Chapter 316: Women Fighting Is Terrifying!
By all rights, Saotome Rei, a freshman from the Obelisk Red dorm, going up against Alexis Rhodes, the reigning queen of Obelisk Blue, should have ended in a completely lopsided result.
But the terrifying willpower a girl in love could summon let Saotome Rei pull off an upset, pushing the reigning duel queen Alexis into a genuine corner at one point.
Of course, Alexis's final counterattack had been just as ferocious. Catching Saotome Rei's one opening in that desperate moment, she finished her off with a relentless combo from Cyber Angel Izana, showing not the slightest mercy toward her underclassman.
Having watched the whole Duel Academy campus queen showdown play out, Jaden Yuki offered his verdict.
"Women fighting is terrifying!"
Amano Rei found himself nodding along to that.
But the reason this particular catfight had managed to reach such terrifying heights probably traced back to this line, the one Eva had inexplicably flagged for him the moment he'd stepped into the Chronicle:
Whoever won would get to date Amano Rei.
As for Saotome Rei, Amano Rei actually did know about this whole arrangement. Well, "know" might not be quite the right word for it. It was purely because the girl had crossed over into Eden as a Lost Duelist that Amano Rei had learned about the connection at all.
He himself, on the other hand, barely had any memories at all of Saotome Rei from inside Duel Academy.
If you don't care about something, you don't remember it.
That, at least, tracked with what the Chronicle's own description had said about him: a duelist as unshakably resolute as Jack Atlas.
As for Alexis Rhodes, Amano Rei actually had a fair number of memories connected to her, more than he had for Saotome Rei.
She was, after all, nominally the female lead of the whole Yu-Gi-Oh GX story, however divisive people's opinions of her ended up being, and however much that status eventually got undercut once Yubel entered the picture. Either way, she'd had plenty of screen time.
Just from what Amano Rei could recall of the Chronicle, it had already come up once that Alexis's older brother, Atticus Rhodes, was someone he'd personally saved during a Dark Game.
There'd also been that stretch of time when Jaden Yuki had gone missing, during which the two of them had worked together to protect the Red dorm from being torn down.
Amano Rei had assumed all of that was simply the kind of bond building event you'd expect between himself and his friends at Duel Academy.
But had something more than just friendship ended up forming out of all that, on top of it?
Having absolutely no memory of any of that made it pretty easy to see that his old Duel Academy self hadn't picked up on Alexis's feelings either, or rather, had simply not cared, same as always.
What an irony. Three thousand years ago, Amano Rei had apparently been a total Sigma male, and yet three thousand years later, he'd somehow ended up with a full-blown romance system attached to him.
Was this the universe's way of compensating his younger, cluelessly oblivious self across a gap of thousands of years?
A difficulty E Chronicle didn't require him to actually duel at all. Having simply watched the campus queen duel play out as a spectator, the notification for a successful clear had already gone off.
Naturally, since there'd been no duel of his own, the clear rating could only come out as a plain, ordinary A rank.
Having claimed her victory, Alexis Rhodes walked straight toward Amano Rei in full view of everyone.
Amano Rei himself had no idea how the terms of this whole "whoever wins gets to date Amano Rei" prize had ever been decided in the first place.
But looking at the way the girl carried herself, her cheeks flushed yet her expression fierce and determined, like she was about to confess her feelings in front of the entire crowd, Amano Rei found himself momentarily at a total loss for how to handle it.
"Amano, could I talk to you alone for a minute?"
"Sure."
Going by the personality the Eva system had described for him, he probably should have refused.
And if he agreed instead, did that count as changing history?
Amano Rei suddenly felt like he was playing some kind of gal game, where one wrong dialogue choice could reshape the entire rest of the story.
Under the envious stares of the surrounding students, looks that seemed ready to swallow him whole, Amano Rei let Alexis pull him by the wrist toward a secluded clearing behind the Blue dorm.
Away from the crowd, alone with Amano Rei, Alexis lost a little of that untouchable queen-of-Obelisk-Blue air about her, gaining instead a touch of an ordinary girl's shyness.
"Amano, I know something like this might put you in an awkward position. But I still wanted to tell you how I feel, in person."
"Alexis?"
"Amano, the truth is, I've really..."
Before Alexis could even finish, the Chronicle scene around Amano Rei had already begun collapsing, data fraying inward from the edges.
Of course Eva, ever the sneaky one, wouldn't actually let him get away with rewriting history however he pleased.
Cutting the Chronicle off right at this exact moment, right after he'd already cleared it, felt like nothing so much as Eva deliberately messing with him for fun.
The familiar weightlessness of exiting a Chronicle set in, and Amano Rei began to fall.
But in that one instant before he left, Amano Rei caught something strange in Alexis's expression.
By all rights, only he should have been able to see the Chronicle's data collapsing and pulling him out. And yet, in Alexis's face, Amano Rei had clearly seen a flash of sheer, unguarded shock.
There was no time to work out what exactly Alexis might have seen. By the time Amano Rei came back to himself, he was already back in the empty, solitary booth, alone.
On his Eva Terminal's display, the Chronicle clear reward blinked into view: Machine Angel Ritual.
Nothing else had happened. Kaiba Chiaki had already left earlier, so the whole luxurious booth at the virtual network login point held nothing but Amano Rei himself.
Had that last flash really just been his imagination, then?
This E rank Chronicle hadn't taken very long. Amano Rei glanced at his wrist terminal and saw he still had a full hour left of lunch break, plenty of time to make his way back to Synchro Academy without rushing.
Just as he climbed onto his D-Wheel to head back, a notification popped up out of nowhere in front of his eyes.
[Lost Duelist Detected: Alexis Rhodes]
[Please shelter as soon as possible]
"???"
Alexis, how did you suddenly become a Lost Duelist?
So that last moment hadn't been his imagination after all. That flash of shock on Alexis's face really had been because she'd gotten swept up in the data collapse and pulled across dimensions too.
Probably just like what happened with the Super Polymerization incident last time. Because he'd changed history, agreeing to Alexis's request for a private conversation, Alexis had ended up crossing over as a Lost Duelist.
Looking back on it now, his three thousand year old self really had been impossibly hard to read, refusing to even give Alexis the chance for a single private conversation.
But Eden was enormous. Where was he even supposed to start looking for Alexis Rhodes?
Best to leave the professional work to the professionals.
As long as Alexis hadn't collapsed in some back alley from a health issue the way Kaiser Ryo had, and was instead simply wandering around a normal street somewhere, the Security Bureau should be able to track her down before he did.
When that happened, Officer Kirigakure Shomei from the Special Investigation Division would surely reach out to him.
Assuming, of course, that Alexis had landed somewhere in the Middle District or higher, and not down in the lower districts, where public order was a much messier affair.
Not that it would really matter even if she had landed down there. Given Alexis Rhodes's dueling caliber, there probably wasn't a single person across Eden's lower districts who could actually beat her. She wouldn't have any trouble looking after herself.
The real problem was on Amano Rei's end. First Saotome Rei, and now Alexis Rhodes had crossed over too.
Saotome Rei, at least, he could still fob off on Finesse with the "my father's illegitimate daughter" excuse that no one could actually go verify. Given how young Rei looked, it was easy enough for a little girl like that to win his lady's sympathy.
But what was he supposed to do about Alexis Rhodes? Pinning yet another one on his own father would be treating everyone else like idiots at this point.
Amano Rei: "This is a beautiful campus queen with a chest to match Big Thunder herself, an old acquaintance of mine. Would you mind taking her in too, Mom Finesse?"
Finesse: "Oh, is that really the only thing you have to say for your last words, Amano?"
The relationships around him lately had already gotten messy enough. He absolutely could not let something like that actually happen.
Even if it cost him a fair number of points, he needed to trade in a Spacetime Return Ticket the very moment he found Alexis and get her sent straight back.
By the time Amano Rei rode his D-Wheel back to Synchro Academy and reached the hallway outside his classroom, he found Kozuka Yoka excitedly waving a flyer in her hand.
"Hahaha, I won, I won! Hahaha, this is amazing!"
Why was this girl always this happy? Guess idiots really did have higher baseline happiness or something.
Amano Rei, who'd been stewing in his own worries just a second earlier, felt a sudden urge to mess with Kozuka Yoka the moment he saw her grinning like that, without a single care in the world.
Kozuka, you do know running and shouting in the school hallway isn't allowed, right?
Amano Rei pulled up the Eva control panel he'd hacked into through his system.
[Kozuka Yoka] [Guilt Value +1]
"I wo..." Kozuka Yoka's excited footsteps came to a sudden stop. "Wahhh!"
So what exactly had she won?
Messing with her aside, once Amano Rei had bumped her guilt value up, he quickly lowered it right back down again.
Taking the flyer from Kozuka Yoka's stunned hands, Amano Rei frowned slightly.
Printed boldly across it: Academy City Upper Division, Freshman Campus Queen Election Duel.
A campus queen election duel. Hadn't he literally just done this exact activity? Inside a Duel Academy Chronicle, no less.
Since when did this world get a real life reboot of it too?
"Kozuka, what did you mean by 'I won'?" Amano Rei asked.
Having watched her guilt value spike and then drop right back down, Kozuka Yoka let out a quiet sigh of relief, though she still didn't dare go back to shouting in the hallway, dropping her voice out of habit.
"Our class rep, obviously! For this year's freshman campus queen vote, our class rep's votes are miles ahead of everyone else. It's already a lock that she'll be chosen to represent Synchro Academy in the finals!"
Nanki'in Sakuya holding a commanding lead in the freshman campus queen vote didn't surprise Amano Rei in the slightest.
Setting aside everything on the inside, just going by looks alone, the sheer knockout power of Nanki'in's long, straight, jet-black hair and cool, aloof beauty was frankly overkill for the average student body.
Speaking of which, when had this whole thing even gotten organized? He'd had absolutely no idea it was happening at all.
Kozuka Yoka said, "The academy's official website, obviously. Don't tell me you've never once checked it, class rep?"
Amano Rei genuinely never had. What decent person spent their free time browsing their own school's official website when there was perfectly good short video scrolling to be done instead?
Still, while slacking off during afternoon classes, Amano Rei couldn't resist logging into Synchro Academy's website to take a look.
Sure enough, just as Kozuka Yoka had said, Nanki'in Sakuya's vote count was miles ahead, leading second place by a full 1000 votes.
Speaking of which, wasn't second place, Kirisame Fuyuo, the class rep of his own campus's Class A? The same one Amano Rei had beaten during the Class War.
At the time, Amano Rei had been too focused on defeating her to really register what kind of a beauty she actually was.
Looking at the photo posted on Synchro Academy's website now, Class A's rep Kirisame Fuyuo had that whole bookish, literary girl look going on, black rimmed glasses and all.
That sort of intellectual beauty tended to do well in the cutthroat, competitive environment of Synchro Academy specifically.
The photo they'd chosen for her was well picked too, a frozen moment in a dusk lit library, one hand resting on the frame of her glasses, the other flipping through a book. Calling it a carefully staged, elegant shot wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
Too bad her opponent happened to be Nanki'in Sakuya.
The photo posted for Nanki'in Sakuya on the website had actually just been a candid shot Kozuka Yoka snapped on impulse.
On the training field at dawn, in her white academy uniform, black hair spilling down in the morning light, Nanki'in Sakuya's over the knee socks and short skirt framed that eye catching absolute territory between them.
And right beside that absolute territory, the katana hanging at her hip somehow fit in seamlessly, as if it had simply grown out of the girl's own soul.
The composition was so perfectly matched that Amano Rei couldn't help saving the photo on the sly.
His own class rep really could pull off looks like nobody's business. Winning the campus queen title should be a walk in the park for her.
He honestly hadn't expected the academy's official site to actually be a little entertaining. Amano Rei scrolled a bit further down and found the general standard of the girls listed was uniformly high.
Wait, why was he on here too, along with Kikawayu?
Kikawayu, fine, whatever. But who had gone and uploaded his own photo?
Did these people even know what a campus queen contest was supposed to be about?
And yet, as the most famous name among Synchro Academy's freshmen, despite his gender having nothing whatsoever to do with a campus queen title, a whole crowd of students just doing it for the laughs had voted him all the way up to sixth place, plain and simple.
If the academy hadn't stepped in and frozen his vote count in time, he'd probably have ranked even higher.
Had he genuinely, without the slightest awareness, almost ended up becoming the campus queen?
The official site even let you look up past years' freshman campus queen winners. Last year's freshman champion had been Kuroshio Nagi, from Xyz Academy.
It was a familiar name, sure, but seeing the photo still gave Amano Rei a jolt.
Who even are you?
Was this composed, properly uniformed, pure and innocent looking black haired beauty really the same person as the little bleached blond delinquent he knew?
A single year, and someone could change that much.
The champion from the year before that had been Latir Wein, of Fusion Academy, another familiar face. All three Wein sisters had absurdly high looks across the board, and the eldest of them in particular fell into that cool, striking, handsome type of beautiful.
By the way, the runner-up from that same year had been Kaiba Chiha. Whoever had voted for that little brat really needed to get their head examined.
Going back further than that, the winner was beyond dispute: fourth year senior Rin Seiya, Synchro Academy's own reigning goddess. That title definitely hadn't come for free.
"Amano, what are you looking at?"
He'd been so absorbed in scrolling that Amano Rei hadn't even noticed class had already ended, or that Nanki'in Sakuya had somehow drifted right up beside him at some point.
"No, nothing." Amano Rei switched screens with practiced ease. "Just, uh, looking at my desktop wallpaper."
"What's so interesting about a desktop wallpaper?" Nanki'in Sakuya asked, confused.
There was no way he was about to tell his class rep he'd been looking at photos of other girls.
"Right, Amano, are you free tonight?" Nanki'in Sakuya asked.
"Nothing special planned, no."
Amano Rei had originally intended to go find Yui tonight and talk through the whole situation with Kaiba Chiha, to see if they could figure out some opening to patch things up between the Kaiba sisters.
But if Sakuya needed something, taking care of his own class rep obviously came first.
"Then could you take a look at my deck for me? And maybe practice a duel with me too, with the new build?"
"A new deck, sure, no problem."
That reminded Amano Rei, Nanki'in Sakuya's new deck archetype was Blade and Sword.
He'd only ever shown her how Sky Striker fought. Down in the Middle District, without an Extra Monster Zone to enable Link Summoning, Swordsoul was the archetype that should really be carrying her main line.
Even so, while his own class rep might not be much good with exams or homework, she genuinely had a real talent for dueling.
In just two weeks, working through her deck entirely on her own, she'd already figured out most of the major combo lines the Swordsoul cards in her deck could pull off.
"That's really impressive, class rep." Amano Rei couldn't help but say so once he'd looked through her deck.
Both being Synchro decks, but Swordsoul's raw power level was honestly on a whole different tier than Shiranui's.
A standard like this wasn't just strong for a freshman at the academy, it could probably crack the rankings across the entire Academy City. It felt like it was only a matter of time before Sakuya cracked the top ten.
"Hearing you say that really puts me at ease." A faint, barely there smile touched the corner of Nanki'in Sakuya's mouth.
"What, class rep, is something worrying you?"
"Mm, it's, well. The campus queen election."
Nanki'in Sakuya explained, "I heard the final winner gets decided by a duel. I'd really like to win it."
So even three thousand years later, Duel Academy's old tradition still held. Being pretty wasn't enough on its own. As the campus queen of a school built around dueling, your skill at the game itself mattered too.
"I didn't expect you to actually be interested in the campus queen title, class rep."
All of Nanki'in Sakuya's official photos had been candid shots Kozuka Yoka uploaded on her own initiative. Amano Rei had genuinely assumed his class rep couldn't care less about any of this.
"If you're going to do something, do it properly, that's what my mother always told me. And besides, I really am interested."
Right now, Amano Rei kept getting stronger by the day, his name echoing not just through Duel Academy but shaking the pro circuit itself.
Sakuya figured that if she could add one more title to her own name, she'd be a little better matched to the growing reputation of her own dear wife.
Sakuya said, tense, "The election duel starts Wednesday. You'll support me, won't you, wifey?"
"Of course. All of Class E is your solid backing on this! Go for it, class rep!"
Working through her deck and sparring with Nanki'in Sakuya all the way through the end of evening study hall, Amano Rei didn't make it back to the villa until later that night.
Back in the villa's living room, Amano Rei found Finesse on the couch, decks spread out across the coffee table, comparing cards one by one.
"What are you up to, my lady?"
"Sorting through my new cards." Finesse stroked her smooth chin, answering Amano Rei while she thought it over. "I pulled a bunch of new HERO cards recently. Feels like I've gotten stronger all over again."
Speaking of new cards, it suddenly occurred to Amano Rei that when he'd opened his Spacetime card pack, he'd pulled a card from the Aster pack: D-Force.
"Here, this one's for you. You'll definitely find a use for it."
"For me?"
Finesse took the card from Amano Rei's hand, and the moment she realized it was the legendary D-Force, she practically leapt straight up off the couch in excitement.
"D-Force! Amano, you actually pulled this card? You're a lifesaver! I love you so much right now!"
The anime version of my lady's Bloo-D absolutely needed D-Force to unlock its full effect. Finesse had spent a fortune pulling cards and never managed to land this one, so her excitement now was more than understandable.
"But what do you mean by lifesaver? Are you in a hurry to power up your deck, Finesse?" Amano Rei asked.
"Yeah. Didn't I tell you this morning, there's an event at Fusion Academy this week?"
"Right, what event was that again?" Amano Rei remembered the chaos of this morning and realized he still hadn't gotten around to actually asking Finesse what the Fusion Academy event even was.
"Heehee~" Finesse smiled smugly, her silver-gray eyes narrowing into two lovely crescents.
"The campus queen election duel, obviously. The final list isn't locked in yet, but going by the current vote count, I'm basically guaranteed to be representing Fusion Academy in it! So, pretty impressive girlfriend you've got, huh?"
"..."
"Why'd you suddenly go quiet, Amano?"
"Im, impressive, of course you are. Our lady's the best."
"Why does that sound a little forced?" Finesse crossed her arms, suspicious. "Well, whatever, I'll let it slide, seeing as you gave me this D-Force."
Thoroughly satisfied, Finesse slotted D-Force straight into her deck.
"With this card, there's no way I can lose! Just wait, Amano, you're going to watch me take the campus queen championship!"
"Uh, go, go for it..."
"Your attitude's been weird all night, Amano, hasn't it?" Finesse pressed. "As my boyfriend, even if it's not official yet, you're obviously going to support me too, right?"
"Of course. Everyone in this whole villa is your solid backing on this!"
Nearly the exact same words he'd already said once that very night.
Before all this, Amano Rei never would have guessed that Academy City's freshman campus queen election would end up boiling down to a duel between Finesse and Nanki'in Sakuya.
Then again, it made sense. When it came to looks, his own lady didn't lose to his own class rep in the slightest. Representing Fusion Academy fit her perfectly.
The only problem was, in a situation like this, who was he actually supposed to be rooting for?
Damn it, students are supposed to focus on their studies! What's with all this campus queen business!
Right at that moment, Amano Rei suddenly remembered what Jaden Yuki had said to him back inside the Chronicle earlier that day.
"Women fighting is terrifying!"
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