Chapter 53: (45) Recovery

The lights of the gymnasium brighten, and I run over to my fallen opponent.

She’s bleeding all over the floor and wailing loudly.

“AAAARGGG!! H-Help!”

“I got you, I got you.” I reassure before using my duel disk to call the paramedics and activating the automatic first aid function, projecting patches and bandages to stop some of the bleeding so that she doesn’t bleed to death before the paramedics have time to arrive.

“AHHHHHH! THIS HURTS!” she laments while the program works on closing some of her wounds. Unfortunately, this is only temporary as there’s nothing my non-specialized duel disk can do against infection and I obviously don’t have any anti-bacterial spray on me.

I look down at my own injuries before sitting down next to her and replying. “Yeah, I know.”

She turns her head to look at me. “Holy shit, that’s a nasty gash…” she observes between deep, labored breaths.

Looking down at it, I comment, “It is, and I have you to thank for it. Thanks for pointing it out.” I contemplate before asking. “Who are you anyway? There’s no way you’re just a basic cheerleader. Not with that deck and you’re at least a duo-summoner.”

The green-haired girl looks away before saying. “Of course not, though sometimes I would prefer that was the case…” she comments before turning to me and introducing herself. “My name is Anna Matili. I’m representing the CSG in the advanced bracket. Also, I’m not a duo-summoner. I’m a natural tri-summoner. Thank you very much.”

My eyes open wide before I respond. “Then what were you doing here? Is tormenting cheerleaders such a pleasure you’d take time out of training to challenge bystanders!?” Call me a little inflammatory, but I’m not seeing another reason for her to be here challenging randos out in this part of the ship.

She looks away again. “Now that you point it out, that makes me sound pathetic… But who are you? Don’t tell me you’re just a cheerleader.”

‘Changing the topic, are we? Fine, but I’m done with you yet.’

“Name’s Yuumi Matsunaga, you may have heard of me. And yes, for this tournament I’m just eye candy.”

*CRASH*

The doors of the gymnasium fly open, and a team of paramedics in white jumpsuits rushes in.

Anna doesn’t get a response out before the paramedics get to her, but seeing how her face paled after I told her my name, I’m guessing she knows me.

————

“How do you always get yourself in these situations!?” demands a very pissed Haruna. “Seriously, we turn our eyes off you for literally 20 minutes and you manage to get into a duel with one of the top competitors!” she continues.

“Hey! In my defense, she challenged me!” I rebut. “Also, I didn’t even know she was a top competitor, and she challenged me just for being a NWDA cheerleader!”

“Haruna… She has a point…” Nanako carefully points out.

The pink-haired cheer captain turns to the dark-skinned cheerleader with long black who just betrayed her. “That doesn’t matter right now! Look! She’s fucked. We’ll probably need to a day off training just so she can recover!”

“Well, if it wasn’t Yuumi, this probably would’ve been way worse for us…” Naeko piles on while giving a side glance at my opponent, who was thoroughly covered in bandages and currently being fussed over by 4 paramedics.

The medical staff left me to recover after giving me some antibiotics and applying nanogel.

Haruna turns to my opponent for a second before returning her attention over to the brown-haired, big-breasted cheerleader who also decided to turn on her. “I’m not saying that… Just” She pauses and turns her head to the side. “I don’t like how she’s always risking her life for the most basic stuff.”

‘… OK then, that was an awfully sweet thing for her to say… I get it.’

“I know Haru, Neko, Nana. I made you all worry…” I trail off.

‘If they knew even the start of how careless I was during that duel, they wouldn’t let me out of their sight ever again.’

Anna even tried to let me go, but I insisted on dueling her, theoretically, that duel was completely unnecessary…

…

… But, in practice, I would face her in a duel again anytime, probably without the misplays that resulted in my injuries. If it wasn’t me there, who knows what Anna would’ve done, and even though ‘protecting the weak’ is not something I’m about to include in my personal mantra, I won’t waste my dueling knowhow by ignoring shit like this.

*Swish*

The doors of the infirmary slide up and Director Light, joined by his assistant and the dueling team, walks through them.

They look around the room for a second before Mai spots me and runs over.

“YUUMI!!!” she yells as she arrives at my bedside.

“What happened to you? We heard there was a duel!” She looks over my body for a moment. “Yuumi, those wounds… Who did this to you?”

I smirk and joke. “Well, I would say I got them back worse.” I raise my hand and point to Anna. “There.”

Yasuna, who by this time had also arrived with the rest next to the hospital bed, looks at her before commenting. “Yeah, that looks about right for you.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand with an impish grin.

She laughs. “You know exactly what I mean.” declares the fit, tanned duelist. “Or do I need to remind you about your dueling history so far?” she ends.

“Can’t really argue with that...” I admit.

Aiko looks hesitantly at my opponent before turning to me and asking “Yuumi are you sure she won’t try to press an assault charge? You got her pretty good.”

I give an exasperated sigh and respond. “Haaa, I don’t think so. First, she was the one to challenge me and she didn’t have time to offer surrender before the last attack. Second, she didn’t even know who I was. In her mind, I was just a generic NWDA cheerleader. No offence to you, Haruna.”

“None taken.” Haruna reassures.

I nod and continue. “She also pulled her duel disk out before even knowing if I had one on me and threatened me with it. With this in mind, it would be pretty stupid for her to claim I was the one who assaulted her.” I look at the Director and ask. “Isn’t that right?”

He strokes his chin for a bit. “If what you’re saying is true and I have no reason to think it isn’t, then you’d be correct. While that ‘Didn’t have time to offer surrender’ is pretty suspect, we could clear any suspicion by making the replay public. Also, you both agreed to a wager before the duel, so as far as laws are concerned, she knew the risks.”

I nod in agreement with him. “You think the CSG would try anything even then? The way she talked about her academy gives me the impression of them being high-strung and easy to offend.”

Light pulls out a tablet before responding. “The CSG or ‘Community for secured growth’ is a private institute in mainland Dragoon City that acts as a boarding school for children as young as nine, operating as a primary school, middle-school and high-school.” He looks up from it and clarifies. “That’s on their GlobalNet Site, by the way.”

Rasing an eyebrow, I ask. “So they’re not a dueling academy?”

Everything he said about them made the CSG seem like a very upper-class boarding school.

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The Director lets out a sigh before continuing. “I was getting to that.” he leans against a wall. “After the Dragoon City uprising, there have been a lot of upstarts in the dueling education field. Mostly other learning institutions, the CSG is one of them. While a dueling academy is considered upper-education, so normally they wouldn’t touch it, the prospect having the influence of a dueling academy makes it too sweet of a prospect for them to not capitalize on.” He says this without looking at his tablet. “And that’s how you get a CSG Dueling academy. Legally, it’s the same corporate identity as the CSG proper, but operationally? They have a different building and contrary to the CSG, accept outside students, giving priority to their own, of course.”

“How do you know all that?” Aya asks.

The Director turns to her and says. “I looked into them while trying to figure out where to send my daught—” he stops himself after realizing what he was just about reveal.

But by that point, I, and pretty much everyone listening to him, had heard enough to understand what he meant to say.

“You have a daughter!?” Aya asks, surprised. “How old is she?”

He closes his eyes tightly, arching his neck upwards and breathing deeply through his nose.

“Aya, I think the Director doesn’t want to talk about it…” Aiko suggests.

————

He didn’t. After confirming that she was 17, he left it at that, not even revealing her name.

After returning to the subject of what the CSG would think of this, he confirmed they wouldn’t make a fuss about it and promptly left the room.

The duelists left with him. Apparently, they were in the middle of some theory crafting of something. Don’t really know what they need to theorise about, but I’m going to check their decks to see if he didn’t try to “Make them fit with the archetype.” Obviously, I have no problem with them changing their decks, but if they do so because of faulty advice, I won’t stand for it.

I don’t know what theories the Director has about dueling, and, for now, I won’t assume I know better than him, but going by the examples of other “Top duelists” AKA Professor Chamberlain, there are some assumptions I don’t agree with, like that “the more summons the better” I practically fell out of my chair when I heard that one, another was “Always attack with your lowest attack monster first, even if you have a monster that can end the duel in a single attack” while that’s true in tesla format, doing so now isn’t really relevant and it just adds unnecessary things to worry about.

‘Still, he probably knows better… He’s the Director after all.’

“So Yuumi, what exactly did you wager?” Nanako asks, snapping me out of my thoughts

The cheer team stayed even after the others left. They couldn’t exactly continue training with me in this state.

“Right!” I remember I got THAT from her.

With this in mind, I turn to our captain. “Haruna, remember how you were complaining about having to cycle our training room with other teams?”

She raises an eyebrow in confusion. “What?”

“Fufufufu, I might have gotten their PRIVATE gymnasium turned over to us.” I cheerfully reveal.

The three of them open their mouths wide and start stammering.

“Y-You did!?” Naeko is the first to let out something comprehensible.

“Yuumi come here!” Nanako leans in to give me a hug.

“Un-fucking-believable.” Finishes Haruna.

Right at this moment, someone who was previously next to my opponent, Anna, walks over and interrupts our celebration.

“Hold on a second!” she yells.

We stop our thing and turn to her. She’s wearing a uniform similar to Anna, signifying she’s a cheerleader from the CSG. Her blond hair is tied into a single ponytail and she’s tall with a build similar to Anna.

“And who are you?” Haruna asks.

“My name doesn’t matter! But I won’t just let you take our space because of some stupid wager!”

Her voice is thin a creaky when she yells, making us cover our ears.

Other than that, we give each other knowing glances, before Haruna turns to her and asks.

“You aren’t a duelist, are you?”

She recoils. “A-And why does that matter?”

I grin and so do my teammates.

“Because if you were, you would know the importance of keeping promises.” I say what Haruna was about to.

Wagers are important in duels because they’re what separate them from mindless slaughter. When a wager is put up, there’s an expectation that the loser won’t go back on it, not just because of sportsmanship, but because the alternative is for the winner to use the 10 minutes where the losers duel disk gets deactivated to enforce their demands using their own disk. It’s a promise backed by the most dominant custodian, violence.

“To go back on one’s wager after a loss is an invitation for bloodshed.” Naeko explains in a somber tone to the now quivering cheerleader.

She’s shaking. “R-Right! It’s yours! J-Just don’t…”

“Calm down Jessica, they’re just scaring you.” Anna’s pained voice echoes throughout the on-board clinic.

The cheerleader quickly turns around and rushes next to Anna. “Captain! You're finally awake!”

I peak up from the hospital bed to see the cheerleader hug Anna.

“Ha- ha- ha, J-Jessica, calm down.” Anna complains.

Seeing her captain like this “Jessica,” lays her down and apologises. “I-I’m sorry captain! I might to have gotten too excited…”

“Fufufu.” I laugh at the scene.

This makes Anna lean up a bit and look at me. “It looks like we’ll have to cycle from now on. I can’t believe you beat me like that. I was certain I had you.”

With a grin on my face, I say. “That’s just how dueling is sometimes. Nothing’s decided till someone’s life points reach zero.”

She nods before laying down again.

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