Chapter 3: D-Dueling

Author's Note: Thanks for the help on card locating guys: I got the info I need. Now, let's see if I can draw some more readers in…if you like it, recommend it to someone! Thanks!

It sounded like someone stuttering, but what it really was a combination of a Seto Kaiba brainstorm, his attempt to silence some critics, and a little petty revenge thrown in.

After failing in Battle City, Kaiba had been depressed for a little bit, and had thrown himself into his work (even more so) to try and escape his personal feelings of disappointment. To make sure he was occupied totally, Kaiba began sketching up some plans for a second Kaibaland.

Then had come the news report. It had been about the possible negative effects of Duel Monsters (in society's continued efforts to demonize everything that is fun in order to find something to scapegoat when some nutball committed a crime and his parents couldn't accept the fact they may have failed quite badly in their parenting), citing how children ignored schoolwork and exercise in order to collect cards and play the game. The report also cast a critical eye on the lopsided victories in major tournaments: all the finalists always seemed to be people who had had time to find or purchase rare cards. Kaiba, after hearing this for the first time, hadn't know whether to laugh or bang his head on his desk as the reporter seemed to accuse him and Yugi and the Duelists who really worked at their game and had the cards to prove it were hogging all the "good" cards for themselves and denying them to the grubby faced morons who probably dueled once a week at most and hardly knew what they were doing.

Then again, there is no better revenge then to beat someone at their own game, and Kaiba had had an idea.

That idea was D-Dueling.

The second Kaibaland plan was modified into a new one that would introduce a new style of card collection. While normal Duelists had to buy, win (or in the case of those annoying Rare Hunters, steal) their cards, D-Decks were different. To acquire a D-Deck, all a person had to do was go to the recently opened D-Dueling Arena, enter an account, and then take a variety of quizzes. This cost some money, but not much: virtually anyone with a job could probably afford it without sacrificing any basic necessities. Once you made your account and paid up, you would be given a 15-question quiz on your basic personality. The answers on this quiz would determine the bare bones of your D-Deck. Then came the tricky part: you would be allowed to select from a variety of other quizzes of various subject: Duel Monsters trivia was one of them, but there were other ones such as math, history, and literature. You could pick a pure quiz, or a random one that offered a jumble of questions. Each quiz would ask a series of ten easy question, ten harder questions, and finally five EXTREMELY hard questions. The harder the question you answered, the better kind of card you got, depending on what your personality Quiz had gone.

This was to show up his critics: look at this, these people have to be smart to get the cards! Kids, stay in school and study, and maybe you can duel with all the cool cards that the world champions use! Everyone can have a Blue-Eyes or a Dark Magician or a Super Duper Mighty Man!

Except that wasn't the case. Kaiba didn't want a bunch of idiots running around with fake Blue Eyes cards (D-Cards had the disadvantage that they only worked inside the D-Dueling Arena, although normal cards worked as well, in case a normal Duelist wanted to duel a friend who only had D-Cards) proclaiming they were superior to him. The best cards had hard questions, and Kaiba had made sure they were HARD. When the Arena had opened, he had shown off the system by bringing in some experts in various fields and having them test the machines. One math genius barely managed to solve a certain question in the time limit he had, and it had rewarded him with a Red-Eyes Black Dragon. Another history expert managed to get a Dark Magician Girl, and had complimented Kaiba on forcing him to think. In the several months the D-Dueling Arena had been open, only one Blue-Eyes had been acquired, and that had been by an idiot savant who seemingly knew every single chemical formula in the world, but didn't know when his bowels were evacuating or not. Kaiba had been quite thorough: Every single card that had ever existed in the game was programmed into the machines, and were there to be won. In theory. In reality, getting the really good cards was a task most people could not accomplish. And Kaiba made sure that the questions and the cards they gave out were rotated so that no one would get an extremely powerful card because they had a good memory. True, if you kept your account open long enough, eventually you could take tests if you wanted to get certain cards, but these were even harder then the usual tests, so again, good luck.

Actually though, there was one set of cards that was not in the D-Deck system: pieces of Exodia. Although the tabloids had suggested that Kaiba had had them removed a month into the opening because of what happened between him and Yugi, the answer was much simpler: it had been a glitch. While rare, Exodia cards by themselves had very low ranked stats, and the computer had, in accordance to that, assigned easy questions. It hadn't taken long for people to catch on, and within two weeks it seemed like every duelist was just trying to call Exodia. It got a lot of complaints, and finally Kaiba stepped in and corrected the problem, removing the cards from the game. That had caused more complaints, but Kaiba knew those ones would fade. They had.

Also, The D-Dueling Arena had other facilities, including a top-notch arcade, a cafeteria arena, a large shop with lots of dueling paraphernalia, and something Kaiba had called the "Extreme Elimination Challenge." Inspired by an old Japanese game show (and a current TNN show J), the game was a physical exhibition where people (after suiting up in protection gear to ensure they didn't maim themselves TOO badly) could play for various prizes including good D-Cards by running a series of amusing abet challenging games, in which failure to succeed usually caused you to be dumped in water or mud. To top it off, a variety of comedians kept the audience entertained by various means while the contestants killed themselves. Great fun, and good exercise!

As for the revenge bit, it was subtle but childish. Kaiba had, when picking out the space for the arena, deliberately chosen a place that was near where Yugi lived. Once the arena was up and running, Kaiba had sat back and waited. Sure enough, not ten days had passed when some punk had shown up at Yugi's game shop and called himself "King of the D-Arena." And challenged Yugi to a Duel in said Arena. Yugi had turned him down at first, but after the punk had returned with some friends and egged the shop, Yami had popped up and marched over to the Arena, where he proceeded to kick the punk's ass in a duel six ways from Sunday, and the Dog had done the same thing in a fistfight immediately afterward. However, not three days later another guy was doing the same thing, and Yugi had been pestered with challenges ever since. It kept his skills sharp, and it annoyed him, so it was doubly fun for Kaiba.

Anyway, the D-Dueling Arena, despite these factors, had proven to be a success, especially with kids who couldn't afford good cards. However, people were still curious about the name "D-Dueling". Kaiba had never given an official reason why it was called that, and speculation was still going on what the D stood for was still going. Kaiba had a reason, but he would never reveal it: he felt anyone who needed to use a machine to get good cards rather then earning them the old-fashioned way was a "D-level" duelist at best. "Pure" Duelists, who used the original cards, mostly mocked anyone who played with D-Cards as well. A specific insult had eventually emerged: "Wanna-D's". Kaiba agreed, abet not in public.

He had no idea this new system would eventually led to perhaps the worst day of his life.

Or that the events were already starting to fall into place…

V didn't like Kaiba from the second he saw him. And he knew he wouldn't have liked him even if he'd never met Solomon Moto. He wasn't even seeing him in public, and he knew it.

There were several large TV screens on the walls of the various parts of the D-Dueling Arena. They showed various things (the ones in the actual arenas for D-Cards usually showed exciting D-Duels, for example), but occasionally they all showed the same thing, which was usually an announcement of some kind.

V was standing in the line to sign up an account when the TV had switched to an announcement, and Seto Kaiba had popped up on the screen. It was hard to ignore the ad: the volume was turned up for simultaneous ones, and even more so when Kaiba was on screen.

V turned and watched as Kaiba announced some tournament somewhere down the line. His eyes narrowed as the man spoke.

Everything about Kaiba aggravated V. The permanent condescending look in his eye, despite the fact that he had been looking into a camera when he had recorded the ad: if he looked like that at a CAMERA, he either had a weird mental problem that made him feel superior to cameras or he was so used to viewing others as lessers that it had become forever sketched in his gaze. The way he spoke, like he was trying to explain to an ape how to do a very difficult trick. Even the slight motions he made with his hands screamed "I am so much better then you scum" to V.

No one was paying much attention to V, and hence no one noticed the dark energy that suddenly sparkled across the pupils of his eyes.

"So sign up, and you never know, maybe I'll come along and show you just how a duel is done!" Kaiba said. He briefly held up several cards, real cards. The three at the front were Blue-Eyes: V recognized them from the game shop. He dropped them and stared at the camera for another second before the ad cut out, going back to the specific wall activity that particular TV did.

It seemed like he was staring right at V, and although V could read worlds in his gaze, one thing stood out above all.

I'm better then you.

"I. Think. Not." V said to himself, and turned back to the line. Dark thoughts whirled in his brain, but one kept playing over and over. A line from Shakespeare.

Seto Kaiba…

Full of sound and fury…

Signifying NOTHING.

And V, if he got a chance, would make that refrain reality.

But first he needed some cards…

There was a lot of D-Dispensers, the machines that you used to get your cards. V took one near the corner and started typing on the keyboard. He had given false info for his account: he was signing up to play a game, not trying to get a job moving ancient artifacts. He doubted anyone would check too closely.

V finished off the personality test. The machine told him he was "dark and sinister." That doesn't even BEGIN to describe me, you fool machine.

Not having any preference, V picked the random quiz. The Duel Monsters trivia stumped him, and he kept getting booby cards when he failed to get the right answers (fortunately, the questions beside the final five were multiple choice, so he got lucky sometimes). The rest were better. V played through the easy and hard questions and eventually made it to the final five.

The first one was a Duel Monsters question. V had no idea what the answer was, so he typed in some nonsense. The machine rewarded him with a good card, rather then the great one he would have received had he gotten the question right. Next one was history: he managed to get half the answer right and got a pretty good card. Next one was Duel Monsters again: again the nonsense answer. Maybe I should have picked something more specific…

V waited for the next question. It seemed to be fairly long.

It popped up.

V's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He couldn't believe how complicated the question was, nor the amount of time he was given to solve it. 40 SECONDS? A question like that would take the average person a WEEK to complete!

But V was not the average person.

And within his head, a secret weapon lurked. He used it.

To the average viewer, it would seem he was staring at the screen as the timer ticked down, but if you'd stood in front of V, you would have seen his neck tense up and his eyes begin blinking rapidly. They did that for several seconds.

Then V's hands flew out and began typing rapidly, entering in numbers like it was going out of style. He managed to finish the question and enter it a second before the timer ran out. He waited.

There was no fanfare, no giant burst of music or fireworks going off to signify what he had just done. The machine just calmly told him he was correct and discharged a card.

V picked it up and took a look.

"………………………Oh……………..my………" V said, amazed. He knew little about Duel Monsters, but he knew that what he had in his hand was something…

The machine was giving him the fifth question. V knew the answer, but he barely managed to type it in. The machine said he was correct and gave him his final card, then wished him luck and went back to the entrance screen. V numbly picked the card up and added it to his stacked deck. He was too busy staring at the card the fateful forth question had granted him.

He went through his deck, looking at the card he held while comparing things.

"…………..Yes…..oh….hell…yes…." V said.

He snapped the card into his new deck and gave it a quick shuffle. There was still a few things he needed to do, but he also knew he had been given a grand omen.

He looked at the door that led to the D-Dueling main arena.

Time to play the game.

To Be Continued.