Cady Whiting was shuffling idly through her cards when she heard Horus slam the door to his room, which was right next door. Another loss, huh? She placed her cards back into her holster and decided to go calm him down for Randy's sake. Horus tended to be a little violent when he was mad.

Clouds were rolling in quickly across the sky, and a sharp burst of cold air chilled Cady to the bone. When had it gotten so cold? Cady just shrugged and ignored it. There was always weird weather around Duel Academy. That was just a minor downside to having an elite duel school on an island.

She paused in front of Horus' door before knocking. Horus had to be really close to expulsion by now. If he didn't start winning a lot of duels and fast, there was a good chance that he was going to lose for good here. Maybe it would be better just to let him be.

Then she shook her head. Horus was going to take his anger out on Randy again if the small red-head came in before he calmed down. Cady brought up her fist and banged on the crappy, thin-as-paper door three times. She knew that Horus heard her, but it was a while before the door finally creaked open and Horus' weird hazel eyes glared out at her.

"What do you want, Cady?" he asked venomously.

"So how was your duel with Corissa?" Cady asked, pretending not to know how his duel with the Ra student went.

"How do you think?" he snapped. He backed up to let her in, then shut the door behind her. Cady patiently sat on the bed while Horus paced around the room running his hand through his long black hair and muttering to himself.

Eventually, he remembered that Cady was there and started talking to her.

"I just don't get it, Cady. What is it about me that makes me lose all the time? Am I cursed? Am I just too dumb to duel? I get all of the stuff they talk about in class, I get all of the most powerful cards, but I still lose." As he was talking, his voice rose and rose until Horus was practically yelling.

"Last week, I got beat by five Ra students and pretty much every other Slifer besides you and Randy, and I didn't even duel you two! Every single time, I'm taken down without a fight and I just don't get it! I don't even get how I even made into this school at all since I suck so bad! The only reason I'm still around is because I do volunteer work around here that no one else wants to do. One more loss, and I'm through!"

He collapsed onto the bed next to her and put his hands over his face. Cady felt awkward and had no clue what to do, but decided to try anyway. "Tell me what happened in the last couple of moves in the duel. Maybe I can tell you what you did wrong," she suggested. To be honest, she wasn't really expecting him to answer, but her surprise, he did.

"The last couple of turns won't help you much, but whatever. Corissa only had her Warrior Mole out on the field."

Cady almost cracked up. Warrior Mole? Wasn't that one of the weakest duel monsters in existance? Unless... Horus continued to talk, confirming Cady's suspicions.

"Or, at least, so I thought. It turned out that she threw down a face-down while I was distracted by her insults. When I ordered my Pteradactoyl to attack her, guess what card was laying face-down? Warrior's Sacrifice! When her mole was destroyed, so was my Pteradactoyl. And since his attack points were 3200, my remaining 2000 life points were wiped out thanks to that damn trap card's effect!"

Cady couldn't think of much else to say other than Well, why didn't you pay more attention to the game than your fragile ego? But she didn't say it. Instead, she suggested that Horus play a practice duel with her just to see if she couldn't find what he was doing wrong.

Horus agreed, but didn't think it would do much good. And he turned out to be right. All of his moves were powerful, but Cady was always somehow one step ahead, and she couldn't figure out why. Horus was doing everything right, but Cady always seemed the right card at the right time to save herself.

The only thing the practice duel accomplished was making Horus even more ticked off and Cady more confused.

In a last ditch effort to calm the steaming Slifer, Cady suggested watching more of the dueling tapes that they stole from the old school archives. They found the stash of tapes on accident, really. Horus was just really lost on his first day at school and found an old broom closet marked "Archives."

It turned out that Duel Academy had recorded all of the major duels done by the best students in the history of the academy's past. That meant that some of the tapes were about a hundred years old. It was a miracle that they could still be watched. Still, it was kind of weird. All of the tapes ended at fifty years ago. No more new tapes had been made since then.

But then again, maybe that was better. Horus probably couldn't fit over a thousand tapes into his tiny closet. It was bad enough with just under five hudred. A couple of them had to be hidden in drawers and under floorboards. There's no way any more could've fit.

Cady's only condition was that they had to wait for Randy, because he liked to watch the videos even more than Cady and Horus did.

Thankfully, Randy was back about five minutes later. "Hey, Horus, how was your-oof!"

Cady slapped her hand over the small red-head's mouth and shook her head. Randy got the message and shut up.

"Hey, Randy? What took you so long? We were about to start the next duel video without you, man!" Horus called from the fridge. His mood improved since Cady came over, but one mention of his most recent failure might send him over the edge again.

"Ugh, Ms. Randolph made me stay an extra ten minutes past the end of detention because she said that I wasn't scrubbing the chalkboards well enough and told me to redo most of them even though they were already clean. I swear, she hates my guts!"

Horus stopped raiding the fridge and came over to sympathetically pat Randy on the back. "That's what you get for falling asleep in her class, I guess!" he laughed. "Now, come on, I want to see how the duel between Alastair York goes against Richard Ford."

Cady fiddled with the TV before settling into a chair. Horus and Randy were already laying on their bunks, impatiently waiting for the tape to play.

A fuzzy image finally appeared, showing two Obelisk students about to face off. "Duel!"

The duel was long, and about halfway through (which was about seven thirty-ish at the time), a loud crash of thunder announced the start of a vicious storm.

A few minutes after that, a downpour started. The sound of the rain hitting the roof of the Slifer dorm was so loud that the three friends couldn't hear the duelists on the tape anymore. They cranked up the volume, and ignored the strangeness of the storm outside.

Blue lightning was flashing rapidly, and repeatedly struck the island at certain points. The clouds were completely black. Not dark grey, but black. The wind was howling mournfully. Anyone listening would've said that it sounded like someone crying.

But just as fast and as suddenly as it came, the storm faded and disappeared like it was never there. A full moon shone with a white light from above, lighting the night brightly and stars winked from their usual places. It seemed like the storm was like a ghost. There one second, gone the next.