Chapter 10

DECEMBER 19; 10:00 AM

Anya

Well, now I knew the range of each of my kinesis students. Tristan could lift up to twenty things at once, and he couldn't lift himself or Tea. I'd already explained to them that lifting themselves meant they could lift something heavier than themselves easily. Tea could move thirty-five things at once, but lifting herself was out of the question. She could lift Ryo, though. Joey could lift himself, though the first time he tried sent him into the ceiling, and he could move his entire deck, however many that constitutes. Yugi could pretend to fly, and he could lift Joey and move all the cards in his deck (and Joey's deck) at once! Seto…wouldn't practice. Or, well, he would – he'd throw Joey into the wall whenever he wanted him to shut up. But that doesn't count as lifting anything. I finally made him practice yesterday, and he proved he could move his whole deck, and redecorate his room, complete with moving his bed to a different wall.

All at the same time.

Anyway, yesterday was also when I got Yugi, Joey, Seto and Ryo on their top level of telepathy, and they'd taken to it with relief.

Today, I told them, "We'll be studying how to summon monsters. Only Yugi, Joey, Mai, and Seto have this particular power. We'll be studying this in the arena in half an hour. Everyone else, continue practicing your other powers."

Seto looked very happy with that news.

ARENA; 10:35 AM

I was standing almost in the center of the arena with Yugi and Seto in front of me. Joey and Mai were both late.

"Can't we just start without them?" Seto asked, sounding extremely annoyed.

"I'd rather not repeat myself in explanations. Besides, calling them is simple enough," I answered, closing my eyes and throwing my mind into finding them.

I found their auras. Oh, good. They're together. Joey? Mai? I asked, gently tapping against their minds.

Passion. Raw, wild, unbridled passion. Good lord, what were they doing during allotted class time?!

Um, guys? I hate to interrupt, but you need to be at the arena five minutes ago.

Panic from Joey, and a sense of rushing. Whew. At least they were coming.

I opened my eyes. "They're coming."

"What's the matter?" Yugi asked. "Your face is all red."

"It's nothing." I fought to get my body back under control.

Then the culprits came dashing in. "Made it!" Joey yelled as he fell on Yugi.

"I ought to give you both detention," I said, my voice going cold. "The only reason I'm not is because you actually managed to pass a test that you yourselves set."

"Great," Mai said, although the look in her eyes betrayed that she didn't know what I was talking about.

"Your little game in that room. I had no idea you were doing that, and passion is the hardest emotion to keep behind shields." I kept Yugi and Seto from hearing that. There are things that need to be kept private.

"Oh." Both had the good grace to blush.

"Now if we can get to the lesson? Ah…" I thought. How to explain the monster-summoning process? They were used to their own way. And in that might lie the answer.

I stormed over to Yugi and set my hand squarely on his head. "Yugi, give me a crash course in Duel Monsters summoning."

"Kaiba's the one to ask," he protested, "he made the equipment."

"I'm interested in the rules, Yugi."

"Oh." Yugi thought a moment, and then sent a volley of images and concepts into my head. There are two different types of monster summons: normal summons and special summons. One normal summons can be done per turn and just consists of placing the monster card in question on the field, although anything higher than level 4 needs tributes. Special summons requires magic cards, and some monsters can only be summoned by a special summons. Those monsters are fusion monsters – which require the Polymerization magic card and the monsters needed to build them – and ritual monsters, which need specific ritual magic cards and usually require some form of tribute.

I took my hand off Yugi's head and stepped back. "Okay, first of all, ritual-summon monsters really do need a ritual here."

Yugi nodded as if he expected nothing less.

"Second, I won't be covering fusion or special summon monsters in this class."

Yugi hesitated for a moment, and then he nodded again.

"We'll specifically be covering normal summon monsters. And I'll tell you right now, you people have an advantage over me in this situation. You have cards that display names."

"You mean you don't?" Mai sounded incredulous.

"No, we don't. The game of Duel Monsters doesn't exist here."

"What?!" Joey and Seto actually spoke at the same time. Then they promptly turned their backs on each other.

"But this is beside the point," I interrupted. "The point is that all you need in order to summon monsters is the right level of focus, the right amount of personal strength, and the name of the monster. There are any number of cheats to get around the power issue, but the important thing is – when you're summoning a really strong monster, or any monster for that matter – to have enough mental strength to where the monster won't turn on you. To start, we'll be summoning low-level monsters. The way to summon such a monster is to focus and say the name. Higher-level monsters require a tribute of a higher amount of strength or another monster, they don't usually stay around for as long, and the wizard often runs into the little problem of controlling it. And Seto," I glanced at him, "dragons are generally not a wise choice for beginners to attempt summoning."

He…sulked. I guess he wanted to summon his precious Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

Joey sulked, too. "Aw man! I wanted to summon my Red-Eyes!"

Yugi closed his eyes. For a second, I thought he was having a headache. Then suddenly, with a pop and a trill, a ball of brown fur with little claw hands and feet and enormous green eyes appeared in front of him! It looked behind it, and with another, happy trill, glided up and rubbed against his head.

"Hey!" he laughed, "Kuriboh, cut that out!"

"Oh yeah," I added, completely deadpan, "did I mention that in this world, summoned monsters are real?"

Seto looked stunned.

About that time, Kuriboh noticed that there were other people in the room. He trilled again, and glided over to each of my students in turn to say hello.

Joey's only reaction was to pat its…head. "Hey there, little guy!"

Mai just smiled, and Seto glared at it.

Then Kuriboh glided quickly over to me and swished through my hair. I couldn't help but smile. "Never seen someone like me before, have you?"

"Can we get on with the lesson, please?" Seto sounded grumpy.

"Certainly, my lord," I said sarcastically, bowing to him, as Kuriboh rushed back over to Yugi and bumped into his chest. I think it was hugging him. "Joey, do you have a monster with a low enough level to summon safely?"

Joey pulled out his deck and flipped through it. "Ah…oh. Um…I don't know."

"What's your problem?" I made his cards glide out of his hand and fan out, the pictures facing me.

"I'm not sure which one I should pick. I mean, my weakest low-level monster's a dragon."

I quickly located it and spun it around again so he could see it. "This one?"

"Yeah."

I gave his deck back and caught that card myself. It was a picture of an orange baby dragon. "Well, I said generally. For a baby like this, though, you could summon it safely. It's more that adult dragons are generally too fierce for beginners to control. If you want to, you can," I finished, sending the card back over to him.

"Okay." He held up the card and said aloud, "Baby Dragon!"

With an audible pop, the little dragonet appeared in front of him. Then it looked over its shoulder at him, squeaked happily, and ran over to bump its head against Joey's stomach.

"Hey, watch it!" Joey laughed as he nearly fell over.

"I think this game of yours gives you more of an advantage than I'd originally thought," I commented.

"What do you mean?" Yugi asked, and Kuriboh agreed with a questioning trill as he let go of Yugi to look at me.

"I think the monsters you're summoning are always tied to their respective cards, and they always know who summons them. The more often an individual summons them, the more they trust the person. And if a monster trusts the person who's summoning them, then it takes less energy for them to summon the monster in question, and less control is needed for them to obey commands."

"Is that why I didn't need to say Kuriboh's name?" Yugi asked, rubbing the fuzzball. The little thing enjoyed that as much as any cat would.

"Hm, yes…though everyone I know needs to say the name to summon the monster. I don't, but…that's beside the point. Mai? Do you have a low-level monster?" Drat! Would I stop getting sidetracked already?!

"Sure!" She flourished a card and announced, "Harpy Lady!"

"I knew it!" Joey yelled as a wild woman with bird talons and wings appeared.

"Hey, sister," Mai said as the lady turned around.

She studied Mai for a minute. Then she made a sweeping bow to her.

"Okay, humor me:" I asked with a grin, "What's so special about this one?"

"Harpy Lady's her trademark monster!" Joey told me, grinning almost as big as I was.

"Anyway," I looked at Seto, "do you have a low-level monster to summon?"

He pulled a card from his deck and showed it to me. It looked like a very weird jester with a scheming eye.

"Keep an 'I'm-the-boss' attitude with that one, Seto. He's a trickster, which means he'll always be looking for some way to take your pride down a notch. Oh, he'll come when you summon him, all right; but without your mental assertion of being his master, he'll attack you for sure."

"I don't think you need to tell him that," Joey muttered from his side of the arena. "If there's one thing you don't need to tell him how to do, it's how to be a boss."

Seto smirked at him and said aloud, "Saagi the Dark Clown!"

The dopey thing appeared in front of him and turned around. All Seto did was cock an eyebrow at it and the clown took a hop backwards and bowed. It kept its eyes on him, though.

Joey left off stroking the Baby Dragon's head to ask, "What if we want to summon more than one monster? What do we do then?"

I used some fine kinesis to make my hair glide up and point at a table against one wall of the arena with a box on it. "In that box is a bunch of magical medallions that are used to give the wearer enough energy to summon multiple monsters. If you want to be able to summon a high-level monster along with more than one lower-level monster, then…" I dropped my hair again and focused for a second, holding my hands in front of me. Technically, I couldn't teleport what I wanted to show them. But what I could do…

A hole appeared in space in front of me, and I reached through, picked up a pocket-sized statue of a phoenix, and pulled it to me, closing the hole as I did.

Mai suddenly said, "Hey, I remember that…"

I grinned at her. "Yeah, it was in my room. This is actually my strongest monster and my closest friend. As a final test, a learning wizard focuses his or her energy, and it condenses into a model of the wizard's…I suppose 'spirit monster' is the closest name."

Yugi and Joey's heads jerked up as though on strings; apparently, they'd heard of spirit monsters before. Mai looked semi-interested, and Seto…well, he was paying attention. I'll call that progress.

"This is a very strong monster, the very strongest monster you can summon, and it doesn't require a tribute of strength or another monster, because technically you've already paid tribute for every time you'd ever summon it in the making of the statue."

"So this is like a special summon?" Yugi asked.

Damn, that kid's sharp! "Yeah. And another thing? This spirit monster basically only exists in one's own soul, so the wizard instinctively knows its name." I held up the statue and announced, "Houou the Rainbow Skylark!"

I felt the power surge through the statue and through me, and Houou formed behind me with a graceful spread of wings.

My students' reactions were priceless: everyone's jaws fell about a foot each, and even the monsters looked stunned!

"Pretty sweet, huh?" I grinned at them.

Amazingly, Seto got his voice back first, and he didn't sound sarcastic! "Houou has your eyes!"

"Really? I never noticed. It doesn't surprise me though, since she's my spirit monster. Just to warn you all, your spirit monster might not be any monster from your card game. And, it instinctively knows if it's in danger of being destroyed, so it retreats back into the statue to avoid that. It can take any number of hits before that point, though. In a sense, its attack and defense points are off all of your charts."

Houou looked around at all of them, studying them. Thanks to my link with her, she knew that this wasn't a fight; I was just displaying her for educational purposes. I could almost see her smirk. Don't ask how she could smirk with a beak; she just can, I've seen her do it.

"We won't be forming your statues until a later class, or sooner if the darkness doesn't give us leisure time. I'll warn all of you, forming the statue takes all your energy, so making it before an emergency cuts off all other activity for at least a day," I added as Houou faded down to a glowing ball and flew back into the statue.

They recovered from the shock, and then I instructed them for a little longer in sending their summoned monsters back to their world, and summoning them again, until they were all exhausted.

I was a little worried while they were leaving, though. I'd felt Otieno's presence at the door to the arena, and he didn't have any business being here. Why was he so interested in my teaching?

Or did I already know somehow?

SETO'S ROOM; 1:20 PM

Seto

I escaped as soon as I could after lunch. I just couldn't stand to be around them anymore. And besides, I really couldn't stand to even look at Anya.

Not that she was terrible to look at, but she dragged me away from my company and away from Mokuba when Christmas was nearly right on top of all of us!

Then I heard a strange sound behind me, followed by Anya's voice. "All right, what's the problem?"

I looked over my shoulder, not daring to credit what I'd heard. Sure enough, there she was, standing just in front of the door! But I'd locked the door!

"How'd you get in here?" I asked.

"That's classified," she answered, walking over and sitting on the end of my bed. We both sat there for about a minute, just looking at each other. Then she sighed. "Compromise. I tell you how I got in here, and you tell me what the problem is."

I thought about that. Then I nodded. "You first."

A wry smile quirked up at the corner of her mouth. "You do realize that the right amount of focus from a kinetic can allow a person to shift their molecules right through solid objects, right?"

I stared at her. She'd walked through a closed door? Literally through it?

"Now it's your turn. What's. Bothering. You?"

I sighed. "Why should I tell the girl who'd abducted me?"

Anya took me literally and answered, ticking off on her fingers, "Because I asked, because I'm your teacher, and because you're radiating annoyance and irritation so bad, I bet your brother can feel you from along the link I strengthened."

"Mokuba can feel my emotions?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Yeah. I didn't do anything to cause that. It's the one power that you have that nobody else has, and that I can't teach you: you can draw strength from your brother, and give strength right back. Emotions can also be transmitted along that line, and it's a two-way street."

I can do something nobody else can? That's…gratifying.

"Now, I've got to ask: what's wrong between you and Yugi?"

I scowled. "It's complicated."

She cocked her head, her brows pulled down. "Fine, don't tell me." Then she set her hand against my forehead. "Show me."

I already knew that physical contact made sending a message easier. The comparison she'd made – after pulling the example from Tea's mind – was that non-contact telepathy was like talking on a phone, and contact put the two people in the same room, which meant that there was much more subtext.

So, I took advantage of the fact that she was asking for something without words. I closed my eyes, focused, and…

Yugi, with a blinking sign above him that read "King of Games", and me glaring at the sign; me, challenging Yugi time and again to duels, and never winning; the total frustration that went with those losses. Then, topping it off, learning that there were two Yugis, and the one who kept defeating me left for the afterlife before I could defeat him.

"Oh," Anya said, pulling her hand away and looking at me with something in her face that I couldn't read. "Has it occurred to you that you don't want that title?"

"What?" I glared at her. "Of course I want it! He stole it from me!"

"Really? Let me put it this way: you are, in your world, the equivalent of a lord, with all the power and responsibility that goes with it."

Well. I liked the sound of that.

"This 'King of Games' title goes with a sport, and it also makes the owner a target for every hotshot duelist who wants the title for himself."

I interrupted her. "So they can make an appointment and get in line. Yugi doesn't know how to handle the hotshots anyway – I'd be doing him a favor to take the title from him."

Anya cocked an eyebrow. I hated it when she did that, it meant she was going to bring up something I hadn't thought of as being important. "I thought you hated Yugi."

"I don't hate…" my voice trailed off as what I was saying penetrated. I really didn't hate Yugi: I'd turned him into my whipping boy because the person I did hate wasn't in my reach anymore. In fact, I was no longer sure I even hated him.

Anya grimaced, too. "I sounded like one of my teachers just then, didn't I?"

I laughed, a little.

She grinned, briefly touched my hand, and stood up. "I'll let you alone now. Just…try not to exile yourself from your kinesis practice again, okay?"

I glared at her and focused. The door opened behind her, she lifted off the floor and moved outside, and the door closed – all from my own power.

"Did I say you could use me?" she said into my head. But there was an after-touch of amusement, so I ignored it.

About five minutes later, it hit me: I was in love with her!

How was I supposed to tell her that?

DARK FORTRESS; 7:09 PM

Nitupsar

Otieno looked up at me. "I have observed. Anya has started teaching her students how to summon monsters. They're learning even quicker than when she was teaching them kinesis. She'll have them summoning very powerful monsters in no time."

"This will not do. But killing her is completely out of the question right now, seeing as she is always alert." I sat quietly for a while, thinking. Then a smirk spread over my face. "Capture her. I have enough power to create a prison that will keep her where I want her to stay."

He smirked back. "And once she's out of the way, sir?"

"Then we shall start planning our attack. I might even drain her strength while she's our guest." I laughed aloud. "That should give me the strength to outright destroy all those pesky psis! Then nothing can stand in my way!"