3
"Be careful!" Zachary lightly grabbed Kylie's elbow to lead her away from a large crack in the hallway floor. The main building was looking a bit worse for wear after being transported to a sandy other-dimension the year before, apparently taking a bit of a beating in the sandstorms and whatever kind of weather phenomena were in dimensions he'd never heard of. He wondered briefly if there was one where blood spewing out of the earth in chunks was as common as gentle rain showers here, but he pushed that thought out of his mind. Blood was organic, so whatever was bleeding underground would just eventually die anyway and then that would be the end of that.
The two of them had just finished classes for the day and met up in their usual place near a statue of Red-Eyes Black Dragon on the second floor hallway so they could walk to dinner together. Kylie was busy going on about everything she learned that day, which annoyed Zachary when she was talking about classes they shared — which was most of them — but helped him feel prepared for future classes he had yet to take. The girl had an extraordinary memory, and was able to condense hours of roundabout lecturing into punchy, concise details that she delivered with her characteristic enthusiasm. If only she could slow down enough for him to take it all in; he realized long ago that she could talk a lot faster than he could listen.
They were almost out of the front doors when Doctor Crowler emerged from an adjacent hall, looking haggard and irritable. "Akiyama! Tanaka! You two don't look busy."
"We're walking," Zachary looked over at Kylie, who didn't appear half as annoyed as he felt. "How can you tell we're not doing something important?"
As usual, Crowler went on as though he didn't say anything. "KaibaCorp has seen fit to tear down the abandoned dorm — at long last if you ask me. The staff went through the building and separated out some things that we want to keep on hand, text books, marker boards, projectors, and the like. Won't the two of you be the exemplary Obelisks you are and move these items into the Obelisk basement? It's where there's the most storage space."
"You want us to carry crap all the way from the abandoned dorm?" Zachary demanded, voice raising in anger. "That's a twenty minute walk!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Crowler waved his hand dismissively. "It's been done already. You can find the boxes in Miss Dorothy's truck, she very kindly let us use it for this purpose. It's parked in front of Obelisk's main entrance. Thank you so much, students!"
Without waiting for a response, he brushed past them and walked into the janitor's closet. Zachary heard strange noises emit from behind the door before it went quiet.
Zachary sighed loudly. "We'll do it, but I'm eating first," he told Kylie, who was still standing there with her usual vacant expression. He gave up a long time ago asking for her opinion on anything negative that was happening around her: he assumed she chose to suppress it until one glorious day when her smile faded and she razed the foundations of everything anyone ever held dear. It would be truly horrifying. In some ways, he looked forward to that.
The pair made the short journey to the main entrance of the Obelisk Blue dorms — more accurately described these days as Obelisk Mostly White Again. The students involved in the effort to remain after the White Dorm incident had either done a terrible paint job or used low-quality paint, or both, because the deep royal blue of the palatial roofs was flaking off in large chunks, leaving the building a mostly blindingly white hue. Zachary had seen photos from before the White transformation, and Obelisk sure as hell didn't vaguely resemble the next Abandoned Dorm. Which it now did.
Miss Dorothy's truck was indeed parked outside on the widest part of the footpath, where vehicles probably weren't intended to drive. Walking past, Zachary could see some boxes and lumpy objects covered in a white sheet in the back. It looked like a lot of stuff, maybe if he had other friends he could manipulate them into helping them out then renege on his end of the deal to help them with something once it was all said and done.
Dinner went smoothly, with Kylie rambling about how excited she was for the upcoming dorm placement practice exams, which were like the PSATs but for dueling and they had no idea what the SATs were, until two girls approached their table with their arms folded across their chests.
"Oh Kylie, sweetie," Madison Saitou sneered down at her. "You know, now that Duel Academy is putting girls like Blair Flannigan in Slifer, you'd better learn to duel. If you're not careful the next promotion exams could send your spastic, fourth-rate duelist ass to the Red dorm."
Zachary clenched his mouth shut. He knew better than to take Saitou's bait, she had a tendency to turn herself into the victim the second a professor came into earshot and he'd gotten into enough trouble lately.
"Isn't that right, Alyssa?"
Alyssa Hayashi, the other girl disrupting their previously pleasant and bitch-free meal, was Saitou's best friend. Hayashi usually didn't put her heart into bullying people the way Saitou did. During duel prep, Hayashi was often the one trying to pull her friend away from a crying younger student after she'd gone too fair, but lately the pressure of being an Obelisk seemed to get the better of her and she felt obligated to harass people she was told to view as inferior. She gestured at Kylie's hair nonchalantly. "You look like a fern is growing out of the side of your head?" Her voice sounded uncertain, like she was asking a genuine question in the guise of trying to make someone cry.
So she's still no good at it, Zachary concluded.
Kylie's expression didn't change during the interaction. It continued to not change as she abruptly jumped onto her chair and swept every tray, cup, book, and card off the lunchroom table she and Zachary were seated at and pulled out her deck, slamming it onto the table with the force of a Brock Lesnar suplex. "Let's duel, Madison. You, me. Prison rules. Right now."
Zachary was tempted to hide his face with his hand but knew it would be an exercise in futility: only he would be dumb enough to eat next to Kylie Tanaka, best known spazz of Duel Academy. "Kylie, sit down!" He hissed, reaching up to pull at her boot — the only part of her he could reach.
Saitou had the decency to look positively disturbed by this display. "What are prison rules—" she started when Kylie whipped out what looked like a handmade shank and some crumpled high-currency yen. Saitou's grey eyes widened. She looked like she was about to call Kylie insane or something equally true when Hayashi grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her away, whispering something about learning how to pick her battles.
"Darn," Kylie looked dangerously close to being sad as she watched the two girls disappear into the crowd. She shoved her deck, money, and contraband weapon back into whatever pocket she got them from and plopped down in her chair next to Zachary.
He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. "How about we have a pickup duel later?" He forced a smile, knowing that she was just going to win again. She always did, and usually he didn't like putting himself through such a thorough and humiliating loss — he preferred the merely mostly one-sided humiliating losses the other Obelisks delivered — but this seemed like one of the rare times she needed cheering up and he could actually do something about it.
Kylie perked up immediately. "Sure! But let's get that stuff done for Doctor Crowler first." She leaned down and picked up some vegetable off the floor that was no longer recognizable and absentmindedly started chewing at one end.
Outside, Zachary and Kylie found Miss Dorothy unloading a large box and placing it gingerly on the ground. The sun was starting to set, casting an orange glow over the small body of water in front of the dorms, which Zachary always failed to determine if it was a pond or a lake or something else.
"Hey kids," Dorothy greeted them, struggling to right herself. "I need my truck back and you were taking a while so I took it upon myself to get started."
"Sorry about that, Miss Dorothy," Kylie apologized.
"It's alright. I put a few things downstairs already, mostly lighter stuff thanks to my bad back. You'll find it all in the stairwell."
Zachary took the initiative removing the rest from the truck bed before he and Kylie waved Miss Dorothy good-bye and they divided up the boxes to ensure this would be a one-trip ordeal. It was already late enough and Zachary had plenty of homework to consider doing tonight on top of what would probably be a five-turn or less game with Kylie.
To his surprise, Miss Dorothy appeared to have done the majority of the work for them, and certainly not the lighter things. There were a couple large classroom projectors from the '90s propped up against one wall next to the basement entrance, as well as some five-foot tall dismantled pieces of dented up marker boards. Kylie moved ahead on the way down the wooden stairs, then balanced the load of boxes she was carrying on one hip as she forced the thick, beaten door open to let Zachary pass her and enter the basement proper.
Considering the Obelisk Blue dorm had the largest and most lavish grounds to maintain, the corner nearest to the entrance of the long concrete room consisted of groundskeeper's tools like wire cutters, weed whackers, and garden hoses that had to be kept from the students to prevent projectile water-based shenanigans. These things, along with a riding lawn mower that shouldn't have even found its way down the narrow stairs to begin with, were situated between the wall and caged in storage units that ran down both sides of the room. Each one contained dusty looking boxes and school equipment and their own padlocks, although the majority of the locks hung loosely open. Zachary supposed they would have free rein of where the Abandoned Dorm's stuff would go, since there didn't seem to be a place designated for them yet.
He made his way over to the nearest chain-link unit that wasn't locked and set the boxes he was carrying inside while Kylie hung outside the basement door arranging the next batch. "Oh!" She exclaimed, causing Zachary to race out to see what was wrong, letting the metal door of the storage unit slam behind him with a clang.
"What's wrong?"
Kylie put her hand over her face, clearly embarrassed about something. "I'm sorry, it startled me."
Zachary looked over at the wall she was facing, noticing for the first time a tall mannequin against the wall. It must have been hidden behind one of the large marker boards.
"It makes me feel the opposite way dueling does," Kylie said from next to him, much more softly than he'd ever heard her speak in the three years they'd known each other.
"Yeah."
The mannequin was similar to a dress mannequin, made of flesh-colored cloth, but it had a head. Its featureless cloth face looked back at them from underneath a high-quality long blonde wig that was elegantly styled in soft waves. It didn't have arms and appeared to not have legs underneath its dark pink evening gown, if the sharp indentation at the hips visible under the fabric was any indication. Zachary couldn't help but be impressed with the craftsmanship, especially of the dress itself. The dangling empty sleeves puffed up at the shoulders and curved delicately down into a sweetheart neckline. The dress hugged the mannequin's waist tightly before cascading down around where the legs should be in a dramatic sweep of long fabric.
"Why is it even here?"
"I don't know," Zachary responded, reaching a hand around to the back of the dress and feeling the lining. "It doesn't have a tag. Maybe a former student made it?"
"Let's just get it in the other room."
He complied, picking it up easily and carrying it into the storage unit where he'd placed the boxes. Kylie followed with her share and in a few minutes time they were finished. Zachary was on his way back out to hopefully never return when he realized his friend wasn't with him. He went back to find her staring at the mannequin again, a blank expression on her face.
"Just forget it, Kylie." He reached out to take her hand but stopped when he saw an old white linen sheet on the dust-covered ground. He snatched it up in and shook it open lightly, careful not to send too much dirt into their breathing air.
Kylie held out her hand to stop him. "Don't. Are you trying to give it ghost powers?"
"It's fine, let's just cover up this creepy ass thing and go." He took one last look at the mannequin's blank face before chucking the sheet over its head, effectively covering the offending object from view. Kylie looked over at him apprehensively but he just rolled his eyes and led her back to the stairs, hitting the lights on the way out.