Okay, so y'all are completely allowed to hate me for updating so late. It's rather inexcusable, but check below for my list of excuses if you want.
What the hell is up with this chick, he thinks as he watches the strange girl recoil from him and cover her face with her hand. He doesn't know what to make of it. First, she follows him and then she's scared shitless of him?
"Stop it!" she screams, though she doesn't seem to be aware of how loud her voice is and he can see concerned bystanders gathering around their duel.
"Stop what?" he hollers back at her. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Lorna!" someone calls out, causing him to turn and search for the source of the voice. He groans when he recognizes the newcomer. It's Tristan Taylor, a guy that he absolutely despises and a friend of Joey Wheeler. What is he of all people doing here? He can feel his lip twitch in annoyance at the idea of that girl being a part of Tristan's gang, though it certainly explains her lame deck, though...
Tristan runs towards them and comes to a halt at the girl -Lorna's side. He puts his hands at her shoulders and rubs them comfortingly. The boy almost gags at the sight of them. What is she? His girlfriend or something?
"Lorna, calm down... I'm here... Shh..." Tristan says quietly, trying to disregard the crowd that had gathered. It was the crowd that led him here to begin with, but now he feels uncomfortable with the several pairs of eyes watching him, curious to find out what is wrong with his friend. His calming words seem to quiet her down and her screaming has turned into almost inaudible whimpering. Not letting go of his friend, Tristan turns his head to glare at Lorna's opponent. "What did you do to her, Dino-Boy?" he bellows.
Dino-Boy, or rather, Rex Raptor, looks incredulous at the allegation. "Me? I did jack shit! Your girlfriend here just started screaming out of nowhere!"
Tristan lowers his head, confused as to why Lorna would be so afraid of Rex Raptor of all people; he isn't exactly the most intimidating person in the world after all. "That's not like her..." he mutters to himself, feeling the meek and terrified Lorna pull him closer. He bites his lip and contemplates on what to do for a moment.
"Listen, Lorna," he finally says, forcing her to look up at him. "You can win this duel, okay?"
She stares blankly at him for a moment then gives him a shaky nod. "Mhm..."
"And I'm gonna be right behind you, okay?"
She nods again and puts her card to her chest, turning around again to face her opponent. Her eyes widen again as she looks at him and Rex can see her trying frantically to avert her gaze. "I don't have anything in my hand, T-Tristan." She makes sure that only Tristan can hear her words, and he knows she's trying hard not to sound terrified, so he doesn't let her know that she's doing a horrible job of hiding her emotions.
Tristan stands behind Lorna, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders and steadying her so that she's no longer shaking and flinching. "Lorna, I don't know much about duel monsters," he admits, cursing himself for getting off to a bad start in reassuring her, "I don't know what Yugi would do in this situation..." He racks his brain for the right thing to say, knowing that Lorna is hanging desperately on to his every word. "B-But I know that somewhere deep down inside of you, you know exactly what Yugi would tell you if he were here, so you need to calm down, and think hard about your next move. Got it?" Without turning to look at him, she nods her head once. "Good," he says with a sigh. "Kick his ass."
She nods once more before moving a shaky hand to her deck, shutting her eyes tightly as she draws her next card. She peeks a the card, groaning weakly when she realizes that she hasn't managed to get a monster, but a second trap card.
Rex: 3700
Lorna: 2450
Swords of Revealing Light... and Beckoning Light... What kind of strategy can she possibly make? The Swords can fend off his attacks and protect her life points, but for only three turns, while Beckoning Light allows her to replace her hand with light monsters from her graveyard. Unfortunately, it's completely useless because the only card in her hand, other than Beckoning Light, at the moment is Swords of Revealing Light, which she needs to fend off his monsters. However, the Swords can still buy her some time, although it will all be useless, if the Swords of Revealing Light wear off and she still doesn't have any strong monsters to face Rex's Herra, the strongest monster on the field, currently standing at 2300 attack points and backed by two other dinosaurs, each packing 1700 points worth of power. If he manages to tack on even more strong monsters, Lorna is done for.
The girl looks perplexed and Tristan can see her hands shaking again, so he tightens his grip on her shoulders. "Focus, Lorna. I know you can figure this out."
"Hey!" Rex objects from the other side of the field. "You say one more word and it's an automatic forfeit for her. So shut up!" Tristan immediately shuts his mouth, not wanting to risk Lorna losing because of him. Then Rex proceeds to address his opponent, the irritation caused by her hesitation was perfectly evident on his face. "And you need to hurry up and make your move because I don't have all day! I have a tournament to win and you're just wasting my time!"
Lorna looks up at him once more, trying to keep her eyes focused, but Tristan can see her struggling to keep her gaze and she promptly lowers her eyes to the floor again. Her fingers move to the cards in her hand, she takes one of the cards and sets it down on the field. "I'll set one card face down and end my turn," she tells him, though she might as well have been speaking to the ground because her dark eyes still won't meet Rex's hazel ones. Looking like someone who had forgotten where they were and what they were doing, she looks over at Tristan, who nods reassuringly. She gives him half of a smile and turns back towards Rex, closing her eyes as she does so -a temporary relief.
He draws, keeping his wary eyes fixed on his shaken opponent, analyzing her, trying to understand what it is about her that makes him feel so uneasy -what it is about her that makes him feel like this duel is anything but ordinary. Her distant expression makes his heart race in the worst way and he wants with all his soul for this duel to end as quickly as possible. He needs to win this duel as quickly as possible. He leers at her, placing a spell card face up on his duel disk with ardor, his fingers lingering over the card for a couple of seconds as the card materializes in front of him. "You know what this is?" he asks, not waiting for an answer from Lorna, and he was sure that she wouldn't give him one anyway. "It's a card called Molten Destruction! This'll give each of my monsters a 500 attack point bonus since they're all fire monsters!"
He watches warily as Lorna's eyes shift between the continuous spell card he had just placed and the attack point counters which had appeared beside his three monsters, however, try as he may, he can't find the hesitation that had originally taken refuge in her solemn eyes. She gestures forward with her hand and a card on her side of the field rises to face up position -Magic Jammer... And he doesn't need her explanation to know exactly what that card will do. Dark smoke surrounds the hologram of his spell card and Rex watches in a rage as his card is consumed by the darkness and is immediately destroyed, causing a slight breeze to ruffle his hair.
"Oh, yeah!" he calls out to his unresponsive opponent. He has to admit that this isn't really the most entertaining duel he had ever participated in, as he's much more accustomed to bickering with his opponent (which was going just fine until she decided to freak out on him). "You still have no monsters to protect you!" He glances over at her empty field. There's nothing there other than a face down card and her stupid field-spell card, Sanctuary in the Sky, which protects her life points whenever he obliterated one of her fairies, and she currently has none of those to hide behind this turn. Her face down card? Well, that's no real threat to him considering the fact that she has only one measly card in her trembling little hand. She's obviously placed it as a last resort and, whatever it is, he'll charge right through it and straight to her life points.
"Jurrac Herra! Guaiba! Velo! Attack her life points directly!" He can't help but let out a chuckle at the knucklehead standing behind Lorna as his face sets into a grim line, expecting the worst. She's toast!
"No!" she cries out, revealing her face down card, Swords of Revealing Light. The field rumbles as Rex's side of the field is showered with several bright swords, which halt his dino monsters' rapid approach and completely immobilizes them.
He lets in a sharp breath and furrows his brows at the sight of his paralyzed monsters, but he retains enough determination to holler at the girl before him. "Those lame swords won't hold back my dinosaurs forever! You think you can get your act together in just three turns?" He lets out a derisive laugh, but it's too tainted by vexation to give off the intended effect. "Just give up now, Schizo!"
Lorna starts her turn by drawing a card from her deck and her life point counter chirps as her card effect activates. Rex fights down the growl building up in his throat and waits to see her next move.
Rex: 3700
Lorna: 2650
She looks down at the two cards in her hand, blinking her eyes purposefully as she thinks about her next move, but to Tristan's confusion and Rex's relief, she does nothing. Dangling her empty hand down by her side and glancing over at the duel's audience, anything to keep herself from looking at Rex, she says, "Y-Your move." Her voice is less than a whisper and it's a wonder that Rex even hears her.
He smirks at the card he has just drawn; it's one of his favorite monsters, but he can't summon it now without sacrificing two perfectly good monsters, and with Lorna panicking and trying to figure out a strategy, he had a bit of time to prepare. "I'll set a monster in face down defense position and one face down card, then I'll end my turn." He bites his lip anxiously at the thought of having to go through one more boring turn before he can summon his strongest monster. He shifts his gaze over to one of the most important pieces of his strategy, and the very key to his victory, thinking back to how he had managed to score a deck like this to begin with.
It had only been a couple of days before the Battle City tournament and he was adding the finishing touches to his Battle City deck, going from one game shop to the other and looking at all the undiscovered gems that some of the less experienced duelists had overlooked -not that he needed any new cards because he was a duel monsters champion and many a duelist had fallen to the power of his Serpent Night Dragon, so he was fairly certain that he was ready for whatever he would face in the tournament.
He doesn't really know who it was that gave him his Jurrac deck that fateful day, and if he's being completely honest, he still isn't quite sure what it was that gave him his deck. He knows that its a person, even though he hasn't seen physical proof of that fact (they had been wearing a heavy black cloak that darkened their face dramatically and made it impossible to make out their features), but it's not like a giant sea monster or something would be giving him a deck out of nowhere and asking him to use it. He couldn't really complain, though, since he now possessed much stronger monsters than he used to, and if there was a catch, he wasn't aware of it, seeing as the weird guy/person/sea monster gave him the deck without saying a word, leaving only a piece of paper with a cryptic "Good Luck" written upon it in impeccable handwriting.
Just as Rex anticipates, Lorna ends her next turn without making her move, leading up to the final turn of her Swords of Revealing Light. She only has one turn left to get her act together or she's a goner, and Rex doubts she'll have anything to rival his new secret weapon, though it may be useless to call it a secret weapon when he's about to unveil it in one of his deck's first test drives. Upon drawing, he realizes that he hasn't drawn the card he needs to defeat her, but with a grin he shrugs off his disappointment; it's only a matter of time before he gets it and that girl won't know what hit her. It's also incredibly entertaining to watch Tristan's face go from worried to irreversibly hopeless behind his friend's back, so prolonging this duel isn't that much of a big deal to Raptor.
He decides to summon another Velo to the field, watching in admiration as it materializes right next to its brother. They squawk to each other enthusiastically before rearing their heads menacingly towards Lorna, a mocking warning to her, and Rex grins thinking, Perhaps monsters really do take after their masters, and he is a master of the great dinosaur species no less.
On his next turn, those pesky swords will go back to where they came from and he'll be able to mop the floor with Lorna. His victory isn't too far off.
Tristan's hands on Lorna's shoulders are now shaking and he's glad she can't see his face because it held no optimism at all, and he doesn't want to reinforce her fears and make the girl even more petrified than she already is. He's not allowed to give her anymore pep-talks either; Rex saw to that soon after he arrived, so he will have to make do with trying to calm himself down and believe in Yugi's training and in Lorna's ability to defeat this guy. She can defeat this guy, right?
Lorna's shoulders stiffen abruptly under her friend's grip, causing the tremors in his hand to travel up his arm and into his body, and it's all he can do not to lose his footing and stumble gracelessly to the ground. He can see Rex observing her guardedly and he wonders what the Dino duelist can see on her face. Though, neither of the boys expect it when Lorna stares straight into Rex's eyes and speaks, her voice ringing as clear as a bell in the plaza, her tone full of confidence and resolve.
Rex: 3700
Lorna: 3050
"Alrighty, you bag of dicks! No more Mr. Nice Lorna! Let me show you what real dueling is all about!"
Rex staggers almost a foot away from his original stance, his face a vision of pure incredulity, while Tristan chokes out a sigh of relief, his hands relaxing their tension as they grip Lorna.
Atta girl! Our Lorna is back!
Ahaha, cheesy Tristan is cheesy. But cheesy Tristan is also my favorite Tristan
I hope this chapter wasn't too boring because Lorna is completely out of it for most of the chapter
But hey, Rex Raptor! Who woulda thought!
So here's my list of excuses, as promised above:
1- I graduated - whooo! -throws confetti-
2- I got a job, volunteering at a school for children with special needs -WOW PHILANTHROPY
3- It's Ramadan and I'm fasting
4- Duels are fucking hard to write
5- idk my dog ate it...