Chapter Three: The Meeting - The Spirit World and New Allies

So Much Magic

Once Renei was back in the dark haze, she remembered what she'd been trying to do before unlocking all her memories. She'd been looking for the girl who'd called for help. Turning in the haze, she wondered where she was supposed to look now.

Would somebody… Somebody, please…

She froze as the words were spoken. They didn't echo with the same quality as Divine's and Seria's had, and the voice who spoke was the little girl's. Renei strained to figure out where it was coming from, but the haze made it difficult to pinpoint anything.

I'm being held prisoner in the Spirit World. Please help me…

Renei wanted to groan with frustration. She hadn't been able to reach the Spirit World in a year of captivity, and now to find out that the little girl was trapped there? She wanted to know what kind of messed-up being would orchestrate a situation like this.

Somebody… Please listen to me!

The girl's voice was desperate, and Renei wanted to tell her that it would be alright, that she'd heard the call for help. It was maddening to be unable to do so. She rummaged through all her memories of previous visits to the Spirit World, trying to find the secret of how she'd managed to get there before. The last dream she'd had before being kidnapped by Sayer floated up, and she recalled how she'd been in a similar darkness before being drawn by the mysterious voice into the Spirit World. Maybe if she focused on the sensation of her consciousness floating towards something…

Just like before, her consciousness began to drift in the darkness in a specific direction, slowly at first, then gathering speed. Renei tried not to get distracted by the rush of triumph, and continued to speed along. A pinprick of light appeared, then quickly expanded until it flashed all around her. Suddenly, her consciousness was no longer speeding along, and she sat up with a groan, hand on her forehead.

There was a murmur of leaves as they were brushed by the wind. Under her fingers, she could feel soft grass and the slight give of deep soil. Opening her eyes, Renei saw an enormous tree that seemed to stretch up forever before spreading out in a massive green canopy. She looked around to see countless shades of green and brown. On the ground were clusters of colorful flowers among the soft clumps of grass. She slowly got to her feet, mouth open in awe.

I… I did it… I'm in the Spirit World!

Renei gave a victorious whoop and punched the air, laughing. Slowly, she turned in a circle, still grinning like a maniac and taking in her surroundings in more detail. As she did, her smile faded. She seemed to be in a little gully that was blocked off at one end by the huge tree. The sides of the gully were steep and just a bit too high for her to pull herself up out of. Plus, they were edged with big bushes.

"Oh great. I guess I'm stuck here. I fucking make it to the Spirit World on purpose for the first time ever, and I manage to land in some asscrack that I can't get out of!"

As she completed her turn, she noticed a little seedling of a tree next to a funky-looking blue staff with golden prongs at its head. The staff looked like it had been stabbed into the ground so it would stand up by itself and was about two-thirds of her height. Renei realized that she hadn't heard any sounds other than the breeze as it passed through leaves since she'd arrived. Weren't forests supposed to have birds and stuff? She began to glance around warily, remembering the warning the mysterious voice had given her a year ago. This was a great place to be ambushed, and she had no idea if the Spirit World had bears or wolves or other wild animals. As she thought of the Beast decks she'd gone up against in the past, she decided it was very likely that there were dangerous predators around. Glancing again at the staff, she decided to take it for a weapon. Those prongs would be good at keeping oncoming enemies at bay for a while.

Gripping the staff with both hands, she yanked hard until it popped out of the ground. A weird pressure suddenly made her stumble back a step, then something rushed up out of the ground and slammed against her. She fell back with a cry, and a big gust of wind knocked her down completely, stunning her for a moment. When Renei managed to get a hold of herself, she found herself staring at another huge tree where the little seedling had been a minute ago. She looked down at the staff, which lay under her hand.

It… made the tree grow… No, that's not right… It made the tree shrink and when I took the staff away…

Renei got to her feet, holding the staff more gingerly now. Obviously, the Spirit World played by different rules than her world did. The staff was magical and she had no idea what it was capable of. She turned to look at the tree blocking the end of the gully, then looked back at the staff speculatively.

If I put the staff on that tree and keep it there, maybe it'll shrink down too, and I can get out.

Warily, she touched the end of the staff to the tree, then cringed away, expecting another catastrophic change that ended in her getting knocked on her ass. Nothing happened. She opened one eye, wondering why it hadn't worked.

Wait… The staff was jammed pretty hard into the ground. Maybe I have to do the same thing.

Gripping the staff hard, she raised it up and rammed the end into the ground so that the end was buried completely. The weird pressure returned and she flinched away, shutting her eyes. There was a clap of air and then the pressure dissipated. When she looked back, the huge tree had been replaced with a little sapling.

She threw her hands up and yelled, "It worked!" Then she looked for the staff, but realized that it had vanished.

"Fuck!"

She had no weapon now. Why had the staff disappeared? She scowled at the little sapling as if she could scare it into revealing what had happened to the staff, but nothing happened. Sighing, she walked forward, deciding it was better to keep exploring rather than wasting time trying to figure out magic stuff.

Before long, she heard the sound of rushing water and something wooden creaking continuously. The trees that surrounded her blocked her view and made her nervous, but she felt a little comforted by a break in the weird silence of the forest. When she made her way into the clearing, she saw a waterfall crashing down into a fast-running river that flowed underneath a water wheel. On the other side of the river was a large wall with an open archway leading inside. She could see buildings beyond the wall whose roofs advanced upward as if they were built on a slope or got progressively taller as they got farther from the wall. Buildings meant people, and she knew more about how to survive in there than how to survive in a forest. As she got closer to the river, she saw that there had once been bridges spanning it, but for some reason, they'd been destroyed. It couldn't be because the river had washed them away, since parts of the bridges still stood against the rushing whitewaters. The river was impossible to cross otherwise. Had the people inside the wall destroyed the bridges in order to keep something out?

But then why is that archway still open?

She looked around more and saw exact copies of the staff she'd used to shrink the tree were scattered around. Excited, she gathered them up, feeling better now that she had weapons of a sort.

I'd feel better with my duel disk and cuffs, but I don't know if there's stuff like that here in the Spirit World. Do duel monsters duel like we do? I guess if there's Machine-type monsters, then they could be able to build duel disks. But what about all the magic and stuff? They wouldn't need technology like we do, I bet, not if they had magic…

Renei shook her head, mentally kicking herself to keep from getting lost in thought about how the Spirit World worked. She was here for a reason! She had to find out where the little girl was being held prisoner and rescue her! To do that, she had to get across the river somehow to get into the city before her and start gathering information. She looked at the river, then at the staves she held speculatively.

These things reversed the growth of that tree… Could they reverse the flow of a river?

One of the broken bridges jutted out close to the waterfall, so Renei made her way onto it. The roar of the waterfall was loud, leaving very little room for her thoughts. Her hair and Arcadia uniform was soon damp from the fine mist that was thrown up by the force of the water falling onto the bed of the river. Blinking against the stinging water droplets, Renei lifted one of the staves over her head and threw it as straight as she could at the waterfall. The downpour of water snatched the staff and tried to carry it downstream, but the prongs got trapped in between a couple of rocks. The other end of the staff could just be seen peeking above the rushing white water. The weird pressure returned, followed by a deep bass rumbling. Then, the water reversed direction and jumped back up the waterfall until nothing remained but wet rocks, broken bridges, and a motionless waterwheel.

Quickly, Renei left the bridge she'd been standing on and made her way across the empty riverbed, eager to get into the town. It was then that she realized why there was a waterwheel in the first place. An enormous, medieval-looking door had slid down as soon as the waterwheel stopped turning. Renei vented her frustration with a flurry of cursing, punctuated with a couple of kicks that did little more than hurt her feet on the very heavy, very solid-looking door. Obviously, it wouldn't open unless the river was running, but the only way she could get the river to run again was by moving the staff she'd used earlier. If she stood in the streambed to do that, though, the river would probably sweep her away and drown her as soon as she moved the staff. The only way to safely move the staff would be to stand on the bridge near the waterfall like she had before, and that would leave her without a way to cross the river once again.

There was another staff laying on the ground nearby, and Renei paused in her tantrum to wonder why there were so many magical artifacts just laying around like garbage when they were obviously still able to work. Such a waste of a thing in such nice condition irked her street sensibilities. In Satellite, everything was used and re-used until it disintegrated into dust, as was natural for a place that was used solely for dumping the mainland's garbage. People in Neo Domino City often threw away perfectly serviceable objects, and those were always nabbed by one resident of Satellite or another. Yusei had built no less than three D-Wheels from parts the mainland had deemed junk, and repaired countless hordes of other things like duel disks and televisions for other people. She tsked in annoyance and picked up the staff, then returned to the dilemma at hand.

Her eyes fell on the remains of a bridge that stuck out from this side of the river, and she wandered over to inspect the damage. It was obviously recent, and Renei wondered if she could use the magic of the staves to fix it. Laying one down, she hefted the other experimentally before wedging the end firmly into the splintered wood at the end of the broken bridge. Again, she felt the weird pressure, but instead of flinching away, she gritted her teeth and held onto the staff with grim determination. As she watched, pieces of the bridge came flying back up the river bed, thunking into place until the bridge seemed to be putting itself back together. The weird pressure grew as the bridge continued to repair itself, and once the bridge was whole, the pressure dissipated. The staff vanished, too, and she wondered again why it had done that.

Maybe it ran out of power?

She picked up the last staff and headed back to the bridge she'd been on previously. When she attempted to move the staff that had reversed the flow of the river, she discovered that she didn't have the proper leverage to get it free from the rocks it was trapped between. With a growl of frustration, she picked up the last staff with the intention of using it to get the other one free. This effort seemed doomed to fail too, as the staves seemed to actively repel each other, but Renei was not about to give up so easily. With a growl, she pushed against the invisible force pushing apart the staves until finally, she managed to brush them together for a brief moment.

There was a loud crack and the staves turned into a fine dust that floated away on the breeze. Renei heard rumbling and suddenly wondered if it was a good idea to be standing on a broken bridge right under a waterfall that had been held back with magic. As the rumbling grew in intensity, Renei scrambled off the bridge just before a wall of water plunged over the edge of the cliff and slammed back down into the river bed. Water leaped and sprayed as it hit rocks and rushed violently downriver once more. Soon, the river was back in full force, catching the water wheel and putting it in motion again. She watched as the huge door slowly lifted until the archway was once more open, then looked to see if her magically repaired bridge had withstood the force of the water. It had, and she whooped triumphantly. She'd figured it out! Smugly, she crossed the bridge and entered the town's walls.

Renei had expected the little town to have people in it, but soon realized the place was just as deserted as the forest had been. There was nobody in the bizarrely tidy streets and neatly arranged buildings. As she explored, she saw dozens more of the magical staves and frowned. What had happened here? Who had made all those staves? What had they been used for?

"Hey! Over here! Hide over here!"

The urgently hissed words made Renei look up to see a small child in a pointy purple hat beckoning to her. He had long hair, held what looked like a branch with some sort of sphere set in the top, and kept glancing up the stairs, a worried expression on his little face, and Renei followed his gaze to see two monkeys.

She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, they were still monkeys. They were wearing an odd combination of armor and clothing, and seemed to be conferring about where to look next. Renei decided it would be best to join the little kid in his hiding spot and ask questions later. The kid pulled her behind some stacked crates and gestured for her to crouch down. It seemed she did so just in time, because soon after, she heard the sound of steps pounding in an odd pattern down the stairs. Both of them waited for several heartbeats after the monkeys had passed before the little kid poked his head out to check if the coast was clear. Seeing that it was, he turned to her with a sigh of relief.

"Phew! That was a close call. They almost found us!" He grinned at her.

Renei just stared at the little kid, nonplussed. Too many questions wanted to be answered and she didn't know where to start. Fortunately, the kid answered one right off the bat.

"I'm Torunka."

He studied her with interest, then added, "You're a human, huh?" When she nodded, he smiled and said in a lofty fashion, "You must be real special then. If you're here, it means you were chosen."

Renei asked, "Who are the monkeys?"

Torunka's smile fell a little bit and his voice held a touch of bitterness as he said, "Those goons back there belong to Zeman the Ape King. He controls this land. Zeman has been catching many a spirit with a curse from a Minus Staff." He gestured to himself. "I tried to escape, but I got grazed by the curse. That's why I'm short and ugly now."

Renei raised her eyebrows skeptically. He seemed like a pretty decent-looking little kid to her, though he could do with a different outfit. The hat, too, probably should go. She was about to offer some reassurance that he'd grow taller, but he kept talking.

"I really am a handsome and accomplished Spellcaster! I know it doesn't seem so anymore…"

She sputtered with laughter and clapped a hand over her mouth, drawing Torunka's attention back to her. He glared at her and demanded, "What's with that look? You don't believe me, do you?" He gestured wildly, waving his stick at the area around them while saying angrily, "Open your eyes! Just take a look at this hollow shell of a town! The proof's right there!"

Still grinning, Renei shook her head and said, "Calm down, I believe you there."

Now Torunka looked at her with a confused expression on his face. "What? You weren't doubting that part? Then what?"

She gestured to him and said, "That thing you said about being a Spellcaster. You're just a kid, you can't have accomplished anything that impressive yet. I bet you're still in training."

His face darkened and he said shrilly, "So you don't think I could have been a handsome and accomplished spellcaster? Is that it?" He stomped his foot angrily and added, "Kids these days! They've got no respect."

That made Renei laugh again, earning more foot-stomping from Torunka. He eventually snapped, "Fine! You don't believe me? Then take a look at some of my magic!"

He raised his stick, beginning to chant. The air around him stirred, making his hair and his clothes start flapping. The sphere in his stick began to glow until it was incandescent, and Renei watched, transfixed, as Torunka's feet left the ground and glowing lines appeared. They formed some sort of circle inscribed with unreadable script. His chanting began to echo and Torunka slowly brought his stick- no, it was a staff- in front of him to grip it in both of his little hands before tipping it forward so that the orb pointed at Renei. She suddenly wondered what exactly Torunka was going to do and began to regret laughing at him, no matter how funny he seemed.

Light coalesced around the sphere, then exploded outward in a blinding flash that passed harmlessly through Renei and the surrounding buildings. A small, square object appeared in the air and began to drift downward. She held out her hands to catch it and realized it was her deck holster.

Torunka's voice was smug. "Perhaps you could use a little something like this right now?"

Renei gripped the deck holster hard and tried to suppress the sudden welling of emotion that threatened to spill out into tears. She could feel her cards in there, ready and welcoming. After a year of being forced to use unfamiliar decks, it was overwhelming to hold something that was such an integral part of her again. Never before had she truly appreciated how important just having a deck of her own was. Even when Securities had confiscated her deck, she hadn't really worried about it. Back then, she'd felt secure in the knowledge that eventually, she'd get it back or create a new one. Now that she'd spent a year without memories, without being able to attach any significance to the cards she dueled with, she realized that it mattered a lot to have a deck she'd built herself.

Torunka tapped his staff impatiently to interrupt her musings and said, "So! Now do you believe me?"

She nodded, smiling gratefully. He shuffled his feet and didn't meet her gaze. Hesitantly, he said, "The thing is, the cards I just called forth can only be used in this world. If you don't have them all in the real world, then you've got to go find them there yourself."

Renei furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "You can't just magic up some more? Or call them forth or whatever?"

His fidgeting became more pronounced. "Truth is… I can't use magic so well with this tiny body. I just don't have the confidence…" Then he looked up at her hopefully. "Will you duel with me so I can check and see if my magic still works?"

She nodded, glad for the chance to duel now that her memories had returned. Eagerly, her fingers reached to draw the deck out, but then she stopped.

"Uh… Torunka, I actually shared a huge pool of cards with a bunch of little kids that my friend and I watched over. I changed my deck a lot depending on my mood. How does this work?"

Torunka looked surprised, then stared at the deck holster intently. His face wrinkled in concentration, and a tiny version of the glowing circle that had appeared before appeared on the holster, spinning slowly. Then it disappeared and Torunka's face cleared as he said, "Oh, that's easy enough! Just visualize the deck you want to use sitting inside your box there and it'll appear. When you want to change it, just put the deck back inside, close the lid, and visualize a different one."

Tentatively, she pictured the last dragon deck she'd constructed before being kidnapped and hadn't gotten to test out yet. For a moment, she felt like she could feel the cards shifting inside the deck holster before finally settling into place. When she pulled it out and checked through it, she was surprised to see it had worked. All the dragons were there just as she had pictured them. Excited, she sat down and began to shuffle the cards, preparing to set up a floor game.

"What are you doing, girl?"

She looked up at Torunka, who was staring at her as if she was doing something weird. She frowned back at him and said, "You said you wanted to duel. I don't have a duel disk, so we'll have to play freehand."

He scowled at her and thumped his staff hard on the ground. "You mean humans duel like the Machines do? With their fancy gizmos that make light projections?"

Renei had no idea what he was talking about. Torunka started muttering, then began making complicated movements with the end of his staff as if he was sketching something out in the air. When he was done, he said, "Think of this duel disk thing of yours." She did so, and it materialized where he'd done the air sketching.

"That's impressive." She put it on her arm and put her deck in the deck slot. The disk lit up properly and she asked, "You ready?"

In response, he held his hand up at his side, palm up, and a deck appeared, floating above it in midair. With a gesture, he sent it to rest in the air and made five cards float in front of him so he could examine them. The lofty tone in his voice was back as he said, "Back in the day, I was pretty hot stuff! So there's no need to go easy on me, okay?"

Renei drew her first hand and grinned. "Don't worry about that."

Author's Note: So duel monsters duel each in the Spirit World. Machine-types use light projections like the humans do and Spellcasters use magic and create illusions. Beast-types, Beast-Warrior-types, and Warriors set up floor or table games and use their imaginations. If you've got other ideas about how they duel, share them in a review.