Chapter 10: Stained Pride
Hiniku Kashikoi woke up. At first, it looked like a normal morning, as she went downstairs, where her parents were waiting for her.
"Ah, good morning, Honey!" her father greeted her, using the nickname she couldn't stand. He wanted to bother her, in order to spark a reaction in her, and he succeeded.
"Don't call me like that." she scowled in response. It wasn't the first time her parents called her attention with that name in order to purposely irk her.
"Good, you're fully awake!" her mother observed, with a smile "Come, breakfast is ready!".
She sat with her parents and had breakfast. However, perhaps it would have been better if they hadn't used their trick to fully wake up her daughter, because memories of the nightmare that the night before had been began creeping up in her mind and surfacing on her head.
Hiniku had managed to defend herself from her opponent's assault. She was left with 3000 Life Points, since she had managed to defend herself from Unzari's monsters with her Angels. However, that came at the cost of leaving her side of the Field empty and, as a result of her attacks, her opponent had four snake tokens, with 600 Attack and 800 Defense each. The short girl knew all too well that a wrong move could spell her downfall. Also, the snake girl had activated Misty Jungle, preventing her from using more Chants.
She drew her card and recovered. She rested her ruler, gaining her seventh Light Stone, then she proceeded to get her strategy underway.
"I rest two Light Stones to use Trix's effect!" She decided to try destroying one of her tokens before doing anything else. The Jester Cat began to glow bright yellow, and its roulette activated, lighting all the cards on the Field, one after another. The light slowed down on Unzari's side of the Field, then one of her Tokens got destroyed, just as she had hoped.
"Yes!" she cheered. However, Viper looked hardly bothered. Hiniku proceeded to the second part of her strategy.
"I then rest two Light Stones to use Somniferous Spell Sage's ability on himself!" Unzari's interest peaked, despite her face maintaining its usual lazy expression. In fact, Hiniku had checked her cards with Akashic Archives during her previous turn, so she knew exactly which monster would be summoned by the ability. She picked the card from her deck.
"Divine Queen, Ruler of Heaven!" The radiant woman appeared on the Field. It could attack right away, since it was summoned by the Spell Sage.
"I'm not through yet! I equip her with Silver Star Bow, raising her Attack by 400 Points!" With the Armor, the Divine Queen's attack rose to 1400 and she gained Pierce.
"Your tokens are too weak to block her! Go!" The being of light extended her arms and fired a burst of yellow light to Viper's table, reducing her Life Points to 2000. The goth-dressed girl shielded her eyes from the blinding light of attack, but, when she lowered them after her Life Points went down, Hiniku saw that her bored expression hadn't changed in the slightest.
"Why the hell is she keeping that face?" Hiniku thought "She doesn't even care! She's seriously creeping me out..." However, she concealed her agitation as best as she could. She had managed to deal significant damage to her opponent, but she had run out of options, so she had no choice but to pass the turn to her opponent.
"Your move..."
"This is the end, Hiniku-san." Unzari calmly said as she drew and recovered. "To think I was getting my hopes up here... I perform my Ruler's Judgement, paying two Wind wills and a Darkness will!" In a flash of green light, the woman shed her Ruler form and transformed, stepping forward with elegance and entering the Field, followed by the snakes slithering at her feet.
"May the world squirm in terror before you! Behold! Semiramis, Queen of Deception!" The woman had a malicious look in her eyes and her mouth was curved upwards in an unsettling smirk, the same smirk creeping its way on Unzari's face. Hiniku was feeling nervous, even though there was no trace of fright on her face, which appeared as calm and collected as usual.
"Since you've attacked with your only monster in your turn, you're wide open! I attack with my token!" Three white snakes lunged towards Hiniku's table as their fangs began shining of a green colour. They bit at her table, making her Life Points go down to 2600. As the snakes got back at their previous position, more of them appeared on Viper's side of the Field, forming a vicious swarm. Hiniku's eyes widened in horror.
"While Kolbera summoned one token every time a monster of mine would attack or defend, Semiramis will summon two tokens instead!" Unzari explained, clearly enjoying the look on her opponent's face "I continue attacking with my remaining tokens!" The white snakes swarmed Hiniku's table, as her Life Points went down to 1800, then to 600. She barely survived the attack, but Unzari was far from done. She still had one Resonator recovered and ready to attack: the Dervish Count.
"Dervish Count! Take the snake's strength and finish her off!" The caped undead weaved its arms as a deep black mist consumed one of the snake tokens, then, as its arms moved towards Hiniku's table, the blackness struck it with great strength, makingHiniku fall back onto her ass from the shock. She could only watch hopelessly as her Life Points went down to 0 and the cobblestone tables disappeared, along with the illusions projected by them.
"Now that was disappointing, Honey-san." Unzari commented "Was that all you had got? Were you really thinking that fighting me would have been as easy as facing Soaku or Mazui?" Her voice had regained its usual bored tone. However, Hiniku was hardly paying attention to her words. She was deeply shaken by the loss she just suffered, her eyes wide open in disbelief and shock. Her classmates were no less stupefied.
"What the hell did just happen?" a thunderstruck Baka asked.
"Hiniku-san just lost…?" Ren's answer was more of a question, expressing his disbelief. Even if he didn't know the game, that fact was easy enough to understand for him.Tonma was just shaking in utter terror, incapable of letting out a sound.
"Hey, are you even listening to me?" Unzari inquired, still in her typical bored tone. "Don't tell me you have never lost a duel before. That's just borderline ridiculous. Then, perhaps you did expect me to be as much of a wimp as those two..." Hiniku still hadn't recovered herself from the shock of what was actually the first loss she ever experienced in her life.
"H-Honey… s-san?" Tonma feebly attempted to call her, with a voice full of fright.
"Hiniku-san! Are you alright?" Ren tried to call her as well, stronger than his classmate did, enough to make Hiniku recollect herself, even if just a little, just enough to notice the goth girl moving her arm as if she was charging a blow.
"Well then, if you don't have anything to say to that, just get lost already!" she said as she swiftly moved her hand right in front of Hiniku's stomach, without hitting it. A dark wave was released from her hand, investing the group of teens and knocking them back to the entrance of the compound, where they had come from.
With the group of teens out of her sight, the goth girl eerily turned to one of the 500 gimps at her disposal, inspecting it with her eyes. The hunched creature just stared back, breathing loudly, its eyes glowing green through its gas mask.
"What's with that look?" she said, even though she knew that the gimp would have never understood her taunt.
"True. I could have just killed them, but what thrill would I gain from that? The others may get pleasure from killing, as for me, it only gets me bored..." she mused as she walked back and forth in front of the gimps. "Besides, Honey-san still has managed to beat Soaku and Mazui, so none of us can lay a finger on her by direct order from The Demon…" She stopped in her tracks as she heard a faint sound of footsteps from behind the wall of gimps. It was Mazui, carrying some peculiar looking machines.
"Un-err, Viper, I've finished collecting all the technology." he notified to his teammate, making sure to call her by the name she had chosen for herself.
"Good. Now head to the next site." she replied "Soaku and I will follow shortly once we're done here."
"Your wish is my command." he said, with a slight bow, as he obeyed, moving to an alternative way out of the compound, probably an emergency exit of some sort. As he moved away, Unzari rose an arm above her head as a small smirk appeared on her face, and then she snapped her fingers.
"Soaku. You know what to do."
Soaku, who had gotten back in one of the warehouses nearby and was standing in there at attention, chuckled darkly as soon as she saw Viper snap her fingers, which was her signal to act. She swiftly took a can of gasoline and spread it on the floor, then, with a devilish grin on her face, she moved her hand near to the liquid and it burned, with no need of external sources of heat. She began chuckling once again, and, as she flailed her arms around, burning other particularly flammable spots of the building solely by extending her hand towards it, her cackle became an insane laughter which could be heard even from where Hiniku and her classmates winded up in.
As the building burnt down, Unzari moved in the direction Mazui followed before, and the gimps retreated. Hiniku and her classmates were watching, but the short girl's mind was still bent on her utter destruction at the hands of Unzari. Tonma was shaking uncontrollably, in terror.
"Wh-What should we do now?" she whimpered, with her voice shaking from fright. In that moment, Hiniku's expression began showing signs of anger at her loss. She quickly got back on her feet and began to walk in the direction she had come from before.
"Hiniku-san, where are you going?" Ren asked her.
"Leave me alone!" she shouted over her shoulder, making her anger and frustration clear to the boy, who was taken aback by her tone. "I'm going home." she sped up her steps and headed back home.
"Hinuku-san..." Ren sighed. He had never seen her lose before, also given the fact that he had seen her play very seldom, besides that time at the public venue when she had beaten him. Still, one thing was crystal clear to him.
"She definitely didn't take that one well..." he thought. It was then that the three remaining teens heard sirens in a distance.
"S-Sirens?" Tonma whimpered.
"Looks like the incident just got out..." Ren mused.
"Oh no!" Baka suddenly burst out, scared "We've gotta get out of here, or else, they'll think we're the culprits." He spat out, not realizing that what he had said made little to no sense.
"Shut up, Baka!" Ren shouted to him, making him almost fall back from fright, and then hang his head in shame.
"Well, the idiot is right about one thing..." he then continued. "It's best for us to head home and call it a day, for now, in order to not get into more trouble than we already did tonight..." That was something everyone could agree on. As the sound of the sirens became louder and louder, Soaku's insane laughter eventually ceased.
Hiniku had already arrived home, made her way over the fence, climbed on the Jacaranda tree near her house and entered her room through the window. As soon as she got in, she just got in her pajamas and threw herself on the bed, trying to force herself to sleep, as if she wanted what happened just then to be nothing more than a bad dream.
"H-How..." That thought was fixated on her mind, until she fell asleep.
As Hiniku recalled those events, a shadow appeared on her face, and her hands clenched in fists.
"Huh? Is something the matter, Hiniku?" Her mother called.
"No, it's nothing..." She replied. She didn't want her parents to know about the humiliation she had suffered the night before. Not to mention that she had sneaked out of the house in late night. They would have definitely scolded her if they knew. And getting reminded of her defeat was the last thing she wanted in that moment.
However, her tone didn't really convince her parents.
"That didn't sound like nothing..." her father was the first one to object.
"I told you it is!" Her tone of voice raised irritably as she replied.
"Young lady!" Her mother scolded "What has gotten into you?" The short girl shot up on her feet in frustration.
"Nothing." she tartly replied. "I didn't sleep well, okay? Just leave me be." She then moved back upstairs, in her room. As she went off, her parents gave each other a meaningful glance, wondering what was the matter...
After entering her room and slamming the door closed, Hiniku sat on her bed. Her head hung, the thought of her defeat fixated in her mind…
Not wanting to hear anyone, she turned off her mobile phone. Her eyes crossed the room, before falling on a small box on her desk. It was her deck, her prized deck that had guided her to many victories before… that happened…
"I've played with those cards since I was a child… I've won so many games with those..." The pleasant memories she had of that deck began to flow in her mind… Only to leave the place to the bitter memories of the night before…
"How… How could I lose? Why now, of all times…? I can't believe I lost..."
Her clenched fists were gripping the bed at the frustration the girl was feeling… At her stained pride...
It was then that it dawned on her… It was then that she recalled what she herself had said to her classmate that very night…
"I've been into Force of Will for a long time, but, without joining official tournaments, I've kept my skills on the down-low, until now..."
She remembered that she had to face people that had been to tournaments. True, according to Ryuuji, they were cheaters, so they might not have been much of a hassle to begin with (which was the case with Soaku and Mazui), but still, all of them were ahead of her.
"Oh… I'm a complete dumbass! Why didn't I think about it earlier?" she thought as she slapped her hand on her forehead. She should have expected such a thing to happen! It was out of luck that her prized tactics had triumphed over the screaming bitch and the dorky suited-man, but luck eventually runs out…
Knowing what she had to do, she went to her laptop and turned it on. She had to search for official tournaments in town. Suddenly, she heard a knock at her door.
"Hiniku? Can I come in?" her mother asked from behind the door. Hiniku sighed in response, then she decided to let her in.
"Yes." she answered. Her tone was lighter than before, but still, not the lightest. Her mother entered the room and looked at her.
"Is something wrong?" she asked seriously, concern written all over her face "Don't try dodging the question. You're worrying me, you know that?"
"I don't mean to, mom." she replied in a sigh. "… I lost a game..."
Her mother was taken by surprise by her daughter's answer. So much for a lost game? Isn't that a bit of overreacting? However, the surprise wore off as she remembered that her daughter was incredibly proud and that she had never lost a match before.
"Well, why don't you try again and do your best, then?" she encouraged her daughter, with a smile.
"Am planning to do it." she replied, matter-of-factly. "I'm searching for tournaments today."
"Ok." her mother said, relief flooding her face. "Tell me when you've found one! I wanna know what my honey shortcake is planning!"
"Stop it!" she snapped, but it wasn't as hard as before. It was just her usual reaction at her parents' teasing. Her mother chuckled, glad to see her daughter go back to her usual self, and left the room. However, Hiniku hadn't told her everything. She couldn't tell her that she had sneaked out of the house at late night. She knew she'd make her situation worse if she did, so she decided that it was best to keep her mouth shut about it.
Meanwhile, Ren was staring at the screen of his phone. He had been trying to call her, but what he heard was the same every time.
"Hello. Hiniku Kashikoi here. Please leave a message."
He couldn't contact her. He sighed, wondering how she was doing. Definitely not well, given what happened the night before… He received a message. For a split-second, he hoped that it was Hiniku responding, but the hope vanished when he saw it was Tonma.
"Good morning, Ren-kun… Do you happen to know how's Honey-san? I can't call her..." The muscled boy replied quickly
"Same here. I tried to contact her, but I'm getting no answer..."
"I hope she's fine..." was Tonma's reply to that text, to which Ren totally agreed.
"Yeah, me too..."
He had just sent the text when a sound from his TV caught his attention. An online gaming session was about to start.