The Rise and Fall of History: A Past Unseen

by Medigo

The world of dueling has reached a standstill. Many stories have been told through these cards, and the final story pits every side against each other. It is a game no more. Duelists are divided, and an unknown enemy watches from afar. In the midst of all this chaos is one man who brings a new power that can forever end the conflict; a stranger to this world and to himself.

36. The Exception to the Rule

Annex 036: The Exception to the Rule

Iria's LP: 3900 Uno's LP: 2400

Uno controlled Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon(7/2500/2000) and his Performapals; Thunderhino(3/200/1800), Spike Eagle(2/900/900), Lizardraw(3/1200/600) and Elephammer(6/2600/1800). Iria controlled Apoqliphort Skybase(9/3900/2500) in attack position, Qliphorts Disc(4/3800/1000) and Shell(4/3800/1000) in defense mode. Uno 's initial attack script was thrown off by Iria's trap card. Odd-Eyes could not double its own damage anymore unless Reqliate left the field. So he had to summon Elephammer. "You'll remember that Elephammer returns all spells and trap cards to a players hand when he attacks!" Uno boasted. "That is correct, Uno. But that will not undo the negation. The moment my trap targeted your dragon, it lost its effects for the rest of the turn." It was too late to help Odd-Eyes now.

"Still trying to teach me something, Silver? I already figured that out." Uno made both Spike Eagle and Partnaga target Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon. The Eagle gave it the ability to pierce through monsters, the partner-snake gave 300 attackpoints to Elephammer(4100/1800) for each Performapal card on the field. "But Tyrants Terror will still be removed from the field!" The battle phase began and Elephammer raised his trunkhammer to the sky. As it came down upon the Skybase, Iria activated another set card. "I will activate Forbidden Chalice." A golden cup appeared above Elephammer. "Your monsters effects will be negated and he will gain 400 attackpoints." The cup tipped downwards and poured holy water over the elephant(4500/1800). "Oh? Min-maxing the damage output?" Her apocalyptic Qliphort still faced destruction at the end of this fight. The hammers impact sent a wave of detonations across the city until it all burst open as a shower of debris.

Iria's LP: 3300

"Odd-Eyes!" Next Pendulum Dragon unloaded his fire breath upon the floating Qliphort Disk. The ship went down in flames fast and Iria took 1500 points of piercing battle damage. "Lizardraw. This is your show too!" The performing Lizard whacked Qliphort Shell with his cane, and cracked it open like a porcelain vase. "Now according to the fine print, Re-qliate cannot exist without Qli-monsters." The continuous trap selfdestructed. "Excellent.. Spike Eagle. The last scene is yours!" The shade-wearing bird made a pass along the opponents side and slashed Iria with his spike-feathered wings. "Oh I get it." Uno said. It was a lot of damage that he delivered. Just not enough to definitively end this duel. "You want to keep the option open for Qliphort Scout.. but can you afford it?" He put his last card down in front of him and ended his turn.

Iria's LP: 900

"You do not ask the questions, Uno. You had two chances now and you failed them both." Iria drew her next card. "That you have disappointed the Master is perhaps your greatest crime. That is enough reason for me to destroy you. I.." She had every intention to crush Uno with her next pendulum summon. "I..." So she was more then a little perturbed when she found out that she could not summon anything. "Yoo-hoo." Uno's whistling made her aware of the problem. "Quickplay spell card: Pendulum Shift! I can change a pendulum's scale with this, mine.. or yours!" Uno had activated his spell and used it on Qliphort Scout. He lowered its scale from 9 to 1. "Hah.. Did you think I was going to let you bore the crowd with a repeat of the last turn, Silver?!" Qliphort Monolith also had a scale of 1. There was nothing Iria could pendulum summon with two of the same scales.

"Pendulum Shift only lasts for one turn." Her left eye twitched. Uno had stolen another turn right from under her nose. "Do not presume that His deck can be humiliated like that, Uno!" Iria had to used the Scout's effect. She payed 800 lifepoints to add Qliphort Helix from her deck to her hand. She then normal summoned the machine. "All level 6 Qliphorts can be normal summoned without tributes. In such an eventuality, their attackpoints and levels will also be reduced. However they are still immune to the effects of monsters with inferior levels." The energy core of Helix(4/1800/1000) emitted less light than normally. "I will target it with the equip spell, Saqlifice! A Qliphort equipped with this spell gains 300 attackpoints and cannot be destroyed as a result of battle." Orbs of various colors floated around the Helix vessel(2100/1000). "I will declare my attack upon Performapal Lizardraw!" The Qliphort shot six blasts. "Oh. That's a good target, would be unfortunate if..whoops." Halfway during the attack, Performapal Thunderhino tripped over its own hooves and fell right into the laserblasts that were meant for Lizardraw. "Aha! You forgot that Performapal Thunderhino makes you choose it as the first attack target!"

Iria's LP: 100

"It was intended. The monster had to be removed." Iria defended her actions. "Oh? Was this intended too?" Uno retorted by drawing three cards from his deck. "When a Performapal is destroyed by your attacks or card effects, Lizardraw draws a card for each Performapal monster on the field!" Now he had a whole new list of toys to play with. "..." Iria had no commentary for that. She placed two cards down in the spell/trap zone and ended the turn. Afterwards Tyrants Terror added 1000 attackpoints to Qliphort Helix(3100/1000). "Maybe I upset you. Maybe you couldn't think properly for a brief moment and you lashed out. I should say sorry. If my performance makes someone angry, then I should do a better job. I don't just want to make your boss happy, or the audience. I want to see you happy as well!"

"You will not succeed." Iria snapped into action as soon as Uno had drawn his cards. "I activate Escalation of the Monarchs!" She revealed a familiar trap, one that worked quite well outside of her Monarch deck. "I can now tribute summon this turn." Iria sacrificed Qliphort Helix. "While a Qliphort has Saqlifice equipped to itself, it will count as two tributes." The one Qliphort was good enough to bring out a higher level Qliphort; a monstrous space-mollusk(8/2800/1000). "Three effects will activate now. Qliphort Helix will destroy your spell card, as it has been tributed." The remaining energy of the Helix-vessel swirled around Performapal Partnaga and tore it to pieces. "And the monster I tribute summoned is Qliphort Cephalopod! For each monster your graveyard has over mine, you will lose 300 lifepoints and I will gain them." Uno's two monsters (Thunderhino, Salutiger) outweighed Iria's one (Apoqliphort Skybase). The cephalopod zapped Uno with his tendrils and drained the lifepoints away from Uno, while handing them to Iria. "Finally. If Saqlifice is sent to the graveyard, a new Qliphort will be added to my hand!" Iria added a second Qliphort Skybase from her deck to her hand.

Iria's LP: 400 Uno's LP: 2100

"I keep losing Pendulums. Good thing I have so many. Have you seen this one yet?" Uno did not miss a beat. He immediately filled the empty pendulum zone with a scale 6 card. "Play a tune, Performapal Guitartle!" This one was a turtle that had a guitar for a body. The name was rather blunt. "Now I can pendulum summon monsters between level 4 and 6!" There were two pendulum monsters he could summon; Partnaga and Stargazer Magician. He only had room for one monster on his field though. "I need your help on the monsters field, Performapal Partnaga!" The redbanded snake(5/500/2100) slithered out of the extra deck, and coiled itself into a defending position. "Partnaga's monster effect prevents attacks from level 5 or lower monsters! But when he is summoned, he gives a target 300 attackpoints for each Performapal monster." The snake stretched out to wrap around Lizardraw, Spike Eagle and Elephammer(3800/1800). The last one was the monster who received the powerboosts. "Maybe I'll be lucky this time! Elephammer attacks!"

Things went well at first. The elephant succesfully hit the ground with his hammer and began pushing Iria's pendulum monsters and continuous traps away from the field. "Limiter Removal!" Except one quickplay spell was activated before it could be returned. "Gah!" As the spell resolved, it removed the limits from the Cephalopod machine. It would destroy itself during the endphase, but for now its(5600/1000) attackpoints were doubled. Regretting his attack was all Uno could do at this stage of the battle. Elephammer faceplanted into the massive Qliphort and disintegrated into pure energy particles. "Ouch." Limiter Removal would destroy Qliphort Cephalopod during the endphase. That was not much help to Uno right now. "Now this is a show." He switched his other monsters to defense position. He also placed every card in his hand face-down in the spell/trap zone. "What else do you have?" His turn ended, and Qliphort Cephalopod blew up from the inside out.

Uno's LP: 300

"You are not suggesting you are actually having fun with this?" The smile on his face certainly did imply it. "Why not? You are definitely the toughest opponent so far, Silver. You should take some satisfaction from that." That smile just got wider and wider. "Do you think you can win?" Iria demanded to know. "Do you think you can lose, Iria?" He countered. "Nonsense. You are trying to bluff me; that is always your last resort." Iria returned Qliphorts Monolith and Scout to the pendulum zones. "There is no pride to be taken from this game! This disk and these cards are mere tools to achieve results! What lies in between does not matter. What I have to do is obvious... Pendulum summon!" She resummoned three Qliphort Helixes(4/1800/1000), Qliphort Carrier(4/1800/1000) and Qliphort Cephalopod(4/1800/1000) from the extra deck. "No amount of pretense will save you from absolute power! I tribute all three Qliphort Helix monsters to summon another Apoqliphort Skybase!" The Helixes vanished into the water. Once more a city-scaled skyfortress(9/2900/2500) surfaced and flew up into the sky. Though it was a hologram it managed to block out the suns light. "The tributed Helixes will destroy all three of your face-down cards!" A spell (Magical Star Illusion) and a trap (Performapal Pinch Helper) were destroyed first.

"Echo Oscillation!" The third card, another trap, was activated before it could be destroyed. "Thanks to your lesson from the Vice Shop chapter, I remembered that continuous traps resolve first if they chain to their own destruction! I will use Echo Oscillation to destroy a pendulum spell card and draw something new!" The trap's power echoed towards Timegazer Magician and sent it to the graveyard. Uno got a new spell card out of the deal. "That one.. was harmless." Iria realized she could have left that trap alone and sacrificed Qliphort Carrier instead. In that scenario, there were fewer monsters in between her and Uno. "...I activate Apoqliphort Skybase's effect." The skybase did steal Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon away from Uno with its gravity beam. Now it was four against three. "He will attack Performapal Partnaga." The snake had to be removed first, since its effect was restricting the movements of her weaker Qliphorts. "I activate Performapal Thunderhino's effect from the graveyard!" But Uno had an expected counter. The rhino-beast was banished from its resting place. "He can negate one destruction of a Performapal in battle!" A current of lightning ran through the snake's long body. There was enough voltage to deter the Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon who wanted to show his former partner no mercy.

"You leave me no choice.. I attack with Skybase." The machine of apocalypse targeted Partnaga with their orbital lasers and made it vanish in a sea of light and fire. Meanwhile Lizardraw let Uno draw another card from his deck. That was something Iria had wanted to prevent. Thunderhino had made that plan gone off-track. It seemed like all her plans were unraveling before her. "Cephalopod." The shell-machine was next in line. Its tendrils lifted Performapal Lizardraw into the air and strangled it until it splattered into starry flickers. "Again." Lastly, Performapal Spike Eagle was destroyed by a laser attack from the Qliphort Carrier. "You are still around." The woman placed three cards down in the spell/trap zone, two of which were the ones Elephammer had returned to her hand before. Then during her endphase three cards were drawn from the deck through the effect of Qliphort Monolith. Control of Odd-Eyes also returned to Uno. "I am. Doesn't that make you at least a little excited? You imagined this would be a walk in the park, that I would give up because I didn't really want the answers. I do, which is why I am still here. It's just that, right now, I am not thinking about all of that. I am in this duel, and I have no idea who is going to win. That is what makes this way more fun than a guaranteed victory!" Uno drew his next card, having no idea what it could be.

"Do you believe in fate?"

"What?" Uno saw his card and heard a voice that was not his. No-one said it, it was part of his mind. "Another memory? Why.." His Pendulum hadn't reacted in any way. "Who..No. Not now. Later." He had a duel to win first. "Care to guess how I am going to pendulum summon this turn? No.. well time's Up!" Uno played a spell card. "I activate Harmonic Oscillation! With this card I can pendulum summon monsters that are face-up in my extra deck.. with the scales in your pendulum zone!" Qliphort Monolith and Qliphort Scout resonated with each other. "You are using mine?" The harmonic soundwaves traveled over to Uno's side of the field. He could now summon anything between the levels of 1 and 9. "I am saying 'Pendulum summon!' aren't I?!" Four blasts of energy pierced time and space. Stargazer Magician(5/1200/2400), Performapal Partnaga, Performapal Pendulum Sorceror and Performapal Lizardraw were all special summoned.

"Pendulum Sorceror!" Uno then made an attempt at using the Pendulum wizard's effect again. Iria beat him to the punch however. "I activate Escalation of the Monarchs! I will tribute the Qliphorts Carrier and Cephalopod!" Her continuous trap enabled the tribute summon of another Qliphort in her hand, a transparent alien stealth fighter(8/2800/1000). "Now that I have summoned Qliphort Stealth, two effects will activate! Both the tributed Carrier and the tribute summoned Stealth can return a monster on the field to a players hand! My targets are Pendulum Sorcerer and Odd-Eyes Dragon!" The stealth Qliphort hit the dimensional magician with an invisible beam to make him disappear. Qliphort Carrier's residual energy eliminated the pendulum dragon. "Ah. There's that look, Iria. You are enjoying this duel too." Uno retaliated, both with words and cards. "Stargazer, bring Odd-Eyes back!" Stargazer magician controlled the dimensions with his magic. If a pendulum monster was returned to Uno's hand, he would bring it back to the field.

"I do not know what you are talking about!" Iria claimed in spite of the satisfied smirk that crept up her lips. "There are no more special summoned monsters on my field, giving me the oppurtunity to activate Lose One Turn!" She flipped another continuous trap. "Monsters that were special summoned this turn cannot activate their effects. If a monster is special summoned, it will be switched to defense position!" The Stargazers magic turned against him and drained his powers. Odd-Eyes would not be returning. "Ha. You can't hide that expression from me. I can tell when someone is entertained." Uno was happy, the spectating and clamoring duelists were happy. Only she resisted the atmosphere. "It doesn't matter. Notions like those cannot change the outcome of this duel! What can you do now?" All effects on the field were shut down. The remaining Qliphorts were too strong to take head on, and Partnaga could not boost anyone's attackpower. Apoqliphort had free reign to control whatever it wished on the next turn.

"Do you really want to find out?" All of this, and Uno still had that confident grin of his. "Do all of you?" He passed the question along to the audience. There was silence initially. "Y-yes!" Alice was the first to shout it away. "Show it!" Her cries inspired the others and dozens upon dozens demanded to see what Uno had in mind. "Well then. They have spoken. Iria. Let me start by saying.. I still have a normal summon left." Uno took a card from his hand and put it down. "So I will bring out... Performapal Bowhopper!" It was a tuxedo-wearing grasshopper(4/1500/1000), with a bow on top of its head. "You can not be serious." Iria's face fell flat. Not because this monster was laughably weak, but because it would be the thing that did her in! "I try not to... Bowhopper, take Partnaga!" Uno activated his new Performapals effect. "Once each turn, Bowhopper can tribute a Performapal. The tribute will do 100 points of damage per level. Partnaga is level 5, so he will take 500 lifepoints away!" The snake crawled on top the grasshopper and pulled the bows strings back. Then it let go and got catapulted right at Iria as if it were an arrow. "Of all the.." Partnaga struck her in the face and that was that.

Iria's LP: 0

"He did it? He did it! That absolute madman! WONDERFUL!" Doms voice finally came in as he witnessed the results of the duel. For the longest time he had assumed that his Pendulums were too much for Uno's. He was extremely delighted to see Uno crush that assumption. "THE ONE AND ONLY UNO HAS DONE IT! His are the supreme Pendulum monsters! That was simply marvelous! We all need a break, something like this has to be given time to soak in! The next duel and location will be announced in 15 minutes!"

"Way to go, Uno! You beat those scary machines!" Alice shouted from the side of the lake. "Yeah, Alice. I will be with you soon!b Just be careful you don't fall!" She was so euphoric that it seemed like she could jump in the water just to congratulate him in person. "So. Did that do anything for your master? I take it he had a reason to call for a break." Uno was carefully optimistic here. He did not want to jinx himself. ".. There is. He told me to take you to him if you defeated me, no matter how it happened." The woman gave a nodding gesture to one of the guards at the other side of the water. They sent in another boat to pick them up. "I lost sight of myself in between the power of the Pendulum monsters." She wondered how the duel would have gone if she had not given so much of her lifepoints to Qliphort Scout. That was what allowed something so puny to get to her. "You surprised me Uno. I didn't think your cards could ever last against mine. I can admit that I was wrong.."

"Thank you... Can you also admit that I made you laugh a little? I know I saw a giggle when that snake flew into the air." Uno winked.

"Don't push your luck, Uno." She gave him a deadly glare. "This is your chance to get answers. Dom is waiting.."

(To be Continued in Annex 037: U.N.O.)

New Cards used by Uno
Performapal Guitartle
Performapal Bowhopper

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Harmonic Oscillation

New Cards used by Iria Silver
Qliphort Cephalopod
Qliphort Stealth

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Forbidden Chalice
Saqlifice

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Lose 1 Turn