She cried. "That dog is the cutest thing! I'd never leave him to starve!"
"You did."
"No, I didn't!"
"Oh? You took care of everything?"
"Yes!"
"How did you manage that? He hates visitors. He also hates cats. And women. You're like, all of those things rolled into one. He'd chew someone like you a new asshole if you tried to get close to his food dish."
"He'd probably think you were an oversized chew toy the instant he laid eyes on you as well," I continued. "What with the purple skin, the massive mane of light blue hair you got there, and the crazy golden hoopy things that follow you around..."
That... or he would have pissed himself in fear. He's done that before. It was really hit or miss with that dog.
"...He wasn't in the room at the time," She replied.
'That's right,' I remembered. He was sleeping upstairs in my parent's room. I forgot about that.
"Oh yeah, that's right. He was upstairs sleeping."
"So, wait," I continued. "You broke into my house, carefully snuck around my kitchen to make sure my dog wasn't nearby, ransacked my pantry, filling my dog's food dish extra high with three days of food, replaced the newly filled dish, all while I was in my room with my headphones on... then you came into the hallway where you came at me with a sword?"
I tried imagining all of that in my head, while observing the irritation rapidly build up on her face at my description of what had happened.
"...Nice strategy," I finished.
"For the last time, I didn't break into your house!" She shouted.
"You did."
"No I didn't! Ugh! You're insufferable!"
"I also find it interesting how that's the bit you're hung up on as well. You only deny the part about breaking into my house. Nothing at all about ransacking my pantry or snooping around my kitchen."
"Why do you always describe everything I do in such a way as to make me seem like some sort of shady criminal?!"
"Why do you always describe everything I do in such a way as to make me seem like some sort of god?"
"That's totally different!"
"No it isn't."
...Our argument got interrupted.
"Are you two done yet?!" One of the villains finally shouted in irritation at the lengthy delay.
We both responded simultaneously.
"Yes."
"No!"
I glanced at Leo again.
"We aren't?" I asked.
"No!" She denied. "I didn't starve your dog, okay? I can't believe you thought that I would be that careless! But he's fine, and he has all the food he needs. And water too!"
Leo then looked at me with an expectant look on her face.
I sighed.
"...Well I guess that removes most of the reasons then. Promise to do one thing for me when this is all over, and we'll call it even."
...If my dog took a crap in the house before I got back, woman, guess who's going to be picking it up?
Not me, that's for damn sure.
She looked relieved, oblivious to my thoughts.
"Okay! Anything at all!"
Wow. She didn't even ask what I was going to demand her to do when we got back. Maybe I should 'demand' her to do two things now. Or more. She should really be more careful.
My house could be absolutely spotless if I got her to clean it up and scrub it down. It was generally a pretty clean place... but I could put a little effort into making it a little dirtier just for her. There was this perfect mud pool in the field just outside my house, and I could coat my hiking boots in it and walk all over the carpets in them. And to throw extra insult in her direction, I could then get her to make me sandwiches and bring them to me on demand.
That'd piss her off something fierce, I'd bet.
...Oh yeah. I could have some fun with this.
"Good. You can go away now. I'd like to be able to concentrate without you nagging at my side."
"Nagging!? I don't nag!"
...
Wow. I didn't even know how to respond to that one. What she said was so unbelievably delusional that I had no immediate response.
I could do nothing but just smile at her next level obliviousness.
...Her picture is in the dictionary next to the definition of the word.
Nag. Verb. To speak in the manner of Lunalight Leo Dancer. Then there's just a picture of her mugshot.
She looked like she was about to go on another rant, so I started the duel before she could say or do anything else.
I glanced towards my opponents.
...They hadn't gone yet, so I guess that meant it was my turn to go first.
I drew my five cards and for a moment, almost forgot to draw my sixth.
...That 'first person draws' rule was so broken.
I looked at my cards.
...
Two seconds later, I was able to determine that the duel was pretty much over by that point.
I won.
…
"Hey! This conversation isn't over! Don't ignore me!"
"Yeah it is. I'm playing cards now. You also smell like spoiled milk so if you could take a few steps back that'd be great."
"Wha-! And who's fault is that?!"
"Yours. Why did you think it was a good idea to go for a swim in my chocolate milk glass? Now shut up please. I've had enough of your whiny, shrieking, nagging voice. It's disgusting, vile, and an abomination that needs to die in fire. I can only take so much of it at a time."
Her voice really was weird. It had a strange accent I had never heard before.
"It's not even close to being as bad as you've described!"
"It really is like alcohol in that sense. Have a little and you get woozy, a little more and your head spins. More still and you eventually black out. Too much and your liver shuts down."
You will never beat me in an argument, woman. It's about time you cut your losses.
"Grrr, fine! I'll go! Just make sure you don't lose!"
She began to stomp away, still fuming in pent up irritation.
She stopped after a few steps though and spoke up in a hesitant and soft voice.
"...But promise me you won't do anything that reckless again."
"No," I replied without hesitation.
I didn't even care what she was referring to, there. She was probably talking about me accepting to fight a two on one duel without a care, but even if she were referring to something else, my answer wouldn't have changed.
Because she was the one who had asked, the answer was automatically no.
"Wha-!"
"I'll absolutely do things that reckless again."
Just because she told me not to.
"In fact," I continued, "you haven't seen anything yet. Prepare to be amazed in the future. And if anything, you telling me not to lose is making me want to lose deliberately just to see what you'd do, so I suggest you don't ask something like that again."
"Now get back already," I said. "I have a children's card game to win."
AN: I have no beta reader either, so there may be a few errors here and there. Hopefully not too many.
