Chapter 4: Learning The Ropes

Writer's Note: Just so you know, if I know what the card looks like I'll go a brief description, but if I don't, I'll just say it showed up. Anyone got a site which has all the card pictures on it?

V walked into the arena and right into hell.

He had expected some kind of spectacle, it being a dueling arena open to the public (and he could bet Kaiba loved to show off), but he wasn't prepared for the storm of light and noise that slammed against his senses.

In order to make sure everyone could hear properly, each public dueling platform was equipped with its own unique speaker system. This blocked out any surrounding noise if you were dueling, but if you were not on a duel platform, the resulting racket was eardrum-shattering. Combined with all the fancy hologram effects and various lights and lasers Kaiba had rigged up, not to mention the three large TV screens showing various duels, and it was as someone had let a group of Dazzler clones into the arena and let them go nuts*.

It was way too much for V. While most of the arenas, roughly forty or so, were open to the public, there were also about ten "private arenas", which one could use for an additional fee. This had several advantages: the arenas were soundproofed, so no ridiculous racket. Also, it was small, so only a few people could watch, and only if you invited them in, this fixing any problems of "backseat duelists" who thought it would be great help if they yelled at the people dueling, offering strategies and such that would more likely then not just annoy the dueling person. However, V still had limited funds, and he didn't want to go around renting private arenas just yet, especially since he had no one to duel with.

He figured, for now, he would make do with the public arenas.

A loud blast of sound came to his right as a hologram of a magic card attacked some duelist and nearly made V deaf in his left ear.

Scratch that. He would make so, as soon as he acquired something. V turned and left, heading for the souvenir shop. He figured they would have what he needed.

Twenty minutes later, V returned to the arena. He looked around and then slipped on the shades he had bought. They were a bit goofier then he had wanted: lots of merchandise had Duel Monsters paraphernalia attached to it, and these shades were outlined by a snarling Blue Eyes dragon at the bridge. But they protected his eyes, and concealed his unusual V scar, so he figured he could live with it. Now, with the sound…he figured he would get used to it. Plus, the shop had not sold ear plugs.

Time to play.

As mentioned, the D-Dueling Arena had several other features besides its special dueling platforms. That was why Tea was there.

You would think that after being pushed around by a jerk like Johnny Steps, dancing arcade machines would prove distasteful to her. However, she could look past the way that idiot had acted for the sake of her greater goals.

Tea wanted to dance, and dancing was hard, in many aspects. So, in order to aid her quest, she had made a list of things she would most likely have to do in order to succeed. One of those things was why she was here.

There were many factors in dancing, but to Tea, the greatest trick was endurance. Grace, style, creativity, those were all important too, but to Tea, endurance was the key to them all. It was usually not a failure in those that led to people's dreams being crushed, but rather the body deciding, at a crucial time, "No, I can't do this" and konking out, leading to unpleasant, embarrassing, and sometimes even dangerous results.

Hence, she was here to enter a contest that had been advertised for the dancing arcade machines that were so popular in Japan. To Tea, not much dancing was needed in these games: it was just a matter of following random patterns as quickly as possible. There was no real knowledge in how to dance in it, but there was something else that Tea knew: it was tiring.

Hence, she was here. She was not here to win the contest (although if she did place in a high spot, that would be nice), but rather to see how long she could last, especially at the murderous blitzkrieg of a pace that the expert levels of the machines ran at. Once she had a decent gauge on how long she could go at peak strength, and how long she could go period, she figured some questions that may have plagued her later in life would be solved.

Plus, she could probably have some fun, and in the end, wasn't that what life was about?

V was NOT having fun.

Now, despite his good fortune, V had not planned to walk in and start dominating. For one thing, that would attract undue attention. For another, he liked to start out slow and play for fun at first. Once he had some idea on how the game was played, and more importantly, how people generally played it, he would have a good idea on how to play seriously, against serious opponents.

He just hadn't expected the first guy he challenged to be so damn good.

"And to finish off this little game, I sacrifice Gemini Elf and Komouri Dragon to bring out the terrible Dragon of the Black Sun!" the kid said, as his monsters vanished and were placed by a spiky, winged black dragon. (2600/2400) "And since I dispatched so many of your Dark monsters, I say…Dark!"

The dragon, which gained 500 points for both categories from whatever type of monster the kid chose, provided said monster was in the graveyard. Immediately went up to 5100/4900. which immediately squashed V's Dark King of the Abyss (1200/800) and his life points.

"Ow. That was…humiliating." V said as his platform lowered. No sooner had he landed then the kid rushed by.

"Like to stay and chat, but I'm in a hurry! Nice game! BYE!" he said, and then Ryo Sai headed off to wherever he was going (perhaps back to the fic Eternal Duelist Soul, from which he was borrowed. Thank you Wise Man Domingo).

V grumbled. Not the best way for his first duel to go, even if he had bit more concerned with testing the opening moves of his strategy.

"Hey you!" came a voice, and V looked at a blue-haired girl of about 12. "I challenge you!"

"What makes you think you can win?" V said calmly.

"Because if you duel like you did against Ryo all the time, it'll be easy!" V peeked over his sunglasses.

"Ok then." V said, and stepped back up on the platform. The girl rushed over to the other end, while V practiced shuffling his hand.

"Ok, you go first!" The girl said.

"Um, ok…." V said, as he looked at his cards. Bah, just one monster card! "Ok, I play Hinotama Soul, in attack mode!" (600/500)

"What, that's it? That was STUPID! Ok, first I play Fire Reaper!" the girl said. The Fire Reaper (700/500) appeared. "Take care of his silly Soul thing!"

The Fire Reaper did, killing the Hinotoma Soul and taking 100 of V's 4000 life points.

"And next I play Vishwar Randi (900/700)! Go, attack his life points directly!" the girl ordered. V lost another 900 life points, leaving him with 3000.

"You are SUCH a sissy!" a young boy yelled at V. V tossed him an amused glance.

"Better to be a sissy now, then when it matters." V said, and continued playing.

He lost.

Tea was thirsty.

The qualifying rounds were over, and the losers had left (not her though, she had qualified). However, as mentioned, the dancing machines required effort, and hence the many thirsty people that had come before her had emptied the nearby vending machines/ Tea didn't want to wait until they were restocked, so she had headed across the D-Dueling facilities in order to get something at the cafeteria.

Her desire to quench her thirst caused the little incident: she wasn't paying close attention to anything, and hence she just say a flash of black in front of her, which she ignored.

A moment later she stepped on the coat that the man was wearing. Worse, a combination of bad timing made her step on the coat in such a way that she put her full weight on her leg at the same time the man tried to take a large step. The result caused him to be abruptly yanked backwards and land on his back rather harshly: his head bounced off the ground a bit. Tea stumbled a bit from the yank, but kept her feet, and hence witnessed this rather painful incident.

"Ow." V said, staying in his position on his back.

"OH MY GOD! I'm so sorry! Are you ok?" Tea asked.

"Yes. Entirely my fault." V said, and then to Tea's surprise, he got up in a unique way: a no-hand leap to his feet that was also known as a "kip-up", and a rather snappy one too.

"Really? But…" Tea said.

"Not a problem miss. Maybe I should keep this thing close to me." V said, pulling his coat in.

"Wow! You're cool!" came a sudden third voice: a young boy addressing V. He was apparently impressed by V's unique way of getting up. "Wanna duel?"

"Sure." V said.

"But…" Tea repeated, still feeling bad she had caused this stranger to fall on the floor.

"It's ok! Don't worry!" V said, leaving with the child to head to a Duel arena. Tea shrugged and continued on her quest for a drink.

Walking back with said drink several minutes later, Tea saw the man again, on a platform. As she watched, a magic card played by the boy took out V's probably trap card, and the boy gleefully attacked with his two monsters, decimating V's life points. V put a hand to his forehead and shook his head, grinning a bit with the kind of laugh that says "Oh. How foolish I must look!". It was the kind of thing only a man who was good at not taking himself seriously could do.

Tea headed back to her contest. She danced the day and most of the night away.

V did the same in dueling.

Tea did a lot better then V did.

Not wanting to go looking for a hotel, for various reasons, V had found a much better place to spend the night: the roof of the D-Arena itself.

It had been relatively easy to sneak up onto it: janitors and backstage personal were not the most observant people. A short amount of time spent watching showed where the few people who did come up to the roof usually went (to smoke cigarettes, or occasionally make out. V hoped it just stopped at that act: he didn't want to be an unseen and unwilling witness to any further acts of that kind). V didn't need comfort to sleep: he had slept in far worse places then a roof of an arena.

Nearly everyone would look at V's day and term it a total disaster. He had played, with people of all ages, but mostly kids (about half, he'd say) roughly 28 duels, give or take a few.

He had won 2.

Terrible! People might say. A prime example of one's assumption of his skills greatly outstripping said skills.

But those people knew nothing.

V had not planned to start his games by winning. He always started by preparing, and that was exactly what he had been doing today: observing and testing himself and others.

There had been plenty of times where he had had cards in his hand that could have turned duels around or outright won them for him. But he hadn't played them. Mostly because those incidents had involved children. No, pulling out his special card and destroying kids was not what he wanted to do. They wanted to have fun, so he played along. Nothing thrilled a child more then beating an adult at something, and V was happy to oblige.

They were just kids.

They were not Worthy.

The rest had been practice and observation. He had practiced strategies without actually pulling off the final step in them: practiced setting up his main attack card from various angles without actually using it in the end, practiced how the magic and trap cards he had could be used to slow down or baffle his opponents while he played.

And he had watched people, studying everything about them. How they spoke, how they reacted, how their body language flowed as they performed various actions. How different people acted when they were winning or losing or in the midst of their own strategies, looking for the holes and how he could use them to his advantage.

That had been today.

Tomorrow…he would play again. And he would play kids, and probably lose to most of them on purpose, but in a way that suggested they had won due to their own skills and luck rather then purposeful foolishness on his part. But now…he would be looking for a challenge.

He did not want to, nor expect, to find a Worthy yet. And if he did, he would wait. Games with the Worthy were grand, but they were also horrible, for various reasons. No, V would settle for someone with skills.

Then, he would duel seriously, with intent to win.

And he would.

Indeed, considering the tricks he had up his sleeve, V could have truly set himself up as an invincible champion, an opponent no duelist could ever beat.

Ever.

But there was no fun in that…

With the exception of a few occasions…

One that may very well play out if fate was as capricious with some things as he was…

Pondering these things, V dozed off.

He did not notice his deck, ducked away in a jacket pocket, start to glow. Rather, it was not his deck, but a certain card within it…

Something was very angry.

To Be Continued.

(* Dazzler= A Marvel comics character, with the mutant ability to turn light into sound. Considering how much noise the arena was making, a bunch of them could make a lot of light indeed)