Duel 11 – Sprouting

Matthew sat on his luxurious couch, his fingers locked together, staring severely at the floor. All the Crusaders gathered in his vast and spacious penthouses to report on Cristy's loss at Jolene's hands. They were all just as tense as Matthew was, waiting with held breath for his answer.

"This is a heavy blow…" Matthew whispered, echoing his thoughts. "Earlier Maya defeated Volcano Man. This was a little worrying but not a real problem for me. Her opponent was a red shirt for all I care, but it showed that she could become stronger. Now she and her little friend steal a safe full of our good cards and Cristy loses, and all duelists on the Internet know…"

Molotov trembled with rage at the words. He exploded in a fury and smashed the wall of the penthouse, cracking the glass. "I hate, I hate, I hate these little worms!" He raged in his typically long-winded and abrasive style. "How dare they defeat us! How dare they humiliate us! We are the best team in all America! If only I dueled that stupid little girl instead of Cristy over here I would have crushed that team!"

Cristy looked defiantly at him, her eyes burning, ready to slap him. He only saw red, ready to smash something else in Matthew's room. He turned around, all too impatient to leave. "Are you fricken' kidding me! Why did even I come over here! I should be dueling these maggots on my own! In fact, I'm about to do it right now!"

"No, you idiot!" Matthew suddenly jumped from his couch. "Walk out and I'm cutting you off from the team!"

Molotov froze in place and finally lunged back like a dog pulled on a leash. The other Crusaders were equally surprised. When it came to Matthew the ice never cracked.

"Don't any of you understand? The reason why you lost is because you acted rashly. They provoked Cristy and she walked into their trap, alone. Maya's friend Ivy Cat made a deck to counter Lightsworns and defeat her. It's dangerous to underestimate them. We need a plan."

"And what plan is that?" Molotov demanded impatiently, still fuming.

Matthew burrowed his head in his hands and took a few deep breaths. He really wished this wasn't happening. The Dark Duelists were a blemish on the great painting Matthew, if he did not actually create, helped manage. Not only that, they formed comradeship with other teams who seemed all too eager to spill over and ruin this good society. They all needed to be exterminated before it was too late.

"The key is in the other teams." Matthew finally said. "The Dark Duelists will undoubtedly work with them to try to take us down or, even worse, publicly do so in a major tournament and win it at the same time. In our media driven age, images are everything, and nothing will ruin the dueling world more than having their degenerate values triumph. If other teams strengthen them then we need to turn those teams against them to weaken them."

"And how do we that?" Cristy asked.

"Shut up, loser!" Molotov shouted. "Losers don't deserve to talk with champions like Matthew!"

Matthew shot him one icy glance and he fell silent again.

"Not every team is with them. Some teams will be neutral or on our side. What we need to do is to get as many teams to fight against them. Meanwhile, we try to turn some of their comrades into moles to undermine them from within. We trap and kill them from both sides. Molotov and Enigma, you two go in the Team."

Enigma's eyes glared, a wolf ready to dine on sheep. "It's not everyday I get to beat down some disgusting heathens to the curb."

"What about me and Onion?" Cristy asked.

"Onion will hold the Regional Christmas Championship, which is in Princeton, my hometown. It is important that we keep our image out of the city as well as in it. Cristy, you will assist the moles when we find them."

Matthew left his couch took a deck of cards from a drawer by his king sized bed and handed them to Molotov. "Augment your deck with these cards. Some are the rarest in America."

Molotov looked like he received a holy relic. "I will do my best. I will destroy Team Dark Duelists with your gifts."

"And one more thing." Matthew said. "Beware of Maya most of all. If there is any Dark Duelist I want you to take down it is she."

"Preposterous." Onion sneered. "She walked in with a structure deck thinking that would give her a competitive edge and you kicked her to the curb in five seconds. Now her deck is gone. She is no threat."

"She is a great threat." Matthew countered. "Yes, I got the impression that she was another loser when we first met but seeing her duels and reading her profile made me think different. She knows how to strategize and exploit weaknesses in others. When she dueled that schmuck in the mall she diagnosed the monarch deck most people use and how to break it. And I'm pretty sure Maya played a big role on how to break down Cristy's Lightsworns and lured her into her trap. She also has a rather violent streak with how she cracked Tim's nose by chucking her duel disk at him."

"I wouldn't pay so much attention to JC. He's a blowhard, a figurehead full of hot air who duels as gracefully as a rock. But Maya is a snake, albeit a small one who just hatched. Kill her now when she is still small and weak. When she grows up she will destroy you and maybe all of the dueling world with it."

"It is done." Matthew concluded. "I will call you when I need you. Dismissed."

Everyone turned and left –

"Except you, Cristy." He stroked her peroxide blonde hair. "You will stay with me. You have to, if you want to be part of the team."

"Elemental HERO – Stratos, kill off Maya! Direct attack!" Alexis's spandex-clad hero wearing a turbine backpack clocked Maya in the jaw, ramming her face-up on the cement. "You lose."

Her breath punched out of her, Maya gasped for a few seconds before slowly pulling herself up and shaking Alexis's hand. "Good game." She really needed to get used to this.

The gang was at Washington Square Park, the sun bright and shining but the weather beginning to grow cold. J.C. was busy dueling some kids, beating them more easily than taking candy from a baby, and boisterously laughing as he sent the poor shrimps crying to their parents. Yukio and Jolene were dueling each other, Yukio struggling to get past Jolene's defenses.

Maya took a quick look at her new deck. To call it dog crap at the bottom of your shoe was this week's understatement. She saved up so much money on her structure deck, naively thinking that buying a pre-made deck of strong, rare cards would give her a ticket into the academy. It might have, if only she wasn't so late and didn't face Matthew. Either way, she lost it, and the scrap deck she held right now really wasn't helping. She really needed to radically change things to give her any chance whatsoever. But how?

Maya sat down on a sidewalk curb to watch her friends duel. Just ahead of them dozens of men dueled each other in another game, chess, jousting each other in wild speed duels for any money they could scrap by. And Maya and her comrades were kind of the same, scraping by at the bottom of the system. She frankly felt she could never relate to Matthew's world of academy uniforms to the point of alienation. The world of drug addicts, street hustlers, and gamblers was more her home.

She took out some folded paper for music. She had dissected the red and green dragon she created earlier and performed an autopsy, taking and rearranging its veins, growing only some themes and letting the rest die. She wanted to prune the growing themes into well-shaped trees and then join them seamlessly in the right four-dimensional road so they would grow in a way she wanted. She was in the process right now. She also changed the landscape from a small one-movement piece to a whole piano sonata, demanding her to make a broader and deeper span. Not the first time she did so, but she missed when she had more time…

And she sees a seed buried beneath black, wet earth, a small spark hidden inside. Maybe her answer lies there. – "Please? Music and Duel Monsters? How stupid!"

JC just came back, satisfied with bullying enough kids for today. He announced, "Alright my cadre of miscreants, today is Interview The Dueling World day. Today we shall be the gadfly of Athens, the madman with the lantern in the sleeping town. We shall confront every duelist we find and free them from the delusion of religion."

Dead silence. "Excuse me." Maya objected. "I don't see how telling random people God isn't real helps our cause. We need to strategize. The Crusaders are probably trying to undermine us as we speak. We need to reach out and network with the other teams to strengthen –"

"No one gets to speak more than me so SHUT UP!" JC rebuked. He tossed Maya the camera she used when Jolene defeated Cristy. "You're the official anonymous camera guy no one remembers or cares for. Let's go."

Maya made hit her face with her palm so hard she thought she killed it. Alexis, who was watching the whole talk, shook her head and snickered. "I pity you… I might as well name you Cassandra."

It wasn't long until JC found his first victim to terrorize. Thanks to Maya and Jolene's research, he recognized one duelist apparently devoted to the Christian God. He just passed by a young woman who might have been his sister and told her we just went to Church.

JC pounced. "YOU FUCKING MORON DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE IN THAT SHITTY LIE KNOWN AS GOD!? RELIGION IS STUPID! GOD IS A CONCEPT FOR BABIES! YOU JUST DON'T ACCEPT THE TRUTH BECAUSE OF HOW BRAINWASHED YOU ARE!"

The young man staggered back in surprise and horror. "What? I don't understand. I just came back from church. Did I offend you?"

"SHUT UP! YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, THEREFORE YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN SCIENTIFIC REASON! YOU'RE THE REASON WE HAD THE DARK AGES! YOU BELIEVE THE EARTH IS FLAT AND PEOPLE LIVED WITH DINOSAURS! YOU SUPPORT RAPING LITTLE BOYS AND KILLING GAY PEOPLE!"

"Hey wait up!" The young man said. "All I said is I was in church. You're making a lot of assumptions on what my religious and political beliefs are. Furthermore, you're painting me with a large brush stroke and you seem to assume that everyone who is remotely religious is some extremist caricature. Sure they exist and religion has done bad things but it also has good things like the charity work I do at the homeless shelter with my Church every week."

Silence. JC looked like he was shot between the eyes. "I think JC just got stumped." Jolene whispered to Maya.

But JC was back in full force. "UH-OH! RETARD ALERT! I HONESTLY CAN'T BELIEVE I'M LISTENG TO A PERSON SO STUPID!"

"Look," The young man's sister retorted. "You're not going to convince, let alone enlighten anyone, by being an irrational and belligerent tool. No one won a debate by calling someone retarded."

"YOU'RE DUMB! YOU THEISTS ARE SO FUCKING STUPID! I CAN'T TALK WITH YOU ANYMORE! IF I KEEP HANGING OUT WITH YOU THE RETARD WILL GET ALL OVER ME AND I'LL BE A RETARDED BRAINWASHED IDIOT LIKE YOU!" And JC stormed away in a rage.

Appalled, the young man and woman both parted ways. "Good riddance." Jolene barely meeked out an apology.

Maya turned the camera on herself. "There you have it. That's JC at his best, or should I say at his worst. That is if I'm insane enough to actually upload this stuff."

Jolene squeezed her face in front of Maya and made a random silly face. Maya shoved her away. "Get away. My screen time. Being random is not a virtue."

The rest of the day went in a similar way. JC unsurprisingly drove out every duelist he talked to, squashing any attempt to strengthen their alliances. After many tedious hours, Maya and Jolene finally sneaked away to do what Maya suggested.

And find duelists they did. They found Jiao Yi in a small apartment since she invited them earlier, a messy space crammed with cheap gothic-style clothes that burned with the smell of incense. A pale plump man with stubble, wearing a monocle and a top hat, lounged on a chair nearby, taking a nap. Jiao was pouring tea into cups and about to put sugar in them as if she was holding a tea party. By the teacups sat a few blotters. Maya now knew why she called herself Blue Lily.

"Why hello there." She smiled. "Come right in." She was very small and pale with a large oval head with small porcelain features. Her black hair flowed down to her waist and her ruby red lips, though thin, spread out very wide. "I'm glad you could come for my little tea party. I really wish more of my teammates would come. It makes me so sad."

Maya and Jolene sat down in front of Yiao, hesitant to take the tea. Yiao giggled. "Don't worry silly, the tea isn't spiked, though it wouldn't be bad if it was now would it."

Maya still didn't take it, still suspicious. She began, her words carefully chosen hours before. "I'm sure you know of the situation we are in. We provoked the Shining Crusaders to bring out their big guns and they won't just go after us but after everyone associated with us also, including you and your team. I think we should really stick together. We should plan attacks against the Crusaders and other teams together and back each other up if we are attacked. We should attack in tournaments if we want rewards and publicity and if we can't afford that attack them in secret. We need to stick together and keep communicating."

"But you are banned." Jiao taunted. "You have no official accounts and can't go into any official tournaments. How will you and your aspiring team of grasshoppers ever climb the social ladder?"

Maya forgot to count for this. She thought a bit and said, "We can gain enough cred somehow and make someone other than the Crusaders lift our ban, or we can somehow trick them into admitting us."

Jiao leaned very close to Maya, so much Maya could see the bags underneath her eyes, the only blemishes on her otherwise flawless face. "Tell me, Maya. What is all of this about? What is this whole contest between you and your rival team really about?"

"I… I don't know."

"You and your motley comrades, peasants who live in dirt yet have seen the light, fight your little holy war against another group of peasants slightly better dressed. And after all this struggle for the privilege to preach from the temple mouth to the unwashed masses that Yugi isn't real."

"I honestly couldn't care less if Yugi was a dude who really existed or if he was the Mary Sue character he's all cracked up to be. What bothers me is we have these weird evangelist-like guys who use the story to control people. They hide it in all sorts of euphemisms but power and control is what it's really about."

"Already the little asp has sharp eyes. Very good."

Maya boiled with impatience. "Enough riddles, Jiao Yi. We need to defend ourselves against the Crusaders. Will you and your team help us?"

"What is music, Maya?"

"What?"

"I see you writing music all the time, but do you understanding what you are writing?"

Maya didn't know what to say. She seriously wanted to leave, but didn't. She didn't want to fail this question. It was, for some reason, very important. So what was music? The textbook definition, recognizable patterns of sounds, didn't work. She often thought of music mostly made of silence, not sounds, as the majority of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy. And there, she thought, was where it's true nature lied. Music was strange. It had no distinctive form. While other arts like Jolene's drawing brought forms to this world, music was a void that drew you away and into a higher world, but she could never see that higher world, only vaguely know it was there.

"Music is a secret, but it is behind a locked door and I don't have the key yet."

"You will find the key. The serpent sleeps in the earth, dormant for millennia, but will soon awaken and will return all to the earth. She will know, you will know, when the time has come. Maya, sharp as the sword in the stone, a long forgotten sword whose blade will be used again under a darkened sky. In the halls of time doors keep opening while doors keep closing, closing to the one door we must enter but fear. There are two paths to choose, one right and one left, but everyone will inexorably go on one. The egg burns apart and breaks and the burning yolk leaks. And the highest of levels is the starry vault, the Underworld; always the last world, the last stage, Super Mario, where the dragon dwells beyond the gate."

Jolene nudged Maya. "Let's go. This is getting really creepy."

Maya nodded and stood up.

"Would you like a blot?" Jiao offered. "I admit it isn't your average cookie to go with your tea but still have a bite."

"So I can be high off my mind? No thanks." Maya curtly retorted.

"We don't the harder stuff." Jolene explained.

Jiao looked very miffed. "You turn down both my tea and my cookies? How rude! Well, if you insist, fine. But…" She handed to Maya a small black book with no title. "Take this devil's book. It is a path away from your 'savior' tyrants. But like with all paths, you have to find your way."

Maya took the book. "At least do you have any advice you can give me about helping my team."

"Just that everything is already there in front of you. You only have to find it."

"Noted. Goodbye." Maya ended curtly.

"And one more thing." Jiao opened her mouth and revealed a tongue pierced and split down the middle. "Grow a forked tongue."

Maya and Jolene continued to wonder around the city searching for duelists to aid them. "Well that was fruitful." Jolene sighed disappointingly.

"At least it was… interesting, what between seeing Mad Max and Alice in Wonderland in one day."

"You're ever the optimist."

"Oh stop it you."

The rest of the search was fortunately more fruitful. Maya and Jolene managed to find both Hassan and Alexis and recited what Maya told Jiao earlier. Thankfully, they got the message and promised they would do everything they could. Alexis seemed to have the most information and gave them a memory stick of every team out there. Good, some useful allies.

The two journeyed back to Washington Square Park and happened to meet an Orthodox Jew rabbi watching the speed chess games among the street hustlers, a sight in gaming as common as people dueling. Oddly enough Maya and the rabbi started talking about religion and Maya's adventures so far. Jolene took Maya's camera and began recording.

The rabbi stroked his beard. "It seems both your group and the 'crusaders' you fight against stand on a lot of assumed values. Neither of you come across to me as a particularly knowledgeable or attentive in your beliefs. Both of you create myths and shallow worldviews in your crusades you fight mostly for yourselves. Fighting them won't enlighten you or them but just make both of you more extreme and ridiculous."

"Yes, I'm aware that most, if not all, people forge their beliefs from emotionally-driven assumptions. Even something like science is based on people doing that. But the Shining Crusaders are rich, power hungry despots who want to control people." Maya protested. "How can I stand and watch that happen? They need to be stopped."

The rabbi raised his eyebrow. "And some street mice are going to take down an elite team whose leader is heir to a billion dollar corporation?"

"I will find a way. I always do."

"I don't doubt that. You seem very intelligent for someone your age. I'll give you some advice regarding belief since not everyone you meet will be your enemy. The character people have and how people act are what makes the world a better or worse place, not their beliefs or ideologies. Beliefs don't exist by themselves but come from the people who made them. It is people who are good, kind, and true, or petty, mean, and hypocritical."

"Then what is the point in what people believe at all?" Maya objected. "What matters then if you believe in God or if Matthew believes in Card Game Jesus or if you don't?"

"You're focusing on the wrong questions. You're too worried about what people believe in. It is why that really matters. God judges people by the things they do, not the words they say. Be well." And he left.

"It is flawed people who are real, not their beliefs." Maya mumbled to herself in summary.

Jolene stopped recording. "Definitely worth more that JC's rant."

"Definitely."

Speaking of which, JC and Yukio just came back. "Where were you lousy slacks at!" JC boomed. "I wanted you to record my master debating skills, not drug addicts playing chess!"

"We got more than enough. The camera can't record that much." Maya lied.

Apparently it worked because JC grunted in disappointment and was reduced to silence. Jolene would edit and upload the good stuff. She was the computer nerd. Maya was more the planner. Either way the team decided to settle down. JC and Yukio dueled while Maya and Jolene did each other's homework. It was a good Sunday.

Then suddenly – Jolene shouted. "Guys look!" She gestured to her laptop and the gang gathered round. It was an email, directed at all of them.

Team Dark Duelists, I saw some of your uploaded duels, especially when the members Zarathustra and IvyCat took down VolcanoMan and CrystaalCristy, and I'm very impressed. Those sacred cows needed to be taken down a notch. I am Jones Dupre, and I'm the attorney of KaibaCorp New York. I heard that the Shining Crusaders banned your team. Your team has a lot of potential and it would be a complete shame to see it go to waste. I can put your team back on the Dueling Network and make you rise to the professional level. Below is the address to my office and my business numbers. We would be glad to have you call.

Best of luck,
Jones Dupre
Senior Legal Advisor

This startling move was enough to kill the mood. Now the gang had no idea what to do. Should they take this offer?

And enough with the riddle titles and with the riddle writing. They're bad habits,