Chapter 4: About Damn Time

For all the bravado and blustering Jounouchi openly displayed in the days leading up to the tournament, nobody was too surprised when he didn't reach the finals. Chess didn't require half as much luck and loopholes as Magic and Wizards to win, so it had never exactly played to Jounouchi's strengths as duelist in the first place. Such a skill set was hard to transfer over to a game that needed an actual strategy and knowledge of the rules to win.

Training with Yuugi of all people had been a disastrous choice. Yuugi didn't even like chess, and Yuugi was the nerdiest of the cult of game nerds that proliferated in the current global boom of game playing celebrity. For all his skill, Yuugi was a lazy coach who kept accidently beating Ryou and Jounouchi a hundred different, perfect ways instead of adequately explaining to them how to even stand a chance. Yuugi was no monster, though, and he apologized the best he could for it. He occasionally attempted to offer pieces of vague advice like "try to think ahead" while blissfully unaware that his students had no mental framework for what they were supposed to be thinking ahead towards.

All Ryou and Jounouchi knew for sure were how to move the pieces and that they eventually, somehow, had to put the opposing king in checkmate if they ever got the chance. The effect was like trying to tell someone how to prepare a pasta dish while giving them the very limited instructions of "boil the water, add the pasta, there's your pasta carbonara". And yes, while those were perhaps very important steps in the process of making pasta, it was hard to shake the feeling that there was probably a little more to it than just that.

If anything, training with Yuugi had taught Ryou how to lose. A lot. Ryou made full use of his prodigious talent throughout the tournament by losing often and with great skill. And yet despite himself, there were still players even worse than he was. Sometimes, inexplicably, Ryou found himself in a draw or, even more confusingly, a stalemate. He wasn't entirely sure how either of those things happened, but the tournament directors told him and his opponents when they were in one and what action to take.

At one point, Ryou was even forced to offer a draw to his opponent by Seto Kaiba himself, who was acting as the lead tournament director. Noticing just that the match was taking longer than expected, Seto had come over for a moment to see if he could resolve whatever issue had come up. After watching the two play for thirty seconds, he nearly flipped the table over and disqualified them both immediately. It turned out that Ryou's and his opponent's kings, the last two pieces on the board, had been dancing around each other in eternal circles for the past seven minutes. To his credit, Seto remained as civil with them as he knew how, not directly calling either of the players stupid, but implying it strongly by speaking to them like they were small children. He forced Ryou to offer the draw and his opponent to take it. Then, problem solved, he threatened to kick them both out of chess club for life if he ever found either of them in the same situation again for the rest of the school year.

Jounouchi faired much better than Ryou, seeing how he was the ambitious type who'd made sure to know what things like en passant and castling were before he'd arrived, even if he still couldn't pronounce either one. When he ultimately played Ryou in the second week of the tournament, Ryou lost in a record five minutes. This was because, in a manner similar how to Ryou was learning to stay afloat in matches at the expense of either player actually winning, Jounouchi seemed to learn more with each match how to actually make moves that resulted in winning. Being beat down was the only way Jounouchi knew how to build himself up, and he thrived in the tournament as a result. He might not have made the quarterfinals, but he definitely didn't go down without a fight.

All said and done, the tournament lasted a little over two weeks, though a temporary misplacement of the adjournment envelopes threatened to push it into an entire month. Ryou, in a move that would've been considered cheating if Seto'd believed he'd done it on purpose, survived just barely because draws were still worth half points, thus indirectly allowing him to earn more points than he maybe deserved. He retained his position in the chess club with a ranking of 143rd out of 150. Meanwhile, Jounouchi, slowly but surely becoming something of a real threat within the club, was ranked 22nd. This accomplishment came as such a surprised to his friends that they threw him a party during lunch break to celebrate on the day the rankings were announced. Honda even skipped class to bring in a cake.

The club tournament, however, for all its high-stakes and histrionics, was only the beginning. With the chess club whittled down to a size Seto was more prepared to deal with, phase three of his plan was put into motion. Meetings were moved to the girl's gym, where boards and tables were set up three days a week immediately after school. The gym also featured a stage at one end, and it was here Seto began challenging the remaining club members to five successive matches apiece.

An extravagant lottery system was set up to decide which member Seto would play each meeting for the sole reason that Seto relished the suspense and fear it caused. Every meeting started with Vice President Hiroshi plugging in the lottery's sorting machine for that day's selection. At the top of the machine was a clear, plastic sorting chamber that held numerous hollow, plastic balls, each with a club member's name written on a slip of paper inside. For a special twist, Seto crushed the ball of the day with his foot while laughing maniacally to reveal his next victim. If the matches went quickly, Seto could challenge up to three students in a meeting, each one selected by the lottery and taken to the stage where Seto had a board set up and waiting.

After the first draw of the day, the club meeting would quiet down and continue otherwise unchanged from the previous meetings in the cafeteria. An expert would arrive and teach a lesson for the first thirty to forty-five minutes, and then there would be time for some on the board practice. The only main difference now, besides Seto's sadistic lottery, was that every week each member was expected to play a match against someone stronger than they were for rating points within the club. This was designed to keep the rankings fluid and improve the members' skills with matches that were actually worth something. Each of these weighed matches had to be recorded with algebraic notation on an official score sheet and turned in to the club secretary by Friday afternoon, or else the player would receive a demerit and have their ranking automatically reduced when club rankings were recalculated.

Like most of his fellow club members, Ryou was terrible at algebraic notation, and his matches took twice as long for the trouble of having to record them using it. It was hard to focus on playing well and writing things down at the same time. For many players, not just Ryou, this seemed virtually impossible. However, Ryou was cunning and soon found a strong incentive to improve his notation skills. Like anyone, he was required to "play" the obligatory rated match every week, but, as it didn't matter where or when the weekly rated matches were played so long as the result was turned in before Friday, Ryou stopped playing physical matches altogether. He got good enough at writing his matches out that he was often seen huddling last minute with a random club member outside the gym before the Friday meeting started, inventing with them a match that had never happened and which Ryou would ultimately lose.

As with all ranking systems, someone had to be last, and Ryou didn't care much if it was him. It soon became a regular thing that anyone who'd forgotten to record a match that week would find Ryou at the last minute and get him to invent something for them to pass off as their game so they both wouldn't get punished. In this manner, Ryou held the 150th position consistently enough for even Seto Kaiba to take notice and become suspicious of it.

The afternoon when Seto finally drew Ryou's name in the lottery, all the typical, sneering fanfare that normally would've accompanied such an announcement ceased. After retrieving the name from the crushed remains of the ball that had held it, he immediately ended the performance mid-cackle, his expression transforming from cruel mirth to grim resolution. The name in his hand offended him more than any insult ever could, and now the moment had come for it to be dealt with. Not even Jounouchi, a sworn enemy whom Seto had played the week before, had earned such a severe response.

"It's about damn time," Seto growled contemptuously under his breath without even reading aloud the name first. "Ryou Bakura," he snarled into the microphone before making an immediate about-face and striding towards the stage. The sharp, exaggerated click of his step echoed through the gym as each and every person turned to look over at the now ashen-faced Ryou. Next him, the only person to make a sound, Jounouchi loudly expressed his fervent desire to know what the fuck, as always.

Notes:

There are none.