Chapter 243: Your Body Is Way Too Useful, Amano!
Inside the direct-access elevator rising toward the top floor, Kaiba Chiaki finally had a moment to actually read through the Chronicle's storyline.
Or more precisely: to read through this Divergent History, which rivaled a singularity point in terms of how far it had deviated from the main timeline.
Without entering through Amano Rei's perspective, there was no built-in story briefing at all. Previous runs had offered nothing but the pure combat, stripped of all context. No matter how many times Chiaki had challenged this scenario before, she had never known the full background of what she was walking into.
"Even Kaiba Seto was defeated. What a fake history this is."
"Chiaki-senpai. Even in the real history, Kaiba Seto has lost a fair number of times."
At Amano's pointed observation about the Kaiba family record, Kaiba Chiaki reached down and pinched her own thigh.
Her own thigh. Which currently happened to belong to Amano Rei, given that she was operating his body in background spirit possession mode.
In the real world, Kaiba Chiaki believed in science and had no time for magic. Under normal circumstances, the concept of soul possession would have been something she flatly rejected. But this was a virtual world built from data. Anything that could be framed in terms of data was something Chiaki could rationalize from a scientific angle and let herself move past.
So when Kaiba Chiaki pinched the thigh, did she consider it a punishment directed at Amano Rei's body?
The pain was going to her. She was the one who felt it.
Chiaki-senpai really does show no mercy, even to herself.
Still, the Chronicle's story briefing had settled one thing for her. If even her ancestor Kaiba Seto had gone down in honorable defeat against this scenario, then the fact that she herself had never managed to clear it perhaps was not the shameful failure she had made it out to be in her own mind.
The elevator chimed and opened directly into the top-floor executive office.
The ease of it gave Kaiba Chiaki a slightly unreal sensation. Every previous run had required fighting through all thirteen card combat specialists the system threw at her before she could reach this point, including two opponents wielding God cards along the way.
"Your body really is too useful, Amano Rei."
Chiaki-senpai, if you keep saying things like that, people are going to get entirely the wrong idea about you.
They stepped out of the elevator into an empty top floor. No grunt guards stationed here, which at least spared those guards from another elbow strike. The executive office itself was also empty.
"On the roof," Amano said, pulling from memory.
Even after eighteen years, the details of the manga's key duels stayed with him well enough. The critical confrontation in this arc had taken place on the helicopter landing pad on top of Kaiba Corporation.
The last Chronicle had featured a meteorite strike on Kaiba Corporation's rooftop. That building really did have terrible luck with its upper levels.
Kaiba Chiaki asked no further questions. She processed Amano's voice in her mind and went straight for the roof.
The rooftop helipad was only one floor above the executive office, no elevator needed. Kaiba Chiaki took the fire escape corridor running along the outer edge of the building, sprinted up it, and kicked the metal door separating interior from exterior open without breaking stride.
Amano noted that when it was not her own body, Chiaki-senpai did not give a single thought to being careful with it. Was knocking politely actually going to kill her?
The door hit the frame with a thunderous bang. The three figures standing on the helipad all turned at once with identical expressions of shock.
Kaiba Chiaki let a slight smile pull at the corner of her mouth. "Found you."
Kaiba Seto's expression shifted through several layers of complexity before settling into a frown. "Amano Rei. Why are you here?"
Amano had the same question in reverse: why did Kaiba Seto's appearance rate in these Chronicles have to be one hundred percent?
In his own Chronicle runs, apart from the very first one where Kaiba Corporation appeared only as background scenery, every subsequent Chronicle set in the DM era had featured Kaiba Seto himself in the cast. In his own era, he was mandatory. Outside his own era, he found ways to appear anyway.
At this point they might as well rename the whole thing the Kaiba Chronicles.
"I'm here to avenge you... Kai... Kaiba!" Kaiba Chiaki attempted to imitate Amano's way of addressing Kaiba Seto, but the unfamiliar form made it come out slightly halting on the final word.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Avenge him?" The silver-haired man standing at the far end of the rooftop burst into laughter. "What standing do you have to avenge Kaiba Seto? The one I'm waiting for is Duel King Yugi Muto. Not you."
The silver-haired man was unmistakably the main villain of this Chronicle: Pegasus's adopted son, the man who intended to use Anzu Mazaki's body as a resurrection vessel for his late guardian. Tenma Yako.
"He has every standing." The third person waiting on the roof was someone who had not appeared anywhere in the scenario until now: Kaiba Seto's younger brother, Kaiba Mokuba. "Amano is Kaiba Corporation's Chief Duel Advisor! Back at Duelist Kingdom, he nearly defeated Yugi Muto. He was the runner-up!"
"Runner-up at Duelist Kingdom. Nearly defeated Yugi Muto. Is that so."
Hearing Mokuba recite those credentials, Tenma Yako's contempt cooled by a fraction.
"Then I suppose you'll do as entertainment. I'll use you to pass the time before Yugi Muto arrives."
"Nobody asked you to come here, Amano Rei!" Kaiba Seto cut in sharply. "The opponent has a God card. Your deck cannot handle that."
"Stop talking and watch." Kaiba Chiaki stepped forward to the opposite side of the circular helipad. "This duel is mine."
The white circle of the landing pad, divided down the middle by its painted line, had naturally formed a dueling arena.
Mokuba leaned toward Kaiba Seto with a puzzled look, keeping his voice low. "He's acting really strange today, big brother. It's like he's a completely different person. If I had to describe it, he almost reminds me of you."
Kaiba Seto said nothing. He simply watched as the figure across from Tenma Yako took position.
The clean mechanical snap of the Duelist Kingdom-era Duel Disks spreading open on both arms rang out at almost the same instant.
"Are we just going straight into the duel, Chiaki-senpai?"
"What else would we do?"
No warm-up. No pre-duel trash talk. No extended exchange where the hero earnestly tries to understand the villain's motivations and inner pain.
From Amano's perspective, Kaiba Chiaki's operational logic was simple: she had come to fight the Evil God, and that was what she was going to do.
"What if we lose?"
"Then we try again next time."
For Kaiba Chiaki, there was nothing to worry about in this Chronicle duel. She had run it too many times for worry to have any grip left. It was like a game stage you kept replaying: maybe the first few losses stung, maybe even the first dozen stings. You reviewed what went wrong, figured out what to fix, went back in. But after losing thirty times, fifty times, approaching a hundred, you stopped even reviewing. You lost, you queued again, you cleared the mental overhead and kept going until the one-percent chance finally landed.
"My turn! Draw!" Tenma Yako, going first, pulled a card.
"I Normal Summon Beast King Barbaros in Attack Position!"
[Beast King Barbaros]
[Level 8 EARTH]
[Beast-Warrior / Effect]
[ATK: 3000 / DEF: 1200]
The half-beast warrior holding a knight's lance came charging across the helipad field, its lion-like lower limbs carrying it at full speed.
Mokuba stared. "A direct Normal Summon of a Level 8 with the same ATK as Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
Tenma Yako declared the effect: "Beast King Barbaros can be Normal Summoned without Tributes, but its original ATK drops to 1900."
[Beast King Barbaros] [ATK: 3000 to 1900]
As a Tribute Summon it would match Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK. Normal Summoned without Tributes, it sat at 1900, roughly equivalent to Axe Raider in the DM era. A genuinely flexible card for its time.
"I set two cards face-down. Turn end."
Tenma Yako concluded his first turn, and now the second turn fell to Kaiba Chiaki to navigate. Or more precisely, to Amano Rei's deck.
"My turn! Draw!"
After drawing the opening card, Kaiba Chiaki scanned the hand she was holding. Her brow drew tighter with each card she looked at.
Mokuba tilted his head and whispered to Kaiba Seto again. "Amano really is acting strange today. He's just standing there doing nothing. You don't think he's bricked, do you?"
"Bricked?" Kaiba Seto gave a dismissive snort. "You've watched enough of his duels. Have you ever once seen him brick?"
"Not really," Mokuba admitted.
From Mokuba's perspective, the biggest consistent advantage Amano Rei had with his pile of weird ordinary cards was that his draws were always cooperative. He never bricked.
And technically, the opening hand was not a brick by any fair measure.
Kaiba Chiaki had gone still because she was completely unfamiliar with the low-Level support cards in Amano's deck. She was reading through them one by one, carefully, for the first time.
"Chiaki-senpai, slow-playing right out of the gate is not great. The turn timer is almost out."
In Duelist Kingdom, the Duel Disk automatically deployed a countdown timer. As long as you were actively operating it the clock held still, but standing motionless made it run, and it would eventually force the turn to end.
The DM-era card effects were simple enough that the Duelist Kingdom Duel Disk did not allocate much time per turn.
"Amano Rei. Is this the pile of strange cards you actually duel with?"
"Not all of them."
Before entering this Chronicle, Amano had made specific adjustments to the deck. DM-era Chronicles did not have Yusei particles active, which meant Synchro Summoning was off the table. Rin Seiya had learned that the hard way during her own Chronicle run against Kaiba when she had been knocked flat. So Amano had swapped out the Tuner monsters he could not use and replaced them with other viable options.
Whether Xyz Summoning worked in the DM era was something he had not actually tested yet.
With the countdown timer's red warning frame closing in and Kaiba Chiaki still reading card text, Amano made the call: "Chiaki-senpai. Just follow my instructions for now."
Kaiba Chiaki did not argue. It was not her deck. "Fine. Go ahead."
Amano had assumed his role in this Chronicle would be the background ghost watching from the sidelines. What he had not expected was to end up as the coaching voice standing behind Kaiba Chiaki, walking her through his own cards.
"To start: summon Kuriboh, Chiaki-senpai."
"Kuriboh." Kaiba Chiaki's gaze moved to the inconspicuous monster card sitting in the corner of the hand. "Hmph. I suppose there is no other option."
Kaiba Chiaki drew Kuriboh from the hand and raised it overhead. And then, in full voice, she delivered a summon chant.
"Proud angel piercing the darkness, illuminate the path to victory ahead with your brilliant body of light!"
"I Normal Summon in Attack Position!"
"Descend! Kuriboh!"
[Kuriboh]
[Level 1 LIGHT]
[Fiend / Normal]
[ATK: 300 / DEF: 200]
Amano and Kuriboh both froze.
Chiaki-senpai. You are summoning one Kuriboh. How did you make it sound like you were summoning Blue-Eyes White Dragon?
And what was that chant? Does Kuriboh itself know it has a summon chant that cool?
She had even called it out in Attack Position.
The little furball, however, was experiencing something unprecedented. Summoned with that much ceremony and conviction for the first time in its existence, Kuriboh felt a surge of energy run through its tiny body. Its normally round silhouette visibly firmed up along the muscle lines.
Mokuba was sweating. "It's definitely strange, big brother. Did Amano hit his head somewhere?"
Kaiba Seto's mouth curved upward slightly. "I find this rather good, actually."
Tenma Yako had been thrown off balance by Kaiba Chiaki's thunderous delivery, only to register what had actually appeared on the field. His expression collapsed into something that could not decide whether it was fury or disbelief.
"Are you mocking me, Amano Rei?"
"I honestly don't know if I am," Kaiba Chiaki said.
"Set the two Trap Cards on the left and you can end the turn, Chiaki-senpai."
"Understood. I set two cards face-down. Turn end."
Between the two of them, they managed to get the turn closed out before the countdown hit zero.
"My turn! Draw!" Tenma Yako pulled his card with visible anger.
"Before my final confrontation with Yugi Muto, you insult my dueling with a worthless creature like that. I'll make you pay for it! I Normal Summon a second Beast King Barbaros in Attack Position!"
[Beast King Barbaros] [ATK: 1900]
Another Tribute-free Normal Summon brought the second half-beast warrior to the field. Two identical lance-bearing warriors standing side by side on Tenma Yako's field.
At 1900 ATK each, the Level 8 status was doing nothing for him right now. In any other era, two Level 8 monsters would have already opened Xyz Summon options. But this was the DM era.
What Tenma Yako activated next, however, was very much in the spirit of DM-era dueling.
"Continuous Trap Card, activate! Skill Drain!"
[Skill Drain]
[Continuous Trap]
[Pay 1000 LP to activate. While this card remains in the Spell and Trap Zone, negate the effects of all face-up monsters on the field.]
Tenma Yako LP: 4000 to 3000.
"With Skill Drain active, Beast King Barbaros's effect is negated and its ATK reverts to its original value!"
[Beast King Barbaros] [ATK: 1900 to 3000]
[Beast King Barbaros] [ATK: 1900 to 3000]
Two lion roars shook the rooftop like a thunderclap, as though the suppression on their power had been lifted all at once. Both warriors surged back to 3000 ATK.
"Worthless trash has no right to stand against something divine! Battle! Beast King Barbaros!"
Whether Beast King Barbaros actually qualified as divine on the strength of one word in its name was debatable. But at ten times Kuriboh's ATK, divine probably did look like a reasonable description from the small fuzzy thing's point of view.
Barbaros charged with its lance at full 3000 ATK, driving directly toward the Kuriboh standing in Attack Position on Kaiba Chiaki's field.
"Activate the face-down Trap Card!"
This time, Kaiba Chiaki flipped it herself without waiting for instruction. The time she had spent reading card effects earlier had clearly not been wasted.
"Trap Card! Xyz Alliance!"
[Xyz Alliance]
[Trap Card]
[Activate by targeting 1 Level 2 or lower Normal Monster you control in face-up Attack Position. Special Summon as many cards with the same name as the targeted card as possible from your Deck to your field.]
"I target the Level 1 Normal Monster Kuriboh on my field!"
Kaiba Chiaki snapped open the deck and pulled two matching cards from it, then drove them onto the Duel Disk with a sharp overhand motion.
"Manifest! The evolved triple formation of Kuriboh descends, and drives straight through Barbaros!"
[Kuriboh] [ATK: 300] x3
"Where exactly did it evolve, Chiaki-senpai? These are still just Kuriboh."
"Garbage monsters in any number," Tenma Yako sneered, "are nothing but worthless things huddling together for warmth."
Kuriboh had not evolved. But Kaiba Chiaki had one thing absolutely right: three of them were about to go straight through Barbaros.
She flipped the second face-down card.
"Trap Card! Three of a Kind, activate!"
[Three of a Kind]
[Trap Card]
[Can only be activated when you have 3 or more non-Token monsters with the same name on your field. Target 3 cards your opponent controls and destroy them.]
Kaiba Chiaki raised three fingers and pointed them at Tenma Yako's field.
"Since I control three Kuriboh, I destroy three cards on your field."
Three small fuzzballs split off and went to work. Two of them each hit one of the charging Beast King Barbaros, punching clean through the lance-carrying warriors.
[Beast King Barbaros: destroyed]
[Beast King Barbaros: destroyed]
The third Kuriboh floated over to Tenma Yako's back row. Its tiny stubby arm reached down and picked up the active Continuous Trap, Skill Drain.
Then the little thing flexed, visibly buffed up, and tore the card directly in half with its bare hands.
[Skill Drain: destroyed]
"How about that, Tenma Yako. Now you have seen the power of Kuriboh."
Tenma Yako had nothing to say to that.
Amano had not been imagining it from the start of the Kuriboh summon.
Kaiba Chiaki was dueling with his body, his deck, and cards she had never touched before in her life. And she looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
Chiaki-senpai. Have you discovered some unusual new preference?