Euphemia of the Duel Academy

Academy Intruder part 1

Disclaimer – Code Geass is the property of Sunrise, Bandai Entertainment and Ichirō Ōkouchi and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is the property of TV Tokyo, NAS (Nihon Ads System), Studio Gallop, Kazuki Takahashi (the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga artist) and up until 29th/30th March 2011, 4Kids Entertainment (I mention this because I'm using the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX dub names). Also some cards I'll be using will be based on characters from other TV shows, movies etc. Those characters are the property of their respective owners.


Warnings – Strong language, possible violence and possible Euphemia OOC (not a female Jaden). Also, this chapter may have some hints of what could be interpreted as yuri (but nothing too intimate and it will be one-sided)


Chapter Summery – As the news of Euphemia's body's disappearance continues to plaque the minds of many in the Code Geass World, Vincent zi Britannia a.k.a. V.V. in not all that concerned like his brother. Believing that Charles is being overly paranoid, V.V. muses on the events that have transpired up till now and is all too aware that Euphemia is alive somewhere, as her consciousness is notably missing from the World's Collective Subconscious, though he's not all that concerned due to Euphemia's overall nature and the fact that she's nowhere to be found on the Earth, however he is curious as to her whereabouts and just how her mysterious benefactor managed to snatch her body and just what they have planned. Meanwhile in the aftermath of the Promotional Exams on Duel Academy Island in the Yu-Gi-Oh! World, things seem to be settling down once again as Stella fumes over her latest defeat. However, it seems that all is not well as an intruder has sneaked onto the island for some unknown purpose and Abigail happens to notice her presence. Just who is this mysterious girl and why is she on the island? Abigail's determined to find out as she is roped into a duel with the intruder, but can she shake of the girl, Amanda's flirtatious antics and just how does Amanda intend to use Abigail in whatever scheme she's planning?


Code Geass World – Tengger Desert, Mongolia, Chinese Federation, Geass Order Base

V.V., formerly Vincent zi Britannia, the older twin brother of Charles zi Britannia sat in the throne room of one of the buildings in the underground city. Everything was quiet and uneventful outside as the eerie purple-pink glow from the nearby Thought Elevator illuminated the underground cavern that the city was built in. Despite being underground, the city itself looked like any other modern-day city complete with streetlights, roadways and streets, ornate buildings and it even had its very own underground train network. However, since the city was underground, it existed in perpetual darkness with the only non-street-lighted light source coming from the Thought Elevator. This was one of many bases that the Geass Order or Geass Cult or even Geass Directorate owned and it was bases like this that the immortal child felt most at peace. V.V. preferred dark places as opposed to places with lots of light. He did not know what it was that made him this way, it was just the way he was. Something about the dark made him feel at ease as he pondered on events that had happened until three months ago when the terrorist known as Zero had rallied the people of "Area Eleven" behind him and convinced them to rise up in rebellion after the Specially Administrated Zone of Japan collapsed due to Euphemia apparently ordering a massacre. However, V.V. knew the truth. Yes, there was a massacre, but Euphemia had not ordered it of her own freewill; Zero a.k.a. Lelouch vi Britannia had accidentally forced Euphemia into carrying the massacre out while he was flaunting his ego and had simply conjured up all those lies afterwards to hide the truth, but if that was not enough; during the rebellion, which had come to be known as the Black Rebellion, Euphemia's dead body had somehow gone missing on board the Avalon, Prince Schneizel's personal flagship while it had still been in the air and the thing was; nothing had been noticed either approaching or leaving the Avalon while it was up in the air.

Anyway, V.V. could not help but think back to before everything changed; back to before he received his Code and entered into a contract with his brother. V.V. or Vincent as he had been known back then had been born into the Britannian Imperial Family along with his brother to Petunia zi Britannia and Sedgwick je Britannia, 92nd Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire. However, their childhood was marred by the constant, seemingly never-ending in-fighting in the Imperial Family over succession to the throne. It was due to Britannia's rhetoric of Social Darwinism; that life itself was one big constant struggle to survive and the strong would rise and crush the weak. It was a time when deceptions and back-stabbings were commonplace and most of those who did manage to claim the throne had more or less, very short reigns; the shortest of which came to an end in just under a month. This period had become known as the Emblem of Blood, which had started with the assassination of Emperor Sedgwick when Vincent and Charles had both just turned eight. No one had ever owned up to the assassination, but since then, the princes and princesses all started to fight among themselves over who succeeded him and many of the nobles also tried to make grabs for power by trying to marry their sons and daughters into the Imperial Family. Two years into the Emblem of Blood, Petunia, Vincent and Charles's mother and perhaps the only woman Vincent had ever loved had been murdered when one of the other nobles had dropped a carriage on her right in front of them; severely traumatising them and it was all because her children had been in line for succession to the throne.

"Ah yes, the only woman I was ever close to was taken from me and why…?" the present-day V.V. mused to himself in an eerily cheerful tone, though the undertone suggested that he was anything but cheerful, "Because Charles and I had gained claims to the throne."

His eyes burned with a fierce hatred as he remembered that day despite his expression remaining calm and collected. He may look like a normal everyday ten-year-old boy, but his appearance only served to mask his true nature for within the ageless body was the soul of someone far older, far older and more dangerous than anyone could ever dream and many of those who had seen his true nature usually did not live long enough to tell the tale.

Anyway, afterwards, the two boys had gone to live with some of their mother's relatives, who pretty much ignored them, but sheltered them nonetheless since it was possible that they would be killed due to their claims to the throne despite only being children, but then one day, the twins had met an individual by the name of V.V.; the original V.V. and once they explained their problems to him, he had told them about his Code and how it made him immortal and he also explained the power of Geass, the Power of the Kings and how he could give normal people this power, but only in exchange for helping him fulfil his greatest wish. Charles had been sceptical at first, but Vincent had been more open minded and he agreed to V.V.'s contract with V.V. explaining that each Geass power was different from person to person and that the Geass power usually manifested itself based on that person's inner desires. It was also through the original V.V. that Vincent and Charles had come to know about the Ragnarök Connection, the Sword of Akasha and the Geass Order; the former two rumoured to be a failed experiment of an ancient civilisation and the latter an organisation that had been around for so long that its origins had long since become lost in history as no one remembered just who had founded it.

However, the purpose of the Geass Order was clear; to produce and study Geass Users and it was usually headed by one Code-Bearer. Basically its role was to regulate and control the power of Geass and it had been independent of all nations both past and present; answering to no one but themselves. However, it was also a very cautious organisation and never remained in one place for too long. The Geass Order was a nomadic organisation that went from one place to another; closely guarding their secrets, though their bases never tended to be that far from the Thought Elevators that surrounded the globe, though a change in leadership also meritted moving to another base. The Geass Order was strict about its secrets and anyone who happened to come across one of their bases while they were occupying the area; they were either recruited or killed depending on their answer. Each intruder was given the offer to join and their fate was dependant on their answer; those who agreed were spared and entered a contract with the Code-Bearer in charge or recruited to the science division that studied Geass and those who refused were killed to maintain the organisation's secrecy.

Anyway, eventually when Vincent's Geass evolved to the point where it had become visible in both his eyes, V.V. had revealed the truth about the Geass and the Code; that he could now trade the Geass for the Code and that his wish had been to die. V.V. explained that once he passed his Code on, he would lose his immortality and become a normal human again and would be able to die. Needless to say, Vincent took the Code, becoming the new V.V. and then Charles, who by this time had become convinced that what the original V.V. had told him was real entered into a contract with his brother; only the wish in this contract was to revive the Ragnarök Connection and rid the world of its lies, since the original V.V. had explained that the Sword of Akasha's role was to slay the gods themselves and bring about the Ragnarök Connection in which the dead and the living would all merge into one single entity. According to the original V.V., masks would vanish and everyone would be able to see everyone else for what they really were.

"Yes, that much is true," the ageless child continued to muse, "No one will be able to hide their true colours any longer once the Ragnarök Connection is complete."

After all, lies had been a key part in the Emblem of Blood and it was lies that had gotten Petunia killed. The noble responsible for her death had been thought to have been one of her closest friends, but Petunia had been deceived. The noble had been planning her demise from the beginning. He had simply approached her under the guise of friendship and had worked to earn her trust and then when Petunia had let her guard down, he and his wife had both shown their true colours and murdered her. It had left deep emotionally scars on both her children and sick of all the lies everyone was telling one another all just so they could claim the Britannian throne for themselves, they both had made a pact to bring about the Ragnarök Connection and also to never lie to one another.

"But unfortunately, due to outside interference I was forced to break that vow," V.V. thought as a sneer materialised on his face and he felt his anger rage from within his heart as he remembered the one who had gotten between him and his brother and because of her, he had been forced to go back on his promise to never lie to Charles.

After they had both made their pact, they had lain in wait for decades, waiting for their opportunity to strike, though to V.V.'s initial surprise, Charles continued to age while he remained in the body of a child. He knew that it was the Code. The Code practically froze its host's aging process. The host would age no further than the day they received the Code, but as Charles got older, they had both finally decided to make their move; first seizing control of the Geass Order and aligning its allegiance with Britannia, though the Emperor was not aware of this, but fortunately Charles had managed to gain good favour with him. The plan was for Charles to eliminate all contenders to the throne before eliminating the Emperor himself and then replace him and it was during that campaign that Charles had met her, Marianne Lamperouge, a commoner soldier who had originally been assigned to provide him protection on a diplomatic venture and who was working towards proving that commoners could be just as good, if not better than the upper classes and for Charles, it had been love at first sight. It was due to Charles and Marianne getting in his good favour that Marianne had been awarded the title, Knight of Six among the Knights of the Round, the twelve strongest knights in Britannia due to her phenomenal skills as a soldier and Knightmare Frame pilot; not that V.V. particularly cared or anything. He was only interested in fulfilling his and Charles's dream and Marianne's status meant nothing to him.

At first, he had completely dismissed Charles's attraction to Marianne as mundane as he believed that Charles saw Marianne as a side-venture. Her skills were so great that she could have become Knight of One, but her status as a commoner had prevented that and V.V. had noticed how even before marrying into the Imperial Family that the nobility clearly hated her guts and that was just because of her skills because she had proven herself more skilled than many of them and what made it worse for the nobles was that Marianne always seemed to have this deceptively kind and caring smile permanently plastered on her face and she had been very much aware of the nobles' resentment towards her, but her solution to the problem seemed to just rub her superiority over them in their faces and those nobles who dared voice their opinions of her to her face… Marianne had had them and their entire families murdered and their properties destroyed and even though everyone else knew that she was to blame for those mysterious happenings, they could not prove it and it helped cement the nobility's fear of Marianne and it only served to further impress Charles.

As time went on, V.V. found that Marianne was slowly becoming more and more of a thorn in his and Charles's side as Charles continued to spend more and more time with her and V.V. feared that he was losing focus on their overall goal and he was even more infuriated to learn that Charles had told Marianne about the plan and introduced her to him, though he had been nice and polite and accepted her and then he learned that Marianne was in the company of another Code-Bearer, a girl known as C.C. and she also agreed to lend a hand, though V.V. felt disgusted at her stoic uncaring attitude since he knew that she had only agreed to help out of sheer boredom and really did not care whether the plan succeeded or not and was only helping them because she had nothing better to do. Anyway, with Marianne's help, Charles had managed to eliminate all other contenders to the throne and disposed of the previous Emperor before taking his place and even made Marianne one of his many wives; much to V.V.'s displeasure as he found his tolerance of Marianne diminishing and what was worse, Marianne seemed to be all too aware of it. He remembered how he shot her glares when he believed she was not looking and how she would retaliate with her usual smile as if rubbing the fact that she was stealing Charles from him in his face and it only served to get worse when Marianne bore Charles children, which he believed would only take even more of Charles's time away from him.

As for Charles's performance as Emperor, he put on a good show as well as put an end to the Emblem of Blood as he had eliminated anyone who could potentially oppose him. He constantly reinforced Britannia's Social Darwinism rhetoric and was quite convincing. After all, when the time came for them to acquire all the Thought Elevators throughout the world, such rhetoric would make for a good smokescreen. It definitely kept everyone away from investigating what he was really up to as Charles had proved himself to be a very frightening man that few would dare cross. However, truth be told, Charles was really a hypocrite. He did not really believe in what he was saying and in truth, he despised the rhetoric he was promoting. After all, the same rhetoric had been responsible for their mother's death, but for the moment it was a rather convenient excuse to use as a pretext for the future expansion that would help them acquire the Thought Elevators that were needed for the Ragnarök Connection.

"Ironic, isn't it," V.V. chuckled to himself as he briefly brought himself back to reality, speaking to no one in particular, "We're on a campaign to eradicate the world's lies and yet, in order to do that, we must embrace those same lies be lying to the masses."

The irony in that was not lost to him; that in order to eradicate lies, they had to lie themselves. It was like the fight fire with fire ideology only in this case, it was fight lies with lies. Anyway, V.V. remembered how he had lied to Charles about not knowing anything about Marianne's assassination. Anyway, before that, Marianne's presence had been getting to the point where she was becoming intolerable and after looking into past leaders and how they fell from grace, he had come to the conclusion that women were the downfall of men; that all men failed in their hopes and dreams because of women and women convinced them to give up on them, which was what he feared Marianne was doing to Charles, though it was just his own jealousy blinding his judgement. However, he finally decided to do away with her and then have her daughter, Nunnally placed at the scene as a witness and it worked. He had called Marianne to the lobby of the Aries Villa one night for a meeting and had requested that Marianne withdrew security, which she had done; apparently even if she had been aware of his animosity towards her, she had clearly underestimated him, believing him to be just the same as those nobles she constantly irked with her smile. However, two of her bodyguards had returned out of concern and then he acted while Marianne was distracted, though he did notice a pink-haired girl about Nunnally's age having apparently witnessed the incident, but paid her no mind. After all, she was just a child and given that V.V. himself looked like a child, he figured that no one would believe her and it seemed that he was right since the girl, Anya Alstreim who had taken Marianne's old position as the Knight of Six had obviously been so traumatised that she had blocked the memories from her mind. Afterwards, he had covered it up and used Nunnally as a witness and it had left her crippled and blind; blind due to psychological trauma, at least that's what everyone believed, but V.V. knew that Charles had used his own Geass on her to make her that way, which piqued his curiosity, but it also worked to his advantage as it had wiped any memories of her having possibly seen him as he had been the one who had fired the gun, though he was tempted to kill Nunnally and her brother Lelouch, just for good measure, but unfortunately, Charles had sent them both to Japan as bargaining chips before the invasion, which had piqued the immortal child's curiosity as he had already been planning on invading Japan before he even considered sending Lelouch and Nunnally there.

However, once the invasion had started both, Lelouch and Nunnally had been declared dead. In fact, Charles had even announced that they were both dead on live national television even before the invasion force had even set foot on Japanese soil. Of course, after hearing Lelouch and Charles's exchanges before Lelouch and Nunnally had been sent to Japan, Charles had told Lelouch that he was dead to him, so he figured that it was not all that surprising. However, after Marianne's funeral, V.V. had decided to eradicate Marianne's memory from the world and had systematically had every single person that she had socialised with aside from those who hated her killed. He hunted them all down and killed them from those of her family to even just people whom she had met and done business with once. The only people who were still alive were Charles, Bismarck Waldstein, the current Knight of One, Cornelia, whom he knew had idolised Marianne Lelouch, Nunnally and the Ashford Family, who had fled to Japan after Marianne's assassination had caused their fall from grace due to their support of her. Of course, he did not kill them all at once, he waited a while between each kill and then they would either be the victim of an accident, like a baker that Marianne was friends with; how he and his entire family perished when their bakery burnt down after someone had seemingly forgotten to turn one of the ovens off or die of natural causes like Marianne's father who had seemingly died peacefully in his sleep from old age. Heck even Cornelia and Euphemia's mother, Rochelle had become a victim of his quest, though it had been arranged to look like an accident during a horse-riding session in which the horse was spooked by a snake and she fell off, breaking her neck against a rock that had been behind her. Unfortunately, he could not get at Cornelia or Euphemia because Cornelia had constantly been away from Pendragon since Marianne's funeral and no matter where she went, she had always taken Euphemia with her.

Anyway, despite having been declared dead, Lelouch and Nunnally had both contacted the Ashford Family, one of the few noble families who had not despised Marianne and who supported her; though since her assassination, they had fallen into disgrace and Lelouch had faked their deaths. He knew this because Charles had told him since he was somehow in contact with C.C., who had left after Marianne's assassination. Since meeting C.C., V.V. had allowed her to assume control of the Geass Order as his successor, but after she left, he had been forced to retake his old position. How Charles was keeping in contact with C.C., the ageless child had no idea, but Charles had decided to make use of Lelouch and his hatred of Britannia. According to Charles, Lelouch starting a war would inevitably divert everyone's attention away from him and then he would have more freedom to act towards the completion of the Ragnarök Connection.

"An ingenious plan, Charles, but it leaves too much to chance," V.V. said to himself, "He could potentially be useful, but his stance also makes him too much of a threat. Have you ever considered the possibility that your plan to make him hate you could work too well?"

He did see the logic in Charles's plan, but he also saw the potential drawbacks, though he supposed that he was just being bias due to his hatred of Marianne and the fact that Lelouch was her child, but he knew that Lelouch could potentially prove to be a threat and if Lelouch discovered the truth, V.V. doubted that he would cooperate like Charles initially believed. No, Lelouch just would not understand; this much V.V. knew and despite Lelouch's success in diverting the people's attention away from the Ragnarök Connection, the cons of his continued existence far outweighed the pros. He had studied Lelouch's character by analysing him in his Zero persona. It was why he had transported both Lelouch and Suzaku Kururugi to Kamine Island from Shikine Island during the Black Knights' attack there, though Euphemia and that Black Knight girl had gotten in the way and ended up being transported as well. He had been interested in Lelouch and what he would do and Suzaku Kururugi had also piqued his interest as he seemed somewhat sensitive to the power of Geass, though whether it was natural or a side-effect of what had happened to him back at Narita when C.C. used her Shock Images to save Lelouch from him was a mystery.

In any case, Lelouch as Zero and his vendetta against Britannia had worked. Hardly anyone paid attention to Charles, though he knew that Schneizel and Clovis's old army general, Bartley Aspirus clearly suspected something as they had been on Kamine Island at the same time as Zero, Suzaku, Euphemia and the other girl and V.V. recalled overhearing Bartley making the statement that he figured that the ruins on Kamine Island had been the real reason behind the invasion of Japan and how had had researched and discovered other ruins and how most of them were under Imperial Control and most of them resided in recently conquered "areas" leading him to believe that the ruins were the true reason behind Britannia's recent expansion, which was true. The ruins in question was where the Thought Elevators resided and V.V. vowed that he would deal with Bartley when the time was right and he would also deal with Cornelia, who he knew was somewhere in the Chinese Federation and was hunting the Geass Order down in order to clear her sister's name.

"But unfortunately for you my dear niece, the huntress has become the hunted," he chuckled to himself as he remembered the reason why Cornelia was hunting him down, "And what would your reaction be if you had discovered that I had been the one to gunned down your precious idol as well as the fact that she was not as sweet and kind as she had portrayed herself and also the fact that I had your mother dealt with due to her association with said idol."

When he learned that Euphemia had declared the formation of the Specially Administrated Zone of Japan, he had expressed his curiosity as he saw it as a means of diverting attention away from Kamine Island as the military had become somewhat curious due to the recent events there. Charles had surprisingly agreed to it on the condition that Euphemia renounced her claim to the throne, which she did without hesitation, much to V.V.'s surprise. However during the opening ceremony of the SAZ, Zero had appeared and requested an audience with Euphemia alone and a while after they had both entered the G-1 Base, Euphemia had emerged with Zero nowhere in sight and then ordered the soldiers to kill the Japanese and started the massacre for which she would be remembered as Princess Massacre. However, V.V. had known that it had been a result of Lelouch's Geass. He had determined how his Geass worked through studying those who had apparently helped him and then claimed that they did not remember doing so. Lelouch's power was the power of Absolute Obedience, which allowed him to bend others to his will and he learned from C.C. that Lelouch had become a victim of what was known as Geass Runaway, which occurred when someone continuously used their Geass and it became so powerful that it automatically activated and remained activate and leaving the user unable to deactivate it, though he knew that Lelouch's mental state also played a factor as the ability to control a Geass and prevent it from "running away" also depended on the user's mental stability and V.V. knew Lelouch did not agree with Euphemia's plan, but the fact that Euphemia was the only one of his half-siblings that he truly cared about and the fact that she now stood in his way had no doubt caused him to become conflicted on what to do and it had caused his mental state to deteriorate, but before learning that, he had believed that Lelouch had done it deliberately, which surprised him; not that he particularly cared, but he never would have dreamed that Lelouch would be willing to sacrifice all those innocents just to discredit one person and motivate the survivors into joining him.

Anyway, how it occurred did not matter to him, once Lelouch had rallied the angry survivors of the SAZ behind him, Charles had sent him to retrieve Nunnally, though he had been tempted to kill her as by the time he had reached Ashford Academy, the Black Knights had already occupied it and it would have been easy to have framed them for Nunnally's murder, but somehow, he had gotten the feeling that Charles would not have believed him if he came back empty-handed with that claim, so he did what Charles had wanted, but before that, he had paid a visit to Suzaku Kururugi in board the Avalon, who was still mourning Euphemia's demise and told him the "truth" about the massacre, though back then, it had been before learning about Lelouch's Geass going into Runaway Mode and he really did believe that that was the truth and he had seen Euphemia's body and confirmed that she was definitely dead.

"Which brings me to the next point on how it managed to disappear," the immortal child pondered as he remembered hearing how it had somehow vanished without a trace after Suzaku had left to go hunt Zero down. It was indeed a mystery even to him.

Apparently, the room's surveillance camera had encountered a glitch that somehow managed to right itself, but when it did, the body was gone, though the doctor and nurse that had seen to Euphemia had apparently entered and were both unconscious on the floor. It was clear that they had both come in and interrupted the body snatcher and the body snatcher had incapacitated them. However they had both awoke hours later feeling fine, but with no memories of what they had seen and V.V. knew that to be the truth as Suzaku had practically thrashed the doctor to within an inch of his life and he still maintained his story, though it was clear to V.V. that Suzaku clearly did not care and just beat him up anyway. However, what none of them knew was that the fault to the surveillance camera before the body's disappearance was not the first "fault" that it had encountered as V.V. had used a jamming device hidden on his person while he had visited Suzaku to temporarily scramble the camera's electronics, but since when he left, everything was normal, no one worried over it, which was possibly why they shrugged off the second "fault". However, unlike the first time, when the camera started to function normally, the people in the Avalon's security room had discovered Euphemia's body missing.

It intrigued him how anyone managed to pull it off. The Avalon had been airborne the entire time and V.V. knew that it would have been able to have detected anything approaching it and nothing could have escaped without being noticed. He knew that it had to be the work of the supernatural. There was no other explanation. Someone must have teleported on board like he had done, though whoever did had to have been someone who was clearly a lot older than he, himself looked. V.V. knew that he could not have pulled it off as he had been alone when he had gone to the Avalon and despite his immortality, he had not been awarded with super strength and he just would not have been able to have lifted Euphemia's body in order to move it and he was surprised when Charles, who was being increasingly paranoid over the body's disappearance, fearing that someone was plotting against them and was trying to stop them from fulfilling the Ragnarök Connection did not suspect him as he did have the power of teleportation, albeit on a limited scale.

"You're such a fool, Charles," V.V. said with a groan of frustration, "You're clearly fretting over nothing."

Charles was getting closer and closer to insanity, V.V. knew and despite his constant assurances and Charles's constant agreements, he knew that part of his brother just refused to let it lie. V.V. even suggested that he go to C's World and converse with Euphemia like he had done with Clovis after Lelouch had killed him, but Charles refused, clearly too afraid that he would not find Euphemia, though at first V.V. scoffed and asked him why since Euphemia was clearly dead. He even told Charles of his little detour to the Avalon while on his way to capture Nunnally in an attempt to convince Charles that Euphemia was indeed dead, but Charles responded that she may have been brought back to life, to which V.V. laughed, claiming that such a thing was impossible. Not even Geass was capable of such a thing and he had gone to C's World to where the Collective Human Subconscious resided to search for Euphemia, but to his absolute shock, he had discovered that she was indeed, missing, though according to some of the other people whose minds resided from within the collective consciousness, Euphemia did indeed arrive, but her stay was only temporary, which could only mean that Charles was right and Euphemia had indeed been resurrected, but just who on Earth possessed a power such as that and more importantly, why had Euphemia been revived? V.V. also realised that Charles's refusal to converse with the minds of the dead meant that he knew that Euphemia was alive, but that he was in denial and was fearful that trying to converse with Euphemia would confirm what he already knew and thus, destroy his denial.

However, despite this, V.V. doubted that Euphemia's revival was to stop the Ragnarök Connection. After all, it had been three months since then and she had not been seen since, though he knew that it was probably due to the fact that her reputation would get her killed the moment someone recognised her and whoever had revived her was pretty good at keeping her well hidden. However, he could safely rule out Euphemia's revival as part of a plan to stop the Ragnarök Connection as Euphemia clearly was not the best person to recruit for such a cause due to her kind and naïve nature. Euphemia was not a fighter and therefore would be ineffective in any plan as V.V. knew that she would try to stop them without resorting to violence, though he did have agents scour the globe, just in case, but they had pretty much scoured the entire world and had not found her; not even in underground locations where hiding someone for a long period of time would be ideal and if Euphemia was travelling, then surely someone would have been bound to recognise her.

In any case, it mattered not. Telling Suzaku of Geass had all been part of his plan in doing away with Lelouch. He hoped that Suzaku would succumb to his anger and kill Lelouch and it seemed that that was what he was intending to do, but unfortunately, Suzaku somehow managed to regain enough of his rationality to deduce that Lelouch was more useful to him alive, which infuriated him, but it was no major setback. Suzaku had brought Lelouch before Charles and Charles used his Geass to wipe Lelouch's memories and returned him to "Area Eleven" under the watchful eyes of the OSI; one of them as which was a member of the Geass Order, Rolo and V.V. had ordered Rolo to kill Lelouch when he finally did regain his memories. Rolo was playing the part of Lelouch's younger brother and he knew that Charles was expecting Lelouch to regain his memories and pick up where he left off, but V.V. was determined that that would not happen. Lelouch was bait to lure in C.C. so they could force her to help with the Ragnarök Connection as they needed a second Code-Bearer and once C.C. appeared, Lelouch would be disposed of. Of course, Charles believed that he would outwit them, but V.V. had other ideas.

"I understand the pros of your plan, Charles," V.V. said as he rose off the throne and walked over to a table with two huge fish tanks sitting on top of it; the one on the right containing a shawl of goldfish and the one on the left containing a shawl of red-bellied piranhas, "But there are also cons in your plan and weighing the pros and cons up, the cons far outweigh the pros. Lelouch is too much of a threat to be allowed to live."

The tanks on the table had no lids and once V.V. stood in front of the table, he reached his hand into the tank containing the goldfish, causing the fish to swim away in fright, but he managed to grab one by the tail with his thumb and index fingers and he proceeded to lift it out of the tank.

"It's a shame, Lelouch, that you never knew your mother's true colours," the immortal child continued to say to himself, "But after you die and join her in the Collective Subconscious, all will be revealed; especially after the Ragnarök Connection has been completed."

He then moved the hand holding the wriggling goldfish over to above the tank containing the piranhas and then released the fish, dropping it in. He watched as the disoriented goldfish started to swim, but before it could get its bearings, one of the piranhas came up to it and took a rather violent bite into its side, but it managed to free itself; albeit with a bleeding wound in its side. However, the rest of the piranhas took this as an invitation to join the first and they all very quickly surrounded the goldfish and moved in, taking bites into it from all directions and it did not take long for the frenzy to end and the piranhas all dispersed leaving behind a few strings of meat, bone fragments and a mass of red where the goldfish had been and V.V. allowed a cruel sadistic smirk to etch itself onto his face as he watched.

"Like that fish, Lelouch will be meet the same fate," he mused to himself imagining the tank full of goldfish being Lelouch's world in his false life and the goldfish he had fed to the piranhas was Lelouch himself and the process of feeding the goldfish to the piranhas being Lelouch regaining his memories and the piranhas themselves where the OSI agents acting before Lelouch had a chance to adjust to regaining his real memories. Like the goldfish, Lelouch would be dead before he realised it.


Yu-Gi-Oh! World – Duel Academy Island

It was a relatively peaceful night in the Southern Seas. The sky was clear and the stars twinkled in the blackness, providing lighting to the otherwise dark sky. A calm breeze blew in the air, causing the grass and the leaves of the trees on Duel Academy Island to sway to and fro gently in the air, but other than that, it was pretty calm and quiet. The sea itself was calm with not even a ripple on the surface. If anyone had been out late-night walking and looked to the east, then they would have seen the lights from a passing ship off in the distance. But this did nothing to disturb the calm nature as the island was pretty near some of the world's major shipping lanes and so passing ships; even this late at night; be they freighters, cruise liners or any other ships was considered normal, so if anyone had been out walking and happened to notice the ship, they would naturally pay it no mind. Despite the randomness of ships appearing off in the distance and no set patterns of when certain ships appeared and reappeared, ships being seen off the coast of Duel Academy Island were so common that they were more or less ignored. The only shipping lane that led to the island itself was the ferry service from the Japanese mainland and the ferries had long since ended for the day. Nonetheless the freighters and cruise liners continued on during the night and so, seeing ships off in the distance twenty-four hours a day was not out of place.

However, sometimes a common occurrence and people learning to ignore them since they believe that those occurrences pose no threat to them could work against them as some people hid behind them and used them to get close to their enemies; though in this case, it was not a case of getting close to one's enemies, but more of being used to infiltrate a facility. Out the beach on the eastern side of the island while the ship was still in the background, a black hump emerged from the water and moved towards the beach and as it did so, more and more of it became visible; including a pair of goggles and breathing apparatus. In fact, the "hump" was actually the top of the head of a girl in a black and blue scuba diving suit; blue in the torso area with black sleeves, leggings and the hood that went over her head, which was attached to the suit was also black. She also had a yellow-coloured air tank strapped onto her back with the straps running over her shoulders and round her waist. She also had a white bag slung over her right shoulder and the bag was made of a very strong waterproof plastic material that protected the contents of the bag from the water while she had been swimming.

"Duel Academy Island," the girl said after removing the breathing apparatus from her mouth and then pulled off her goggles, "Finally, I'm here and nothing's going to stop me this time."

After she had made it onto the beach and out of the water, she removed her flippers, which were the same colour of blue as the torso area of her suit, revealing that the suit also covered the entirety of her feet and she also undid the straps that held the air tank in place and took it off before pulling the hood of her suit off revealing long sky-blue coloured hair that went down to just the area where at the front, her stomach would be and then she looked around the beach, looking for somewhere to hide her discarded items with her sharp sparkling blue eyes.


Meanwhile at the Obelisk Blue Girls' Dorm, Eileen and Hailey fearfully stood outside Stella's room as they heard their leader scream in absolute fury mixed in with the sounds of hard objects hitting off one another and the two unwilling lackeys knew that their leader was throwing things around the room and against the walls. They both just could not believe what they had just witnessed earlier that day. They had seen Stella duel against Euphemia Felixton, the "Pink-haired Floozy" that had gotten under their leader's skin since losing to her on the first day they had arrived at Duel Academy. Earlier had been the Promotional Exams and Stella had gone to her uncle, Edward to have him pull strings in order to ensure that she faced off against Euphemia as they were in separate dorms and under normal circumstances, students from different dorms were usually not paired with one another during the field portion of the exam.

"I still can't believe that that Slifer Slut managed to pull off another miracle," Hailey said to her orangette friend as she played the events of the day back in her mind, unable to believe or accept that Euphemia had somehow managed to win, "It's just not possible. She must have cheated somehow."

Eileen only nodded, though she did not seem to be listening and only nodded because she had heard her friend speak, though if she had been listening then she would have nodded anyway as she also refused to accept Euphemia's win. It was just unbelievable how it had happened. Right from the word, "Go", Stella had clearly been dominating the duel right up until Euphemia only had two hundred life points left and just when it seemed that Stella would win, Euphemia had surprised everyone with her facedown card, which had turned the duel around and destroyed Stella's monster and if that wasn't enough; even though Stella had managed to cut the damage she received in half, saving her from defeat, Euphemia had drawn a monster with enough attack points to win her the duel and if that was not enough; she had only been able to summon said monster thanks to a Field Spell that Stella had played as she would have had to have sacrificed a monster on the field had the Field Spell not been played and she had none out on the field. It was inconceivable how Euphemia managed to do it. Sure, she had beaten Stella before, but they had just put that down to dumb luck and had simply believed that lightning never struck twice in the same place; meaning that Euphemia just could not pull of a lucky win a second time. Unfortunately, it seemed as if they had been proven wrong and somehow, some way, Euphemia had managed to defy logic and win a second time.

"Unbelievable," Eileen whispered as she remembered witnessing the duel's conclusion, which resulted in Stella flying back and landing on her butt, "I wish I knew how she did that."


Meanwhile, inside the room, Stella continued to scream in seething rage as the duel continued to play out in her head. She just could not understand or even comprehend what had happened. She clearly had the duel won and in her mind, she believed that she should have won. Just how did that Pink-haired Floozy manage to turn things around? It should not have happened. She had been dominating the duel. The Floozy should not have been able to wriggle her way out of her predicament. The fact that she had and the fact that Stella refused to believe or acknowledge it only served to infuriate the teal-haired girl even further.

"I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS!" Stella screamed as she picked up a chair with both her hands and threw it against the wall to the left of the door, "I WAS THE WINNER! ME! HOW DARE THAT FLOOZY STEAL MY VICTORY! I'M GONNA FREAKIN' KILL 'ER!"

She then picked up one of her spare blazers by the drape at the back that ran under the band and threw it to the floor. The blue drape at the back on the girls' blazers was normally missed by those studying them. It went down to stomach level. It was the same dark blue colour as the band and had the same light blue colour outlining the edges. At the bottom of the drape were two points as the edges went upwards at diagonal angles, meeting in the centre, making the bottom out to be an upside-down V shape.

Anyway, Stella continued to fume over her latest defeat and to make matters worse, she knew that she, herself had contributed to her own defeat. First, she had forgotten about her Sacrificial Bypass Field Spell, which had enabled Euphemia to summon Dark Magician Girl to win her the duel, but if that was not enough, she had used her Giant Behemoth's ability to switch Euphemia's Cybernetic Magician from defence mode to attack mode knowing that Giant Behemoth had a piercing effect and that the difference between the behemoth's attack points and the opposing monster's points were doubled as damage and seeing how Cybernetic Magician only had one thousand defence points as opposed to its attack points, which were twenty-four hundred. However, she had wanted to prolong the duel so she could make Euphemia suffer for the defeat she had handed her when they first duelled and she wanted to use the monsters that her Uncle Edward had given her to crush Euphemia, but unfortunately, that was not all that contributed to her defeat. Before Euphemia had turned the duel around, Stella had noticed that she had placed a card facedown; the very card that had led to her downfall and thinking back on it, she realised that she had Mystical Space Typhoon in her hand and therefore could have destroyed Euphemia's facedown card, but she had been so caught up in her excitement over finally winning against the Pink-haired Floozy that; even though she had seen Euphemia place the card facedown, she did not believe that it was anything to worry about. She had initially believed that all the facedown card would do was prolong the duel for a little longer and so decided that she would humour Euphemia and not bother using Mystical Space Typhoon to get rid of it. Unfortunately, it had cost her.

"Just how in the world did she get her hands on a card as rare as that?" the cruel teal-haired girl thought as she clenched her fists and shook her head, "She shouldn't have been allowed to possess that card. She's an amateur, a nobody and weaklings like her shouldn't be allowed to have powerful cards."

Of course, she knew that she was just making excuses to vent her anger, but in her anger, like with the fact that she had targeted Euphemia first, it had become lost to her. In her mind, she was supposed to have won that duel and Euphemia was supposed to have become a psychological wreck. She refused to understand just how it was possible for Euphemia to overcome her, but thinking back, Stella had slowly come to realise that even if she had won, judging from Euphemia's attitude throughout the duel, if she had won then Euphemia would not have been broken. She would have probably shrugged it off and moved on with her life. That was something that Stella had not encountered before. Usually when she duelled against someone, her taunts and verbal lashings along with her fierce attacks usually succeeded in breaking her opponents' spirits and scared them out of duelling again, but Euphemia was different. She had been able to shrug off her insults and attacks as if they were nothing and not knowing how to handle it, the teal-haired girl exploded with anger, unable to believe or accept it. Euphemia was not supposed to shrug it off; she was supposed to break just like everyone else; especially since, when Stella first saw her, Euphemia was a kind and caring individual that looked so gentle that she would not hurt a fly. Those were Stella's favourite types of people to break. Their innocence and naivety made them soft targets and giving them a vicious slap of reality and knowing that they did nothing to deserve it really made Stella's day. It brought out a euphoria in her that she found to be addictive as if it were a drug.

"Only human," Euphemia's voice echoed in her mind, taunting her once again by reminding her of the inescapable truth that she was like everyone else.

Well, at least the Floozy had not mentioned that in their duel, but unfortunately, that did nothing to sooth the cruel girl's rage. It had been a month since she had been hit with them and their taunting meaningfulness had not diminished any. Despite Euphemia's kind and caring nature, she had proven to be a fierce duellist that was more than willing to put aside her calm and gentle nature when the need arose, though how she managed it was something that Stella just could not fathom. How could someone with such a kind and caring character also be a fierce competitor that was able to shrug off even the most vile and cruel insults and succeed in unnerving her? Such a thing was incomprehensible. Stella just could not find an answer no matter how much she wracked her brain. The kind and caring Euphemia and the person she had duelled earlier that day were so different that Stella believed that they were two completely different people and yet, she knew that they both were the same person and yet, when Euphemia duelled her, she had been so different from the person she had seen laughing and joking with her friends, it was almost frightening. However, Stella did know one thing; even if she had won, Euphemia would have no doubt blown it off as nothing and with that in mind, Stella realised that she would probably never be able to break her, which infuriated her even further.

"Well, I suppose that there's only one solution that'll solve my problems," she thought as she eyed a knife lying on the floor as she remembered what Euphemia had told her during their duel and how she contemplated it after her defeat and a rather sadistic smile slowly started to creep onto the edges of his lips, "People like you are not meant for this world. People like you are a disease; a disease that needs to be eradicated and people like me… we are the cure."


Back outside the room, Eileen and Hailey continued to stand, wondering whether or not to go in and check on their leader. Things had definitely quietened down now, though neither the orangette nor the short-haired brunette were sure if the teal-haired girl had calmed down or not. This had happened in the past whenever Stella was angry. Just when it seemed that she had calmed down, Eileen and Hailey had both gone in to see if she was alright, only to find her just as angry as she was when she was throwing things around her room. She had just run out of things to throw and the two unwilling lackeys usually found themselves the new targets of their leader's rage. They were both wondering if this was like all those other times that they had been lulled into a false sense of security or if Stella really had calmed down this time.

"D-d-d-do to think it's safe?" Hailey asked nervously as she glanced fearfully at the curly-haired orangette, just as concerned for her friend's safety as she was for her own.

"Who knows," Eileen said, looking unsure as she gave the door to their leader's room a fearful glance as she pondered whether or not to go in, "But the question is, should we risk it?"

They both then took a long glance at one another before turning to face Stella's door and then turned back to face one another before shaking their heads, finally deciding not to risk it before they both ran off in opposite directions.


Meanwhile, at the Slifer Red Dorm, Euphemia, Yumi and Blair had already gone to bed and Euphemia and Blair were both out to the world, but Yumi could not sleep for some reason. She lay awake in the middle bunk with her hands clasped behind her head as she stared up at the bottom of Blair's mattress as if it where the ceiling, thinking about the course of the day. Once again, she had just barely managed to win a duel, winning her duel for the field part of the Promotional Exams and she had only managed to win because her opponent; who had surprisingly been the girl that she and Euphemia had spoken to before going to the card shack had only used monster cards and not spell or trap cards, but even then, she had been a handful and Yumi had only managed to win with just a hundred life points. However, that did not matter to her as she already knew that she had failed the written part of the exam and it really did deflate her mood as she feared that she may be expelled anyway due to her poor performance and she could practically feel her older sister's "I told you so" gaze of indifference baring down on her as if to mock her.

However, thinking of Euphemia and how she had managed to pull off a miracle and come out on top during her duel with Stella when Stella clearly had the advantage throughout the duel, but only to lose due to her own overconfidence helped take her mind off her troubles. Euphemia had simply been amazing, able to maintain her cool against Stella's cruelty and shrug it off. In truth, Yumi had feared for her friend, knowing that Stella had every intention of completely destroying her spirit, but to her surprise and relief, Euphemia refused to break and seemed to become even more determined when Stella clearly had the advantage. Yumi wished she had that sort of confidence. She knew that if she had been Stella's opponent, Stella would have undoubtedly verbally lashed her into forfeiting due to her lack of confidence, but Euphemia was able to brush it off like it was nothing and yet, Euphemia was also the first person to befriend her and not ridicule her due to her poor duelling skills in comparison to her sister's and not only that; but thanks to Euphemia, she was also able to open up a lot more round the group of friends that she had made and once again, Euphemia was responsible for them all getting together in the first place. Euphemia certainly did seem to produce this soothing aura of friendliness round about her and not only seemed to calm people to the point of letting go of their troubles and opening up, but also let those who had also been touched by this aura to befriend one another and Yumi knew that the group of friends she had were definitely not the sorts of people that would usually tolerate being around one another for any considerable period of time. She was too timid to open up, Terrance and Abigail had personalities of stereotypical nerds, James looked like a punk and Zukasu was a prep-school graduate that was at the top of his class and probably would have considered himself too good for everyone else… well, that was not entirely true as she remembered that Zukasu had approached her and Euphemia after their first run-in with Stella and was genuinely friendly with them and did not consider himself better than them because he was an Obelisk and they were Slifers, but still; Yumi had to wonder if he would have socialised with them if Euphemia had not been there since those who did socialise with those considered inferior to them were usually frowned upon by their peers.

"Suzaku," the Japanese brunette suddenly heard Euphemia moan in her sleep, bringing her back to reality, "Suzaku, I love you…"

That was one thing that did pique Yumi's curiosity. Euphemia herself was a kind and caring carefree individual, always cheerful and eager to make new friends. Yumi remembered how she just came into the Kaiba Dome where the Entrance Exams had taken place and struck a conversation with her out of the blue without being prompted to do so and she had even talked her into going over with her to congratulate James on his victory and they hit it off pretty well. However, despite that, Yumi could not help but wonder about Euphemia as she was all too aware that aside from her name, she knew practically next to nothing about the pinkette. She did not know anything about her past, her family or even where she came from and from what she had seen, it seemed that Euphemia herself did not know either.

"Suzaku," Yumi whispered to herself, "And Zukasu is an anagram of Suzaku."

She remembered hearing Euphemia mention that name when she first laid eyes on Zukasu and Zukasu did indeed find the name familiar, but neither he nor Euphemia, who did not remember mentioning the name knew why, though Zukasu and Euphemia did hit it off quite well. In fact, studying their behaviour, Yumi found herself surprised as she concluded that they were acting as if they were reunited lovers who had not seen each other in a long time… and then there was the mystery of Zukasu's Knightmare Frame monsters and Euphemia's recognition of them. Yumi remembered watching Zukasu's duel with Stella and how Euphemia seemed to zone out throughout the duration of the duel as Zukasu's monsters appeared on the field. It was clear that she was definitely experiencing flashbacks, though when she came back to reality, she had completely forgotten what those flashbacks had been about, though she did manage to discover that a woman called Cornelia had been a part of them as Euphemia clearly mentioned her name upon seeing Zukasu's Royal Gloucester. Unfortunately, like everything else, Euphemia just could not remember this Cornelia woman, though she was able to deduce that Cornelia had been the woman she had been arguing with in her dream that she had had while en route to Duel Academy.

"Euphie, I really want to get to know you," the Japanese girl thought and she rolled over onto her left side and stared at the wall, "But you have amnesia and it's getting in the way."

That much was true, Yumi knew. She was no fool. She knew that Euphemia had amnesia, but she was determined that she would help her friend piece together her forgotten life. She wanted to get to know Euphemia; the real Euphemia, though she could not help but wonder if Jaden was somehow involved with her strange amnesia. After all, Jaden had been the one who recommended her to Duel Academy and according to Euphemia, he had found her unconscious in an alleyway in Domino and she did not know how she had gotten there. However, Yumi could not help but wonder if Jaden knew despite Euphemia telling her that he had denied it when she had asked him. The whole thing with Zukasu and his deck of Knightmare Frame monsters or "mechas on roller blades" as she had dubbed them due to the wheels attached to the backs of their feet was indeed peculiar as they all invoked flashbacks of Euphemia's previous life. Heck, she remembered that earlier that morning, Euphemia had tried to kiss her, mistaking her for Suzaku when she tried to wake her up, though Euphemia's advances had prevented her from thinking about it then. However, she knew that even if she had thought about it back then, she would still be no closer to solving the mystery than she was now, but she wanted to be there for Euphemia; to help her if she needed it.

"Don't worry, Euphie, we'll just take it as it comes; just one piece at a time," she thought as she made up her mind, "We'll get your memories back eventually."


The next day had proven to be rather uneventful. Classes had gotten back to normal and though Stella did show up and continue her furious glaring towards Euphemia, nothing came of it as aside from the glares, the cruel teal-haired girl left the pinkette alone. Euphemia was ten-to-fifteen minutes late for the first class as usual, but other than that. Everything was relatively peaceful, though looking up at Stella had caused Yumi to worry since she knew that the hostilities between her and Euphemia were far from over and what terrified the Japanese brunette the most was that she remembered how Euphemia had practically told Stella that if she wanted rid of her for good, then she would have to resort to killing her and knowing Stella, Yumi knew full well that the teal-haired girl was more than capable of carrying it out.

"Just what the hell were you thinking, Euphie?" she thought worryingly as she had shot a concerned glance at Euphemia before trailing her gaze up at Stella, "Don't you realise that Stella's insane enough to actually take advice like that to heart?"

Looking at Stella, Yumi knew that the next time she and Euphemia duelled, Euphemia could very well be duelling for her life as she knew that Stella would kill her if she lost; heck she may just decide to kill the pinkette anyway regardless of the outcome. Stella definitely had a frighteningly murderous look in her eyes; something that had not been there before the Promotional Exams the previous day and she knew that it would mean trouble for Euphemia and potentially the rest of their friends in future.

Presently, Yumi, Euphemia, James, Terrance, Abigail and Zukasu were congregating outside the Slifer Dorm with Blair leaning against the left of the doorframe to the room she shared with the other two Slifer girls. Anyway, just before they were about to start their conversation, Hassleberry came walking up to them with a cheerful smile on his face.

"Hey, soldiers," he greeted as he raised his hand, "How're things in these here barracks?"

Yumi groaned as the others all chuckled nervously, still feeling rather awkward as the dino-duellist's military jargon. However, if Hassleberry noticed, then he obviously had chosen to ignore it as he just chuckled in response.

"Just comin' to check up on Private Euphie," he said simply before turning his attention to Euphemia, "So, how's things with ya?"

"Oh, everything's great, I think I've settled in pretty well," Euphemia replied with a smile, deciding to be polite as Hassleberry truly meant well.

"Good to hear, ma'am," the dino-duellist said with enthusiasm, "Oh, I heard how you defeated that mean Stella girl during the field tests of yesterday's Promotional Exams, so congratulations."

"Thanks, but honestly, I think I just lucked out," the pinkette spoke up, deciding to be honest, "Stella was dominating the duel right up until the very end when I drew the card that helped to turn it around and I was only able to summon the monster I drew on my last turn due to the effect of Stella's Sacrificial Bypass field spell. If not for that, Stella would have undoubtedly won since with only two hundred life points and nothing in my hand that I could use to defend myself and the only monster in my hand having a level that requires a sacrifice to summon, then without Stella's field spell, Stella would have summoned a monster and defeated me on her next turn. It was only because the effect of her Field Spell applied to both players that I was able to win."

"It doesn't matter," Hassleberry said in a dismissive tone, "I heard that ya kept yer cool even when things looked bad. From what I've heard of Stella, had ya been anyone else, ya probably woulda cracked."

Everyone nodded in agreement, though it only served to remind Yumi of the fact that Stella was now probably out to kill Euphemia; especially considering what the dino-duellist had just said. Euphemia did not break under Stella's usual verbal bashings and the Japanese girl knew that Stella just did not know how to handle that since it was the first time anyone she had encountered had not broken while under the pressure she normally put her opponents through. Yumi knew that that would no doubt only fuel Stella's desire to kill Euphemia, since in Stella's mind; Euphemia was not meant to maintain her cool. She was supposed to break just like her previous opponents. Since Stella had not encountered anyone with a will as strong as Euphemia's, plus Euphemia's usual kind and caring nature towards others; being unable to handle it meant that Stella's only solution to get rid of the problem was to eliminate the source of said problem and Yumi knew that even if Euphemia had have lost, she would have just blown it off and she shuddered to think what that would have done to Stella as she knew that Stella probably would have exploded with rage; believing that Euphemia was supposed to be a quivering mass of paranoia. In fact, that scenario would probably have been worse, all things considering. Stella had made it her mission to crush, humiliate and ruin Euphemia and believed that defeating her in a duel would do the trick, but just through observing Euphemia throughout the duration of the duel, Yumi knew that it would have taken a lot more to break the pinkette and even more frightening; the Japanese girl knew that Stella was no doubt aware of that fact as well.

"I understand what you mean," Zukasu said to her quietly as he had been observing her and had been thinking along the same wavelength, "The revelation that it'll take more than a loss and verbal bashings to break Euphie could potentially drive Stella to murder since she's never encountered anyone like that before and doesn't know how to handle it, but even more dire, the rest of the Harrington Family will no doubt get involved since her uncle had been watching the duel and he had set it up."

Yumi's eyes widened in shock as she realised that she had neglected to consider what the rest of Stella's family would do since, as Zukasu had said, Stella's uncle, Edward had arranged for the duel to take place and had been watching. She had been so worried over Euphemia and what Stella would do that she had forgotten about the rest of the Harrington Family. Stella was bad enough, but if even half of what she had heard about the Harrington Family was true, then it meant that they; Euphemia in particular could potentially be in for the roughest rides of their lives since she knew that to make an enemy of one Harrington was to make an enemy of them all and they did not mess about when it came to dealing with their targets. They would no doubt come for Euphemia and anyone else who stood in their way.

"By the way," Blair spoke up, bringing Yumi and Zukasu back to reality, "Yesterday when Euphie came back to the dorm after turning down her promotion to Ra Yellow, Yumi got so carried away in her happiness that she actually kissed Euphie right in the lips."

"Blair!" Yumi exclaimed in shock as everyone else's eyes widened in shock at hearing this.

"Wow, she actually kissed her?" James said in awe as he fought to prevent a perverted smile from making its way onto his face, remembering the double uppercut that Yumi and Abigail had given him for a rather perverted comment he made during Euphemia and Stella's duel when Euphemia had summoned Horned Kuriboh and the girls all went hysterical over its cuteness.

The girls all noticed the smile that was trying its best to burst out onto his face, but seeing that he was trying to suppress it, none of them made a move to hurt him.

"It was an accident!" Yumi stated in a defensive tone before turning to face Euphemia, still a bit worried that she was not as okay with it as she let on, "You're not upset about that, are you, Euphie? I swear that it was an accident!"

"I believe you Yumi; you just got so caught up in the moment that you acted without thinking," Euphemia said with a nod, "No worries, stuff like that happens from time to time."

"You kissed another girl," Terrance teased, earning a glare from his sister.

Yumi only groaned in frustration before noticing Zukasu staring between her and Euphemia in wonder, which only served to further alarm her as she knew the strange relationship Euphemia shared with the Japanese boy.

"Zukasu, I swear to you that it was an accident," she said in a hurriedly fearful tone, fearing that the knowledge had destroyed their friendship as well as the relationship he had with Euphemia, "I, I just got so caught up in my excitement that I acted without thinking before I could stop myself, I swear that's the truth! I'm sorry!"

Zukasu was indeed another mystery on top of Euphemia's amnesia. From the very first day they met, Yumi had seen how Euphemia had taken to him. Despite the fact that they had only just met, Euphemia acted as if she had known Zukasu and the same could be said for Zukasu himself. As she had concluded the previous night, Euphemia and Zukasu were like reunited lovers picking up from where they had left off before parting ways and it was strange considering that not only did Euphemia have a familiarity with the prep school graduate and associated him with the name, Suzaku; Zukasu himself also had a familiarity with the name as well and also seemed as familiar with Euphemia as she was with him and like Euphemia, he had no idea why; though unlike Euphemia, he did not suffer from amnesia and knew everything that had happened to him before enrolling in Duel Academy and he had not met Euphemia before enrolling in Duel Academy. Yumi remembered how Zukasu had told them of his life and Yumi had to admit that it was puzzling how someone he had never met before could be so familiar with him and him so familiar with her at the same time.

"Gee, I think I'm jealous," the Japanese girl thought to herself as she stared worryingly at Zukasu.

That much was true. Since meeting Euphemia and getting to know her personality, Yumi could honestly say that being in her presence was addictive. Euphemia was friendly to everyone she met and seemed to lighten the mood no matter where she was. However, seeing Euphemia in Zukasu's company and seeing how familiar they both seemed with each other made her feel jealous. She found herself envying Zukasu since Euphemia seemed closest to him and Yumi had met her first. She could see it in their eyes whenever she saw them interact. Yumi figured that they probably were not exactly boyfriend and girlfriend, but they were definitely closer than most siblings. Yumi wanted to be in Zukasu's place. After being ridiculed for so long by others due to her lack of duelling skills and her sister's success, she longed for people who could make her feel safe and secure so she could just let go of her troubles and be herself and Euphemia was the first person that made her feel that way. Of course, she was not in love with Euphemia. It was not that sort of jealousy. It was possible for someone to be jealous to someone of the opposite gender for cutting in on their time with their friend of the same gender and not be in love with that friend. She was just a bit afraid that if Zukasu took Euphemia's time away from her, then she would regress back into the person she was before she met Euphemia. There was no other reason to explain it; at least, that's what she told herself.

Of course, the fact that Zukasu was her friend as well and the fact that the jealousy Yumi felt for him was relatively small due to the fact that he also spent time with both her and Euphemia together and had been really friendly with her prevented her from acting on this jealousy. She had been surprised to find that Zukasu had been really forgiving after she had read a fake love letter that Stella wrote for Euphemia claiming it to have been from Zukasu in which the letter stated that Zukasu had wanted Euphemia to become his sex slave. Yumi remembered how Stella had spelt Zukasu's name wrong, but after phrasing the misspelled name using the English sounds for letter placements, she had been so shocked that she had forgotten to double-check the letter and had pretty much given Zukasu a rather nasty glare when he had tried to approach Euphemia, though Yumi had to wonder if her jealousy over Zukasu's place in Euphemia's life had played a part in that, now that she thought about it. Nonetheless, once the misunderstanding had been cleared up, Zukasu had forgiven her unconditionally. Just how would he react to the news that she had kissed Euphemia, albeit accidentally?

"Hey, don't worry about it," Zukasu's voice came, bringing the Japanese brunette back to reality, "Accidents happen. Besides, there's nothing that can be done about it now, is there?"

"Yeah, don't get so worked up over it," Abigail said dismissively as she waved a dismissive hand, "Accidents are accidents and even if they are preventable, that doesn't mean that you're able to stop them."

"You mean it?" Yumi said as she stared at Zukasu and Abigail both, feeling rather nervous.

"Yeah, no use crying over spilled milk," Zukasu said with a smile, "We're not mad. I can tell from your body posture that it really was an honest accident."

"Arigatō, Zukasu-kun, Abi-chan," Yumi said, speaking in her native language as she sighed with relief.

"But I bet you enjoyed it," Blair whispered over to the Japanese brunette with a wicked grin on her face, though Yumi knew that the younger girl was just teasing her, but that did not stop her from shooting her a rather frustrated glare.

"Anyway, if we can just put that unfortunate event to one side, I'd like to talk about something else," Euphemia spoke up and everyone nodded in agreement.

Hassleberry had to admit that he had been at a loss for words at hearing that Yumi had accidentally kissed Euphemia, but decided to just leave it as it had clearly been an accident and talking about it seemed to upset Yumi.

Yumi just shot Blair a glare.

"Don't you ever bring stuff like that up again," she whispered dangerously to the bluenette.

Blair just nodded, realising that she may have unwittingly upset the older girl as she stared into her eyes and hung her head in shame.

"I still say that you liked it though," she chuckled, though she did not voice this aloud, knowing better than to push her luck.

However, Yumi found herself blushing somewhat at Blair's statement, but shook her head, deciding that the redness in her cheeks was from her anger at Blair for letting everyone else know about yesterday's unfortunate accident.

"So, Euphie, I was wondering," she said as she put all thoughts of what had just transpired to the back of her mind, "Can I call you Euphie-chan? You know how we Japanese tend to add honorific suffixes to the ends of people's names. I was wondering if I could do the same with you."

"Of course you can," Euphemia said with a smile, "I'm very familiar with Japanese honorifics, so I don't mind."

"Arigatō, Euphie-chan," Yumi said, feeling a bit excited.

"Dōitashimashite," Euphemia said, speaking Japanese and saying, "You're welcome".


Not far away, the intruder that had infiltrated the island the previous night stood behind a tree and watched the congregation of three Slifers, four Ras and one single Obelisk and was unsure what to make of it. She had heard about the colour-coded system of Duel Academy that acted as a hierarchy with Obelisk Blue being the top ranking dorm and Slifer Red being the lowest ranking dorm.

"Though if those rankings were ranked due to the power of each God Card, then Ra Yellow would be the highest ranking dorm," the girl thought to herself.

It was a well-known fact that of the three Egyptian God Cards, the Winged Dragon of Ra was the most powerful of the three with multiple abilities and a strange way of summoning it to the field that it was rumoured that only certain duellists knew how to pull off. However, the girl also knew that the dorms at Duel Academy were not ranked based off the power of each God Card, but were ranked according to who had which God Card during the Battle City Tournament. Since Kaiba had obtained Obelisk the Tormentor, Obelisk Blue was the highest ranking dorm and since Yūgi Mutō had managed to obtain Slifer the Sky Dragon, Slifer Red was the lowest ranking dorm, which reflected Kaiba's bitterness that he still held to this day over losing his title as the Number One Duellist to Yūgi despite the fact that Yūgi and Kaiba had, more or less managed to put aside their differences and get on together whenever the situation called for it. The Ra Yellow Dorm was the dorm in the middle, which represented the God Card that had been in the possession of Marik Ishtar, the leader of the former International Crime Syndicate known as the Rare Hunters, who somehow managed to gain a full pardon after the Battle City Tournament due to his sister's ties with the Egyptian Government. Anyway, the dorm's standing in the hierarchy represent that card that neither Yūgi nor Kaiba had during the tournament.

"I guess not everyone lives by the status quo of the school as much as I thought," the blue-haired girl thought as she continued to watch the congregation as they all burst out into laughter.

She was of course, aware of the problems that the hierarchy caused. The Obelisk Blue students were at the top and only those with really high grades or connections could get in and since they were seen at the academy's best, many of them let it go to their heads and looked down on those who did not make it into the Obelisk Blue Dorm. The Ra Yellow students all seemed to follow suit with the Slifer Reds coming out having the worst of it since they were at the bottom, though for the Ra Yellow students, looking down on the Slifers was more of a coping mechanism since the Obelisk Blues also looked down on them because their dorm was ranked lower than theirs, though the Obelisk/Ra troubles were normally overshadowed since both dorms looked down on the Slifer Red students.

"Gee, an attitude like that is bound to produce a great deal of resentment among the students," the girl thought, "I guess even Jaden Yūki couldn't do anything to stop it."

That much was true. She knew all about Jaden Yūki and how he was the best student in Duel Academy during his time there despite the fact that he was a Slifer Red for the entirety of his three-year stay, though it was rumoured that he only remained in Slifer Red because he turned down all promotions that were given to him, though whether it was because of his friends or the fact that he liked the colour, red was a mystery as Jaden had been known to have been fond of red as a colour. Maybe it was a combination of both, the girl figured. In any case, Jaden had taken Duel Academy by storm and proven the notion of duelling skills being determined by the colour of one's blazer wrong. Unfortunately, there were those who were just too stubborn to accept it and they had come up with the excuse that Jaden had cheated somehow, though how anyone could win the number of duels Jaden had through cheating and not get caught was a mystery, but unfortunately when that was put to those too stubborn to accept the truth, they pretty much tried to dodge answering the question and those that did not… their answers were basically along the lines of "it doesn't matter, he cheated because we say he did".

"Idiots, if Jaden was a cheater, he may have been able to have gotten away with it for a while, but he would have eventually been caught," the girl thought with a nod as she rationalised Jaden.

Jaden was no cheater. He was a pretty good duellist who was only placed in Slifer Red due to his poor grades on the written side of the curriculum. He managed to beat the headmaster of the Obelisk Blue Dorm when the said headmaster was using his own personal deck. If that did not say something about his skills, the girl did not know what would. Zane Truesdale was the only student that Jaden could not beat, though the closest he got was a draw during their rematch and unfortunately Zane could no longer duel due to heart problems that he had gotten after he turned to underground duelling when his first official loss to Aster Phoenix sent him spiralling into a losing streak. Rumours were that Zane had turned to illegal underground duels that had the players put on electrodes that gave them a shock every time they lost life points. The duration of the shocks depended on how many life points were lost, but Zane had turned to those duels in a desperate attempt to get back on his game and when he emerged, he started winning again, but had adopted a cruel, sadistic and rather brutal personality and enjoyed making his opponents suffer, but unfortunately, the continued use of the electrodes during his underground duels had led to heart complications and now Zane's heart was so badly damaged that the adrenaline rush that came with duelling would undoubtedly kill him and the girl knew that Jaden was probably sore about that as Zane was perhaps the only person that he had never beaten in a duel.

"Enough about that, I've still got to a job to do," the girl said, shaking her head as she reminded herself of why she had come to Duel Academy Island in the first place, "And this time, I will not be denied."


Later that night not long before curfew, Terrance, Abigail and James were all on their way back to the Ra Yellow Dorm. Hassleberry had left the Slifer Red Dorm ages ago since he had only been there to check up on Euphemia. However, Terrance and James were currently talking to one another as Abigail took up the rear a few steps behind them, looking around and not really paying attention to what her brother and their friend were talking about.

"So the J-Man was wonderin'," James was currently saying, "Thinkin' back ta Euphemia's duel with Hassleberry."

"Uh huh," Terrance said with a nod as he listened.

"Hassleberry had Dark Tyranno out on the field and used his Fossil Excavation trap card to bring back his Gilasaurus," James continued as Terrance nodded, "An' Euphie only had Dark Magician Girl out on the field whose attack points were enhanced by Dark Magician and Illusion Magician in the graveyard, right?"

"Yeah and Dark Magician Girl gains three hundred attack points for each Dark Magician and Magician of Black Chaos in the graveyard and since Illusion Magician is treated as Dark Magician while on the field and in the graveyard, Dark Magician Girl gained six hundred extra attack points," Terrance explained as he remembered witnessing Euphemia's first official loss.

"An' Hassleberry used his Miracle Jurassic Egg to bring out his Super Conductor Tyranno," James went on and Terrance nodded, "Well the J-Man finds that totally unnecessary. He didn't need to do that. He could've just used his trap card to bring Gilasaurus back and sacrifice his Dark Tyranno since it had the same number of attack points as Dark Magician Girl and have Gilasaurus finish Euphie off, but he didn't."

"Yeah, I also noticed that," Terrance said in acknowledgement, "However, I think that it was just that he already had Miracle Jurassic Egg out on the field and didn't want it to go to waste, which is why he probably summoned Super Conductor Tyranno."

"He also used Super Conductor Tyranno's special ability to finish Euphie off when there was no need," James pointed out.

"Who knows," Terrance said with a shrug as he was also clueless as to why Hassleberry did what he did, "Why don't you ask him the next time you see him?"

James nodded.

However, further behind them, Abigail continued to walk at a slightly slower pace until she thought she saw some movement to her right, which caused her to stop. She thought she saw a flash of blue move behind a tree and she turned to face the tree. Of course, it may have just been her imagination or an animal of some kind as the island was home to a variety of wildlife, but somehow she got the feeling that it was more than that.

"Hey, Abi, what's up, why'd you stop?" her brother's voice came, causing her to shake her head and turn to face him and James, who had both noticed that she had stopped following them and were looking at her in concern.

"Huh, I thought I saw something," the bespectacled girl said as she turned back to stare at the tree that she had noticed the flash of blue at before nodding her head and turned back to face her brother and friend and then continued in a more serious tone, "Never mind, go on ahead, I'll catch up with you in a bit."

"Are you sure?" James asked, clearly showing concern as it was clear that was worried for his friend's safety.

"Yeah, I'm sure, just go on," Abigail said with a nod of assurance, "I won't be long."

James did not look convinced as he looked into the forest. Who knew what sort of wild animals were out there? Abigail may end up getting hurt. There were rumours of animals having escaped from a top-secret animal research laboratory that was said to have been based on the island. Of course, assuming that it ever existed at all, it had long since been abandoned, but unfortunately they left all the animals that they had been using as their guinea pigs behind and some of them just may have escaped. Of course, James knew that the chances of being attacked by a dangerous animal was pretty slim since Duel Academy would have taken safety measures if there was the chance that the students could be attacked while on their way to and from the main building to the dorms. Since they had not received any warnings, then James knew that the faculty of Duel Academy believed that it was safe enough, though it did not hurt to be careful, just in case. James opened his mouth to protest and looked to be taking a step towards the bespectacled girl, but Terrance raised his arm in front of him and shook his head.

"Don't worry about it," he explained with a smile, "Abi's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

"Are you sure?" James said, still not a hundred percent convinced, "The J-Man's not all that confident."

"I know how to handle myself!" Abigail snapped, feeling a bit miffed that her friend did not have faith in her, assuming that his concern was due to the fact that she was a girl.

"Trust me, I know my own sister," Terrance said, also giving James a glare that told him that he was better off dropping the issue, "She once risked her life to save me from a burning building when we were eight when it was believed that there was no hope for me coming out alive. Abi went charging on in and came out with me unscathed and all I had suffered was a mild case of smoke inhalation."

"That was only due to the fact that I was small back then," Abigail commented honestly, "If it wasn't for the fact we were smaller back then, you really would have died."

Terrance nodded and James, albeit rather reluctantly nodded and gave in as he realised that there was just no changing Abigail's mind.

"But remember, curfew's in ten minutes, so make it quick," Terrance said to his sister, giving her a stern look as it was clear that he was also worried about her.

Abigail nodded and then both the boys turned and walked away as she watched them go and once they were out of sight, she turned back to the tree with a look of determination on her face.


Behind the tree, the girl was leaning her back against it as she tailed the three Ras as they made their way back to their dorm. After the congregation had split, with the other Ra; whom the girl guessed was older than the others leaving a lot earlier, she had decided to tail the three of them; two boys and a girl. She was rather curious about the layout of the island and was looking for someone to potentially give her a tour once she had fulfilled her self-proclaimed mission. Of course, she could have chosen any of the others she had seen, but she felt that the boy from Obelisk Blue was probably a stuck-up snob and that asking the two Slifers may harm her chances at making friends in future. She did not have anything against them or anything like that. In fact, she believed that they were probably really decent people, but unfortunately, given how everyone else seemed to look down on those from Slifer Red, she feared that they would also look down on her as well for socialising with them since she knew that those who sympathised and associated themselves with those that were looked down on were pretty much given the same treatment by the masses.

"Alright, come out!" a rather demanding voice came, bringing the girl out of her thoughts as she realised that whoever was speaking was speaking to her; obviously having seen her, "I know you're there, so come out!"

"Oh crap, busted!" the girl thought in a panic as she righted herself from leaning on the tree and started to run, "Not now! It's far too soon. Now I'm likely to be arrested for trespassing!"

"Hey, get back here!" the voice shouted after her, causing her to turn her head and look back to see the girl from the threesome she had been tailing chasing after her.


Abigail had seen someone emerge from behind the tree and had immediately given chase as she studying the person she was chasing and was surprised to find that it was a girl with long flow blue hair wearing what appeared to be a blue and black jumpsuit of some kind.

"I wonder what her game is," she thought as she also took notice of a white bag with the strap slung over the girl's right shoulder, "Well, I seriously doubt that she's a student, otherwise she wouldn't have fled or felt the need to hide herself."

In all honesty, she really did not know if what she had seen had been just her imagination or not and had called out, only half-expecting a response while at the same time, half-expecting there to be nothing there. However, she had spooked the girl and was now giving chase with the sole intent on finding out just who this girl was and what she was doing here.


Out in front, the girl was cursing her luck for being so careless. How could she have been so careless as to have gotten caught? She thought that by tailing them at a safe distance, she would have not been seen, but unfortunately, she had figured wrong. She had been seen and now she was being chased. However, looking back and noticing that the girl chasing her was alone with neither of the boys that had been accompanying her in sight; a wicked grin suddenly appeared on her face as she just thought of a rather devious idea that could potentially turn this whole situation to her advantage despite having various risks involved.

"Oh, I can make this work for me," she thought as she started to tremble with excitement, "Not my original intent, but I can have that girl help me get what I want."

She then veered to the left, leading the unsuspecting Abigail on as she eventually came to a clearing in the forest and ran to the opposite end of the clearing from where she had emerged and stopped, letting Abigail gain some ground between them, but seeing that the girl had stopped running had caused her to stop as well.


Meanwhile, James and Terrance had made it back to the Ra Yellow Dorm and were currently getting ready for bed. However, James just could not stop thinking about Abigail and how she had told them to go on ahead while she investigated something. He just could not get this nagging feeling out his out that something bad could possibly happen to her and was having visions of her in need of help with no one around to answer her calls.

"Don't worry so much," Terrance said, having noticed his roommate's withdrawn look as he got into his bed and pulled the covers over himself, "As I already said, Abi can take care of herself."

James reluctantly nodded as he made his way over to his own bed, which was opposite Terrance's next to the adjacent wall, though from the looks of it, Terrance could tell that he was not convinced, but rather than continue to push it, he decided to drop it as he knew that James just would not let it lie, no matter how much Terrance tried to convince him otherwise, though he did appreciate the concern the punkish boy had for his sister, and he was also a bit curious about it as well, wondering if James perhaps felt something more for Abigail other than normal friendship and being Abigail's brother, Terrance just could not help but feel a little protective of his sister.

"I appreciate your concern for my sister though," he admitted rather honestly before giving James a rather stern look that held a hint of warning within his eyes, "Though I am curious on how you feel about Abi."

James visibly flinched upon noticing the look in his friend's eyes, which to him seemed to say something along the lines of "Don't even think about pursuing my sister in that manner".

"The protective brother," James said as he cautiously made his way to his own bed, "If yer implyin' what I think yer implyin', then fear not; for the J-Man wouldn't even dream of it."

Terrance just gave a rather satisfactory nod before lying down. He then looked over his room, which had light greenish yellow wallpaper and a white ceiling and a brown wooden door. The floor was made up of smooth wooden floorboards and the window between the two beds was draped with green curtains. The beds were at opposite ends up against the far corners of the room with the backs against the wall that held the window. There were also two wooden desks; one at either side next to the bed with light blue chairs positioned underneath and next to the desks were wooden polished cupboards; again, one at each side. Unlike many of the other rooms, this room had two single beds as opposed to bunk beds and that was the way Terrance liked it as he felt that being in the bottom bunk limited the light he was getting and the top would be too high for him to work. Anyway, next to either bed was a small bedside table, each with a small white plastic lamp with a white shade. Terrance shut his off as James climbed into his own bed.

"Good night," he said to his roommate as he turned to face the nearest wall.

"Good night," Terrance replied as he James's example and turned over to face the nearest wall.

However, James just could not sleep. He still worried over Abigail and despite what he told Terrance about his relationship with the bespectacled girl, he just could not help but wonder if perhaps he did feel something more for her. Of course, if anyone had asked him, he would deny it in a heartbeat, but he had to wonder if perhaps there was something there. Of course, he knew that Abigail may not necessarily feel the same way and from all their interactions in the past, he could believe that she did not. From their interactions in the past, James concluded that she only saw him as a friend and nothing more and he did not know why, but this knowledge did upset him somewhat. He honestly did not know what attracted him to Abigail. She was smart, beautiful, kind and did not judge him by his appearance, though he wondered if that had been down to Euphemia and the strange aura that she seemed to give off. If Euphemia had not existed, James had to wonder if the group of people that he now socialised with would have ever met up and befriended one another. Of the three girls in the group, Abigail stood out, though he did not know why. She was not the only girl with the traits that he found attracting him to her, but there was definitely something else about her that he found irresistible.


Back in the forest clearing, the blue-haired girl slowly turned to face Abigail, who had come to a stop a few feet behind her. She looked the Ra Yellow girl up and down and Abigail felt a shiver run down her spine as she suddenly started to feel somewhat uncomfortable, but she gathered up her courage and pushed uncomfortable feelings to the back of her mind.

"Okay, you, who are you and what are you doing here?" she demanded as she glared at the girl, clearly not liking the way she was looking at her.

The girl did not reply right away as she continued to look the bespectacled redhead up and down, making said girl even more uncomfortable.

"Answer me!" Abigail snapped furiously as she took a threatening step forward in an attempt to intimidate the girl into stopping what she was doing.

"My, my, you're a beautiful one, aren't you?" the girl finally said as a rather wicked grin slowly materialised on her face, which caused Abigail to take a step back, feeling somewhat intimidated by the girl's tone.

"E-e-e-excuse me!" Abigail exhaled in outrage as she fought to hold onto her composure, clearly not liking what this girl was getting at.

However, this did nothing to deter the girl and if anything, her grin only widened as she observed Abigail's reaction. She then dropped the bag round her should to the ground and opening it up, she produced an old Battle City-style duel disk and attached it to her left arm.

Abigail's eyes widened as she remembered that she also had her own Academy-issued duel disk with her; just in case someone challenged her to a duel.

"So, you want to duel, huh?" she said as she calmed down, though she was still unnerved about how this girl was looking at her.

"Yep, that's right," the girl replied with a nod, "Oh and before you ask, my name is Amanda, Amanda Ribbets."

"Amanda?" Abigail said simply.

"Uh huh, and that's all you need to know for the moment," the girl, Amanda said with a chuckle as she flashed a smile at Abigail that Abigail, herself clearly did not like, "So what's your name, sweetie?"

"Sweetie!" Abigail said, clearly taken aback by the tone that Amanda was using and she struggled to contain her outrage, "For your information, my name is Abigail Richardson, not "sweetie" as you just called me and should I win this duel, you're telling me why you're here before I turn you over to Campus Security or the Disciplinary Action Squad."

Amanda just chuckled as she shook her head, causing Abigail to become increasingly nervous and she even subconsciously took a few steps back, causing Amanda's devious smile to widen even further.

"Abigail, somehow that name suits you," she said in a soft tone, though it did nothing to calm Abigail's nervousness down, "And believe me, my dear, regardless of the result of this duel, I'll tell you everything. To tell you the truth, I really wasn't intending on duelling anyone until I had done what I came here to do, but since you happened to catch me prematurely, I figured that I could use this to my advantage. Win this duel and I'll talk. However, lose and I'll still talk, but only because you're going to help me whether you want to or not."

Abigail could not help but tremble as she listened to the excitement in Amanda's voice. Looking at Amanda caused Abigail to tremble as she still looked at her in a way that she did not like. She then opened her blazer and looked on the inside, which held multiple card-holders. Like her cousin, Bastion, Abigail also had multiple decks, as did Terrance. Like Bastion, the Richardson Twins had six decks; one for each of the six attributes that existed in Duel Monsters and like Bastion, they both had a seventh deck that was pretty much filled with expendable cards in case a potential opponent tried to get at them by stealing their decks and throwing them away like Chazz Princeton had done to Bastion. When Bastion wrote to the twins, telling them of that incident; though Bastion had used his Water-Attribute deck and defeated Chazz anyway, both Terrance and Abigail decided that it would be a good idea to follow Bastion's example just in case. In fact, the twins had won their Entrance Exam duels using their "decoy" decks.

"Oh, so you're a multi-deck duellist, I gather?" Amanda said with a smile, "Somehow I gathered as much, given your nerdish appearance."

Abigail flinched at that, despite knowing that Amanda was not intending to insult her, but she still felt insulted nonetheless. It also served to remind her that she wore glasses and could not see probably without them. It was a topic that she was very sensitive about and hated it when people brought it up in front of her and she hated being called a nerd. Sure, she wore glasses and was pretty intelligent, but that did not make her a nerd, did it? In any case, she put those thoughts to the back of her mind as she selected the deck on the middle left of the inside of her blazer and inserted it into the deck slot of her duel disk before buttoning up her blazer again.

"Well now, are you ready, my dear Abigail?" Amanda said with a teasing giggle as she blushed, making Abigail feel even more uncomfortable.

Amanda then reached down into the bag she had dropped beside her and took out a deck of Duel Monsters cards and then inserted the deck into her deck slot and then activated her duel disk with Abigail following suit.

"I hope you like duelling in water," Amanda said to Abigail, causing Abigail's eyes to widen in shock.

"You mean you have a Water-Attribute deck?" the bespectacled girl asked and Amanda nodded.

"Why, what deck did you pick?" she asked curiously.

"None of your business!" Abigail snapped furiously, "You'll find out soon enough. Let's just do this!"

Amanda then flashed her a rather mischievous smile.

"GAME ON!" they both shouted in unison.

Abigail: 4000 – Amanda: 4000

"Well then, since you're the student and I'm the intruder, why don't you go first?" Amanda said giddily with a giggle as she drew her five cards and waved at Abigail.

"Fine," Abigail said in a rather uncomfortable tone after drawing five cards and then drew her sixth.

Looking over her hand, she found that she had Negate Attack, Fox Fire, Fissure, Molten Destruction, Backfire and Solar Flare Dragon, which she just drew. This was her Fire-Attribute deck, which she had chosen, since she believed that it best reflected her mood towards the blue-haired girl since she felt rather uncomfortable with her behaviour. In any case, she reached for her Molten Destruction spell card, which had the image of an erupting volcano spewing out magma and ash with a reddish orange sky in the background and streams of lava trickling down the mountain.

"First, I play the field spell, Molten Destruction," she announced as she push a button on her duel disk and the field spell slot of her duel disk opened up and she proceeded to insert the card into it before it closed and then, suddenly, the scenery around them both changed to that of a barren wasteland with a red sky full of volcanic ash and the ground scorched black from burns and in the background between the two duellists was the volcano depicted in the card's image that was in the process of erupting.

"Wow, so I gather you're using a deck full of fire monsters," Amanda complimented in awe, though she had to admit that she was a bit frightened of the volcano despite it being just a hologram; but then again, the island did have a real activate volcano at its centre, so her fears may not be as exaggerated as one would probably think.

"That's right," Abigail said with a smirk, clearly enjoying Amanda's change in mood as at least she was not coming on to her anymore, "You deduced that much from just that one card. Anyway, with Molten Destruction, all fire-attribute monsters gain five hundred extra attack points, but in exchange they lost four hundred of their defence points."

She then reached for her Fox Fire (300/200) card and placed it on the monster space just to the left of the middle monster space in a horizontal position, indicating that she was summoning it in defence mode.

"And then I'll summon Fox Fire in defence mode," She went on explaining before a small anthropomorphic fox appeared on the field in a kneeling position with its arms crossed over its chest and a flame at the tip of its tail, "And then I'll threw two cards facedown and that's my turn."

She then reached for her Negate Attack and Backfire cards and placed them in the spell/trap slots; one in the slot to the far-right of the middle one and the other in the slot to the far-left of the middle one and the holographic representations of both cards appeared next to the imaginary borderlines of the field at either end. The Fox Fire (800/0) monster's look became more determined as it felt the effect of the Molten Destruction field spell.

Amanda looked in awe at Abigail's Fox Fire and then looked into Abigail's eyes and saw her disapproval of her behaviour reflected through them as well as the burning fire that seemed to strength her resolve. It was little wonder that she had chosen a deck of fire monsters since it seemed to reflect her mood pretty well, but it only served to excite the bluenette even further as she drew her sixth card and then looked at her hand, which consisted of A Legendary Ocean, Tornado Wall, Water Minotaur, Nightmare Penguin, Water Wall and Double Summon that she just drew.

"Oh, I see a fire in you, sweetie," she said as she trembled with excitement, "I'm so looking forward to this."

"Just take your turn!" Abigail snapped as she trembled uncomfortably, shooting the bluenette a disgusted glare.

Amanda then reached for her Water Minotaur card and placed in it vertically on the middle monster space of her duel disk.

"First, I'll summon my Water Minotaur in attack mode," she announced as a creature of the body of a man appeared on the field with a blue loin cloth round his waist, covering up his modesty and like the Minotaur of Greek Mythology, he also had the head of a bull, the bull's head appeared to be entirely made out of water with the only organic parts being the eyeballs, which had blue irises.

The Water Minotaur (1000/1000) clenched and then opened its right hand and a sword that looked to be made entirely out of water appeared in the hand that had just opened and the Water Minotaur wrapped its fingers round the handle before dropping into an attack stance and brought its other hand to grasp the water sword as well. Now the Water Minotaur held the sword with both hands.

"And next, I'll play the spell card, Double Summon," the bluenette went on as she took the Double Summon card, which had the image of a long-haired man decked in black and grey armour holding up a staff horizontally with both hands with white energy coming down at either side of him as he appeared to be shouting against with a black sky with lightning in the background, though the energy to his right had not yet reached the ground and in front of the man was a monster in a defensive position that looked suspiciously like Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts and she then inserted it into the spell/trap slot to the left of the middle open.

The card then appeared on the field and started to glow.

"With this card, I am allowed to normal summon an additional monster this turn," Amanda explained as she took her Nightmare Penguin card and place it facedown horizontally in the monster space to the left of the one that Water Minotaur occupied and the card then appeared on the field, "And since it's a water-attribute monster, my Water Minotaur gains five hundred extra attack points, for you see Water Minotaur gains five hundred attacks for each water-attribute and aqua-type monsters out on the field."

The Water Minotaur (1700/1000) grunted as it tensed up, feeling the increase in strength that the other monster gave it.

"Hold on, you said five hundred extra attack points, but its attack points have got up by seven hundred," Abigail pointed out as she noticed the two hundred extra attack points more than the blue-haired girl had stated.

"That's the effect of my facedown defence monster," Amanda stated with a smile, "All water-attribute monsters gain two hundred extra attack points whenever it's summoned to the field. Care to guess what it is?"

Abigail shook her head, feeling rather unnerved at the bluenette's tone. She was smart and she had already deduced the answer as she scanned her brain, remembering the various kinds of Duel Monsters monster cards and their effects, but she really was not in the mood for humouring Amanda.

"Just finish your turn," she declared in a serious tone.

"As you wish, my dear Abigail," Amanda said with what sounded like a childish giggle as she reached for her Water Wall card and placed it in the middle spell/trap slot, "I place one card facedown and that'll finish my turn."

"Huh, you're not bothering with going through with your battle phase?" Abigail asked in a mixture of surprise and suspicion as Amanda's facedown card appeared on the field.

Just what was she up to? Abigail knew that she could have declared an attack since it was the second turn of the duel, but she chose not to; but then again, Abigail had two facedown cards and had Amanda attacked, she would had sprung one of them on her. However, it seemed that Amanda herself was aware of it despite her strange behaviour and had decided to play it safe. Looking into the bluenette's eyes, Abigail could see a rather calculating look as she studied the field and seemed to be weighing up her options. The bespectacled girl had assumed that with Amanda behaving the way she was had meant that she was stupid and would have been paying attention to her and not her moves, meaning that Abigail had expected Amanda to walk blindly into every trap that she set for her, but apparently, she had been mistaken in that regard.

"You have two facedown cards out on the field, silly," Amanda giggled happily, though her tone suggested that Abigail should have already known that, "You would have activated one, if not both of them had I attacked."

Abigail groaned as she shook her head as she watched the blue-haired girl blush in seeming embarrassment. Abigail did not know why, but she felt rather insulted at Amanda's statement. The undertone that she had used seemed to suggest that she was insulting the redhead's intelligence.

"Oh, it's your turn now," Amanda said before Abigail could reply, catching Abigail with her mouth open.

"Fine," the bespectacled girl said as she drew her next card, practically snatching it from the top of her deck and found that it was Monster Reincarnation.

She then reached for her Solar Flare Dragon card and practically slapped it onto the middle monster space of her duel disk.

"I summon Solar Flare Dragon in attack mode," she announced, letting her anger be known as a serpentine dragon with a brown face made entirely of rock and green eyes appeared on the field.

In addition, the dragon itself was made up of fire aside from its face and its underbelly, which was made up of a conglomeration of boulders and two bone like horns at the sides of its head near the back and a row of brown spiked plates running along its backbone. This was Solar Flare Dragon (1500/1000).

"And don't forget, thanks to my field spell, his attack points increase by five hundred," Abigail said, beaming in an almost boastful tone.

Solar Flare Dragon (2000/600) roared at Amanda, who just stared at it in awe.

"But its defence points decrease by four hundred," she pointed out simply.

"A small price to pay to get rid of that water headed mutation," Abigail replied as she suddenly pointed at Water Minotaur, "Now, Solar Flare Dragon, attack Water Minotaur with Flaming Fire Blast."

The Dragon opened its mouth as a ball of fire started to gather between its teeth and then it spat out the fire, which had formed into a ball and sent it hurtling towards Water Minotaur.

"In case you've forgotten, I have a facedown card on the field and now, I activate my Water Wall trap card," Amanda announced as she pushed a button on her duel disk and the holographic representation of her facedown card rose up revealing the image was a huge wall of water and an army of knights at the bottom trying to slash their way through, but to no avail as it was clear that the wall was solid despite being made out of water.

An identical wall of water rose up from the ground in front of the length of Amanda's field and Solar Flare Dragon's fireball slammed into it and was doused out of existence before the wall of water retreated back into the ground.

"Every time an aqua-type or water-attribute monster is targeted by an opposing monster, my water wall prevents the targeted monster from being destroyed and also reduces all battle damage to zero," Amanda explained as she suddenly beamed with pride, "Oh, and this is a continuous trap, so you can't target any of my monsters since they're mostly water-attribute monsters."

"Fine, I end my turn," Abigail fumed, feeling rather infuriated that she had walked right into Amanda's trap, but then smirked, "Oh, and in case you don't know, Solar Flare Dragon's special ability allows him to deal five hundred points of direct damage to you, come the end phase of my turn."

No sooner had she finished talking, Solar Flare Dragon let lose another fireball, only this one went straight towards Amanda, whose eyes widened in shock as she saw the oncoming fireball, which slammed into her before she could raise her arms in defence.

Abigail: 4000 – Amanda: 3500

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Amanda screamed as she felt the phantom pain and in truth, if she had not known that it was a hologram, she would have believed that she was genuinely being burned.

However, afterwards, she just regained her composure and dusted herself off before bursting into a rather excitable grin and winked at Abigail, making the redhead feel even more uncomfortable.

"Nice move, Abi, I can call you Abi, can't I?" the bluenette said with a childish giggle as she flicked her hand through the back of her hair.

"Only my brother and friends are allowed to call me that," Abigail said, feeling rather infuriated at Amanda for how she seemed to act as if she was on very familiar terms with her despite having just met and Abigail could clearly state that this girl was definitely getting on her nerves and she was in no way her friend.

"You really should calm down," Amanda said, her tone suddenly taking a serious edge to it, "I don't want you walking into every trap I lay out and for this duel to be one-sided. It wouldn't be fair if I won because my opponent was too blinded by her anger. Anyway, that was a nice move. Despite my trap, you were able to use you monster's special ability to deal damage to me anyway."

"Thanks for the compliment," Abigail said in surprise; clearly astonished at how Amanda's tone became more serious one minute and then reverted back to its usual playfulness the next.

"Anytime," Amanda said as she puckered her lips and appeared to blow a kiss at the bespectacled girl, causing Abigail's fury to return, "Anyway, It's my turn now and I draw."

She then drew her next card, which turned out to be Levia-Dragon – Daedalus.

"This'll come in handy later," the bluenette thought to herself, "But not right now. I'll wait to see what else Abigail's got to offer before I spring this on her."

She then reached for her A Legendary Ocean card, which had the image of a sunken city with a few fish swimming in the sea and the sun shining above the surface on it.

"This'll deal with her field spell," Amanda continued to explain to herself in her thoughts, "Besides; I'm more comfortable in the water."

"I activate the field spell, A Legendary Ocean," she announced allowed, showing the card image to Abigail before she inserted it into the field slot of her duel disk, "And you know what that means, don't you?"

Abigail's eyes widened as the scenery generated by her field spell started to crumble and fall apart as it was slowly being replaced by sunken city depicted in the image of Amanda's field spell and also it appeared as if they were surrounded by water. All in all, it appeared as if they were indeed duelling underwater and the field slot of Abigail's duel disk automatically opened up and she took the card out before discarding it to the graveyard.

"In Duel Monsters whenever a field spell is played and there's already a field spell in play, then the first field spell is automatically sent to the graveyard," Amanda explained as the image of her card appeared to come to life around them.

Solar Flare Dragon (1300/800) and Fox Fire (100/0) both groaned in disapproval at having lost their extra attack points and seemed to lose two hundred points worth of their original points and Water Minotaur (1900/1200) roared as his attack and defence points increased even further.

"If you're familiar with the field spell, Umi, then you should know that this card is treated as Umi whenever it's in play and all water-attribute monsters gain two hundred extra attack and defence points and all water-attribute monsters in both players hands have their levels decreased by one," Amanda explained, must to Abigail's fury.

"I know perfectly well what it does!" the redhead snapped furiously, rather infuriated that Amanda was giving her lectures on topics she knew already, but upon realising that her temper was getting too high, she started to take really deep breathes in an attempt to calm herself.

"Touchy," Amanda said as she noted Abigail's attempt to calm down, "Anyway, I'll flip my facedown monster from defence mode into attack mode."

She then took her facedown Nightmare Penguin (900/1800) and flipped it and moved it into a vertical position and the facedown horizontal card on the field glowed for a moment before appearing to transform into a blue and white penguin with dark greenish black feet, yellow busy eyebrows and red eyes. However, what made this penguin stand out was that it was dressed in a white shirt underneath a purple waistcoat with a red bowtie round its neck. It also had a black coat and a black top hat sitting on its head.

"And thanks to a Legendary Ocean, his attack points go up," Amanda announced as Nightmare Penguin (1100/2000) appeared to grin as if attack and defence points went up, "And thanks to his flip-effect, I can choose a card that you have out on the field and send it back to your hand and I choose the facedown card on the right."

Abigail groaned and she removed the facedown card on her left, which was to Amanda's right and was relieved to find that it was Negate Attack and not Backfire, which could deliver five hundred points of damage to Amanda when activated. On the field, the facedown holographic representation of the card that Abigail had just removed started to glow and then transform into a stream of energy that appeared to travel up to Abigail's hand, enveloping the card as she added it to her hand.

"Now, Nightmare Penguin, attack Abigail's Fox Fire," Amanda said as the Nightmare Penguin waddled over to the small humanoid fox and then deliver a rather fierce peck to its head with its peck, causing the fox to shatter into triangles and then vanish, but since it was in defence mode, Abigail took no damage.

"You activated my trap, Backfire," Abigail said with a smirk as she pushed the activation button on her duel disk and her facedown card rose up, revealing the image of a bald headed monster that looked to be made of rock with blue and white striped sleeves and green hands and he appeared to be doing a karate-style chop to what looked to be a giant monster made entirely of reddish coloured rocks, "Whenever a fire-attribute monster on my side of the field is destroyed and sent to the graveyard, I can inflict five hundred points worth of damage on you."

The card then started to glow and a fireball suddenly shot out of it and slammed into Amanda, whose eyes widened in shock and surprise.

Abigail: 4000 – Amanda: 3000

"Wow, again with the fireballs, I have to say that you're full of surprises," Amanda said with a smile, "I take it that your deck relies solely on a burn strategy."

"Uh huh, so don't think that Water Wall trap card's going to protect you because it won't," Abigail said with a smirk, "Oh and I should tell you that my Backfire trap card is a continuous trap card like your Water Wall, so destroy my monsters all you want. I may not be able to destroy your monsters thanks to your Water Wall, but like they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat."

"That's incredible," Amanda said in awe as she gave Abigail a look of admiration, "So with Backfire on the field, plus any effects your monsters may have will essentially chip away at my life points since you can't get at my monsters; a true burn strategy. However, there's one fatal flaw in your plan."

"And what's that?" Abigail asked, not sounding in the least bit upset as she knew that her strategy did indeed have its weaknesses, but she decided that she would humour the bluenette.

"You'll have to either stop me from damaging your life points or at least minimise the damage if you want to last long enough to get my life points down to zero," Amanda said with a smirk and then winked at Abigail, causing the redhead's anger to return, but this time, she held it in, "In any case, I'll continue with my battle phase by having my Water Minotaur take out your Solar Flare Dragon."

No sooner had she finished, Water Minotaur jumped over to the Solar Flare Dragon and brought its water sword down on the fire beast, causing it to roar in pain before shattering and disappearing.

Abigail: 3400 – Amanda: 3000

"Oh and when Water Minotaur destroys a monster, it doesn't go to the graveyard, meaning your Backfire trap doesn't activate," Amanda said, greatly surprising the bespectacled girl, "Instead, the destroyed monster is summoned on my side of the field and becomes a water-attribute monster."

"What!" Abigail exclaimed in surprise as she threw her Solar Flare Dragon card over to Amanda, who took it and placed it on the monster space to the other side of Water Minotaur from the one that Nightmare Penguin occupied.

Solar Flare Dragon (1500/1000) appeared on Amanda's side of field next to Water Minotaur (2400/1200) whose attack points increased due to the fiery dragon now being treated as a water-attribute monster and since Solar Flare Dragon (1900/1200) was now a water-attribute monster, its attack and defence points had risen in accordance with A Legendary Ocean's effect as well as Nightmare Penguin's effect, which boasted its attack points even more by a further two hundred. However, despite now being a water-attribute monster, Solar Flare Dragon's appearance had not changed at all.

"Now, Solar Flare Dragon, attack your former mistress directly," Amanda commanded as she pointed at Abigail, who simply raised her arms in defence as Solar Flare Dragon hurled a fireball at her.

The fireball slammed into her and sent her stumbling aback a few steps, but she eventually managed to right herself.

Abigail: 1500 – Amanda: 3000

"Luckily for you, any monster that is revived on my side of the field due to Water Minotaur's effect has its own effect is negated," Amanda said with a beaming grin of triumphant, "So don't worry about losing more life points this turn due to your former monster's effect and with that, I end my turn."

"And that enables me to activate Fox Fire's special ability," Abigail announced with a smirk, "For you see whenever Fox Fire's on the field and he attacks or is attacked and sent to the graveyard, then I can summon it back to the field."

The Fox Fire card that she had discarded to the graveyard suddenly ejected from the graveyard slot and Abigail placed it on the same monster space that it had been occupying before and Fox Fire (300/200) reappeared on the field in defence mode and then groaned as A Legendary Ocean's effect kicked in due to the fact that it was a pyro-type monster and that the field spell was treated as Umi, which reduced the attack and defence points of any machine-type and pyro-type monsters by two hundred. Fox Fire (100/0) looked towards the opposing field, feeling a little nervous.

"Not bad," Amanda said with a nod, "You were able to bring your monster back."

She then followed up with a wave to Abigail, who looked ready to shout before regaining her composure and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down.

"Okay, Abigail, calm down," she told herself in her thoughts, "You're letting her get to you and if you let her do that then she's going to win."

She had to admit that that was true. She was letting Amanda's strange behaviour get on her nerves and because of it, she had attacked without taking Amanda's facedown, which had turned out to be Water Wall into account and now she found herself unable to declare an attack on the bluenette's monsters; relying solely on the life points draining effects from her own monsters to chip away at Amanda's life points. However, like Amanda had said, the fatal flaw in that strategy was trying to last long enough till her life points did fall to zero. She had noted that Amanda was smarter than she appeared when she foregone her first turn's battle phase due to the two facedown cards on the opposite side of the field and she did rile the redhead up when she told her why she had not bothered conducting her battle phase since Abigail believed that she was insulting her intelligence. Amanda was indeed smart. The fact that she had gained the lead due to Abigail's reckless turn and failing to take her Water Wall card into account was proof of that.

"Wait, could her strange behaviour be simply an act to throw me off my game?" she thought as her eyes widened upon realising that possibility.

Amanda, who had been studying her opponent carefully for the entire duel despite her behaviour noticed the bespectacled girl's eyes widening and then gave a rather intrigued nod as she realised that Abigail had just figured her behaviour out, though she would not deny that Abigail herself was beautiful, but it was fun flirting with her to throw her off her game. However, now that Abigail had figured her out, it meant that she had to get serious since she probably would no longer be affected by her behaviour, but that did not mean that she could still have some fun with her in maintaining her behaviour.

"Okay, it's my turn," Abigail announced as she drew a card, which turned out to be Pot of Greed, causing her to smirk as she placed it in the far left spell/trap slot, "I activate the spell card, Pot of Greed."

The card appeared on the field before the image on the card seemed to jump out of it and then laugh as Abigail drew her two additional cards, which turned out to be Mystical Space Typhoon and a second Solar Flare Dragon.

"As you know, Pot of Greed allows me to draw two cards from my deck and next, I'll play the spell card, Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy your Water Wall card," the redhead continued to explain as she inserted the Mystical Space Typhoon card into the spell/trap slot to the right of the one she had inserted the Pot of Greed card into.

The Mystical Space Typhoon card appeared one the field and a really strong blew out of it, causing the Water Wall card on the opposite side to move slightly before it shattered.

"My Water Wall!" Amanda exclaimed in surprise as she clearly had not expected Abigail to come up with such a move.

"And next, I'll summon a second Solar Flare Dragon to the field in attack mode," Abigail went on as she explained her turn, bringing Amanda back from her shock.

She then placed her Solar Flare Dragon card in the monster space to the left of the one that Fox Fire was currently occupying, causing the Solar Flare Dragon (1500/1000) to appear on the field and let out an almighty roar. However, afterwards it then let out a groan as it felt the effect of A Legendary Ocean take effect.

"Oh sure, thanks to your field spell he's two hundred attack points weaker, but he still has enough attack points to deal with your Nightmare Penguin," Abigail said as she pointed at said penguin, "Now Solar Flare Dragon, fry that bird."

Solar Flare Dragon (1300/800) responded by opening its mouth and hurling a fireball towards the tuxedo-wearing penguin and Nightmare Penguin's eyes appeared to bulge out of their sockets as it saw the oncoming attack before the fireball slammed into it and caused it to scream and shatter.

Abigail: 1500 – Amanda: 2800

"And then I'll place one card facedown and that'll end my turn," Abigail said as she took her Negate Attack card that Amanda had returned to her hand with Nightmare Penguin's flip effect and placed it in the spell/tap slot it had been occupying before.

As its holographic representation appeared on the field, Water Minotaur (1700/1200) and the Solar Flare Dragon (1700/1200) on Amanda's side of the field both groaned as they lost the extra attack points that Nightmare Penguin's presence had provided them and Water Minotaur losing the five hundred additional attack points that its own ability awarded it since Nightmare Penguin was a water-attribute monster..

"And don't forget my Solar Flare Dragon's effect," the redhead added with a smirk as the Solar Flare Dragon hurled another fireball at Amanda, but this time, the bluenette was prepared as she raised her arms in front of her as the fireball hit.

Abigail: 1500 – Amanda: 2300

"Nicely done," Amanda commented, giving Abigail praise for managing to destroy her Water Wall card, "But don't think that it's over. I still have the lead in this duel."

"Just take your turn," Abigail said in an impatient tone, "It's past curfew and I'd rather not get detention 'cause of you."

"In that case, if you are discovered, then you shouldn't have confronted me," Amanda pointed out as she drew her next card, "Besides, if I win this duel, you won't be going back until I've gotten what I came here for."

Abigail shuddered as she felt a chill creep down her spine as she thought of the possible implications of what the blue-haired girl had just said.

"J-j-just what is it that you want?" the bespectacled girl asked Amanda as she struggled to regain her composure.

"I'll tell you once this duel is over," Amanda said with a devious and mischievous smirk that did nothing to sooth Abigail's unease.

Of course, Amanda knew what the redhead was thinking and despite her behaviour seeming to confirm this, Amanda had no intentions of doing what Abigail believed that she was going to do to her. What she intended to do was use Abigail as a bargaining chip for when she confronted Chancellor Sheppard; nothing more. In any case, she looked down at her card, which by an amazing coincidence happened to be her own Pot of Greed card.

"Anyway, I play the spell card, Pot of Greed, which allows me to draw two additional cards from my deck," she went on as she looked at her cards, which turned out to be Monster Reborn and Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness, "Cool, huh? Just what are the chances I managed to draw the same card you did last turn?"

"Just finish your move already," Abigail said impatiently.

"Okay, I'll then summon Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness to the field in attack mode," the bluenette announced with glee as she placed her Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness card on the monster space to the left of the one Nightmare Penguin had been occupying, "Now normally, since he's a level-five monster, I'd have to sacrifice a monster already out on the field, but as I already explained, A Legendary Ocean lowers the level of all water-attribute monsters in my hand by one; meaning my monster is now a level-four monster and I can summon him without having to sacrifice him."

Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness (2100/1200) turned out to be a huge orca whale with was appeared to be the metal flat surface of a battleship welded onto the top of its head with six spikes in a three by three pattern at a slight diagonal angle at either end and a bridge structure built in front of and at the sides of its huge dorsal fin and a green crane to the left. It also had what appeared to be a green torpedo shaped like a fish with red fins attached to its underbelly.

"And thanks to A Legendary Ocean's effect, his attack and defence points go up by two hundred," Amanda went on as Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness (2300/1400) roared as it felt its strength increase, "And don't forget, since it's a water-attribute monster, it gives my Water Minotaur five hundred extra points."

Water Minotaur (2200/1200) tensed up as it felt another power up come on due to the orca's presence and then Amanda took her Monster Reborn card and inserted into the spell/trap slot behind the vacant monster space that Nightmare Penguin had occupied.

"And I play Monster Reborn to revive my Nightmare Penguin," Amanda continued explaining her turn as the image on the card appeared on the field and emitted a red glow before Nightmare Penguin (900/1800) appeared to come up out of the ground as Amanda took the card after it was ejected from the graveyard and place it in the monster space that it had been occupying before, "And since he's back, all water-attribute monster gain two hundred extra attack points and my Water Minotaur gains an additional five hundred due to its own special ability and Nightmare also gains two hundred extra attack and defence points."

Nightmare Penguin (1100/2000) once again appeared to grin and the Solar Flare Dragon (1900/1200) Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness (2500/1400) and Water Minotaur (2900/1200) all gained their additional points.

"Now, Water Minotaur, attack her Solar Flare Dragon with Water Sword Slash," the bluenette commanded as she pointed at Abigail's Solar Flare Dragon and Water Minotaur jumped over to the Solar Flare Dragon.

"Not so fast for I activate my Negate Attack trap card," Abigail announced as she pushed the trap/spell facedown activation button on her duel disk, causing her facedown card to rise

The card displayed the image of a bluish green background with a red circle and a dark purplish black hole that was illustrated as if there was spinning. In the centre of the hole was a bright light with three light streams running out from it; again illustrated as if they were spinning and the light in the card appeared to shoot out at Water Minotaur as it brought its sword down on the fiery dragon, but the ball of white energy slammed into the Water Minotaur's chest and send it back to its original position on the field.

"When this card is activated, you're forced to end your battle phase," Abigail explained, to which Amanda nodded, looking rather impressed.

"I gather that that was the card that I returned to your hand using Nightmare Penguin's flip effect?" Amanda asked curiously and Abigail nodded.

"That's right," she confirmed, "It had been returned to my hand, so I figured that I'd just reuse it."

"Impressive, I have to say that I never thought that you'd do something like that," the blue-haired girl complimented with a look of admiration towards the bespectacled redhead, "Anyway, since I can't do anything else, I end my turn."

Abigail then drew her next card, which turned out to be Card of Sanctity, which caused her to smirk before she inserted it into the spell/trap slot to the left of the middle one.

"I play the spell card, Card of Sanctity, which allows us both to draw until we're holding six cards, she said as she drew four additional cards from her deck and Amanda drew an additional four cards from her own deck as she also had two cards in her hand as the cad appeared on the field and then the image started to glow, indicating that it had activated.

Looking at her hand, she found that she had drawn a third Solar Flare Dragon, DNA Transplant, Double Summon and Fire Trooper and looking over her hand, she realised that she still had the Fissure card that she had drawn before her first turn.

"Excellent, this'll do nicely," she said as she looked towards the bluenette and smirked, "I think I have most of the cards that'll guarantee your downfall."

"Oh really, then by all means, show me," Amanda dared with a smile and curious look in her eyes.

"With pleasure," Abigail said obligingly as she reached for her Fissure card, with depicted the image of a diagonal horizon moving upwards from left to right with the top being the blue sky and the bottom being a barren wasteland with a fissure near the bottom of the image and the finger from a person's right hand holding onto the ledge of the fissure with the left arm rising even higher as it depicted a person trying to climb out and inserted it into the middle spell/trap slot, "With this, I can destroy the monster on your side of the field that has the lowest attack points and guess who that is."

Amanda raised an eyebrow as she witnessed a hole appear beneath Nightmare Penguin's feet and Nightmare Penguin nervously looked down as it no longer felt the ground underneath its feet and then started to freak out and tried to run towards the edge of the hole for a few moments before gravity started to take effect and Nightmare Penguin shrieked as it fell into the hole. It was reminiscent of a scene from an old Loony Toons cartoon. However, instead of a thud, a bright light seemed to shine up from down within the hole before it vanished.

Water Minotaur (2700/1200), Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness (2300/1400) and the Solar Flare Dragon (1700/1200) that Amanda controlled all groaned at losing their two hundred attack point bonus that Nightmare Penguin had provided. Amanda just frowned at losing her monster a second time, but shrugged it off as she was curious to see what Abigail was going to do next.

"Next I'll summon another Solar Flare Dragon to the field," Abigail announced as slapped the third Solar Flare Dragon card on the monster space on the other side of the one that Fox Fire currently occupied, though she placed the card horizontally, indicating that she had summoned it in defence mode.

The Solar Flare Dragon (1500/1000) did appear on the field, though had coiled part of its body in front of its face in a defensive position, though it groaned in discomfort as it felt A Legendary Ocean's effect drain it of some of its strength.

"And next I'll play a card that you played on your first turn, Double Summon," the redhead went on as she reached for her Double Summon card and placed it in the spell/trap slot behind the monster space where she had summoned her third Solar Flare Dragon and the card appeared on the field and started to glow, "As you know, this allows me to perform a second normal summon."

She then reached for her Fire Trooper (1000/1000) card and placed in in the monster space beside the one that her Solar Flare Dragon (1300/800) to the left occupied and placed it in a horizontal position as she decided to summon it in defence mode.

"And my second monster is Fire Trooper," she announced as a strange looking monster appeared on the field with its arms crossed and in a kneeling position.

The monster itself was dressed with black armour over its torso with golden outlines the armour even provided a metal guars for the crotch and hip areas. It also had shoulder guards with four purple spikes, two at either side curving outwards. The monster also wore a purple cape that looked torn at the bottom and had white sleeves down to its elbows and white trousers down to its knees. There were also two black arm guards running from the elbows to the wrists and black skin guards surrounding the lower legs from the knees down to the ankles and the monster had dark purple feet with black spiked talons. However, what made this monster stand out was that its hands were surrounded by flames and its head was made entirely out of fire with only marking depicting where its eyes were and the fire formed two horns at the top.

"When he's summoned to the field, I can send him directly to the graveyard to inflict a thousand points of damage to your life points," the bespectacled girl said as she immediately removed her Fire Trooper card from its monster space and sent it to the graveyard.

On the field, Fire Trooper brought its hands together and then pushed them towards Amanda and the flames surrounding its hands shot towards her in the form of a fireball and then Fire Trooper seemed to transform into energy and then the energy quickly moved into Abigail's graveyard slot.

"Not again," Amanda groaned as she raised her arms in front of her in an X formation as she braced herself for the fireball, which slammed into her a few moments later.

Abigail: 1500 – Amanda: 1300

"I'll then move my Solar Flare Dragon that's in attack mode into defence mode and that'll end my turn," Abigail said as she moved her card into a horizontal position and the dragon on the field fell into the same pose as its partner, "And don't forget about Solar Flare Dragon's effect when it come to the end phase of a turn and since I have two of them…"

She then trailed off while smirked as her two Solar Flare Dragons prepared to unleash their attacks.

"I lose another thousand life points," Amanda finished with a nod as she once again raised her arms in front of her to defend herself as the two dragons hurled their attacks at her in unison.

"Man, this is gonna hurt," the blue-haired girl thought and the two fireball combined into one and then slammed into her, this time causing her to stumble backwards and slip, which caused her to fall on her back.

Abigail: 1500 – Amanda: 300

"You were saying about my burn strategy?" Abigail asked gleefully as she realised that she was just one attack away from winning the duel and bringing this intruder to book, "Seems that it's pretty effective to me."

However, Amanda moved to pick herself up and then moved her hand up to her hair and felt around for a few seconds before realising that the last attack had messed up her hair style.

"M-m-my hair," Amanda stuttered for a moment while in shock as she clearly did not expect that last attack to have that effect and was shocked because she prided herself in making her hair perfect and hated it when even a single strand of her hair was out of place, "My hair, it's messed up."

Normally, Abigail would have chosen this moment to taunt her opponent; especially since she did not like the bluenette's flirtatious behaviour towards her and would have seen this as the perfect opportunity to gain some payback, but looking at Amanda's reaction and her shocked expression; something told the redhead that taunting the bluenette would be a bad idea and she could not help but feel an overwhelming sense of nervous fear build up from the pit of her stomach.

"It took me over five hours to get my hair like that," Amanda continued to ramble on to herself, still in shock and disbelief, "And now it's messed up. Who knows how long it'll take to get it back to the way it was."

"Crap, why do I get the feeling that I just sealed my fate," Abigail thought looking at Amanda with a nervously fearful look in her eyes.

However, upon coming back to reality and noticing Abigail, the bluenette surprisingly burst out in a rather cheerful, yet eerie smile that did nothing to ease the bespectacled girl's growing distress and only seemed to heighten it even further.

"Oh, Abigail," Amanda spoke in a spookily cheerful tone that sent shivers down Abigail's spine, "I think that it's time that I end this duel and I have just the card in my hand that'll do it."

Abigail flinched at the sinister sweetness that was clearly apparent in the bluenette's voice as Amanda drew her next card.

"Oh yes, this duel is over," Amanda continued in that same frighteningly sweet tone, "I have to say that you duelled pretty well and have come close to beating me. You truly are worthy of attending this academy and probably worthy of your rank and I'm sure that if you had your next turn, you'd win the duel, but unfortunately for you, this turn is the last turn of the duel."

She then looked over her hand which consisted of Tornado Wall from her opening hand, Levia-Dragon – Daedalus, which she drew on her second turn, Legendary Fisherman, Fish Depth Charge, Umiiruka, Hydra Viper, all which she had drawn thank to Abigail's Card of Sanctity spell card and Ocean Dragon Lord – Neo Daedalus, which she had just drawn. There was a rule saying that a duellist was only allowed to have a maximum of six cards in their hand while in a duel, but that only applied at the end phase. A duellist was allowed to have more than six cards in his or her hand at once during their turn, but if they still had more than six cards in their hand when they declared their end phase, then they were required to discard the extra cards to graveyard from the last one they had drawn and working back until they had six cards, so even though Amanda had seven cards in her hand, she was not breaking any rules since having more than six cards in their hand at the end of their turn was rare since they normally played some of the cards in their hand during their turn, freeing up space.

"P-p-prove i-i-it," Abigail stuttered, not really feeling all that confident as she subconsciously took a step backwards, knowing full well that the bluenette had every intention of doing just that.

"With pleasure," Amanda said obligingly as she took her Levia-Dragon –Daedalus card and then removed her Water Minotaur from its monster space and discarded it to the graveyard, "I now sacrifice my Water Minotaur to summon Levia-Dragon – Daedalus."

On the field Water Minotaur disappeared in the same manner that all tribute monsters that were sacrificed to summon higher level monsters disappeared and Amanda placed Levia-Dragon – Daedalus's card on the same monster space that Water Minotaur had occupied and then the Solar Flare Dragon that Amanda had taken control of shattered as soon as Water Minotaur had left the field.

"Oh and just so you know, whenever Water Minotaur leaves the field, any monster that was brought over to my side via his effect is automatically destroyed," Amanda explained, deciding to give Abigail an explanation as to why Solar Flare Dragon had shattered as she removed its card and discarded it to her graveyard despite it being Abigail's card.

After Solar Flare Dragon had shattered a new serpentine dragon had appeared on the field only this one was bigger and blue in colour with yellow eye, spines running along its back with red webbing in between. It also had red claws; three on each of its four feet and two red spike; one underneath the knee joint of each of its front legs and two more; one at each of at the shoulder joints as well as two more; again one at each of the hip joints of its hind legs it also had six red fish like fins; two at the shoulder joints, two at the hip joints and two sticking out of the sides of its head as if they were ears. However, what made this dragon stand out was that it was wearing a dark blue metal helmet shaped like a dragon's head on top of its head. The helmet had a peck like shape at the front along with a green orb sitting at the top and underneath at either side was a red eye making it appear as if the dragon had two sets of eyes. Three segments ran along the back of the dragon neck, each coming out from under the other with each possessing a small brown orb at each of their centres and then three larger armoured segments ran along the beginning of the dragon's back, the last two possessing two spikes; one at either side. The dragon also had four red spikes; two at either side of its tail.

"Like him?" Amanda said in a rather mockingly sweet tone as Levia-Dragon – Daedalus (2600/1500) roared at Abigail and Abigail herself felt as if the monster was a physical manifestation of its mistress's rage over having her hair messed up, "This is the monster that's going to win me the duel."

Levia-Dragon-Daedalus (2800/1700) continued to roar at the bespectacled girl as the effect of A Legendary Ocean rose its attack and defence power.

"And now I activate his special ability, which involves sacrificing my A Legendary Ocean card to enable Levia-Dragon – Daedalus to destroy all other cards out on the field aside from himself," Amanda said as she pushed the button that opened the field spell slot on her duel disk and removed A Legendary Ocean before sending it to the graveyard.

On the field, the scenery that was being generated by A Legendary Ocean faded out of existence, returning the scenery to normal and Levia-Dragon – Daedalus (2600/1500) fired a purple energy beam from its mouth and moved it along all of Abigail's cards, causing them to shatter and they turned it on Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness (2100/1200), causing it to shatter as well. Only Levia-Dragon – Daedalus remained and Abigail's eyes widened as she realised that she was now defenceless and Amanda had a rather satisfactory smirk on her face as she pointed towards the redhead.

"Daedalus, attack her directly and end this duel," she said simply and Levia-Dragon – Daedalus let out a roar of acknowledgement before lunging over to Abigail and slammed its head right into her, sending her flying backwards.

Abigail: 0 – Amanda (winner): 300

However, as Abigail had subconsciously jumped backwards with the phantom sensation of being hit by Daedalus, she had jumped back into a tree and hit the back of her head off its trunk, causing her glasses to fall off and Abigail herself was rendered unconscious.

"Well now, that was rather invigorating," Amanda said as her Levia-Dragon – Daedalus hologram vanished as she deactivated her duel disk and walked over to the unconscious Abigail, "I have to hand it to ya, Abigail, you were quite the challenge. In fact, you're perhaps the second… no third person to successfully manage to put up a fight against me, though unlike those other two, you didn't beat me. However, as per the wager of this duel, since you lost, you're now mine until I get what I came here for and you're going to be my bargaining chip for that. If Duel Academy wants you back, then they'll have to enrol me into their ranks and until they agree, you're my prisoner."

She then knelt down and picked up Abigail's glasses and examined them to see if they were broken, but was thankful that they were okay and then she took Abigail's Solar Flare Dragon card that she had claimed during the duel and picked up the cards that had been in Abigail's hand when she had lost before removing the cards in her graveyard and then took Abigail's deck from her duel disk's deck slot before adding the cards she had picked up to it and then she put the completed deck back in the deck slot.

"You probably think very poorly of me due to what I'm doing, but I assure you that I'm no thief," she said with a frown, expecting that Abigail would now hate her for what she was doing, "And I have absolutely no intentions of doing what you probably think I'm going to do to you. Even I know where the line's drawn and to cross it would be unforgivable, even by my standards."


Meanwhile, at the Slifer Red Dorm, Euphemia, Yumi and Blair had just gotten into their pyjamas, which consisted of a pair of dark pink trousers and light pink sweater with dark pink sleeves collar band and were getting ready for bed. Yumi and Blair had already climbed into their respective beds and Euphemia was about to follow suit, but she suddenly stopped and turned her head towards the door as a rather uneasy expression appeared on her face as she suddenly got the feeling that something was wrong.

"Huh, Euphie-chan, what's wrong?" Yumi asked upon noticing her friend's hesitation at going into her bed.

"I don't know why," Euphemia replied as she continued to look towards the door while contemplating on whether or not to get back into her clothes and go out to patrol the island to see if anything was wrong, "But I suddenly got this horrible feeling that something's not right. Something seems wrong all of a sudden."

"Oh it's probably nothing," Yumi said dismissively, shaking her head, "You're probably jumpy from the defeat you handed Stella yesterday."

"It was actually two days ago," Euphemia replied as she saw that according to the alarm clock, it was after midnight, meaning that it was the following day, "And why would I be worried about Stella?"

"Because you beat her, again, and surely you know that Stella's not the sort of girl that'll let it lie," Yumi said with a hint of fear and surprise in her voice; surprised that Euphemia did not seem to take Stella all that seriously, but she just told herself that the pinkette was subconsciously suppressing her fear and that's what was getting to her.

"I know that," Euphemia confirmed as she admitted that she was indeed aware of the fact that things between her and the cruel teal-haired girl were far from over, "But why would I be afraid of her?"

"Because next time you both duel, she'll be aiming to kill you," Yumi said in a fearful tone, "Don't think that she won't. When I managed to free myself from her when I fell for her phony "love-letter", she ended up chasing me with a knife. She wasn't looking to intimidate me with it. If it wasn't for you and Zukasu showing up when you both did, I probably would've been killed."

She was still worried about Stella, that much was certain. However, surely Stella could not have come up with her revenge plan this soon. That must be what the pinkette was worried about; even if it was on a subconscious level.

"Yeah, that must be it," the Japanese brunette told herself.

"Maybe you're just subconsciously fearful that she's already thought up of a revenge plan," she said aloud with a nod of confirmation, though it was mainly to assure herself that that was what the pinkette was fretting over, "But don't worry, I highly doubt she's already got a plan in place already."

"Y-yeah, right, that must be it," Euphemia said with a nod, though she was still unsure.

She did not know why, but something was definitely not right and she highly doubted that it had anything to do with Stella. No matter how hard she tried to dismiss it and tell herself that Yumi was probably right, part of her mind just would not let it lie. However, she knew that telling Yumi that she doubted that it was Stella would do no good and probably lead to an argument. Looking up at Blair in the top bunk, the pinkette could see that she had already fallen asleep and was out like a light and no doubt, arguing with Yumi would probably just wake her up, so she decided to drop it so as not to disturb the bluenette.

"Yeah, Yumi's probably right," she said to herself with a nod, "Maybe I'm more worried about Stella than I'd like to admit. After all, I did tell her that she would have to kill me to get rid of me."

Yeah, that was it, not only was she afraid that Stella did indeed already have her next plan lined up; she was also afraid that Stella may very well decided to take her statement about having to kill her to get rid of her to heart and really kill her. She knew very well that had she and Zukasu had not shown up that night Yumi had inadvertently walked into the teal-haired girl's trap then Stella would have definitely killed her if she had managed to catch up with her and she did not doubt that Stella would try to kill her either despite her dismissals of the issue. Yeah, that was it, it had to be. That's why she was so worried.

However, as she climbed into her bed and lay down, part of her just refused to let the notion go and even telling herself that it was Stella seemed to only heighten the feeling that something was indeed not right and that she was lying to herself in a feign attempt to dismiss it. Deciding that it must be because she was tired, she decided to wait until the next day… or rather earlier in the day when everyone was up to investigate. Unfortunately for her, the feeling just refused to go away and kept nagging her mind, which kept her awake.


Meanwhile in the Ra Yellow Boys' Dorm, James and Terrance were both fast asleep. Terrance had fallen asleep relatively quickly, but James had spent most of the time awake worrying about Abigail as he kept telling himself that they should never have left her on her own and no matter how much he tried to let Terrance's reassurances that his sister would be alright calm his mind, part of him just outright refused to let the issue lie. Like Euphemia, he was currently plagued with the notion that something was not right, but unlike Euphemia, he had a fair idea that it had something to do with Abigail. However, somehow, despite his worry over the bespectacled redhead, sleep had managed claim him; though neither he nor Terrance realised that Abigail had not returned to her dorm and was at the mercy of an intruder who was planning on using her as a bargaining chip in order to get enrolled in the Academy.


Preview of next chapter

Abigail wakes up and is shocked to find her hands tied behind her back at the wrists and her legs tied together at the ankles and that she's in a tent.

"Hey, just what is this?" Abigail demands furiously.

"My, my, you're so cranky all of a sudden," Amanda says in a creepily happy tone, "You really should learn to calm down."

"Calm down!" Abigail snaps furiously, "I'm gonna freakin' kill you when I get free!"

Amanda, who is also in the tent brushing her hair notices that Abigail's awake before she returns Abigail's glasses to her by putting them on her and then proceeds to explain herself.

"I'm your bargaining chip for getting you enrolled in Duel Academy?" Abigail said in disbelief, "That plan's just lame. You do realise that Duel Academy's more likely to call the police, don't you?"

"They'll have no choice but to enrol me because if they don't I'll just keep you as my prisoner," Amanda says.

"I'm just one person and as they say; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," Abigail counters, "And what makes you think that you'll get away with this? How will you deal with the police?"

"I'm not scared of the cops; I have a wealthy father," Amanda says, though her tone is filled with bitterness at mentioning her father, "Though I'd rather not have to rely on his help. So, I'll just have to think of a plan should the police choose to get in my way."

Meanwhile, in Doctor Crowler's classroom, the class is shown a presentation of different Duel Monsters cards, which highlights the different effects in the game, but somehow a really embarrassing photograph of Dr Crowler in his birthday suit is shown, causing the entire class's eyes to widen in shock.

"My eyes, they burn!" someone yells.

"Oh my, so he really is a guy," Zukasu says, still in shock.

Dr Crowler hurriedly moves onto the next slide, feeling rather embarrassed and humiliated.

"Oh my, how'd that get in there…?" Dr Crowler says as he calms down, "Never mind, let's never speak of this again."

Euphemia was the only student who did not see the embarrassing photo as she had nodded off, but once Yumi tell her what happened, she surprisingly stands up for Dr Crowler.

However, upon calming down, she notices that Abigail's absent.

"I can't believe those people; it's not Dr Crowler's fault, he didn't ask to look like that," Euphemia fumes before noticing Abigail's absence, "Gee, I wonder where Abigail is."

"I don't know," Alicia says in a rather distressed tone, "She never came back to the dorm last night."

"What!" James says in alarm.

After class, Euphemia confronts Terrance and James about Abigail's absence as Alicia comes and tell them that she never returned the previous night.

"Oh boy, this is bad," Terrance says in alarm as he worries over what could have happened to his sister.

"I hate to say, "I told you so"," James says simply.

"Shut it!" Terrance warns threateningly.

With no choice, Terrance and James explains what happened the previous night. However, the Headmistress of the Ra Girls' Dorm, Reina Shizuki overhears and decides to help.

"Yes, that is strange, I never saw her at breakfast this morning," Reina says in a worried tone, "Tell you what, why don't we go and look for her? I'll take the wrap for why you all missed your classes."

"You'd really do that, Professor Shizuki?" Euphemia asks curiously.

"Of course, Miss Richardson is a Ra Yellow and therefore under my care," Reina replies.

So Euphemia, Yumi, James, Terrance, Alicia and Reina all go and look for Abigail.

After a while, they all meet in the forest with no such luck, but fortunately, James notices a tent nearby and they all go to investigate.

"Gee, the J-Man wonders what that could be," James says.

"Maybe Abigail decided to sleep outdoors," Yumi dumbly suggests.

Once they reach the tent, they find Abigail and Terrance goes to free her, but Amanda suddenly jumps out in front of him.

"Sorry, I can't have you doing that," Amanda says simply, "She's my ticket to getting into Duel Academy."

"Say what?" Terrance says in disbelief, "Now see here, that's my sister you have prisoner."

Amanda explains herself to the group, which does not go over too well with Reina, Alicia and Terrance.

"What a lame plan," Terrance says, shaking his head

"Yeah, if you think that the Academy will enrol you just because you kidnapped a student then you're sorely mistaken," Reina says in disgust, "I have half a mind to just go and call the police."

Reina, Terrance, Alicia and James all protest and Amanda says that she'll let Abigail go, so long as one member of the group beats her in a duel.

Euphemia immediately volunteers, but Terrance raises his arm, saying that he'll be the one to duel.

"Sorry, Euphie, but you'll have to sit this one out," Terrance says in a tone of finality, "Abigail's my sister and anyone who messes with my sister has to answer to me."

Amanda lays eyes on Euphie as she volunteers and for some reason gets a strange sense of déjà vu from her, but immediately dismisses it when Terrance announces that he's Abigail's brother.

"So you're her brother, huh?" Amanda said with a hint of excitement, "This ought to be interesting."

"You bet I'm her brother," Terrance says enthusiastically, "And I don't care if you're a girl. I'm gonna make you pay for kidnapping my sister."

"Well then, bring it on," Amanda challenges.

"Be careful, Terry," Abigail warns worryingly, "I've already duelled her and she's no pushover."

"GAME ON!" both Terrance and Amanda yell in unison.

Terrance: 4000 – Amanda: 4000

"You're using a fire-based deck, ha," Amanda scoffs, "Your sister already tried that and failed."

"Well, I'm not my sister, am I?" Terrance says confidently.

Terrance manages to win the duel. However, before Amanda can recover the Academy's Disciplinary Action Squad show up and take her into custody.

"Miss Shizuki called and explained the situation to us," the leader, a woman with brown hair and grey eyes says, "And you'll be detained here until the police come to take you back to the mainland."

"Next time: Academy Intruder part 2," Abigail says, feeling rather excited that she's free, "I told you that your plan was lame Amanda."

Meanwhile, elsewhere in a mansion out in the country, a man sitting on his chair after just having finished having a video conversation with Schneizel is told of Amanda's fate at Duel Academy.


Card of the chapter

Name – Levia-Dragon – Daedalus

Attribute – Water

Type – Sea Serpent/Effect

Level – 7

ATK/DEF – 2600/1500

Info – Send "Umi" of your side of the field to the Graveyard to destroy all cards on the field except this card

"Wow, that Amanda's Water-Theme deck reminds me of the time I duelled that crazy admiral guy," Jaden says, "Okay he sacrificed Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness to summon Levia-Dragon – Daedalus."

"Yeah, I know," the author says, "Makes the Orca summon a total waste, doesn't it?"

"Yep, though I'm surprised that this chapter's card is not Water Minotaur, which I can honestly say is a water-variant of Fire-Attribute monster, Gorlag, which Alister of Yu-Gi-Oh's Doma Arc used in his first duel with Kaiba," Jaden points out.

"Yeah, I know, but Levia-Dragon – Daedalus won Amanda the duel, so that's why it's up instead of Water Minotaur," the author explains.


Author's Notes – Another chapter done. Sorry for the delay. I was going to start on the chapter immediately after the Christmas and New Year celebrations were out of the way, but I ended up getting distracted. Anyway, this chapter took my more than a week to write, so I hope it's worth the wait. Also, when referring to the fact that Abigail wears glasses, I originally referred to her as the speckled girl, but I was unsure if that was right and felt that it may be interpreted as a derogatory insult, so I asked my dad and he told me that the term was bespectacled, so I used the find and replace feature to correct it and I realise that I may have used the "speckled" term in previous chapters. I do apologise if I've caused anyone any offence. That was not my intention. Anyway, hopefully it won't be long until the next chapter is out. Also, reading up on the Code Geass wiki article on the Geass Order, according to that, it proposed that the Chinese Federation base was somewhere in the Tengger Desert in Mongolia, so I decided to use that as the location.