Tournament of Souls- Regionals
Quote of the Day: "Nothing is the basis of everything, just as order is the basis of chaos." –my interpretation of a lecture given by Elmore James.
"Hahaha, you aren't so different from the rest, are you? In the end you lose just the same."
"I hate repeating myself. If you are so sure that you are going to win, go ahead and do it quickly."
"If you insist; I draw. I gain 500 so you lose 500."
Lucien: 4100
Ray: 11600
"During my standby phase, I gain 1000 from Dancing Fairy (1700/1500), 1000 from Spirit of the Breeze (0/1800), and 1600 from White Magician Pikeru (1200/500)). You lose 500 for each one."
Lucien: 2600
Ray: 15200
"Now I will play Sanctuary in the Sky, destroying Chorus of Sanctuary. You must have figured this out already being and intelligent person, but the only card that I need to beat you now is one of my Agents. Summon Spirit of the Breeze in attack mode, and that will be all." (How am I going to beat this guy? I will only have 100 life points after his next standby phase. Even if I managed to not loose, all he needs is one of his more powerful Agents, and I loose any how. There is no hope for me in this duel, and I have been stalling for so long, that odds are there is no hope for Larron either… because I was so stupid, he will loose his life. All hope is lost, for both of us…)
/Flashback/
"All hope is never lost." Lucien said into the phone. "I'll be over right away."
"How can you be so sure? You're sister isn't going crazy. Do you have any idea how many stashes of drugs we found? And now that I'm here, my family has already called trying to get me to come back." Said a female voice on the other side of the phone.
"I don't have a sister. As for how I am sure, I will have to use a metaphor. Look at the game of Duel Monsters. If you build your deck right, you will always have a chance to win."
"But this is life, not Duel Monsters. In any case, where would my deck be?"
"Right now, you just got a decent top deck; me."
"But Lucien, what's the point? Why shouldn't I just jump off the balcony of the hotel room? What are you supposed to do when you have no reason to live, but to die?"
"If you have no reason to live for yourself, you should live for the sake of the next guy, for the people who look up to you, who depend on you. Don't say that there is no such person, there always is whether you know it or not. In this case, I am that person."
"Lucien…"
"I'll be right over."
/ End Flashback /
There is a way, I just need to find it…My deck isn't working as it is supposed to, so it is time to move it outside of the box that it has created.
"Draw. I will now play the Card Destruction that I set down as a bluff. Now I discard my hand and draw four cards." Lucien looked at his cards, his face blank.
"I will discard my only card and draw one…" Ray grinned as he saw his new card.
"And you are doomed." Just my luck, he must have drawn one of his Agents.
"We will see about that. Now I will activate the effects of one of the cards that I discarded. Night Assailant (200/300) when discarded allows me to take one flip effect monster from my graveyard and add it to my hand. I will return Morphing Jar (600/700). Now I will activate Nobleman of Extermination on your face down card." Ray paled.
"It was Fake Trap. So now it is removed from play, right?"
"It and every other copy in your deck." Ray searched out two others, and placed them to the side.
"Now I will play Lightning Vortex. I will discard Morphing Jar to destroy all monsters on your side of the field."
"No!" Now Ray was turning white as a sheet. Why is he so afraid of loosing? He has nothing to loose. Nothing like what Raoul will loose if I don't hurry.
"Get over it. Now I will tribute my Raging Flame Sprite (1100/100) for Vampire Lord (2000/1500). I will also set two cards face down. That will be all. Not so confident now are you sunny?" Ray was too petrified to even complain about the pun.
"I…" Ray picked up a card from his deck and did nothing.
"Come now, make your move." At seeing the disgust on Lucien's face, Ray finally calmed himself.
"I will play Premature Burial; I will revive Dancing Fairy by paying 800 life points."
Lucien: 2600
Ray: 14400
"I will now tribute Dancing Fairy for your doom!" Lucien's poker face remained in-tact.
"Does my doom have a name?" He sounded exactly like a parent asking exactly who "the guys" or "my friends" who you want to go to a party with are.
"Its name is…" Ray paused for suspense.
"Agent of Judgment- Saturn! Now my angel-" Ray was addressing his card as if it was his sweet heart. Lucien was clearly sick of it as he cut him off.
"I hate to ruin the moment, but I will chain to the summoning with Solemn Judgment. It is negated, and I pay half of my life points."
Lucien: 1300
Ray: 14400
Ray looked to be on the verge of tears, but as he looked at the field he quickly shook it off.
"It means nothing! I have a huge amount of life points, and you have next to none! And my Wall of Revealing Light is stopping all of your attacks!"
"If you are so confident, end your turn."
"Fine, I end." Lucien picked up a card.
"I will set a card, and I will chain that with Dust Tornado on your Wall of Revealing Light." Even as he destroyed Ray's last defense, Lucien's face remained blank.
"Now I will attack your life points with both The End of Anubis and Vampire Lord."
Lucien: 1300
Ray: 9900
"By Vampire Lord's effect, I will have you discard a trap card from your deck." Ray searched out and discarded a Light of Intervention.
"That will be all." Lucien finished, and Ray was pale and sweaty. If he had tried to get out of school sick, he might have succeeded.
"I will set a card, and end my turn." Ray almost dropped the card as he set it due to the shaking of his hands.
"I will play Bait Doll on your face down card." It was revealed to be Mirror Force.
"It is destroyed and Bait Doll returns to my deck. Now I will repeat my attack."
Lucien: 1300
Ray: 5400
"You must discard another trap for Vampire Lord." This time Ray discarded a Light of Judgment.
"End." Ray hesitantly drew his card.
"I will play Tremendous Fire. I pay 500 life points and you lose 1000!"
Lucien: 300
Ray: 4900
"End." Ray had gained a little confidence from his last move.
"Is that all you can pull?" Lucien sounded blank, hypnotized almost, and as devoid of emotion as the table that they played on.
"If so, than this will end fast. I will set a card. I will attack once more. Discard a spell; you don't have enough life for me to care about Wall of Revealing Light."
Lucien: 300
Ray: 400
"Now I will end." Ray grinned as he saw his next card.
"I will summon a monster that pales only before Saturn! I summon Agent of Force – Mars (0/0) (100/100). Now attack!"
"What's wrong with you? Or did you not get the memo, your monster is pathetic, it only has attack equal to the difference in our life point if yours are greater. Well, yours are greater all right, by a hundred! I am merciful, I will activate Magic Cylinder. You survive through your own turn. (Mars (0/0))
Lucien: 300
Ray: 300
Ray muttered to himself as he waved at Lucien to take his turn.
"I will attack with The End of Anubis. You lose."
Lucien: 300
Ray: 0
Lucien cleared his cards and shoved them into his deck box. He ran towards the board where he hoped Raoul and Aliya were, not noticing that Ray was trying to say something to him. He saw that only Aliya was at the board, looking at the note that said there was a one hour break after the round ends.
"Aliya! Where's Raoul?" Aliya looked at Lucien, worried.
"He's over at the vending machine getting a snack, why?"
"I'll tell you later." He dashed through the store to get to the front door where the vending machine was, right next to the counter, Aliya following behind.
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When Aliya saw Raoul he was struggling with the vending machine, evidently it had just eaten his…
"My quarter! You stupid hunk of junk! You stole my quarter! I needed that piece of candy!" Raoul started kicking the machine but turned as Lucien walked up to him.
"Hey Lucien, what's wrong? Did you lose your duel?" Aliya mentally cursed herself for not considering this possibility. But how could Lucien lose? He was the one who made me a true duelist, not a mere shuffler of cards. Without him I wouldn't have made it this far. If he can lose what chance do the rest of us have?
"No, I didn't lose. It was a close thing though." Good, we can still win this. All of us… All I have to do is win two more duels and I will still be in the top ten…But what if I don't? I lost this duel, why not another? I couldn't even beat Amy…
"What's wrong then?" Raoul looked confused and had completely forgotten about his lost quarter.
"It's Larron. I figured it out. He is going to commit suicide by jumping off of the Main Street Bridge. He's standing on the observation box that they just put in recently. We need to hurry." Lucien started to pull Raoul out the door. As soon as they got out, Aliya started to follow, but stopped when she saw the emotions go through Raoul's eyes, from surprise to disbelief, from disbelief to shock, and from shock to fear. Then they changed from fear, to fury. He broke away from Lucien and started yelling. Aliya flew through the door and heard him.
"Why didn't you tell me? Thanks to you he could be dead!" Lucien's face had become a cold mask that showed no sign of emotion, or humanity. I've seen him like this before. Once when my mom had given him a ride home from a tournament that ran late, his mother was really mad at him. Evidently he hadn't been there when his uncle had arrived. He just stood there as she yelled at him, and he left the prize cards that he had won in the car. Later when I tried to give them back to him, he told me to keep them… like they were contaminated.
"Raoul, please think through this rationally." Lucien's voice was an even monotone.
"Rationally? Rationally! My brother could be dead and you want me to be rational!"
"Yes, I do. Odds dictate that since he didn't jump off the bridge as soon as he got their, that he is having second thoughts. Then if we wait, just a little while, then he will have had enough second thoughts for us to convince him to come down. Would Larron want you to give up the opportunity to be a champion, just to get him to loose his life prematurely?" At this Raoul slumped against the wall, brooding. Seeing this, Lucien grabbed his arm.
"But if you don't stop brooding about it instead of getting out their and doing something, he'll just die any how. So come on, we have to catch the bus; one of the stations is near the bridge." Lucien looked toward Aliya, so she got up and helped pull Raoul up, and toward the bus stop, until Lucien ran ahead to stop the bus. After Lucien had stopped the bus, Raoul straightened up, and jogged the rest of the way, Aliya panting to keep up.
They got on the bus, and headed toward the back. Lucien sat down on Raoul's left, and Aliya at Raoul's right. It would be a good 20 minutes or so, at best until they got to the bridge. That meant that they had about 20 minutes to get Larron down from the bridge, and then 20 to get back. But Mr. Kiwasaki will understand… but will Mr. Dongard. He is the official head of the tournament after all. Raoul was bent over, crying softly holding his head between his knees. Lucien looked over him to Aliya, and nodded toward Raoul. Aliya understood immediately. Lucien never did have good people skills. When someone cries, generally he is embarrassed, and tries to find someone else to help them… I'm the only exception. So Aliya put her arm around Raoul and tried to comfort him. Meanwhile Lucien gazed out the window.
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If Larron dies, it's all my fault. I should have just forgotten about the tournament, and gone to save him. No matter what I may have said about the odds, if we had planned it right, we could have stopped him. Its too late…Then another voice spoke out in Lucien's head. Lucien generally suppressed this part of him; it was too outspoken, and to logical. If he has died, then brooding about it won't help much now will it? No, but if he has died, nothing else will help either. That's a big if. Now, what's that saying? Hope for the best, but plan for the worst? Well, that's inaccurate. What it should say to be an intelligent aphorism is, "Hope for the best, prevent the worst, plan for both." Now that would be helpful. Now rather than brooding, why don't you start planning how to save Larron? Ok. So as Lucien was watching the world go by through the bus window, he planned. He planned for every possible eventuality.
The bus however, never reached the Main Street Bridge station. There were cars parked in the street for almost a block before the bridge, media vans, police cars, and spectators. Spectators! It's hard to believe that there are people so dissatisfied with their lives, that they want to see another person end theirs. Lucien got Raoul's arm over his shoulder and nodded to Aliya. She knew exactly what Lucien would have said, and she said it. "Excuse me sir, this bus isn't going to be getting any farther, so would you kindly open the doors?" Except that she asked as a question. Lucien wouldn't have put in a question mark.
As the bus driver opened the door Lucien lead Raoul out, until he tore himself away from Lucien and started to run to the bridge. Lucien raised his eye brows at Aliya and saw that she got the message, "Think fast, run faster." So then as she started running and Lucien turned to follow Raoul.
Lucien had to sprint to catch up to Raoul, as he had gotten a decent lead, but wasn't running all out. Raoul had enough distance training to pace him, even in this emergency. When Lucien reached him, Raoul slowed down to a walk, and Aliya caught up to them. Panting, she noted the obvious thing that both Lucien and Raoul had missed.
"Where's Larron?" She pointed up to the observation box where Larron should have been- it was empty. Lucien and Raoul spoke simultaneously.
"No." All three of them ran together to some of the police officers blocking the road. Raoul almost started yelling at them, but sensing that he would be too hysterical to be of much assistance to Larron, if he wasn't already beyond help; Lucien stopped him and let Aliya speak.
"Excuse me, where is Larron… has he jumped?" A kindly police officer looked at her and replied.
"He went into the observation box just as the lights went off, and that's the strangest thing. The lights are all on one system, but the lights at the bottom are still on." This time Lucien spoke.
"Couldn't he have broken them?" The police officer shook his head.
"Nope, couldn't have been. All of the lights at the top and for a little ways down turned off at the same time. Unless your friend has some eighty ghostly arms, he couldn't have broken them all at once." Lucien looked back up at the observation box. The windows were dark as pitch, and the entire top of the tower on which it stood seemed somehow darker than the rest of the world, as if all light was eclipsed before it could bring any brightness or joy. Joy? Why am I associating an emotion with the lights being turned off? Because light isn't the only thing that is absent from that box. There isn't any happiness, or hope. Lucien was glad that he had planned on the bus; he was going to need all of them.
"Ok, we need to realize our goal here. Get Larron down and safe at all costs. Aliya, you and Raoul take the stairs in the tower up to the observation box; we can't risk the elevator because if the lights are out, odds are it won't work either. I'll go up stairs that go around the outside, we're lucky that they didn't take them down after they finished building. I'll prevent Larron from jumping out the window from the outside, as the stairs go up to the platform where he was trying to jump from. You two will talk him out of it, and if necessary, hold him back. Got it?" Lucien felt like a foot ball coach, but both Aliya and Raoul nodded, and headed off towards the tower entrance.
Lucien circumvented the crowd, as where he wanted to go wasn't in the midst of it like the tower doors were. Once he was all the way around, he walked to the back of the tower and started climbing the stairs. Lucien estimated that the tower was about 13 stories high, and for the first few stories it was fairly easy. But as he got higher, the wind blew harder, and it was hard to keep his balance. The outside railing was broken at some points, so he had to cling to the railing along the wall. The stairs themselves weren't too secure either, they hadn't been fortified for use as a fire escape yet, so the wind blew them around a bit too, and at times, the staircase could be blown as much as 2 feet away from the railing and the wall. When that happened Lucien crawled up, climbing the stairs like a diagonal ladder, never letting go, but never stopping either. Because of his friends' trouble getting through the crowd, he got to the top first. When he reached the platform and saw what was in the box, he realized that he had planned for every possible eventuality. But not the impossible one that was before his eyes.
No…
Aliya and Raoul approached the door to the observation box. About 2 flights down, the lights were all off, and even if it hadn't been a time of grief, they wouldn't have been able to smile. The air itself seemed sad. Aliya got to the door first, when she opened it, she had her eyes closed, afraid of what she might see. When she opened her eyes, she was so shocked, that she slammed the door behind her, and left her hand on the knob, frozen in place effectively locking it. In front of her, she could see blackness, but in that shadow, she saw Larron, and a woman with red hair. There was a demonic looking knight on a black horse between them, and then she realized, This is a duel! But there are no projectors, how? They are wearing duel disks, but they don't appear to be functioning as anything but a board for the cards. As she thought this her hand dropped from the door knob and Raoul burst into the room just in time to see the knight plunge his spear into Larron, and fling him out the window. As this happened, the shadows began to clear, and they could see Lucien on the observation deck, with Larron's body flying right at him.
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Lucien couldn't dodge the body, so he go knocked into the railing; luckily it was one of the stronger portions. Larron's body however, went past him and started the fall into the river. Instinctively, Lucien grabbed for Larron's wrist but was almost pulled over the railing, and had to let go. Aliya and Raoul ran to the railing with him, but the body had disappeared, long before it should have hit the water, and there was a sound like a small explosion that disturbed the water below, as if a large amount of air had been displaced. Lucien looked toward Raoul, and led him back into the observation box. There were cards all over the floor where they had fallen out of Larron's duel disk, most of them torn. The woman with the red hair had disappeared along with the darkness. But in the corner, wedged under one of the telescopes near a window, were three cards that hadn't been ripped. Lucien saw them and motioned for Raoul to pick them up. He did and almost smiled when he saw them.
"Our favorite cards" he said. "Our rarest cards too. Barrel Dragon is mine, Blowback Dragon is his. The other one came from a pack that we decided to split the contents of, because it was the last pack of the bunch that we got. Gatling Dragon." Lucien saw the tears coming to his eyes, and nodded at Aliya, and they each took one of his arms and led him down to the bottom, to deal with the police. Lucien had already decided. The police weren't going to know that anything strange had happened. They would have seen the disturbed water and assumed that the body had fallen into it.
Once he was sure that Raoul was going to go the rest of the way down stairs with Aliya, he went back up, and collected all the shredded cards. There was nothing more valuable than Polymerization, and there were no playable cards remaining. Lucien could tell that Larron ran a machine deck when he saw 7 completed, but scolded himself for thinking about duel monsters at a time like this, and finished picking up the cards, and put them in his various pockets. What the police didn't know wouldn't hurt them, especially because if they did know, it wouldn't help anyone. Just get them in an asylum for the mentally ill. Lucien started to think that he shouldn't go to the rest of the tournament in light of recent events but then he thought again.
Why not? After all, he was killed through these cards. Maybe I can find a way to- no, not save him, that would be preposterous. But stop it from happening again. Two people lost to this game is two too many. With that decided, Lucien hurried down stairs to support Raoul, and get back to the tournament as fast as possible. It was their best chance of catching this person. Everybody who is anybody in the dueling world is going to be in this tournament series. If this person is good enough to take two peoples lives like this, they are good enough to be up in the higher rankings of the tournament.
I'm coming for you, and when I find you, you won't have time to be afraid.
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Author's note: sorry for being so late with this, I was out of town for 2 weeks with only a 4 hour break at home (that I was awake for at least) during which I re-packed after washing all of my clothes.
Rex: Yes, all Italics as of yet are Lucien thinking unless it is clearly from another character's point of view. (Like when it focuses on Raoul or Aliya). Yeah, the Stumbling thing was an error on my part. As for who was talking, I will try to fix that. Thank your for tolerating my mistakes.
Zenryo: Yes, but that is his personality (to do things on his own that is).
Sdrive: I realize that it seems strange, but Lucien is thinking far ahead; first of all it is against the odds that he will be able to stop Larron from jumping. Second of all, this is a once in a life time opportunity, if they go to save Larron, they will be eliminated and Lucien realizes that they shouldn't ruin their lives to save Larron, seeing as if #1 is true and they can't save him in any case.
John: Yeah, it looks tough, but as you saw, he made it through
Peace Writer: I guess I just disagree with the rulings associated with continuous traps in general. And trust me; even if Lucien got eliminated I could keep the story going… seeing as (unfortunately) some other characters that are eliminated return, so it isn't impossible. But no more spoilers.