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.

53. While it Lasted

Annex 053: While it Lasted

"Don't interfere, ma'am. This does not involve you." The XYZ-duelist stated to the bystander as his Artifacts Failnaught(5/2000/1600) and Vajra(5/1800/1900) slashed through the smog that his first attack had created. "Not involved? She is my daughter! What did you do to her!?" Heather could not see Alice through the smoke and fire. "Nothing worth screaming about, she still has some lifepoints left. It's all energy and forcefields." It was only the last blow which had the highest impact settings; another constraint forced upon every dueldisk.

Alice's LP: 1300 XYZ-duelists LP: 8000

"Why.. would you want..this?" The smoke and noise began to clear. "Alice?" Her mother could hear and see her again. "Why would you hurt people with cards?" Alice emerged relatively unscathed, aside from scratches on her clothes and dust in her throat. "You're standing? I guess you're made of stronger stuff than I thought." The opponent sneered. "This is how dueling was always supposed to be. It's not just a game of skills but a test of endurance! And we're the only guild that honors that." He moved to the second main phase and placed another card in the spell/trap zone. "I XYZ-summon Artifact Durendal!" Artifacts Failnaught and Vajra were placed on top of each other; the spear and clubweapons transformed into a large red spirited sword(5/2400/2100). "I will activate one of its two powers!" One material was detached from the XYZ-sword. "Each player with a hand shuffles their entire hand into the deck, then draws the same number of cards they shuffled into the deck!" The XYZ-duelist exchanged one card while Alice had to shuffle four cards into her deck. One of them was the reason he activated this power in the first place, she had to let Shurit the Nekroz Strategist go now. "Your turn, champion slayer Alice."

"Alice... You do not have to do this.." Heather could not bear to watch this, she wanted the duel to end. "I..." But it wouldn't, this guy would not accept an obvious surrender. He wanted the duel to look clean. "It won't stop. Why..won't it.." She did not have any desire to counterattack either. It would hurt him too. "Why can't you just stay away!?" Visibly rattled, Alice drew her card. She normal summoned Dance Princess of the Nekroz(4/1600/800). "Nekroz Cycle!" After that a ritual spell was played, to revive a Nekroz ritual monster from the graveyard.

"You're not going anywhere! I.." Normally, the opponent would have simply stopped that spell with either of his XYZ-monsters. Durendals second power rewrote effects as they were activated ad Cyber Dragon Infinity(6/2700/1600) could negate effects altogether. "Crap. The Dance Princess!" However he had overlooked the Princess of the Nekroz. Her effect prevented anyone response to the activation of a Nekroz ritual spell. "Nekroz of Decisive Arms!" The Nekroz Mirror sacrificed a level 7 Mermail Abyssmegalo and a level 3 Djinn Releaser of Rituals from her hand. Life was given to the armored seadragon(10/3300/2300) with great golden cannons on its back. "I do not want to duel like this, I never wanted any of it!" Decisive Arms activated its effect to banish one face-down trap or spell each turn and banished the face-down Artifact monster that the opponent had set. "So just stop!" Then she Nekroz of Decisive Arms attack; it blasted Cyber Dragon Infinity to pieces.

XYZ-duelists LP: 7400

"Bah! You think you can keep us in a stalemate?" Alice had done more than defeat his strongest XYZ-monster, she was also blocking the arrival of new ones. When someone tributed the Djinn Releaser of Rituals for a ritual summon, the Djins sealing effect would come into play. He could not special summon while the monster that Djinn was sacrificed for stayed alive. He couldn't exactly sit on his traps either. "You don't have a lot of time either. So if you don't mind.. I am going to get what I want, while I can!" He took his turn. In his draw phase he got a spell that would come in handy. It was Parallel Twister, a card that destroyed one of his spell/traps and then one of her monsters. "Heh." First he would need to remove the Dance Princess of the Nekroz. That card denied him the chance to target ritual Nekroz monsters with his effect. "Attack, Artifact Durendal!" The red sword spirit could do that easily. With one swing from the blade the Princess was cut down at waist-level. "Now!" When the main phase came again, so did his combo. He placed one card face-down in the spell/trap zone.

Alice's LP: 500

"I don't think.. that is gonna happen." Before any twisters could arise, a storm of a different type arose. "You what?" The duelist gasped. Alice had activated Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy his set card before he could. "Ugh. This isn't over." He kept Parallel Twister to himself for now and passed the turn to her. "Why isn't it? Arent you winning, Alice?" Heather did not understand why this man was not giving up yet. "I should be.." Alice hesitated to keep attacking. "You're running out of cards.." But she had to. She discarded Catastor from her hand to special summon the Dance Princess from the graveyard. "You can't keep this up." Decisive Arms fired another cannon shot to reduce Artifact Durendal to a burning slag-pile. The Princess in turn fired a blast of water to strike the enemy in the chest. "Oof!" He winced again as he felt the blow to his lifepoints. "Heh.. Maybe. Maybe not. But this wont stop until one of us falls. That's the way to duel and it will never change! If you can't handle that, then you shouldn't be the champion slayer anyway!"

XYZ-duelists LP: 4900

"And besides. You're too late either way." He looked behind him. "Oh." Heather flinched. There was someone else coming, and she was wearing the same kind of uniform as this guy. "Heh. I don't know you are, but you're just in time. I softened up this girl. Come help me take her down and I will split the reward with you." The nameless duelist was eager to let this newcomer assist him. Via the rules of the battle royal system that was allowed. "Hey..." However this blonde duelist did not pair up with him, or Alice. She took her own slot and had her own monsters all prepared. "What are you..doing?" Madolche Puddingcess Chocolat-a-la-Mode(5/3000/2700) and Madolche Chouxvalier(4/2200/1800), powered up by the Madolche Chateau fieldspell, attacked the wide-open XYZ duelist directly. "Kgah!" The sudden damage shocked him into unconsciousness. "Yeah, no." The woman spat.

Liza's LP: 8000 XYZ-duelist's LP: 0

"Liza!" It was her, the woman from the golfcourse. "You know her?" Heather was even more confused, this woman looked like she belonged to the same guild as the other guy. "She does.. she beat me a few weeks ago. That set me back, and I thought joining this new plan of Roma would get me back at the top. But.." Liza stared at Alice. "I didn;t sign up for this madness." She shook her head and turned of her dueldisk. "Liza.. You did this for us?" Alice felt guilty that she had almost believed it; that Liza was just here to steal the credit. "I told you, you're too sweet. You're gonna get swallowed alive here. So wake up those two slackers and take them to that safe place, you aint got much time before someone else shows up. I'll pretend I didn't see you." She turned around and walked away. "Oh.. Thank you Liza!" Alice shouted at her anyway. "Yeah yeah yeah." She waved once. Then she was gone from sight. "... Was she a friend?" Mrs. Brandt asked. "I'd like that." Alice sighed. At the very least not everyone in that guild was an enemy.

...

"So where is Dom?" On the inside of the theater it was pandemonium, Uno expected to be ambushed at any second. He followed Zach even though he could not tell where the disciple got his directions from. "His dueldisk.. pardon, your dueldisk.. was last seen on the re-established network inside his own office. We can track every active dueldisk. That's how I managed to chart a smooth path." The guilds could not be everywhere, Zach simply slipped through the cracks. "If you can detect every disk, what about Emily? Do you know where she is?" Uno had promised to find her too. He was not even sure if he had to make Dom a priority. "I do, and she is in a safe location. You can see for yourself if you don't believe me." Zach's disk showed a holohraphic grid. Her dueldisk appeared on the far north sector. As long as a dueldisk had a spot on the radar, their duelist still had lifepoints. "I know what you're thinking, but we have got to be practical. She is too far away for us to be any help, we can do good here."

"And here is any better?" Uno observed the great hall. There were monsters upon monsters in every row. Duelists were tagteaming duelists, doubling up on others or sniping them down while they had their backs turned to them. It was like a tournament where rules did not apply; half conscious duelists and broken dueldisks littered the floors. "It's even worse than I thought.. But we can't afford to throw ourselves in there." Zach moved to the end of the hallway and pushed a button on his dueldisk. "We are taking our own road." A section of the floor slid to the side, revealing a stairwell down into the darkness. "A secret tunnel?" Uno was not all that shocked. "Doms idea.. You probably gathered that on your own. The people who built it called him an extravagant fool. But the master knows more than they'd think. He also created that digital card program that allowed us to fight back in the first place. While he dueled Roma, I used the connection to upload it to one of his followers disks. It wont take long before they find out which disk that is, so we have to hurry."

"Hey, who are you?" They heard a random XYZ-duelist shout. "Oh no." Zach had dropped his guard, now they were cornered. "Hey, hey! We weren't done yet!" Fortunately, or unfortunately, it turned out their witness was already engaged with another opponent. Said opponent performed a summon that would put an end to their fight. "You can't hide from Infernoid Onuncu!" Hells destructive dragon fired a blast that wiped out the XYZ-duelists monsters and followed it up with a direct attack that took down the duelist. "Urghrgh, blast it." He did not stay conscious, just like the last one. The heat of the blast was too much. "Wait a second, Eric?" Nobody else he knew used Infernoids. Nobody else had Infernoids. "Uno!? When did you get back?" Indeed it was Eric Stonewell who had saved them. "Creffield? You're both here? Oh man, talk about luck!"

"Eric. How is it going out there?" Zach inquired. "Oh you know, messily. I think my guild is holding on, but it's..brutal. You can't keep track of anyone. Especially those guys at the stage. I wanted to help Iria, but nobody can get near them.." Eric seemed to be fueled by adrenaline and terror at the same time. Seeing Uno again was like the first bit of good news all day. "But why are you.. better question, how are you here? Did you use that trapdoor?" He had so many questions and so little time. "Not yet. That is where we need to go. We are going to rescue Dom." Uno told him. "We are? I wanna help!" He claimed, smashing his hands together. "You do? Wont the guild notice your absence?" Zach fretted. "They probably wouldn't even notice if the sun exploded with how busy they are." Phoebe was not watching over his shoulder for once, so this was the perfect moment to break free. "Zach, weren't we in a hurry?" Uno reminded the disciple. "Right you are. Very well, Eric. You can come with us. This way!" He went down the stairs into the tunnels.

The office was a few minutes away. "So where did you go? What did that Neter kid do?" Eric succeeded in whittling down his question-list to two topics as they traversed the underground pathways. "I am actually curious about that myself." Zach said. They had not gotten around to getting answers the last time they saw each other. "I am saving that story for later, when I am ready to believe it myself. Neter is not the problem right now." Uno did not think this was a good moment for that whole story. They soon reached the end of the tunnels anyway. Zach slowly lifted the floor tile above them and looked around. He held up four fingers. "Huh, four what?" Eric asked softly. "Four adversaries..possibly more." Zach whispered back, annoyed. "Need a distraction?" They would be outnumbered in a head-on confrontation. "Yes.. There is a second exit a bit further back, go there and make some noise, then come back down here and I will lock them out. They wont be able to follow us through the tunnels once I seal the doors."

Dom was on the other end of the room, strapped to a chair, being questioned by Ichirou. He had not gotten far. Mostly because he could not get that damn mask of his to come off. "I don't believe you cardmaker. You couldn't have deleted everything, it is far more likely that you hid the data through some from of encryption. I do not want to be rough, but if you do not start giving answers.." It was when he was about to go into extreme methods that the the distraction took place. A loud blast came from the waiting room. "That wasn't one of us." Ichirou looked at the other XYZ-duelists. "Go check it out." The four of them marched out of the office. A little while after the last one had gone through the door, Zach popped up from the floor. "What?" Ichirou gasped. Before anyone had an idea of what was going on, he closed the doors and locked them down. "Creffield my boy! Stupendous work!" Dom congratulated him. "The other disciple? I was wondering where you were. Did you come here alone?" Ichirou hovered his hand above his deck of cards. "Sorry to disappoint you!" Uno and Eric emerged from the trapdoor. Zach sealed it off with the push of a button. "Uno?! Ha, I knew you had that heroic spark!"

"Please do be quiet, cardmaker." The second-in-command put up his dueldisk. "Heh. You want to take on all three of us?" Eric would love to see that. "You could try." Ichirou activated a function of his device, one that had a very familiar sound to the Disciple. "A forcefield!" Only Zach was close enough to react and rolled forward as a barrier came down. "Ah you bastard!" Eric and Uno were trapped on the other side. "Two out of three; how inconvenient." The XYZ-duelists plan would have involved capturing them in a barrier and wait for the guards to break the lock on the door. "I challenge you, Ichirou!" Now Zach was in his way. Ichirou could not talk his way out of this duel. "So it is going down like this." There was an upside though. They could not take Dom away while he was around. "Very well, Disciple."

Ichirou's LP: 8000 Zachs LP: 8000

"Uno, Eric! Make sure the door stays locked. I wager those people are calling backup as we speak." Zach said as he drew his cards. The first turn was his. "I hope your locks and doors are very strong then." Uno heard the banging on the other side. "They're so and so." Dom admitted. He could not estimate how long it would take for anyone to break through. "Right.." So Zach moved as swiftly as he could. He placed one monster and one trap card face-down. "No chatter? You are usually talk without end, you and your master." Ichirou started his turn and he drew at a leisurely pace. "Hmm. I summon Kuribandit." His first monster was the eyepatch-wearing pirate Kuriboh(3/1000/700). "Then I will set these four cards and end my turn." Four traps filled his backrow. "That's a lot." Uno flashed back to his duel with Akai. Was Ichirou using a trap monster deck as well? He hadn't really watched his duels in the tournament. "Now during my endphase, I can sacrifice a normal summoned Kuribandit to excvate the top 5 cards from my deck. One of them I can keep." The Kuriboh bandit burst into pieces, pulling five cards from the deck as it died. All of them were trap cards. "What should I keep?"

"I know how Kuribandit works, Ichirou. You do not need to explain it to me. You do not need to stall either." Creffield spoke with polite impatience. "Am I that obvious? Aha-ha, what a shame." Ichirou kept a Discovering Destiny trap card and sent the rest to his graveyard. "However, I am not the only one who is being obvious. I read your file, and I know everything about you. You seem captivated by that card you just drew. Polymerization, right?" He made a guess. Zach gasped, which practically gave him away. "Hm-hmm." So the second in command activated a continuous trap; Anti-Spell Fragrance. "Eesh!" This trap, while it was active, delayed the spells of both duelists. They could not be activated from the hand or during the turn they were set. Zach could not fuse his Melodious monsters this turn, not with a spell card. "Then I will attempt a different approach! I tribute Serenade the Melodious Diva! She counts as two tributes for a Melodious monster!" Zach's facedown pink-toned angel(4/400/1900) in a golden dress was tributed for Zach's strongest card, Mozarta the Melodious Maestra(8/2600/2000)

"Of course you are quite capable without fusion. So allow me to prepare myself." Ichirou activated another trap card, Fatal Abacus. "With this, every time a monster of ours goes to the graveyard, that player loses 500 lifepoints. Ergo.." The sacrifice of Serenade took 500 lifepoints away from Zach. "Terrific.." He moaned.

Zach's LP: 7500

"Oh I have more." A third trap was used. "Paleozoic Marrella, it sends one trap card from my deck the graveyard." The trap he sent was called Paleozoic Olenoides. A pattern was emerging. "Paleozoic.. trapmonsters." The pattern had been there since Kuribandit. Three of the cards that Bandit had sent to the graveyard were Paleozoic cards. "Exactly; as you can see monsters dying is not going to be an issue for me. When a Paleozoic trap is activated, any Paleozoic trap in the graveyard can be summoned to the field as just a monster card!" The activation of Paleozoic Marrella awakened the sleeping fossils. "I special summon Paleozoic Eldonia, Dinomischus and Hallucigenia!" A round diskshaped shell(2/1200/0), a deepsea tendril sprouting flower(2/1200/0) and a green worm(2/1200/0) with spines and teeth; these were the living forms of the trapmonsters. "History is fascinating, don't you think? I wonder what the future will say about us."

(To be Continued in Annex 054: Notes in the Sand)

New Cards used by Alice Brandt
Djinn Releaser of Rituals

New Cards used by Zach Creffield
Serenade the Melodious Diva

Cards used by XYZ-duelist 2
Artifact Durendal

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Parallel Twister

Cards used by Ichirou Azora
Kuribandit

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Paleozoic Marella
Paleozoic Olenoides
Paleozoic Eldonia
Paleozoic Dinomichus
Paleozoic Hallucigena
Fatal Abacus