Duel 8 – The "Old" World
meh
[Light from a clear blue late September day seeps in through the windows into an empty classroom. Maya sits on a desk, holding a small cheap camera with one arm. For a whole minute she sits completely still, eyes downcast. Finally she looks up and speaks.]
So… This is my first video, ever. I mean, I would post this on the Dueling Network but the Shining Crusaders shut down all our accounts, so I will be using Daily Motion instead. I might as well introduce myself. My name is Marina but you can call me Maya. I love to play and compose music, especially Classical style music. I like nature, getting away from people to be at peace, the sunrise. I also love books, like history and philosophy. My room has piles of them.
Um… I consider myself a shy person. I like to do my own thing. I often brood about certain ideas. I'm perfectionistic and a control freak but I can be quirky and energetic. I like being sarcastic. I'm 5'5'', very thin. Do I drink/smoke? Yes. I don't date, I don't believe in relationships. I don't have a zodiac sign, I don't believe in astrology. I don't believe in anything really. Doubt and uncertainty are natural and logical to me. I don't find it easy to accept ideas or trust people without good reasons to. [She shrugs.]
I'm also a duelist and I wish I could duel right now but unfortunately I lost my deck. Yeah… I forgot to take it out before I chucked it at that security guard…To be honest I almost want to quit. The Shining Crusaders – they are the biggest team in New York in case you didn't know – make the game into a weird cult. I hardly began playing and already I stepped into this subculture with rules I knew nothing about. They seriously think a children's show is real, that all the events actually happened. They take it as literal truth and have built all these rules around it.
Like… there is this idea of being a true duelist, whatever that means. And if you don't follow their narrow road of virtues than you are not a true duelist. But how can I even follow it? I try to be a good person. I work to support father. I get good grades. I protect my friends like JC. Shouldn't that make me a true duelist? I don't know what a true duelist is, just what it's not. And what it's not is… [She raises her hand, exasperated.] Anything the Shining Crusaders decide it's not. To be a true duelist you have to do what they say and fit in how they think the world should be. But I can't do that.
And maybe I am being oversensitive or too PC but I don't like the 'demographics' of what I've seen so far. I'm not white and I don't come from here. Father is Serbian hence my name but mother was a black Muslim. And I'm female, so I'm pretty much as 'abnormal' as I can be. Every opponent my friends and me faced so far was a white man. Sure there's CrystaalCristy but she's their token. And as long as she accepts being a token – actually, I doubt she'll ever be called a true duelist.
And what's with everyone using a chaos or monarch deck. It's not just that it's the only deck everyone uses but it's the only deck that works. If you want to duel in the big leagues you use chaos or monarchs. I only won against VolcanoMan by his own stupidity. And they have his whole idea of decks you can and can't use. Like when I was buying my deck there were commercials of women dueling with 'girl decks' like angels, harpies, and amazons. But I didn't want a girl deck so I got a water deck and now it's lost. My friends JC and Yukio talked the other day of how it was 'black' to use a beast deck and 'Asian' to use machines. Zombies, fiends, and anything 'weird' is off limits. I know. I saw a kid got beat up for it. They think Bakura is Satan. It's sick and stupid. All of it.
I really sometimes wonder if I came from another planet. None of the rules of the dueling world makes sense. One guy said to me 'You see the world around you and you reject it.' Yes I reject it because it's shallow and disgusting. What I see around are all of these tropes, these catchy, empty truisms. Everything I just talked about the dueling world and all the sermons I've heard from Phoenix are tropes. And it's infantile. Living by these tropes is like being a child all your life, doing whatever the Shining Crusaders tell you. I am born, I go to school, I go to work, I get married, I have kids, I retire, I die. I go to church, I obey my boss, and I get wasted during the weekends. I am free.
[Maya sighs deeply and heads over to a barred window. She points her camera at it, fixing the lens through it at the steel valley of buildings.]
The dueling world is a giant prison. It's one of the joys of being me I guess. I'm sorry for everything before. I don't know what's wrong with me. I guess I'm destined to be an outcast, to be the bad guy, to never fit in. Me, JC, Yukio, Jolene, us comrades. I'm… wrong. About everything. But I'd rather be wrong than right. I'm not making any sense any more.
Maya and Jolene sat at the top of the school building, smoking some cigs. They weren't allowed up there but they didn't care. Ever since Maya stole the school keys they copied them and had access to every room of the building. Maya inhaled the smoke from her cig deeply like it was a soothing medicine and exhaled. The smoke trailed up and away to the air above. It was chilly but sunny and the sky was a cloudless endless deep sea of blue. Maya wished she could fly.
"How's life cher?" Jolene asked.
"I'm in Hell, I mean high school. I work minimum wage, the Shining Crusaders nearly brainwashed us and I lost my deck."
"Stop trying to put a positive spin on its."
Maya chuckled. "How's your little bro?"
"You mean Chip? He's doing great. He learned the difference between a fact and an opinion in kindergarten today. He also learned how important it is think of other people's feelings."
"You know most grown ups still can't do that."
"A la JC. Now I'm really depressed."
"I thought I was putting a positive spin on things."
"I take it back. Do you have literature and history for today?"
Maya produced the literature and history homework due today for Jolene to copy. Jolene in turn produced math and physics homework for Maya to copy. A loud hollow knocking rang from the metal door. Four knocks then a pause… four knocks then a pause… Jolene rushed to open the door. It was Yukio.
"Heyyy!" Jolene hugged and kissed him. "How've you been?"
"Fine Jolene, fine. I thought I could bring over my band to Team Dark Duelists. It would be cool."
"Really? Awesome!"
"Yeah, I know. It'll be pretty cool once it gets set up. We could use the band to get more people on the team and our songs could critique the system. They don't call me Voltaire for nothing."
"I'm sure you'll do great." Jolene pecked him on the cheek. "Say hi Maya."
"No."
"You're so weird."
The couple sat down. "What are you reading Maya?" Yukio asked politely.
Maya showed him the cover. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But Yukio could see the inside. The pages were covered with walls of hieroglyphic underlines and circles, sentences written around the pages and some musical notes. "Cool. JC has that book too."
"Yup. Too bad he doesn't actually read it."
Jolene hugged and cuddled next to Yukio. Maya stuck her face in her book even though she was ready to write some ideas down. She was ready to throw up on the page. Why couldn't people keep it to themselves?
"So anyway JC's sick so he wants us minions work out a plan to attack the Shining Crusaders while he's out. So far I can't think of anything to do."
"So you're going to women for advise? Isn't that heresy to him?"
"It's heresy to Nietzsche."
"So why does he go talk to old women?"
"Whatever". Yukio waved off. "But we need to come up with something. But the Shining Crusaders are so powerful. You know the duel academy they turned into a megachurch? That is just one across all of America. Everything they say goes around here. They are everywhere. How do we even come to stopping them?"
"Well, we could recruit other teams if there are any." Jolene suggested. "Many are just branches of the Shining Crusaders now, but I'm sure there are some who are willing to join our cause."
"Which I tried. A few teams said yes like Team 42, Team Black Bloc, Team Five Pillars, Team Green…"
"But these teams are so small in numbers. They're like us. They have some pretty good duelists but our problem is simple numbers. How can we match that? We don't have a chance."
"Then we will create a chance." Maya suddenly interjected. "We will level the playing. What make the Shining Crusaders so formidable are their numbers and resources. I can't judge for every Crusader but from what I've seen from VolcanoMan the average Crusader is weak. Sure, he uses game breaking decks with expensive cards we could never hope to get but he is only capable of following a rulebook whether it is a simple strategy or Phoenix's dogma.
"What's your point?" Yukio aksed.
"My point is that the average Crusader is a disposable pawn. Losing VolcanoMan meant nothing to Phoenix. If we want to bring the Shining Crusaders down we should attack Phoenix and his band of four at the top. They are the lifeblood of the team. They are the strongest opponents and have the most symbolic significance. The best course of action would be to bring them down to our level. And we do this by forcing them to duel in small areas where their power and influence don't mean anything. We grab on to a small space and we hold on to it as a fortified position."
Yukio's jaw dropped. "Wow… I'm impressed. That's ingenuous."
Maya shook her head. "It's not. Leonidas in 300 does that." Maya looked up from her book for the first time. Yukio and Jolene didn't know what she was talking about. "It's a graphic novel of the 300 Spartans taking on a whole Persian army. I think a movie might come out soon. VolcanoMan would never stop referencing it."
"That's great, but where do we set up our base of operations may I ask?"
Maya shrugged. "I don't know."
"Maybe we can set it up near our headquarters." Jolene suggested. "You know, JC's basement."
Yukio shook his shaggy black head. "No. It's too close to where we keep all our stuff. Even if it's hard to find, if it is found we will lose everything. But at the same time, if we set a new base we're going to have to move everything with us. We're in a nice middle-class section. We might as well keep it. In particular I think we should make FDR Drive our stronghold. It's quite out of the picture. It's a good place for one of Phoenix's cronies to feel all alone."
"But there is one more issue, sweety." Jolene said. "All our accounts are deleted. We still need to publicize our duels to show the dueling world how we humiliate them. Otherwise, they can just spin the story and claim it never happened."
Maya took out her camera. "Daily Motion?"
Jolene squinted, but Maya could see the laughter in her eyes. "Where did you steal that?"
"From the computer lab."
Yukio shook his head. "You're both crazy. I'm outta' here." He kissed Jolene before leaving.
Maya buried herself back in her book. "You're an uninteresting case. Whenever you're with your boyfriend you turn into goop."
"You're not very interesting either." Jolene retorted. "You're too scared to get into a relationship so you become a loathsome prude who pretends to know better."
Maya buried her face deeper into her book.
"Don't make that nasty face at me!"
The next day JC was back in spirits. Predictably he announced his return like the Terminator and demanded a session in his "headquarters" after school. Yukio elaborated yesterday's plan.
JC stroked his scraggly beard. "Hmm… Excellent! I like the way you think Yukio. You have the heart of a lion and the eyes of an eagle. There's just one problem. YOU, MAYA! Where's your deck?"
"I lost it." Maya sheepishly responded.
"What kind of duelist loses their deck?" JC exasperated, the whole basement ringing with his loud voice. "I swear I'm going to make a vlog about this on. Well, no matter. We all need to revamp our decks a bit if we're going to compete against all those generic monarch decks. We will need to find effective strategies based on our own unique decks."
Now it was Yukio's turn to scratch his goatee. "Hmm… Yeah. That'll be a problem. Monarchs are the most effective decks out there. We can use some anti-monarch support but other than that we're just going to have to find a bunch of new cards and swing at the dark. Maya, were you going to say something?"
"Huh? Oh, I guess I was. There are other mainstream decks out there, like chaos and lightsworn. We have to fight against those too. I haven't seen many chaos decks. Maybe it's because the cards are so expensive only the upper classes can use them. And we might face some Yata."
Everyone groaned. "When will that bird die already!"
Maya couldn't blame them.
"Anyway!" JC interjected. "I have a plan. Yukio and me will pick on the weakest link, CrystaalCristy, and isolate her by luring her to our little area. Then we have Jolene take her own in a nice catfight."
"We're dueling, JC, not shooting porn." Maya reminded.
"I know what I'm talking about! Don't lambast me as some male pig, you condescending feminazi. Because of that, you and Jolene do the dirty work. You do what Maya does best, you two go steal all the cards you can find. Some gear like duel disks will be great too."
"Since you and Yukio are going to lure CrystaalCristy to her demise why don't one of you duel her. I promise you won't get cooties."
"BECAUSE SHUT UP! THAT'S WHY! Besides…" A wicked grin came on his face. "I need you to steal stuff anyway. We'll use it as bait."
"I guess this wraps it up." Yukio said. "I gotta' go practice."
"I gotta' pick Chip up." Jolene left.
"I gotta' work. Then cook for my dad so he doesn't kill me." Maya left.
JC stood all alone in his basement. Even though the cheap overhead lights flashed a blaring white the room felt far darker than ever before. Was any of this even worth it? JC didn't know what he was doing. He doubted any of the others knew what they were doing also. There was a burning in his chest, a fire of passion and anger and frustration and it had to go somewhere. Whether it was ranting passionately in a video or dueling some goon of the system or creating his little revolution he had to do it. There was nothing else he could think of doing. Everything else seemed so empty.
