Starting Notes:

Welcome back! It's been a while. :) No duel in this chapter, because the next few all have them, and this is… well, the set-up for that.

#9: Apprehension

In LDS, there were six courses. A general course that taught dueling strategies, and the five courses that taught a summoning method each—Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Ritual and Link Summoning.

Those five special courses contained only around three percent of all LDS students. It was something only accorded to the best of the best.

One of those students was Masumi Kotsu, who was now walking towards one of the main lecture halls of LDS. She had received an email telling her to go there after school today, signed by the chairwoman of LDS herself. Slightly baffled, she had followed the instructions.

When she entered the lecture hall, she instantly understood why she had been called over. There were four other students in the lecture hall. Two of them were her friends—while they all treated each other as rivals, Hokuto Shijima and Yaiba Todo were clearly ribbing each other—Yaiba was teasing Hokuto, who had already gotten riled up by him.

The other two, however, weren't really people that Masumi would consider good friends. In fact, she didn't really know them that well.

Link specialist, Midori Kazenori. He had joined the school about two months ago and immediately showed great aptitude with Link Summoning. As such, he had swiftly risen to the top of the Link Course. He was a young man with wispy light green hair, and some darker green accents curling out from the bottom of his hair. He had eyes that were surprisingly gentle despite being a harsh yellow in colour. He was also supposedly more interested in card design than actually dueling, despite his prodigious skill—in fact, he barely dueled at all. The few duels that he had participated in had been complete curbstomps. He had apparently cracked the code to make Link Monsters by himself, and the Leo Corporation was planning to take him on as an intern once he graduated LDS too.

Meanwhile, for the top of the Ritual Course…

That was a complicated answer. Ritual was not as popular of a summoning method in LDS. For one, it didn't use the Extra Deck, and so, many of the more superficial students thought that it was weaker as a result. It was also a mechanic that required more specific cards, which meant that one usually had to build their deck around it. As such, there were far less students who would choose to use Ritual.

Thus, most of the LDS students who chose to learn Ritual were very unimpressive—none of them could match up to the level that Masumi, Yaiba or Hokuto were at. In the end, the strongest student was a student that had transferred to LDS about half a year ago, after her school had been acquired by the Leo Corporation and its chairwoman. That was the short girl who was currently sitting next to Midori and chatting rather dramatically—Mieru Houchun.

As the five of them were in the room, the door opened, and the purple-haired figure of Himika Akaba walked in.

All five students tensed up.

Reiji Akaba followed her as well, his figure even more imposing than his mother's.

"Greetings," Himika Akaba said. She got to the point immediately. "We are thinking about setting up a match between LDS and a Duel School. If we win, we acquire that school. You five are going to be our representatives."

"You need all five top students?" Masumi said. She felt bad for whatever school the chairwoman was going after—this felt like complete overkill—

"Yes. We are aiming to obtain You Show Duel School and their Pendulum Summoning."

… oh.

For the first time, Masumi felt a moment of hesitation.

"Regardless, we have to settle the details. We simply wanted to inform you of this early on." The chairwoman raised her clipboard. "Of course, there is something in it for you other than simply defending the pride of our school. When we win, any of you that won your matches will be given Pendulum Monsters."

'When' they won, implying the chairwoman's absolute confidence…

"Any information that we have on the students of You Show Duel School will be sent to your emails. Do any research that you want to do."

With that, those two left. The five of them were still there.

"You Show?" Yaiba snorted. "They have like six students, right? And three of them are kids? This should be easy."

"Yeah, there's no point in studying them," Hokuto agreed. "They're just wins for our duel statistics."

Masumi looked at them. She didn't say anything to agree with them, even if they might have expected her to.

"Hey, Kotsu-san." Midori approached her, Mieru next to him. "You look bothered. Something wrong?"

"… they're not that weak," Masumi said.

"Oh?" Midori smiled. "A compliment from you to them, then? Have you faced them?"

"I have," Masumi said, thinking about the girl with dark red hair who had relentlessly faced each of Masumi's monsters and cut them down one by one. "They can't be underestimated that easily."

"Interesting. We should study the data then. Even if they only have three students around our age, those three could still pull off a miracle."

Masumi glanced at him.

This guy…

For all that he was rather kind, he was still looking down on You Show, wasn't he? Describing the idea of You Show winning as a miracle…

Masumi had always been direct and straightforward, but for some reason, right now, she felt slightly uncertain.

"… well. Either you're a ridiculous prodigy, or you're underselling yourself. Or both." Cloud Piercer was seated on a crate, watching Keika. "Good job." She had lent Kagari and Raye to Keika temporarily to let her try out the method. Kagari was now in front of Keika—Keika had succeeded.

"Despite being a brat, you're a surprisingly good teacher," Keika responded. She removed the cards, giving them back to Cloud Piercer. And the truth was, having a teacher there with her had helped a lot. Cloud Piercer had used a lot of allusions and had been surprisingly patient when it came to demonstrating Link Summoning over and over again.

("You really just follow the materials listed on the card—they're step by step there for you. Then make sure that the total number of monsters used matches the Link Rating. Link Monsters are special because they can be treated as more than one monster for the purposes of that. A Link 2 monster is two monsters at once. A Link 3 monster that can use at least two monsters can thus be summoned with a Link 2 monster and another monster, or three monsters. It's addition, really…")

"Who are you calling a brat?" Cloud Piercer said, pouting. "I'll have you know that brats are annoying, and I'm too cute to be annoying!"

"… okay, you can drop the fakeness around me," Keika said. She sat down on another crate, picking up a plastic bottle of water and beginning to drink. The weather was very hot at this time in the afternoon. She flipped another bottle around with her other hand, tossing it towards Cloud Piercer.

Cloud Piercer caught it, looking surprised. However, the air seemed to ripple slightly—the bottle seemed to stop before it actually touched her hand.

"… I always forget that this isn't actually what you look like," Keika said. "Is your… uh, holographic real life avatar differently… shaped from you?" She had just taken the weird technology in stride at this point.

Cloud Piercer shook her head. "It's the same," she said. "Matches facial expressions and everything, even if the actual appearance of my face is different. The reason why it looked like it was different is because the AR still has some issues when it comes in contact with physical objects that aren't part of the model."

"… see now, you're a lot more tolerable when you're being yourself," Keika said. "I'd be more willing to hear you talk like that compared to your idol persona, anyway…"

"You're very good at saying things that annoy me, you know." Cloud Piercer said, arching an eyebrow. "… you talk too much, little miss firefly."

"You're the first person to tell me that." Keika capped the bottle, putting it back down. "I guess I'll have to figure out a way to get a Link Monster, but… come to think of it, this happened really fast."

"I didn't expect it to be so fast too," Cloud Piercer admitted.

In a way, it almost felt too fast. As though Keika had read Cloud Piercer's mind and assimilated it—and that was a little dramatic, but the point remained true. Keika had never learned anything so fast from another person before, not even her own twin brother. (Come to think of it, Keika tended to try to learn everything by herself, so she rarely learned from another person, anyway.)

(This was the first time that she'd met someone who felt like they were genuinely stronger than her.)

"Maybe I can figure out who gave me my Fusion Monsters last time and shake it out of them."

"… ugh." For a brief moment, Cloud Piercer actually sounded genuinely annoyed. Was Keika missing something? "Catch." A card whizzed through the air, and Keika barely caught it. She looked at it and barely managed to avoid gasping in surprise.

"… thanks?" How had she…

"I'm sacrificing my entire too-good-for-you cool girl aesthetic for this," Cloud Piercer muttered to herself. Keika held back a snort. "Repay me by using it well. Until you lose to me again, you're not allowed to lose to a single other person. Got it?"

"Sure." Keika didn't argue—she could feel the other girl collapsing in embarrassment just from giving it to her. "So, you don't come from this city, right?"

"Is it that obvious?" Cloud Piercer said after a moment.

"The kind of technology you have? Not even LDS has it." Keika shrugged. "Seems like a reasonable assumption to make. Plus, you called yourself famous. I'm usually out of touch with idols and bands and things like that, but I probably would have remembered you, if I had seen you."

Cloud Piercer was just that effortlessly striking. Even Keika could admit that. It was that striking confidence that had made Keika willing to ask her for pointers, after all.

"I come from somewhere far away, yeah," Cloud Piercer said. "You've never even heard of it." She shrugged. "There, I was the most popular one. The shining, perfect Number 1. It's an image I have to keep up, you know. Over time, it just meant that I had to keep on being the person that they wanted to see. It's not even like who I am as Cloud Piercer is that different from who I am normally—I am confident, and I am assertive, and I purposely try to get under people's skin… that's never changed. But there are some times when I seriously can't stand anyone around me. I can't stand the people who cheer me on, I can't stand the people who look at me and want me to perform for them."

"So you don't like being an idol?"

"… she told me that I didn't have the temperament for it," Cloud Piercer muttered. "That no matter how successful I became, I would never be happy doing it, because my attitude wasn't suited for it." It seemed to be a sore spot for the other girl. "It's not that I don't like it. I love performing. I love dueling. I love having the eyes of people on me. I want to shock them and make them realise how much better I am than them. But I want to decide that myself. I don't want people to look at me like I'm… like I'm a caricature. Someone there just to fulfil their image of me. I'm the only one that gets to say 'yes, this is me, you can look at me'. Sometimes, I just don't want to have to be the Cloud Piercer they see… sometimes, I just feel like shit and I don't want to smile for a while, but I have to."

So that fakeness that Keika had sensed… it came from this girl's unwillingness to fit into the expectations of others.

Keika leaned her head back. She smiled.

"… mind elaborating before I think you're smiling at my misery?" Cloud Piercer said, raising an eyebrow.

"But I am smiling at your misery," Keika said bluntly.

Cloud Piercer twitched. "I'm going to pour this water on you."

"I…" Keika searched for the words. "I just… well, I used to feel like that all the time as well… I never stopped feeling like that. Like everyone had this image of me and that they wanted me to play that role."

"Huh? You don't seem like a conformist to me."

"I'm not." Keika turned to her, her expression turning neutral again. "So I didn't. I just… rebelled against it constantly. They wanted me to be weak? Then I would be stronger than any of them. They wanted to look down on me? I would look down on them. They wanted me to break? I would break them. It goes on and on."

"… hah! Then you're more petty than me." Cloud Piercer ran her fingers through her hair. Despite how long her avatar's hair was, her fingers stopped about halfway down the golden blonde strands—implying that her actual hair was a lot shorter. "Well, as an idol, I can't just tell people to fuck off." The word sounded surprisingly sharp coming from her lips. "Swearing's against my contract, for one. But also, an idol only has value if their fans like them. There's no point to our existence otherwise."

And she thought that showing her true self would make her less popular than her facade… not that she thought that her real self was inferior, but rather, that people would only accept her if they saw what they wanted to see.

She loved herself, and she hated people for being so narrow-minded that they couldn't love her too.

"Well…" Keika debated her next words. " … I like you. And I'm sure that the people you knew as your real self liked you as well. Isn't it better to try and find people who will accept you as you are?"

"Hah. You're the only one that might." Cloud Piercer jabbed her sharply in the shoulder. With her other hand, she crushed the plastic bottle in her hand—it was empty now. She was a rather fast drinker. "You're as rotten as I am on the inside after all, little miss firefly."

"Just call me Keika."

"Tch. I'll only use your real name as my real self." Cloud Piercer shrugged. "Even if I'm your teacher now, I might not always be your ally. Just be aware of that."

Without another word, she leapt up, beginning to race away over the rooftops. Keika watched her go, something complicated winding up in her heart.

In the end, despite not showing up to the school, she still showed up just to check if Yuya had already headed home.

There, she happened to stumble in on a ridiculous conversation.

"We're not selling You Show."

"We're not telling you to sell it," the purple-haired woman said. "But your student has somehow accessed our property. Either way, we need to settle this."

… was this a conversation about her?

Keika stepped in. Both adults' gazes were drawn to her.

Keika looked directly at the tall, purple-haired woman. She recognised this woman, of course.

It would be very difficult not to know who Himika Akaba was, when that woman was the chairwoman of LDS.

Keika looked at this woman who everyone would think was above them, and she decided that was not the case. "Settle it with me then," she said. "I am the one that you're talking about, am I not?"

(A voice in the back of her head hissed in annoyance, completely submerged in her subconscious. She only felt it as vague irritation, without hearing the actual words.)

(Of course it's one of those damn Akabas.)

"You're surprisingly bold when talking to me. My, my, you don't give off the deferential air of a student at all."

"I'm sorry," Keika said, not sounding sorry at all. "I'm not very good at lowering my head. My headmaster can vouch for that."

"Very well. Let us talk." Himika Akaba took a step forward. Keika saw Yuya and the rest sitting nearby, looking at them. "Keika Sakaki. You were the one that stole the guide from LDS, correct?"

"I have no clue what you're talking about," Keika said automatically.

Yuya smacked his forehead. Keika understood why. That was a bit too obvious of a deflection.

"… regardless," Keika said, "cut the crap, Akaba-san. You're here for Yuya's Pendulum Summon. You want You Show. I'm just the excuse—the side character that you're framing. So why don't you speak plainly?"

"You really have no respect for anyone at all, do you?" The woman looked surprised. "You're not affable at all—nothing like your father."

Yuya and Yuzu both winced.

That was the wrong thing to say to Keika.

"I'm only ever myself," Keika said. "Why should I bother to be like him?" She did not smile—in fact, not slapping the crap out of this woman for poking at a sore spot was already the best that she could offer. "So? What do you want?"

A threat of assimilation. Five duels. If they won a majority, LDS would back off. If they lost, they would be devoured by the larger school.

And it was simple. No matter what, they could not refuse.

LDS had a monopoly on Solid Vision. LDS had a monopoly on summoning methods.

They could hold all of those over You Show's head.

No matter what, they could not refuse, because their opponent held the access to the lifeblood of their school.

Even without a pretext for them to be attacked—

They had nothing that they could do against LDS.

… some days, Keika really just wished that all these politics would disappear. That she could just live her life without complications like this popping up constantly.

Five matches. Very well-calculated. The school only had three official older students. Two of the kids would have to duel as well—

And thus, there was a high chance that one of the older students would mess up and lose a duel, and thus, that You Show would lose overall.

… in the end, it was up to them.

But…

Keika, at the very least, would not lose.

After all…

Would it really be any harder than dueling Cloud Piercer?

"I'll take part," Sora said cheerfully. He seemed to be the only one capable of staying cheerful even in the tense atmosphere. "And you're going to help out too, right, Gon-chan?"

"Of course! I, the great man, Gongenzaka—"

"Great!" Sora callously interrupted Gongenzaka. "That way, we just need three wins, and since there are five of us, the kids don't have to duel, right? Let's crush them! Or, really, you should duel, Kanae-san."

Kanae rolled her eyes. "With Yuya, Keika and you dueling? I don't need to move a finger, shorty. You'll win either way." She excluded Yuzu from the list, which clearly bothered the pink-haired girl slightly, though she didn't voice it. "It doesn't matter. I know you'll win."

She was looking directly at Keika then.

Keika nodded.

Yes.

She would.

End Notes:

So yes, in this AU, Mieru is a student at LDS. Why? Not because I like her character, but because I needed a Ritual representative for this anyway. And I might as well use her since she's there. It does mean that she isn't going to be playing a role after this though.

So here's the answer to how the LDS arc takes place! Twin Dragons has a very dystopic view on the different dimensions in general, by virtue of its main characters being… well, the kind of people that they are. So—Himika Akaba needs no excuse. She can come up with them, but no matter what, because LDS holds all the power, she can force them into the duels anyway. It's a farce on her part. I firmly believe that the moment she found out about Pendulum, she would have taken any excuse to start a fight.

Thank you to Vulcan 300, phantomdragons, LHOCIN, Ben23ten, T.V. 2000 and a Guest for reviewing!

To phantomdragons, thank you! I did want to give her that modern influencer kind of vibe, but she's a very cynical influencer.

To LHOCIN, glad you're enjoying so far! The other counterparts will show up soon—or a few of them, at the very least.

To Ben23ten, thank you for the lovely review! You've definitely hit the mark, and I'm pleasantly surprised by your analysis! :) Cloud Piercer's very uh… yeah, wait a few chapters and you'll see. :D And I'll give you the freebie that Kazuha refers to her last name, which is, as mentioned in Chapter 5, Kazuhara. Her first name isn't exactly said by her yet though.

To T.V. 2000, thank you! All the girls' dragons have 2000ATK! :) And all of their dragons have 2500DEF except Moonshine Anchor, which has no DEF.

See you guys next time, when we properly start the LDS arc!