Ami didn't exactly tell anyone where she was disappearing to that weekend. No emails, no handwritten notes, no messages on the communicator. She just left and showed up in the Tokyo Convention Center with a convention pass. She had arrived in a blue one-piece loose short dress tied together at the waist with yellow sleeves and a yellow capelet. She had a feather in her hair and mid-calf boots on her feet. She looked like she walked out of a video game, and surprisingly, that was her intent.
While Ami was extraordinarily good at video games, literally able to see the coding for them as she played, tabletop games were another story. They had more statistics, more strategy, more possibility. They weren't code but driven by people who could be somewhat unpredictable. That fascinated her. It got her into chess, but now her newest fascination was TCGs.
She didn't want to admit it to the others, but Duel Monsters was fascinating. The possibilities, the cards, the strategies that went along with different structures of decks. She had built herself a powerful strategy deck, and she wanted to test it at a tournament.
But there was another reason she'd come. Yugi might be there. He was a champion duelist, after all. It only made sense that he might be attracted to the gaming convention as well, perhaps entering the tournament too. If he was targeted by the enemy, they could possibly attack. Past enemies had known to attack large crowds before. She wouldn't put it past these strange rain-bringing suited men.
She slipped into the convention center, flashing her pass at the door. The center was humongous, filled with swaths of different types of gamers. Off to the left was a massive video game center, featuring arcade games and the newest set of home consoles available for play on large screens. Sure, the consoles had intrigued her, but she wasn't here to analyze their updated code and graphics. She was here for other reason, yet that didn't mean she wouldn't come back to them later.
Weaving her way through the crowds, she managed to locate the Duel Monsters trading card booth, not that it was hard with the massive Kaiba Corp logo behind the desk. They were likely sponsoring the tournament to display some sort of new holographic technology. Ami had her holo-bracelet on her wrist, ready to use the new technology, but there could be something on an even bigger scale inside the main arena.
Part of her was admittedly excited to participate in a tournament. The last one she did was a chess tournament that was interrupted by Beruche's attack. This one might be interrupted too, but it might just go smoothly like a normal tournament.
She glanced around. There were quite a number of girls present, something she hadn't quite expected at a gaming tournament, yet their involvement wasn't her main focus. She was trying to see if she could spot Yugi. Usagi had described him as having starfish-shaped hair and being short, neither of which seemed to help her locate him. There were many people with spiked hair and odd shaped hair and all sorts of colors and some were just plain tall and in the way.
Ami thumbed through her cards for a moment, entering the tournament hall. The place was as massive as she expected, practically a coliseum in its own right. Seating stretched from the entrance downward to the center arena in rows by the hundreds. Many of the seats had already been filled, the competitors shuffled off to a specific seating area reserved for them. A massive projection stage was set up along the ring of the arena with two desks, one on either side.
Ami glanced over the crowd. There were sure a lot of duelists, some in cosplay while others seemed to be in casual clothing.
"Welcome to the Tokyo Dome Exhibition League!"
The announcement grabbed her attention. In the center of the arena stood a single man, a long white coat with peculiar silver accents along the collar. It had a sharpness to it, one that caused it to bell out around him as he stood. His hair was a sharp brown, accenting the sharpness of his features and the crispness of his shirt and pants.
"Hey look, it's Kaiba, the president of Kaiba Corp!" one duelist pointed out.
"He looks like he's in high school," another commented.
"Here are the brackets of this tournament!" Kaiba pointed upwards toward the display monitors. Ami found her name pretty quickly in the first bracket. She skimmed over the other brackets, spotting Mutou Yugi listed in the last bracket. So he was here. She glanced over the gathered duelists. She didn't see anyone in crisp blood-red suits, so perhaps this would just be a normal tournament.
The first few brackets went by quickly. Ami destroyed her opponents with her combinations of sending monsters to the graveyard then blowing it up with a Graveyard Bomb. She used her strategies from chess to help her predict possible strategies laid out before her. It was like fighting in battles but with cards instead of magic. She could see why Usagi had come to enjoy it. It was actually pretty fun, and Ami found herself enjoying the game more as the tournament went on.
She wanted more of a challenge however and that challenge soon stood before her in the finals. There he was, the champion Mutou Yugi. She'd watched his strategy throughout the day. He was good, very good, and he knew it. Ami wanted a challenge, someone who could counter her intelligence and strategy. She wanted a good duel that would keep her attention. "Let's have a good, strong duel."
On the other side of the field, both Yugi and Atem had been waiting for her to reach the finals. Her strategy was strong and sharp, using the cards to her advantage. She planned ahead incredibly wisely, as if she could see possibilities of the duel play out before the opponent even moved.
"You've been waiting for this opponent all day, Other me," Yugi commented.
"I have," Atem agreed. "She's really good. It'll be a fun challenge after Battle City."
Yugi had reasoned his other half had stayed with him after the Memory World to battle some more, to find something exciting. Atem had a few casual battles with his friends and at the arcade, but nothing where an opponent would actually challenge him. It'd been awhile since either saw a good duel. Yugi wanted to duel her too, but he felt that letting Atem duel her instead might do the spirit some good.
"Let's have a good duel!" Atem called out to her. He cut and shuffled the deck before placing it down on the mat. He drew his hand, looking over his cards. A pretty solid set of cards. De-spell, Feral Imp, Magical Hats, Black Magician, Big Shield Gardna, and a Resurrection card. Not a bad way to start, though after watching Ami duel, he knew that she had cards that could clear the field and alter hands, and she wasn't hesitant to use them.
"I place this card face down and summon Feral Imp to the field," Atem announced. "End turn." He watched Ami on the other side of the field carefully.
Ami looked over her drawn cards. It certainly wasn't enough to take down a champion, but it was somewhat of a start. "I play Graceful Charity. This allows me to draw three cards then discard two." She drew her cards, thumbing through the new selection. There it was, a starter combo.
"I place Fire Princess on the field." Before Ami manifested a young princess clad in red with black hair. She held a staff at her side. The card reminded her of Rei, so she naturally slipped it into her deck. The special effects weren't bad either. "I also play this spell card, Fountain of Life, which gives me 300 life points and directly attacks yours for 500, thanks to Fire Princess's special effect!"
"She's direct!" Yugi commented, crossing his arms in front of him as Atem's life points blew away.
"I think she's inviting us to play directly," Atem reasoned. His opponent was being more direct than she was in previous rounds. She seemed to simply destroy the other duelists pretty quickly but here, Ami seemed to be enjoying herself, a large grin spanning her features as she ended her turn.
A large grin spanned Atem's features as well. "I think we should play, Aibou, play to win."
"Alright, Other me," Yugi smiled. "Let's give her a final round worth remembering."
"Draw!" He pulled a card from his deck again. Another magician, this time the Black Magician Girl. "I summon the Black Magician to the field! Attack the Fire Princess with Black Magic Strike!"
Ami shielded her eyes as the Black Magician quickly blew away her monster card. So this was the Black Magician Usagi had mentioned earlier. He certainly had a lot of power, but the he seemed like an ordinary card. Well until he seemed to look over his shoulder at Yugi and nod. She squinted a bit, second guessing that she actually saw that happen.
"I place this card face down and end my turn," Atem concluded.
Ami watched him carefully, not seeing anything else unusual about his side of the field. Perhaps she was imagining the Black Magician acting the way he did. He was just a hologram, a piece of paper projected before them.
"Draw!" There was a card she could use. It went with the theme of her deck. "I summon Water Princess!" Before her stood a glittering princess, long blue robes and blue hair to match. The card reminded her of herself, of Sailor Mercury and her past life before that. "I place one card face down and end my turn."
"Another princess?" Yugi peered across the field. "Just how many does she have?"
"I get the feeling we never saw her full hand before," Atem reasoned.
"She may be playing an elemental deck that can manipulate the field," Yugi considered the strategy. "She's truly trying to get the upper hand in this situation."
"We'll see how long her fortune lasts," Atem grinned, drawing another card. The Black Luster Soldier, another powerful card now in his hand. He could easily play it and try to wipe out yet another princess card from Ami's field, but there was the worry of a field-manipulating card that she'd placed face down. She also had cards that cleared the opponent's hands. It was tricky to figure out which she had or planned to use.
"I place-" Atem's words were quickly cut off as the lights suddenly cut off in the arena. "What the heck?"
On the opposite side of the field, Ami glanced around. This wasn't a good sign, and she had her worries that something might happen at this tournament. She pulled her Mercury Computer from her bag, flipping it open. Magical energy readings were through the roof. They were here, weren't they? The blood-red-suited men. She summoned her heart crystal to her hand.
As the lights flicked on, the situation revealed itself. The audience, all several hundreds if not thousands staggering towards the playing field as if zombified. Magical mind control, Mercury reasoned. She quickly grabbed her cards, dashing across the field towards Yugi. Her suspicions were right, though she wasn't sure how those strange men Usagi and Minako reported would be possible of such mass mind control. There was more to this. It was a show of power.
She skidded to a halt in front of Yugi, crossing her arms and summoning an orb of water in both hands. Spreading her arms, she offered a single command, "Mercury Aqua Mist!" As mist filled the arena, she grabbed Yugi by the arm. "Gather your deck. We need to get out of here."
...
Author's notes:
While Ami does have some actual TCG cards in her deck, I decided to create for her an elemental princess deck that would suit her play style and make her a good strategic challenge for Atem. But it seems they won't complete this duel just yet. Unfortunate.
