Dueling life in a futuristic world

‘Where to start?’ Light thought to himself in his office.

It was the end of the first month of classes and he was just looking over some budget and student reports.

This is something he mostly left to his staff - after all, the benefit of having staff was to use them to lessen your workload - and this wasn't the start of the Era where he struggled to manage the expanding NWDA. But there was a specific student that he had to deal with personally. It was not a preference thing. No, this student had to be dealt with personally by him because she didn’t fit into a mold neatly like the others and would stagnate otherwise. Thankfully, he knew this before accepting her.

Yuumi Matsunaga was a strange occurrence, and he had immediately understood this after she accepted his pitiful offer. Historically, when a natural Penta-Summoner appeared, they would hold themselves above the rest and look down on everyone that didn’t at least share their “Gift” or those that trained hard for it. Mix this EGO and hubris and you get someone who didn’t live past 20.

But Yuumi… He couldn’t put a finger on it. The way she dueled seemed… unnatural, treating it almost like one would a game… Maybe this mindset was the basis for her undeniable skill, for someone with no formal training. Light didn’t know who trained her and it might just be a natural talent for all he knew.

One thing was for sure: she didn’t have the same arrogance he expected.

————

01/Ago/35MT

He had arrived on the first day of August after getting held back in the city because of news of movements at the union’s border.

After a cup of coffee, he sat in his armchair just to be faced, first thing in the morning, with an irrate blue rank student and some ramblings about a red rank “Stepping over the line”. Whatever that meant. Still, he had to take care of this. Her father was an executive at one of the academy's main sponsors.

With the still babbling girl in front of him, he opened the NWDA’s duel logs and searched for her name.

[

Name: Aya Ohayashi.

Most recent duels:

Aya Ohayashi vs Yuumi Matsunaga, Result: Loss. New ELO: 995. WARNING: Rank demotion probable.

]

‘Oof, that’s going to be a mess. Let’s just keep her at blue.’

“Very well, Miss Ohayashi, I will call over the student for questioning.” Light informed the Irate student sat in front of him.

“CALL HER!? For what!? Director, there’s no need for you to waste time like this! She’s just a red rank! Expel her!” She demanded.

‘If only you knew…’

“Now, now, there’s no need to be hasty.” He reminded “Maybe you’ll even make up if she can explain herself.”

‘Besides, I’d expel you first before touching her if it came down to it.’

The Director was uncomfortable in doting Yuumi like this, but there was no way he would let her go. After her little performance at the square, the dueling academies were already preparing for their moves. At least that’s what his informants told him.

Running a dueling academy in Dragoon City was a risky business, and Light knew this better than anyone. The conflicts at the start of the MT era tore the city apart from the inside, only ending after the deaths of the entire city council.

It started with a military revolt, then the academies joined in. In the end, the academies were all that remained, and with a city in ruins, they finally put their fighting behind. They joined forces to rebuild the city, prefab panel by prefab panel, putting their expertise with solid vision and, for the first time in history, used the technology for something other than dueling or war. Their engineers created projected machines that looked alien to anyone other than the ones that designed them. But it was effective. Only 4 years to rebuild an entire city, even in the faraway colonies around “Prope Domum” Star - where the most advanced technology was being used to make the otherwise barren planets habitable - couldn’t compare to this.

This made Dragoon City unique, built by duelists for duelists. While other cities raved about their multilayered traffic, or lack thereof, because of personal tube transport networks, Dragoon City would always be the Solid Vision capital of humanity. The projected highways, projected transport systems, and even the projected sewer system stay something unique to it. Half the city would disappear without the many Solid-Vision projectors and their backup fusion generators.

Regardless, he knew the only reason he had this academy was that conflict. Without it, he would have just stayed a faceless NCO from Dragoon City in the Union combined forces. Running the academy came naturally to him, even if the academies had signed their alliance, and the city their “Voluntary change of ownership,” didn’t mean there was no conflict between them, especially with the manipulation from the wealthy previously ruling families in-play.

‘Letting them go intact was a mistake.’ he thought, the irate blue rank still spitting insults at the non-present penta-summoner.

It was a tough decision. Most of the reasons for the conflict in the first place was the influence of those families, but to not disturb the still fragile economy and balance of the city, they let them go after repossessing their personal armies and dueling supplies. Now he had to deal with extortion, bribes, spies, break-ins, raids, and assassination attempts. So not so different from before…

Whilst he was busy reminiscing about the past, the elevator doors that lead right into his office opened, revealing Yuumi Matsunaga.

“There’s the one!” Aya immediately announced, pointing to Yuumi.

“Again, there’s no need to be hasty. Yuumi, please take a seat.” Light requested.

She sat down. Light noticed the annoyed expression on her face.

‘I’m in the same camp here, sister.’ He thought to himself.

“Now, I’m told that there was a duel at the red dorm. Is this right?” The Director asked.

“Yes, I would be happy to tell the full story, contrary to the doctored version that Aya over here has told the Director.” She said.

————

That she fucking did. Somehow, this pissed him off. He knew about the elitism present in blue and, to a lesser extent, yellow ranked students. Hell, he expected this to have to do with it. BUT THIS? No, he didn’t expect THIS! For a moment he was terrified that Yuumi might just decide to walk out. The director was ready to offer her a room at the central tower in the Elite quarters, if she had. But she… she just... didn't care…

‘I really need to stop comparing her to the others, huh?’

Either way, he demoted Aya. If her father wanted to make noise about it, then fine, he was just a marketing director, anyway. Also, he would now need to launch an investigation on why this was possible in the first place, a blue rank marching into the red dorms would be rude at most and she would be told to explain the visit, but THREATENING STUDENTS!?!?!?!?!? Why didn’t the head of the dorm call security!? And worse, it wasn’t the first time, from what Yuumi told, this had happened last year.

‘Why did no one tell me about it?… Oh right…’ He thought then facepalmed.

He was the director, the top… and while his opinion on rank was something he tried to share with his staff, he knew this would not work for everyone, but he didn’t expect it to go up to the head of dorms. Miss Umeda was going to need to be replaced, at the very least. She didn’t even try to report this and if it went further and someone got hurt, it would be a mess to cover up with the methods to do so probably doing more damage to the image of the academy in Yuumi’s mind than the incident itself.

————

06/Ago/35MT

‘I can’t get a break can I?’ The Director thought as he looked over the weekly reports.

The new student he handled was getting up to more trouble than he had expected. He was dealing with the incident with Professor Chamberlain. The Director had been out of the academy for most of this week because of the incident at the Union’s border wrenching him from the academy on Monday and the discussions with the city council and the Union defense organizers taking a week to resolve. So only now on the weekend had he time to go over the reports.

With that in mind, Light turned to his holo-screen with the replay queued to start. He wanted to know how the professor lost this. Right now, he reasoned that Chamberlain simply was not expecting a decent deck from a red rank and choose one too weak to compete. If this was the case, a follow up duel would be required before he offered her a teaching position. This is something Light would prefer. At the present, the only thing that kept Yuumi nailed down to the academy was a flimsy scholarship that didn’t have a required minimum stay in its terms. A job, however, would, as she would need to be trained for teaching students and that could be a reason to pin her down.

Still, Light wasn’t stupid enough to not understand this probably wouldn’t happen. If he offered her a salary that’s too high, it would lead to suspicion of why her scholarship was only one fifth of what a professor got even thought she was one of a kind. He would need to offer her an assistant position and that was just double the money for infinitely more work. But she was already getting paid a lot, many people would kill to receive 10000@ for just standing around like she was.

With this in mind, he pressed play on the replay.

…

…

…

…

[“I activate the other effect my dragons copied from Nightingale, plus the effect of nightingale herself. This will deal 500 burn damage times the level of the monster. My two dragons are level 8 and nightingale is level 1, resulting in 8500 damage!”]

‘What the fuck.’

An FTK…

The Director closed the replay window and leaned back on his chair then muttered.

“Only you Yuumi, only you.”

FTKs were something like station stargazing stories. The prospect of a deck capable of ending a duel on the first turn with nothing you could do was terrifying, like an undefeatable superweapon just waiting to fall into the wrong hands. Or at least that’s what a lower skilled duelist would conclude. In reality, most FTKs were easily disturbed with little effort and, when stopped, didn’t have any other lines of play to recover, losing the duel in the second turn.

The FTK performed by the Penta Summoner here wasn’t as prone to that. Outside of the elites, there were few decks could out two 6800 ATK monsters and still win in a single turn.

With this in mind, the Director had no choice but to call up Professor Chamberlain, who after a short time arrived at his office sweating profusely.

“D-Director, what might be the reason you’ve called me on this sunny day?” Chamberlain stuttered.

“Come on, man, pull yourself together.” Urged Light. “Yes, it’s about that duel last Monday. Please sit down.”

The concerned old man did as told. Chamberlain was one of the first professors that joined the academy and the last one of the old guard still teaching after 29 years of service. While for teaching he was a terrific professor, his skill had stagnated and he couldn’t move on from his position as a red-yellow rank professor. In the Director’s mind, it was not much of a loss if he could pin Yuumi down using his position.

“I’ve called Yuumi over and know I will offer her a position as assistant dueling theory professor. Now don’t get scared, she probably won’t accept.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” asked the professor, confused.

“She’s in a scholarship that pays half of the position I’m offering to just stay here.” He tells.

“So one hundred times more work for double the money? Yes, I wouldn’t accept either. Isn’t it risky to be nickel-and-dimming like this with a penta summoner on the line? If the other academies got wind of this, I don’t think even you could stop the offers from getting to her.” The old man snapped back.

“Relax, she’s not going to accept.”

“What am I not accepting?” Right on queue, the aforementioned penta-summoner walked out of the elevator.

From then on, the talk with Yuumi went mostly like he expected. She refused the teaching position, which is a shame, but, eh; he didn’t care that much. He got her to accept on giving a presentation which for him was the most important part. This meant he had a reason to get her out of that scrummy red dormitory.

With the talk done, Light was once again alone in his office.

He leaned back in his chair and took in a deep breath. “Fuaaaaa, that girl is a trouble magnet… I really hope she settles down, for my sake.”

…

…

‘I just Jinxed myself, didn’t I?’