Annex 074: As Thin as Water

"Uh...Hello?" Alice fidgeted as she entered the detainment block. "It's me, Alice. Do you remember me?" She did not really know why she had come down here; either boredom or curiosity. A solid wall of reinforced glass separated him from the rest of the room, yet she still looked and felt tense. "Uhm." Alice gave the glass a gentle knock with her hand and flinched back. When Adamant did not react to her, some of the tension dissipated. "...Can you hear me?" The glass appeared to be soundproof as well. "Oh.. hmmm." Getting a new idea, the girl started breathing against the glass to fog it up. Then she started writing large letters in the fogged up screen to spell out 'Hello'. "Yes I can hear you." Adamant finally answered her before she could start on her second word. "Ah!"

"Did Cassius send you?" Adamant was wary of any visitors, no matter which guild they hailed from. "Cassius? No.. I came here by myself. Aaron is.. Cassius is doing something else, with my sister." Alice at least sounded honest when she spoke. That led to a different question. "Why are you here then? Shouldn't you be with them?" While Adamant might have been stuck here, he could still keep himself up to date with current events by listening to all the chatter that bystanders made. This prison was not particularly well isolated or guarded. Case in point; Alice just being able to walk in. "I was.. but I couldn't stand all that waiting anymore. They were so busy, and wouldn't let me help." She had to get out of there and find something to do to distract her mind. "Wait.. why do you think Cassius would send me?" Alice was confused. She was not the spying type. "Do you really not see why? You defeated me, Alice. You I can respect." Adamant admitted bluntly. "M-me? But what about Cassius? He beat you too." Alice said with a flustered tone. "Cassius.." Adamant could not say the name without retching. "That man is not worthy of any respect, mine or yours. He is one of them, the Enemy."

"The enemy? Don't you mean the fusion guild? They are the ones who are doing all the bad stuff.. well also." Alice couldn't exactly overlook the actions of the XYZ-guild, no matter how pitiful Adamant looked right now. "No. It is not them. It is the synchro guild. I was not sure of it until my duel with him, until I saw the look on his face when he summoned that dragon. He recovered too quickly as well." He asserted, strongly. "But that's not.. He could just be a quick healer. Aaron's our friend, he wouldn't do anything mean. And you, you don't want to hurt people either." Alice disagreed, strongly. Adamant gave her a questioning look and did not comment. "When I first saw you, I thought you were the scariest duelist around. But you said you were worried of an enemy as well, who could scare you? Is it rge time travelers? Gods? Aliens? Beings from another dimension?" Rhe more she argued, the more awake Adamant felt. "Time? ...How much do you know?" The prisoner got up from the floor, his eyes narrowed. "What? I was just guessing.."

"You do not know enough either way. If any of the outsiders deserve to be told, it is you. The enemy.." Adamant grit his teeth. "..is beyond us, they are from a world that has advanced its technology and its powers endlessly. They can reduce cities and people to nothing... they can cause destruction on a global scale. And they have found us. To fight them we need every advantage. We needed Doms inventions, and we need the cards he hides, before the enemy can get them." His voice got more tired with every sentence. Adamant was at a point where he no longer felt the attack had been worth it. "That's." It was a lot to absorb. "Why?" Alice got more distressed with every word. "Because they must, and we must. We each have something the other needs; time. One of our worlds has to die.. and right now our world is weaker. I cannot say more, the enemy is listening. But I will warn you, Alice. Take your friends and get out while you can." He turned towards her, taking steps to close the distance. "What? What is going to happen?" Despite the prison, Alice did not feel safe. Not anymore. "If Roma has not activated his plan yet, he will soon. When that happens, you will want to be far from here. You do not want to be a part of this guild. You do not have to suffer.."

...

"Don't let it get to you Zachary. Sure we gained nothing from that and now the fusion guild knows what we can do, but an even break is preferable to nothing!" Dom tried to cheer his disciple up after he reported the outcome of the museum exchange over the transmitter. Tried being the keyword. Phoebe had given Zach the slip in all the confusion, as it turned out. "Hey they got Eric back, that is worth more than any card." Emily's praise was at least of a stronger nature. This entire time she had been waiting for some news about Eric and it finally payed off. "What the lady said." Dom assumed Zach had heard her. "What's done is done sir. I am more concerned about what we learned here. It has to be the hooded man..." Zach referred to the inexplicable zombie-like trance that had been put on a lot of people around them. IIn the museum-case and the amphitheater the affected people had woken up with no memory of what happened before. All they had to go on was camera footage of a cloaked man lurking in the theater halls. Martel was his name according to Eric. "The Fusion Guild has strange friends. I knew they liked to dabble in the occult, but I did not think they would resort to brainwashing." Cassius shook his head in disgust.

"We will be going now, sir. The cops are done questioning us and they will take over from here." Moments after Erics duel had concluded, the city authorities dropped in. Their late arrival was another suspiciously lucky break for the Fusion Guild. "Probably going to blame this mess on duelists too." Emily grumbled. Though they would be 66 % right. "We'll wait for you here, Zachary." Dom shut down the connection. "Well. Something is finally going, right.. huh Alice?" Emily turned around. "Alice?" This was when she finally noticed that her sister was not in the radio room anymore. "Oh, Alice? Yeah she wandered off a while ago." Dom said offhandedly. He hadn't really paid much attention himself. "Guess she got distracted by something again.. Where is she, Aaron?" Even if Alice had lost interest, she would likely want to hear about Eric. "She was.. oh." Cassius checked the camera feed of the last 30 minutes. "She's at the castle walls now, but before that.. she was talking to Adamant." He pulled up the footage from that conversation. "With him?" Emily did not like the sound of that at all. "...If he started talking now, he must have had a hidden motive."

...

"Hey Alice, penny for your thoughts?" Her sister was still at the wallwalk when Emily found her, sitting in between the battlements to look out over the horizon. "Ah..hey Em. Uh, I was just wondering if I could see our town from here. Don't worry, I am not going to fall." Alice laughed and carefully got back up. "I wasn't saying you were. I think we learned that lesson." There were some fond memories; all those times she and her sister dared each other to do reckless things like climbing trees and leaping out of them. Though in the beginning she was the cool sister who started the fun. "..But that's not really what's on your mind is it?" Now she had to be the bigger sister instead. "... I went to see Adamant." Alice quickly came clean. Partially because she wanted to. "I know." The other part was Emily not being easy to fool, especially not when she had outside information already. "Did he say anything bad to you? Do I need to yell at him?" Alice's smile usually hid her distress from most people. Not from Emily. "He did.. He said we had to escape."

"Huh? Escape from what?" Emily had assumed he made threats or insults. This sounded more like a warning. But as Cassius had told her, it was probably a trick. "From everything, the guilds, the dueling, the country. He said that we could never beat their enemy." Alice repeated what she remembered as her tone got more frantic. "And he expects us to run? There's so much going on right now with us, Aaron, mom and dad. Everyone is on opposite sides of the country. Also they're bringing Eric, so that's another thing we have to take care of." Emily shook her head. "Eric? Then.. he is coming back?" For a brief moment, Alice felt genuine relief. But it was soon smothered. "But then. If we can't leave, can't we just go home? Maybe that will be far away enough from all the fighting, and we can take Eric too..." She pleaded. "I don't know what else Adamant told you, but you shouldn't listen to him. He is the enemy and he is trying to fool you. This is the best place we could be right now, sis."

"But I don't like this place!" Alice blurted out and immediately covered her mouth. "I.. I didn't mean it like that. It's not the castle.. the castle is awesome. It's the below parts that feel creepy. All this dueling... People arent playing games. I don't think we should be the ones doing this.." Ever since she had seen the news, she had hoped that the army would handle the rest. "Hey, Alice. Look at me. I'm not saying I want us to jump into battle, I'm not going to ask you to. But right now we're stuck here, and we're with friends. Besides, you're stronger than you think, and I can prove it to you." Emily took out a dueldisk and placed it on the floor. "Eh? Isn't that mine?" Her big sister kicked the device towards her and Alice picked it up. "Eric isn't here yet, so I thought I could help you kill some time. We havent had a simple consequence-free duel in ages, so I wanted to show you that we can still do that." Emily picked up her own dueldisk. "I figured it might come to this, so I grabbed our stuff. What do you say, like old times?" She inserted her cards.

Emily's LP: 8000

"Oh-kay. Maybe this'll help." Alice followed her lead.

Alice's LP: 8000

"Great! Now last time I checked, the score was 19-15." Emily grinned as she started drawing her cards. "18-15! That one with the Unity spell card didn't count." Alice complained. "Alright, alright. But the frontrunner takes the first turn!" Emily placed a monster on the field, a mechanical samurai(4/900/1900) with a magnet on its back. "When Superheavy Samurai Magnet is normal summoned, I can special summon a lowlevel Superheavy and switch the first to defense position. I summon another Superheavy Samurai Magnet!" The first Magnet pulled the card down in defense mode. Once the second Magnet(4/900/1900) appeared, the two aimed their charged armcylinders at each other to create a magnetic current that ran between the two. "Oh, not a combo like this again." Monsters Alice controlled could not attack anything other than the Magnet. That posed a problem with two Magnets on the field, as both had to be attacked yet neither would let the other be attacked. Alice could not declare any attacks at all. "Your move, sis."

"Nhh.. I don't know." Alice looked back and forth between her hand and the field. "I don't see a way through." She placed a monster down and a trap card. "Sorry." After that the turn fell back in Emily's lap. "What? Oh don't be.. With a deck like yours you can break free in no time. I'll be honest, I kinda wanted to see how we would do now.. after so many changes." Emily drew her next card and called out the next samurai. "I summon the tuner monster, Superheavy Samurai Drum!" A steel and gold hand-drum(1/300/300), filled with red pipes, landed in the middle of the magnetized zones. "Tuner?" That was not a good thing. "I..can't let you do that." She responded before an actual synchro summon could take place. The continuous trap card; Vanity's Emptiness was that response. "Hey.. I was only going to synchro summon something I didn't get to show off in the tournament." There definitely were not going to be any attacks done this turn now. At least her Drum was protected by the two Magnets. "Alice, I know you don't like synchro monsters. But I'm still me."

"I know, I'd know you anywhere!" Alice fumed. "It's not the cards' fault. Synchro monsters, XYZ-monsters, Fusion monsters: they remind me too much of what is really going on. Every time one of them gets summoned, I feel strange inside.. " Alice used her next turn to place another monster face-down. "I didn't mind losing before, because it was just a game. I could be happy if you were happy, or if Eric was happy. But it isn't the same with the guilds. I..." She stopped herself. "I don't think this is working, Emily. What if Adamant is right? Why would he lie?" She gave the turn back to her sister. "Because.. ehr... I don't know. Why would he tell the truth? The XYZ-guilders are an bunch of crazy zealots. He'll say anything to excuse his actions.. Is that really why you are worried?!" Emily drew Superheavy Samurai Big Benkei from her deck. "Come on!" She tributed both the Magnet Samurais to tribute summon the her Big Samurai(8/1000/3500). Benkei switched itself to defense position with its effect. Then it slammed its fist into the ground and released a wave of energy that headed towards Alice's facedown monsters. The Great Sorcerer of the Nekroz(4/1500/800) was wiped out. As a card had been sent to Alice's graveyard, the Vanity Emptiness trap selfdestructed. "I switch Drum to defense mode. Your turn again."

"I remember now.." Alice looked up at Big Benkei, her big sisters favorite monster. "Whenever we argued and couldn't convince each other, we just played a game. The winner got to say what we would do. Emily.. I say we should go. You're gonna say we should stay, you don't feel what I feel. So this is all I can think off.. Just like then. If I win, I want you to promise that you will go with me. It doesn't matter where, it just has to be away from here!" Alice drew her next card but waited for her sisters response before she played it. "You say it like you don't trust Aaron. He wouldn't let anything happen to us!" Emily wondered if her sister had been waiting here for her, so she could avoid Cassius. "Just promise me!" Alice yelled. "Okay, okay. But we're staying here, if I win." Emily was taken aback. Nevertheless, she did not see leaving as the right thing to do and had no desire to lose now either. It was tough either way, she didn't want to stop Alice, but she didn't want to leave her side either.

"Thank you.." Alice played her card; Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands(4/1400/1000). "I want Nekroz Mirror!" Manju's effect claimed a ritual spell and sje activated it immediately. "I will ritual summon Nekroz of Trishula!" The Mirror sacrificed Nekroz monsters from her hand and graveyard; the Great Sorcerer of Nekroz and the level 5 Exa Enforcer of the Nekroz. With their combined level stars, the great dragon warrior(9/2700/2000) of the ice barrier was summoned. "Whoa.." This came a bit sooner than Emily expected. Trishula activated its effect to banish three of Emily's cards. Big Benkei was removed from the field, one the Magnet Samurais was banished from the graveyard, and a random monster was taken out of her hand. "This is how much has changed." Alice could use even more effects. The banishing of her Great Sorcerer sent a Nekroz monster from the deck to the graveyard; Nekroz of Brionac. The sacrifice of Enforcer Exa added a dragon-type Nekroz monster from the deck to Alice's hand; Nekroz of Catastor. "So very much." Alice flip summoned her other set monster, the Dance Princess of the Nekroz(4/1600/800). Finally she discarded Nekroz of Catastor from her hand to activate its reviving effect. Exa the Enforcer(5/2000/1000) was special summoned from the graveyard.

"Geez..." Emily was speechless. Her sister had been holding back all this? "Emily, this is it." Manju made the first attack and crushed the Superheavy Drum tuner with its many hands. "Then I will go as well! If Drum is destroyed, it brings back another Samurai from the graveyard!" It was unfortunate that Big Benkei had been banished, Emily could only special summon the remaining Magnet Samurai in defense mode. "Yeah." Alice continued the battle phase. To destroy this monster, she sent in Exa. The enforcer dismantled Superheavy Samurai Magnet with two swipes from its gauntlet claws. "And.. I am sorry, but now I have to attack you too, sis." Trishula and the Dance Princess launched into a joint strike of ice blades and water magic.

Emily's LP: 3700

"This.. is what I was trying to tell you. Just look at this, look at what you can do, Alice!" Despite what it meant for the two of them, Emily was glad to see her sister getting into the game. "No. You're trying to talk me out of it again. Stop it. I wont change my mind." Alice ended her turn. "Alice, why can't you just tell me what really is going on? This is not just about Adamant.." She had not seen Alice act this serious in years, she could usually just brush off any unpleasant experiences. "Wait... are you thinking back.." It had to be bigger. "No! You said we would never talk about that! Never ever!" And Emily was right. The things Adamant said were not the cause. They just reminded Alice of something she had been trying to forget.

...

"Sir? I didn't think you would be calling again." Zach answered a second transmission from the master. "Small matter came up, Zachary. I need you two to do a little scan on something for me before you all get here." Dom estimated that they would arrive in a couple of minutes. "What do you need, sir?" Iria was already with her hands on her portable computer. "I am sending you some files, crossreference those with a scan of the entire complex." The files turned out to be hologram footage of the castle base, recorded with Doms own disk. "What is this about, sir? Do you suspect something?" Zach wondered why he came to them, on his private channel. "Let's just say being unreasonably skeptical payed off for the second time..."

(To be Continued in Annex 075: Decompression Sickness)

New Cards used by Alice Brandt
Exa, Enforcer of the Nekroz

New Cards used by Emily Brandt
Superheavy Samurai Magnet
Superheavy Samurai Drums