Chapter 1: A Waiting Buddy
The limo ride was still lengthy, but Leo wasn't nearly as bored as he was before.
It helped when you had a ten year old to torment.
"What kind of deck do you use?" Yuri asked, bouncing around in his seat full energy.
"That's a secret." Leo replied with a smirk on his face.
Yuri's eyes filled with disappointment, "Aw…where is this school of yours?"
"That's also a secret."
Yuri started moping around at this point, "That doesn't seem like its secret worthy. What does someone have to do get into your Duel School?"
Leo turned to Yuri, a smirk and a playful look in his eyes on his face, "Secret."
Yuri huffed, crossing his arms and turned away from Leo and looked out of a window.
Leo let out a laugh.
This surprised Yuri, mostly because of how deep it was.
"Sorry, sorry. I find a lot of humour in your reactions." Leo took a deep breath, composed himself, and then went back to staring straight ahead.
Yuri shook his head. Leo caught the gesture, 'What? Is he…disappointed?'
"It's not nice to play around with people's feelings like that." Yuri mumbled to himself.
Leo looked up in thought. That statement made him think a little about a subject that always interested him.
"Hey Yuri?"
He was still moping, but he responded with "Yeah?"
"What do you think a person's cards says about them?" Leo shifted to turn to Yuri, all playfulness gone and replaced with pure seriousness.
Yuri picked up on this and thought before answering, 'A person's cards? What does that mean?'
Yuri just sat and thought about it for a minute. He knew his own deck fairly well, so he decided to work with that.
"I use HERO cards…what does that say about me?" Yuri mumbled out loud.
Leo smirked, if anything he was getting him to think. Before he could respond the limo stopped.
"We're here." Leo said quickly before opening his door.
This brought Yuri out of his thoughts. He quickly unbuckled himself and quickly crawled out through the door Leo opened.
Yuri's eyes widened in surprised. They had stopped in front of 'The Duel Shop'. As the name would suggest, it was the local card shop. It also had two old fashioned Duel Arenas that they'd use when hosting tournament or if you were willing, rent one out.
Yuri turned his attention back to Leo, who shrugged.
"This building offers everything we needed for the try outs. So we rented it out." Leo started walking, "Come on now, I'm running late."
Yuri nodded and followed him. Yuri walked with a smile on his face as he got closer to the brick building, he'd been going here for years, be it to buy cards or to take part in their tournaments.
Glass motion door slid open as the two approached. As they walked in Yuri noticed that the main shop room was relatively packed.
There were twenty adult men, ten on the left wall and the rest on the right. They were wearing suits with strange blue jackets with twin tales. One thing Yuri noticed was that all twenty men were big, in a rather threatening manner.
In the centre of the room there were around thirty people, of different ages and genders, all yelling about how the try outs should have started already.
They were so busy yelling that no one had noticed Leo or Yuri walking in.
Yuri's eyes filled with fear, till he felt a firm grip on his shoulder. He turned, and found Leo looking down at him, that same playful look in his eyes and small smirk on his face.
"We wouldn't want people to think that you had special privileges, what with walking in with the guy that owns the school, eh?"
Yuri's eyes widened, he hadn't even thought about that.
"Don't worry, just run up to the group and try not to stand out, okay?"
Yuri gave Leo a panicked look, before gulping and tip-toeing over to the loud group. Leo watched Yuri as he went, analysing him. Yuri was remarkably light on his feet, Leo couldn't hear a single step.
'Then again, maybe it's just being drowned out by the sound of the crowd.' Leo shrugged, 'I'll have to look into it at later date.'
Leo cleared his mind and walked around the room, side stepping the large crowd of annoyed duelists.
As he walked around the group he noticed that they were standing in front of a recently constructed stage. He knew it was recent because he had paid for the materials it was made of.
Someone noticed him and yelled, "There he is!"
Before he knew it the entire group was glaring at him, and they quickly started to look like they would charge him.
The sudden snap of ten trained men moving at once to in-between thirty people and their employer caused the group to stop in their steps.
Leo smirked and continued on his way to the stage.
He walked up the steps of the stage, finding three colleagues of his that sighed in relief as soon as they could see him properly.
A man wearing a red jacket stepped away from the centre of the stage and the microphone, leaving that space all for Leo.
Leo tapped the microphone gently, a sound that was heard around the entire room.
"Right, speakers work. That's good. Hello candidates, I'm Leo Akaba. I'm not usually a betting man, but I'd wager most of you are rather annoyed that I'm late, correct?"
The glares of the people standing in front of him were the only answer he needed. Despite their annoyance Leo found himself smirking again.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Yuri, who shook his head in a righteous disapproval of Leo's joy. That only made things more entertaining to Leo's mind.
"Well, to that I place a question. What right does anyone have to question the actions of someone above them?"
In that moment he saw some eyes focus in confusion, intrigue or annoyance at his statement. Some even stormed out, pushed to the edge and finished with Leo's insults.
"I see those that are annoyed and those that are interested. That's good. That question is something you should ask yourselves before expressing your annoyance. But never mind, more on that later. We're here to separate the weak from the strong, and I think you've all waited long enough." He let out a mild chuckle.
The room remained angered, but no one else left.
"When your name is called up please walk over to a vacant duel arena." Leo pointed at two door on the left and right walls of room, "There you'll find a duel tester. They'll be challenging, and you might lose. If that is the case you weren't strong enough this year, I'm sorry to say. Please remember that you can always try again next year." Leo turned to the man in red, who held a clipboard.
He walked up to him, out of range of the microphone.
"Kita? Before you start calling out names, I have an extra candidate for you to add." Leo spoke smugly, which just confused Kita.
Beyond that Kita found himself with raised eyebrow, "It that where you were, sir?"
"Why yes, yes it was. Add the name Yuri, if you don't mind." With that Leo walked off. The staff members on the stage and the group stared at him as he went, till he eventually walked outside.
"That was it? We waited thirty minutes for that?"
The man, Kita, started reading off names and soon things were underway.
People started sitting down on chairs in the corners of the room, or on the floor, as they waited. The first two duelists had walked up to the arenas, and with them going two at a time, everyone knew that this would take a long time.
Yuri sat with his back against a wall, five feet between him anyone else. He didn't mind being alone so much, in fact it gave him time to think about his current situation. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't notice when people glanced over at him and laughed.
The reason being that he couldn't believe his luck, like he really couldn't. Yuri didn't trust luck that often, he preferred to understand why something was happening.
'That duel wasn't that impressive…' A depressing voice said in the back of Yuri's head. He looked down at the ground, his knees hugged into his chest.
'Just dumb luck. I can't duel, not really. I'm no good.' He winced as the voice kept telling him just how far he was out of his depths.
"You don't belong here." Yuri's eyes blinked open in a flash, desperate to find the source of the voice.
Standing in front of him was a boy. Visibly younger than Yuri was, with blue hair that framed his face and with a ponytail. He wore a blue t-shirt with brown shorts.
He had a lollipop in his hand, from which he was taking licks from periodically. Yuri stared at the kid for a moment, blinking his eyes as he did. One thought crossed Yuri's mind as he studied the kid in front of him, 'He's really cute for a boy.'
"What?" His tone was confused.
The kid rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, "I know everyone here, took the test with most of them and scoped out the rest just in case we'd have to duel each other for our spot in the schools. You don't fit into either category."
Yuri glared at the kid, but it did little to scare the kid in front of him.
"Maybe you just did a bad job at 'scoping' out the competition." There was a moment of silence as Yuri and the kid glared at each other, till the kid blinked and laughed.
He smiled at Yuri, "I doubt that."
"Well, sucks for you." Yuri crossed his arms and turned away.
The sound of footsteps were notably absent.
"Would you mind if I sat with you?"
Yuri turned back to the kid with a raised eyebrow, confusion evident on his face.
"I'm sorry, but what?"
"I wanna sit with you, kay?" The kid danced on the heels of his feet, a wide smile on his face.
Yuri shook his head, "I'd rather be alone."
"Aw, please?" Yuri was quickly becoming annoyed with the kid and was about to tell him to leave, till he got a good look. The kid was pouting, and his eyes were so big, constantly looking like he might cry.
'He looks so sad. And so cute.' Yuri blushed, that was the second time he had thought that. It was starting to annoy him.
"Fine, sit down." There was a cheer and before he knew it Yuri had a young ball of energy sitting next to him.
"I'm Sora, by the way. You?"
Yuri didn't make eye contact as he said, "Yuri…"
Instead of the laugh he was expecting he was met with silence.
Yuri turned to look at Sora, who was looking up in thought.
"Nice name. Think you'll get into the school?"
"I don't know. I hope so. How about you?"
"Totally. I'll probably have no trouble at all." Sora smiled smugly.
Yuri looked him over with a grimace on his face. Sora was the very image of confident, except for his left hand that absently tapped at the carpeted floor. Between the muffling effect of the carpet and the noise from the other candidates Sora probably thought no one could hear the trapping.
Yuri could.
"Well, good luck anyways…" Yuri trailed off, looking straight ahead.
"…Thanks. You too." Yuri looked out at Sora out of the corner of his eye. The smug grin had dropped, and Sora's face looked dejected for a moment. Then the smile returned.
"So…got any more sweets on you?" Sora laughed and reached into his shorts pocket, and handed Yuri a small red lollipop.
Yuri smiled well removing the wrapper, "Thanks."
"No problem." Sora took a bite out of his own lollipop.
The two talked for a while about random things that crossed their minds.
4 reviews? 4 reviews! Thank you all so much, it means a lot.
So...Yuri and Sora are hanging out. Cause why not?
