Annex 080: Head of the Round Table

The last few days had been very hard on James Brandt. He was not usually separated from his two daughters for this long, and there was a reason for that. Because of Alice's 'situation', he tended to keep her close to him at all times. The Brandts never stayed in any town for more than a few years. Sometimes he wondered if this always-moving isolation was doing more harm than good. At first it seemed to go wonderful, and he could tell the whole town about how proud he was of her and Emily. Now the two were facing the worst consequences of going out in the world and he couldn't do anything to help them. And he was not the only one to feel this way. "Enough is enough, my baby-boy is somewhere out there and I am going to find him!" Erics mother had come by often to ask how her son was doing, and the less information he had, the more agitated she got. "Brandt, your kids are out there too! We have to find them!" She came to him this time for a more direct question, she wanted to use him and his car. "I know. But we can't just leave, the whole country is locked down." There were reasons to go and reasons to stay. From time to time even he felt the latter were stronger than the former. "I'd like to see any man try to stop a mother looking for her son." Mrs. Stonewell fumed. She didn't care who got in her way, she would find Eric.

"Huh?" There was a knock on the door. This was a strange hour to be receiving visitors. "Good evening. I hope I am not intruding on anything." When James opened the door he was greeted by a girl in a half-black and half-white dress. "You're.." She was one of the contestants in the tournament. He recognized her from the TV. "Dame Phoebe?" Mrs. Stonewell was familiar with her too. "Ah. It is good to see you too, and convenient. I think I know what you two have been buzzing about.. and I can help you, if you let me."

...

Eric's LP: 2900 Synchro Duelist's LP: 5600

As for Eric himself, he had seen better days. "Okay you are really getting on my nerves. Didn't you hear what your own boss said? He is trying to scramble your brains, all of them!" Despite the castle-wide announcement that Cassius inadvertently gave, there were still people after him. Two of them had cornered him in the cantina. "I don't understand any of what he said, all I understand is that someone needs to be captured right here!" One girl controlled a Celestial Wolf Lord Blue Sirius(6/2400/1500) and had one trap card set. "Yeah, we don't accept fusion guilders around here. Especially not when they help one our enemies escape!" The other controlled Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier(7/2700/2000). "Ragh. You two got messed up priorities! They were talking about the end of the world! Am I more dangerous than that?" Eric could see that there was no reasoning with these people. At least he now had a considerable amount of Infernoids in his graveyard. "Whatever! My turn!"

"I banish three Infernoids from the graveyard to special summon Infernoid Nemehoth from my graveyard!" The first was the tenth; the great plague serpent Onuncu(10/3000/3000) burst out of its infernal prison. "Time for your synchros to die!" Onuncu activated its effect, which wiped out all monsters on the field. Sirius and Trishula fell into a fiery tomb. "Yeah, well, you're gonna regret that!" The girl scoffed as the effect of her dying beast came into play. "Sirius will eat 2400 of your monsters attackpoints when he gets destroyed!" The ghost of the wolf lord rose from the grave and passed its jaws through the hell dragon. Infernoid Onuncu(600/3000) was critically weakened. "Pft. I already moved on to the next demon!" Eric flipped his trap, Mischief of the Yokai. "I can't summon any Infernoid though, because I control more than 8 levels. But wait.." The Yokai trap removed two of Onuncu's(8/600/3000) level stars. "Oh look, level eight.." After this Eric banished three more Infernoids to summon an Infernoid from his hand. "Go, Infernoid Lilith!" The consort of Onuncu, great serpent Devyaty(9/2900/2900), devoured the three souls to give itself life. "Burn, traps, burn, spells!" Devyaty's effect destroyed all of their face-down traps, paving the way for an open attack.

"Hmph. Think you're so good? Go ahead and hit us. We can take it, and on the next turn.." The guy started to brag. "I'm gonna stop you there, pal." Eric did not want to waste any more time on these fools. He had friends to get back to. "I sacrifice my two monsters to special summon Legendary Maju Garzett!" The two infernal serpents coiled together to form a helixical pattern. Their bodies combusted into a trail of ash and smoke, and a mutated winged demon(9/5900/0) was born from that smoke. "Legendary..""'Maju Garzett?" The two opponents had no response to this, other than dumbfoundedness. "Forgot this card even existed, did ya? Well.. let me give you a refresher. Garzett can be special summoned by tributing other monsters and he gets the original attackpoints of those monsters. I admit, I'm dying to see what it looks like in motion." Eric brought his hand down. "Let's find out together! Direct attack!" The True Demon beast gathered vile magic in the yellow orbs on its body and brought them together to create a blast big enough to remove the remainder of its targets lifepoints.

Synchro Duelist's LP: 0

"Agh. That didn't count!" The two cursed and advanced on Eric. "Hey, what are you doing? The duel's over. I won!" He did not like where this was going. He had to get passed these mooks if he wanted to run away. "You probably cheated anyway, that's what all fusion duelists do! You're not.." The two got in close. But then a third person put herself in between the two. "Alright guys, knock it off. We have bigger issues on our plate!" It was Akai. "Get out of the way, Akai! You don't get to boss us around just because you're higher ranked now!" The girl growled. "Will you two use your brains already? You know what Cassius just said, we were never his equals! He lied to us, everything they told us was a sham. So why fight for him?" Eventually she got through to them. "..But what do we do then?" They had to be mad at someone. "Telling everyone else to stop dueling would be a nice start." She suggested. The two seemed to agree with that idea and cleared the room.

"Hey, thanks." Eric said. "Don't mention it..." Akai sighed. "Okay, so this is crazy. Where is that Dom guy? Right now I trust him a lot more than I do Cassius. Does he have a plan?" Akai was certain of one fact, they needed to be united on this. "If he did, he didn't tell me. I kinda lost track of where they were after I ran here.."

...

One floor below Cassius and his partners held up in the monitor room. They controlled the lower levels while chaos reigned above. With only a handful of functions restored and Adamant on the loose, there seemed to be end in sight for the bad news. Until one other member gave this call through Cassius' dueldisk. "Cassius, we have an issue. We have found Dom, and he isn't alone. Some of our duelists are with him, and he is standing here in front of me." Cassius, who had blamed this whole mess on the cardmaker, felt his blood boiling. "Dom.." Now Dom was also taking his allies away. "Open a visual line!"

"You.." Jets dueldisk created a hologram of Cassius, so he could greet the master and his small army. "Hey, Cassius.. did you miss me?" If Doms intent had been to further irritate Cassius, his reply succeeded at that. "Is this it? Where are the others? Where is Alice?" Dom did not see her, Eric or Uno anywhere. "I will answer that as soon as you tell us where Emily is." Dom countered. "She is in a safe place! I am the one who is trying to save her.. and all of youl!" Cassius pleaded with the duelists who stood besides Dom. "Yeah, I was so looking forward to living with another me, Chief. If any of that story is real to begin with." Jet said with a sneer. Cassius was insane or the world was. Either way, he was getting away from here. "Doesn't look like they agree, Cassius. My fans outnumber your fans. You could try to wait or you can let us down and then we can discuss this like proper gentle..."

"Man?" Then everybody froze. While Dom had prattled on, Cassius had sent in an order to desynchronize everyone down there. It seemingly affected all of them, except Dom. "Oh. I really must have gotten to you." The masked man coughed as his body remained mobile. "You.. why aren't you.." Cassius flinched. "Paralyzed? If I were to hazard a guess; Uno's pendulum did this favor to me. Now I really didn't expect you to do this to your 'friends'."

"Not all of them, master Dom." Unexpectedly, one of the other duelists broke out his paralysis and grabbed Dom by the arm. "Oh. A fellow actor. Well you had me fooled." This man was not desynchronized either. In fact he was synchronized all the way. It was the Goyo-duelist Gareth. "You could call me that. Cassius figured it would be smart to not reveal all members to a man like you, not while your disciples were still out there." Gareth was part of the Circle too, who knew how many members they had. "No wonder the guild counted on you to make it to the finals." Dom remarked rather casually as Gareth relieved the master of his dueldisk. "Fun's over, Cardmaker. This is twice now that you managed to keep your identity a secret. There wont be a third time. Take of your mask.." Gareth was not going to say it again. "Gladly." Still the master seemed very cooperative. He placed his hands on the card-back colored dome and slowly lifted it. Cassius and his partners waited with bated breath.

What they got was not what they expected, in any possible way. "Is there something wrong with my face?" It was not the master but the disciple; Zachary Creffield. "YOU!?" Cassius yelled. "Yes, yours truly. You have to forgive us for this deception, but I couldn't very well put my master in harms way. So I took his part.." He explained while making a formal bow. "You took... how long? How come you sounded like him?" Gareth did not know where to begin. Jim had not noticed anything off earlier. "Since we returned from the museum, before I ordered your friend Jim and the others to come with me. Apparently I performed very well. Maybe the stage should have been my calling. I will help you with your other question too.." Zach picked up the mask. "The mask has a voice synthesizer. Dom never uses his own voice for public appearances." The inside of the mask held a lot of technical gizmo's, it was no wonder it was so oversized. Zach did not know how the master could stand it for hours on end.

"Then where is he? Where is Dom?" He had to be somewhere, Cassius had to know. "Oh, you should already know that.."

...

There was a part of the synchro base that most of the guild were not aware of, a round circular chamber hidden below ground. The only way to access it was through the elevator, and only if she allowed it. This room belonged to one person, a middle-aged woman who rested in a high-tech wheelchair that was strapped to a million wires. The wires traveled all the way across the floor, walls and ceiling. She was the brain of this nerve center, nothing happened without her knowing about it. Normally. With the unexpected blackout, half of her senses were shut down. And the others were dealing with difficulties, due to the nature of the masks the targets were wearing. Now that Dom had been revealed to be Zach, she could see the plan he was following. Unfortunately that plan was now in its final stage. "Knock, Knock." The doors to her chamber opened for four individuals. Of course, with the elevators out of commission and the doors powerless, people could just descend the shaft to get force their way down and inside. "I hope you don't mind us resting here. It was a long climb!"

They were all wearing the same mask, but different clothes. "Vesper, I take it?" The one in the middle was definitely the real Dom. "Oh my god, why does she have all those things stuck inside of her?" One of them, the shortest one, let out a shriek upon first seeing the woman. "She is plugged into the system that operates this base." The tallest explained the situation accurately. "Then you are the mysterious lady who synchronizes and desynchronizes people?" The fourth was a male, with no discernible traits.

"Your mask. It will not protect you." The woman finally spoke and raised her hand. "Oh? In that case.." As a response, the fourth trespasser took of his mask and revealed himself to be Uno. "No need to hide who we are!" He grabbed his pendulum and it flashed a sharp light that made Vesper withdraw her hand. "The pendulum.." She rasped. "Yeah people tell me these crystals keep people anchored to one timeline. Guess what, you wont be pushing anyone's mind out of time, lady."

"...This place, how did you locate it?" The woman scanned the four duelists. She had to resort to verbal communication to get her answers. "You can't read our minds, can you?" The tall one said with a satisfied tone. "She can read our minds? Is that why he had to put these on?" Alice asked as she was the next to take of the mask. She was glad to be free from it. "If she can move minds, she can do whatever she wants with them as well. That is my reasoning." The real Dom stepped forward. "Now how did I find you? Easy. You don't spend a lot of time designing underground networks without learning a thing or two about spacing. I could tell from the first day that something was off here. And when I heard what Adamant had to say, I got curious enough to investi..gate." Dom cleared his throat. "Ahem, new mask. Takes some getting used to.. Anyway. At Dreamworld I developed the technology for three-dimensional image mapping. It was a cinch for me and my disciples to create a full layout of your compound. That is how we discovered this super secret room and the path that led to it." He clapped his hands. "Of course, we needed to shut down all surveillance cameras first. Luckily your scan also showed us the weak points in your power-grid. I wouldn't have lowered myself to stealing tips from the XYZ-guild handbook, but when you turned my own bodyguard against me,.. well, I didn't feel so guilty about it anymore."

"Zachary Creffield, a distraction." Vesper determined. "Bingo. Someone had draw the eyes of all your servants away. Even with all the cameras down, I couldn't risk you finding out what we really wanted to do. And I gotta tell you, these masks are really paying off." Doms glad that he always carried a case full of spares with him. "Why are you here?" The woman then inquired. "Uno is here to keep your powers tied down. The girl is here because she refuses to leave Uno's side. I am here to protect my master." Iria, who now also removed her mask, took out her dueldisk and created a barrier around the room. "And I am here, to have that talk I requested. If Cassius is being stubborn, I will just go straight to the source." The master, naturally, was the only one who kept his face hidden. "But..who is she?" Alice still didn't understand why this lady was here, or why she looked like that. "I am glad you asked, Alice! Vesper, stop me if I get anything wrong, but I believe you are the first of your kind. You are the one who started the Synchro guild.."

"I am the synchro guild." She said as her hand pushed a few buttons on her chair. "And.. a duelist, as well." A disk-blade slid out of the side of the chair, thirteen zones were on the blade. "Sir, look out!" Iria saw that Vesper was initiating a duel. "No Iria, I'll take this one!" But it was Dom and not her, who met the call. "Dom, what are you doing? If anyone should be dueling her.." Uno had the pendulum, he felt he had the best shot against her. "Sorry, Uno. I know you two are from the same world, but I am the one whose mind she hasn't been able to read since the start." Dom activated his dueldisk properly. "This should be between creator and creator. We can talk and fight at the same time!" Dom drew five cards.

Vespers LP: 8000 Doms LP: 8000

"It will be your cards against ours, creator." Vesper had the first turn. "PSY-Frame Circuit." And she played a field spell card on her chair that changed the appearance of the room. The lightning in the wires turned golden green and a ring-pattern was drawn on the floor. "What.." Dom the cardmaker did not recognize this spell. "Sir, cards of these kind were not on UNO's list." Iria had scanned the field with her own dueldisk. Despite its unfamiliarity, it was treated as an official card. "So, whole new cards, won't be able to predict my opponents strategy, Interesting. Good thing, I have my own brand of special cards! I activate the pendulum monster, Performage Plushfire!" He started out by placing a stitched and stuffed flame in a cone in the left pendulum zone.

"This will be your first of many mistakes. You activated a spell card while monsters do not exist on my field." Vesper made her move now. "The tuner monster, PSY-Framegear Delta, can summon itself from my hand under these conditions, to negate and destroy your spell." A masked two-handed robot(2/1200/0) made from gold and silver dropped down to the field. It fired a static spark at Plushfire to destroy it. "And Delta also summons one PSY-Frame Driver card from my deck." An electrically charged psychic fighter(6/2500/0) in a black uniform landed besides the Framegear. "Psyframe Circuit; If a PSY-Frame monster is Special Summoned I can synchro summon 1 synchro monster, using PSY-Frame monsters. Summon Synchro, PSY-Framelord Omega! A Psyframe Driver and any Psyframe Gear, together they create a Lord!" As the nontuner and tuner were summoned together, they were synchronized by the field spell. Delta connected and changed the Driver into a more mechanical masked psychic(8/2800/2200) in spiked green and silver armor. "Oh." Dom saw the bottom line now. But then, he did not think this was going to be easy.

(To be Continued in Annex 081: NetWork)

New Cards used by Eric Stonewell
Legendary Maju Garzett

New Cards used by Synchro Duelists
Celestial Wolf Lord Blue Sirius

New Cards used by Vesper
PSY-Framegear Delta
PSY-Frame Driver

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PSY-Framelord Omega

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PSY-Frame Circuit

New Cards used by Dom
Performage Plushfire