Chapter 212: Opening Salvo
The Academy Challenge Tournament had arrived.
For all its name implied about competition, once it was actually underway the atmosphere reminded Amano of nothing so much as a school festival from his previous life. He had braced himself for the kind of tension that crackled between three rival academies ready to settle old scores. What he found instead was food stalls and music and the easy excitement of a crowd gathered to be entertained.
It made sense, when he thought about it. If the goal were actually to have the three academies tear each other apart, the format would be a formal elimination bracket, not a stage challenge where any registered student could queue up and try their luck. The stage format was designed for spectacle. It let the top-ranked duelists at each academy put on a show, and it gave every student in the crowd the vicarious thrill of imagining themselves as the one who would finally knock the champion off the platform.
The thrill was mostly imagined. The vast majority of challengers got swept off the stage in short order, but that, too, was part of the entertainment.
Amano was finding himself genuinely caught up in it. Last month's joint duel, this month's challenge tournament. Academy City knew how to keep things interesting.
"They have so many snack stalls over there!"
Kikawayu came jogging back through the crowd with both arms full of wrapped street food, a synthetic grilled sausage already tucked in the corner of his mouth, expression bright with uncomplicated delight.
"You are really getting into this, aren't you? Treating the whole thing like an actual festival."
"Want some? Here." Kikawayu held out the sausage.
"Not the one that has been in your mouth."
"That is incredibly unfair. You eat whatever the class rep leaves behind."
The comparison was technically accurate. If Sakuya had brought back a sausage she had taken two bites of, Amano would not have thought twice about it. But Kikawayu had carried this one the whole way back clamped between his teeth. That was a different category of sharing, and any reasonable person would feel the same way.
Amano reached into the bag under Kikawayu's arm and pulled out a bag of puffed rice candy. "Speaking of the class rep, where did she go?"
The group had set out together from Class 1-E's homeroom, but the festival crowds were dense enough that people naturally drifted apart.
A few minutes later, Sakuya came pushing through the crowd carrying her own armful of snacks, a grilled sausage held in her mouth with the same flat expression she used for everything.
"Want some?"
"No thank you."
These two were completely hopeless. Amano had come here to gather intelligence, not snack his way through the morning.
He had already spent a fair amount of time watching the Synchro Academy Bronze stage. The fourth-year defending it, a senior named Chiba Anning, had a Crystron deck, and Amano had seen enough of her plays to build a reasonable picture of how it worked. He could not challenge her directly since they were at the same academy, but information gathered today might have uses at other events down the line.
This match was the first time Amano had seen Chiba bring out her ace.
Thousands of students in the crowd watched as the giant crystal mech completed its formation above her, segments locking together in cascading blue light.
"Double Synchro! Intertwining starlight, become the spiral that binds fate! Guided by starlight, forged in crystal! Descend - Crystron Quariongandrax!"
[Crystron Quariongandrax]
[Level 9 / WATER / Machine / Synchro / Effect]
[ATK: 3000 / DEF: 3000]
[2 Tuners + 1 non-Tuner]
Effect 1: If this card is Synchro Summoned using monsters as Synchro Material, you can target monsters on the field and in the GY equal to the number of Tuners used as Synchro Material; banish those monsters. Effect 2: If this card is destroyed by battle or an opponent's card effect: target 1 of your banished monsters; Special Summon it.
Crystal wings spread wide, the golden mechanical serpent erupted from the Synchro light spiral.
"Whoa," Kikawayu said through a mouthful, "that is Blue-Eyes White Dragon level attack power. Underwhelming."
The attack points on their own were not the point. Chiba had announced it as a Double Synchro for a reason. Two Tuners meant two banishments. The targeted opponent had both his field monsters and part of his Graveyard cleared out in a single resolution.
"Crystal Cannon - Yamata Torrent!"
Another Bronze stage defense successfully completed. Even at the lowest rung of the challenge ladder, there were no soft opponents.
Gold stage had Rin Seiya standing by at the top. Reportedly, the Gold stage had never actually been reached in the history of the Academy Challenge Tournament. Every challenger had been stopped at the Silver stage before they could even attempt it. Amano briefly wondered whether three days of waiting in reserve got boring. Probably not. Probably she found ways to stay occupied.
"Time to move. Let's head over to Fusion."
Enough intelligence gathered on the Synchro side. Amano sent a message to Finesse marking a meeting point and the three of them worked their way through the crowd toward the Fusion Academy arena.
"Over here, Amano! I got you a good spot!"
He spotted Finesse through the press of bodies by her hair, the distinctive red standing out sharply as she bounced on her toes and waved. Since the Wicked God broadcast, her face had become recognizable to a significant portion of Academy City's student population. People parted around her without being asked, which conveniently meant they parted for Amano's group as well.
"How is it going?"
"One-sided, honestly. Even Bronze stage, he is impressive."
The man defending Fusion Academy's Bronze platform was a fourth-year named Dresser, composed and broad-shouldered, studying the field behind black-framed glasses with the calm of someone who had been in this position many times before. His deck was ABCXYZ.
The letters were not an abbreviation of something else. They were the actual deck.
"Fusion that does not use Polymerization," Finesse said, having clearly spent the morning studying this. "The monsters combine by banishing themselves."
[XYZ-Dragon Cannon]
[Level 8 / LIGHT / Machine / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 2800 / DEF: 2600]
[X-Head Cannon + Y-Dragon Head + Z-Metal Caterpillar, banished from the field]
Cannot be Special Summoned from the GY. Effect: Once per turn, discard 1 card; target 1 card on the opponent's field and destroy it.
[ABC-Dragon Buster]
[Level 8 / LIGHT / Machine / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 3000 / DEF: 2800]
[A-Assault Core + B-Buster Drake + C-Crush Wyvern, banished from field or GY]
Effect 1: Once per turn, discard 1 card; banish 1 card on the field. Effect 2: Opponent's turn: Release this card to target 3 of your banished LIGHT Machine Union Monsters (max 1 copy of the same name); Special Summon them.
Two separate fusion chains, each built from three components, each assembled without a single Fusion Spell. They were already formidable on their own. But the real point of the deck only became apparent when Dresser pushed his glasses up his nose and raised his voice to the stage.
"Now combine. ABC into XYZ. Final form - AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon!"
[AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon]
[Level 10 / LIGHT / Machine / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 4000 / DEF: 4000]
[ABC-Dragon Buster + XYZ-Dragon Cannon, banished from the field]
Effect 1: When the opponent activates a monster effect, Spell, or Trap: discard 1 card; negate the activation and destroy it. (No once-per-turn restriction.) Effect 2: Opponent's turn: banish this card to target 1 each of ABC-Dragon Buster and XYZ-Dragon Cannon; Special Summon those targets.
Six machine bodies merged into one colossus, every cannon port aimed forward. And that first effect had no once-per-turn limit on it. As long as Dresser had cards in his hand, every effect activation on the other side of the field would be met with negation.
The Synchro Academy student on the stage lasted one more exchange.
Amano felt a quiet chill. He had been treating the Bronze stages as things to look past, obstacles between him and the actual goal. Seeing AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon with a full hand of ammunition behind it was a useful reminder that even the third-ranked position at any of these academies represented genuine power.
He glanced toward the edge of the crowd. Jinguuji Masayo was there, having apparently migrated from wherever she had started the morning, carrying a considerable armful of bags that belonged to Yukki. She looked entirely untroubled.
She also seemed to be walking noticeably closer to Yukki than she had at the start of the semester. Amano registered this without particular surprise. Since Sakuya had formally declined her, Masayo appeared to have identified a new primary focus within the Nanki'in household. Some people, it seemed, were flexible on the specific person as long as the family remained the same.
"Did you get registered?" Amano asked her.
"Of course. I told you I would keep my word." Masayo's manner toward Amano was businesslike and direct, entirely unlike the deferential softness she showed Sakuya. "The Eva system just has not called me up yet."
That was the other thing about the challenge format. The system selected challengers based on multiple factors, deck composition and ranking among them. Higher-ranked students were weighted toward earlier selection. For Masayo, top-ten in the academy, the odds of being passed over all morning should have been unfavorable. And yet here she was.
"Yukki, should we go find something to look at while we wait?" Masayo asked.
Yukki shook her head. "Better not, Masayo. You have been kind enough to keep me company all morning already. Big Sister Sakuya and Amano-sensei would be unhappy if we wandered off now."
"I am not unhappy," Sakuya said carefully.
Amano said nothing. What Yukki had just done was plant a seed and step back to watch it take root. Sakuya's earnest correction would now rattle around in Masayo's head for the rest of the afternoon, reassuring in a way that was somehow also unsettling. Engaging with that kind of deliberate innocence was generally a losing proposition.
The morning ground on. Several genuinely strong challengers came up from the Synchro and Xyz academies, duelists ranked in the hundreds who put up better fights than the average. AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon chewed through all of them. Masayo was not called.
Amano checked the time. Two matches left, at most, before the morning session ended and everyone broke for lunch.
"Looks like I am waiting until the afternoon," Masayo said, with the philosophical acceptance of someone who had been unlucky all morning and had made peace with it.
The last challenger of the morning session arrived at the stage.
Something happened at the front rows. A sound, collective and confused at first, then quickly building into excited recognition. Whatever the crowd nearest the stage had seen, word was already spreading outward through body language before anyone said anything.
Amano could not see past the people in front of him until the challenger actually stepped onto the platform. Then he understood.
"In the darkness, a shining galaxy! Become a light of hope and reside within me! Embodiment of light, descend now! Appear - Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon!"
Radiant silver light poured across the Fusion Academy stage, momentarily competitive with the noon sun.
The reason no one had spotted the challenger in the crowd before she stepped up was that her head did not clear the shoulders of the people around her.
Nobody at Academy City mocked Kaiba Chiha's height and expected a conversation about her dueling ability. Those were two entirely separate topics. Outside of one specific entrance exam loss to a first-year who had found a way past her strongest card, Chiha belonged at the Silver stage of the Academy Challenge Tournament. That was where her rankings put her. The fact that she was here, at the Bronze stage of Fusion Academy, attacking upward into her own sister's territory, was something the crowd clearly had not been prepared for.
Finesse went quiet beside Amano. She was watching.
The morning's final duel was not like the ones that had come before it. Every other challenger, even the capable ones, had operated at a certain level. Chiha played at a different level, and the gap was visible from the second row back.
Chiha's Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon materialized on the stage, 3000 ATK of concentrated silver light leveled at AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon.
Then Chiha went further.
"Come forth! Number 62: Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon! Light and darkness wandering the cosmos, slumbering in the rift between them, sorrowful dragons! Gather your power and open the gates of truth! Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon!"
[Number 62: Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon]
[ATK: 4000]
"No use!" Dresser answered immediately. "Any effect you activate will be negated by AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon. I have two cards in hand."
Two negations sitting loaded in his hand. One monster on Chiha's side, no other cards. Dresser was correct that this looked like the end.
"Then let me show you the power I dragged back with me from the edge of nothing." Chiha's voice carried across the stage without strain. "No effects. I am just stacking another Xyz Summon directly on top of Number 62."
From pure silver galaxy light to the deep crimson of something older and more dangerous, the transformation unfolded over Chiha's Number 62 like a second sky opening.
"The galaxy shining in the cosmos, born from the rift between light and darkness! The ultimate dragon of sorrow! Roar your power and open the gates of truth! Xyz Summon, Rank 8 - Chaos Number 62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon!"
[Chaos Number 62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon]
[Rank 8 / LIGHT / Dragon / Xyz / Effect]
[ATK: 4000 / DEF: 3000]
[3 Level 8 monsters. Can also be Xyz Summoned by placing it on top of Number 62: Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon you control.]
Effect 1: At the start of the Battle Phase: detach 1 Xyz Material; this card can attack up to 3 times during this Battle Phase. Effect 2 (requires Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon as Xyz Material): This card is unaffected by opponent's monster effects. This card gains ATK equal to the combined Levels and Ranks of all its Xyz Materials x100.
Three dragon heads emerged from the chaos light, each one carrying the echo of its predecessors.
"Only one watch at the Displaced Singularity and she figured it out," Amano said, more to himself than anyone else.
He remembered with complete clarity the state of Chiha's Extra Deck when they had fought through the District 32 duel together. Chaos Number 62 had not been in it. It had not existed for her. Somewhere between watching Chaos Number 107: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon come into being during that duel and now, she had awakened the equivalent evolution for her own ace. That was the Kaiba talent working in real time.
"Chaos Number 62's effect!" Chiha announced. "Detach one Xyz Material. This card can attack three times during this Battle Phase."
Dresser did not flinch. "You activated a monster effect, Chiha! AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon discards one card. Your effect is negated and destroyed."
The cannon array of the six-body machine gestured gloriously. Energy and light and considerable noise followed.
When it cleared, Chaos Number 62 was still standing on the stage without a mark on it.
"Done?" Chiha asked.
She let the silence answer.
AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon's negation effect was itself a monster effect. Chaos Number 62, carrying Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon as Xyz Material, was simply immune to opponent's monster effects. The negation had fired at something it could not touch, impressive as ever and completely without result.
The remaining Xyz Materials under Chaos Number 62 added up to a total combined Level and Rank of sixteen, boosting its attack points by 1600.
[Chaos Number 62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon - ATK: 4000 to 5600]
"Take it. Chaos Super Galaxy Spiral - Triple Assault!!"
Three heads. Three charging bursts of crimson chaos light. AtoZ-Dragon Buster Cannon, along with the two remaining monsters on Dresser's field, absorbed them in sequence.
The Fusion Academy challenge stage disappeared behind an expanding wash of red.
"AAAAAAAH!"
[Dresser LP: 4000 to 0]
The crowd had seen plenty of impressive dueling through the morning. They had not seen anything like this. The Bronze stage of Fusion Academy had been cleared on the last match before lunch, by a duelist from Xyz Academy.
A duelist whose older sister held the Gold stage directly above.
The implications of that particular family relationship were not lost on anyone watching. Chiha had not challenged Fusion Academy randomly. This was a statement aimed at a specific person.
Chiha looked up toward the elevated Gold stage platform where Kaiba Chiaki stood, then her gaze dropped to find Amano in the crowd below. Her voice was quiet enough that only the people immediately around him would hear.
"Consider this even for the entrance exam. I'm done carrying that debt." A pause. "Whether you can beat Sister dear is your problem now. That's something I can't do for you."
She knew perfectly well that even with Chaos Number 62, she could not beat Chiaki. The gap there was real and she had always understood it.
But standing on this stage and clearing this platform was not about winning that fight. It was about something else. It was about looking up at the Gold stage and saying something that did not need to be spoken out loud.
I am not content to be your little sister anymore.