Ethel got up after a few minutes of self-loathing, brushing off the dirt off of her bare knees. She then realized something. If she was bent over like that, couldn't some people have...? No, they couldn't. Her skirt's not that short. Still, it caused the girl's cheeks to become a little more red than usual... Aside from that, though, Ethel seemed to have regained her stoic attitude. The tempter tantrum she nearly threw earlier seemed to have passed. The bluenette scanned her surroundings again, but didn't get enough time before the door flew off of it's freakin' hinges! Ethel let out a little yelp and jumped back, her face twisting into genuine fear when Transformer stormed through. The rather... Muscular man was intimidating to say the least of it. Realizing how stupid she must've looked doing that, the teenager tried her best to save face and not look like she was about to book it for the nearest exit.

Ethel was called over to recieve her three cards shortly after the winners' round and walked over casually. She tried her best to have a steady gaze that could kill a man with a glance, but against Transformer? The moment she made eyecontact the girl felt her face muscles twitch, and needed to break away from it. When she arrived three cards were handed to her... None of which were of any use, on closer examination. That... That hurt. They seemed to support other deck types, none of her own cards could benefit. The bluenette was about to give up right as Floyd started swaggering over, looking like the smuggest person this side of the galaxy... At least, in Ehtel's eyes. In reality they were just walking like any other person, but Ethel still took offense. Once the brat boy arrived, Ethel sneered at him. "What, come to rub your victory in my face? I bet you looked up my skirt while I wasn't looking as well, pervert." She turned her back to him, actually... pouting? That was a rare sight...

Megan sighed, 39 turns for a tie? She felt seriously gypt, oh well, at least she had gotten something from it. As she received her cards, flinching at the forceful delivery of the.... fearsome 'transformer', she saw with some disappointment that none of them were particularly interesting to her. Oh well, perhaps she could trade them later. Apparently classes started at 9 tomorrow. Or today. Or the tomorrow of today. She had no idea what time it was. Nor did she particular care at this point.

Now however, Megan was conflicted on whether she should try to get some more sleep or... mess around here, maybe try to talk to Haas? A glance around didn't reveal Hass' location, it looked like she would have to make some new friends. But the only people that looked interesting were already in a conversation. Or holding a plastic sword apparently. Well she wanted some food regardless so Megan made her way to the elevator and took a ride to where she hoped the food was. She could figure things out after that.

Taken aback by the hostile response Ethel had given him, Floyd bit his lip for a few moments before deciding what to say as a positive response. "Uh, well I just wanted to make sure you were alright! I mean, I'm pretty happy that I won, but it's not like it's everything, y'know?" He shuffled his feet; this particular conversation had become extremely awkward extremely fast and he was quickly running out of things to discuss. He rattled his mind for any sort of topic that would make her more happy, before finally seeing the obvious. "Hey, what'd you get with your three cards? Anything neat? I just got the basic stuff, but some of them were good for me, I'm trying to make a plant deck, you see..." He smiled hesitantly. Floyd was not good at dealing with other people's emotions, yet he strives to be so. The boringness that had become a product of the awkwardness was almost making him tired, as a yawn erupted from his mouth and his eyes were slowly shutting to, yet not quite fully. The young boy hoped that perhaps Ethel had even a singular card from her random pack that he could hopefully have. Remembering that all of the monsters in her deck were dark, and that he had a Gozen Match, Floyd had another bright idea. "I got this neat card, Gozen Match, thought it'd be good in your deck, y'know?" His hand moved into his pocket and pulled out the nine cards, before retrieving the specified one and showing it to the other.

Haas cringed just a bit once he saw the blue-haired bunny chick and the ninja-man lose, given that it looked like they were pissed to lose. Haas was glad Vincent was...emotionally stable. He really didn't want to have to deal with an emotional teammate after a loss. Almost getting an accidental look at blue-girl's panties, Haas managed to turn his gaze away before anybody could ever have noticed. Taking a deep breath and regaining his purity once more, Haas watched the final match and...was asleep by turn 15. Long drawn out matches were just so...boring. It wasn't even all that exciting either, since it just seemed to be destruction and creation in tandem over and over...

Eventually waking once Transformer yelled, Haas scrambled to attention, scared witless at having been fucking violently screamed at by an angry buff man with VERY big hands. Not wanting to get in trouble for anything, Haas sat like a good little boy until his turn came, at which point he quickly recieved his cards and...oh. Oh. That one was rare, he knew that much. An eager grin spread on his face as he looked over his cards, before he was literally punted all the way back to where he'd sat before by Transformer. Wincing and rubbing his now-bruised tailbone, he holds up Armades, Keeper of Boundaries. Proudly, he put it into his extra deck before looking to his other two cards. "Huh...never liked gravekeeper's that much. Maybe I can find this guy a home later. His effect wouldn't benefit anything I have. Oooh! Mecha Phantom Beasts! Wow, this one looks cool. Some kinda...lion plane. Definitely getting more of these eventually." he said in his mind, nodding to himself like he was winning the best argument with himself ever and making the best turnabout.

Finally snapping back to his senses, Haas blinked a few times at Hayato and remembered the food. Bashfully holding up his right hand, he said: "Don't worry about me. I've got enough to pay for myself. So, did you get anything good in your pack?" as he looked at the two. Then he realized...where was Michelle?

Ehtel stared at the Gozen Match. She hadn't seen the card before, so the first thing she was doing was actually reading the effect... And it was pretty good! For her deck, anyway. She needed a way to single out the enemy in case they'd have more than one element, ESPECIALLY that asshole Vincent, so Floyd's offering of goodwill actually cheered Ethel up a bit. "Let me see." she relied to Floyd, taking out the three cards she'd gotten earlier. Two of them were absolutely useless, but one DID have its use... "How about Ivy Shackles?"
The card she offered did support plant types like Floyd wanted, and considering the bluenette wasn't ever using it anyway it'd be a win-win situation. "Also I'm... Sorry about right now... I don't take failure very well..." Ethel was still staring like a machine and speaking in monotone while apologizing, but her eyes were shifted a little downwards. Floyd would be able to spot it if he paid attention, a sign of her showing a bit of emotion.

The duels took quite a while, especially the one that resulted in a tie with Self-Destruct Button. Still, Michelle had taken the time to learn as much as she could about each person's deck. With the duels done, things began to settle down. After about half an hour, Michelle was beginning to get bored of waiting, but then a long bang suddenly sounded, startling Michelle, and the door to the arena flew off its hinges. From the entrance came a rather large and muscly man holding a large amount of card packs in his arms. The students around Michelle all began whispering about this person, comparing him to Transformer and what not. People were being called down, one by one, to receive their card pack, and Michelle noted that only the winners were being called. Soon, her name was called, and she went down to get a Dark Legends pack. Returning to the stands, she opened the pack, but was disappointed to find nothing worth using yet.

As the announcement about classes came up, Michelle put the cards away and began to leave. Then she remembered the promise for food with Hayato, Haas, and Vincent. Scanning the area for them, she soon spotted them at the Transformer person, who was now handing out cards to the losers. Making her way over to them, stopping behind Haas, she greeted them with a raised hand and a "Hello." She continued on with, "I believe someone said we would get food together?"

39 turns that's how stale that match was, 39 turns and it ended how Vincent guessed, with Ethel losing, its not her fault that she was against a prediction fairy deck AND a Dragon deck. The way she acted upon losing though remind Vincent of his dickish overkill, never the less maybe he should stop staring, Looks like she was punching the floor in rage. Oh god he could almost see her; He turned away quickly to avoid gaining a nosebleed, and pretended to have a coughing fit. Until Transformer squandered his way into the room and Everyone rushed out to greet him, was it his personality? pfft no it was the fact he was holding the winnings.

rushing down like everyone else Vincent waited patiently for his loser winnings, free cards are still free cards however and he waited for Transformer to get round to giving him his earning for his troubles. He undeniably pulled cards mostly useless to him except The Monarchs Awaken which since he had no extra deck to speak of he could add that to his deck to make his Cards more beat-sticky... So beat-sticky... mmmmmmmh Delicious Card immune Blue-eyes... but then again his deck was more special summon so maybe it wouldn't fit... oh well.

Vincent just looked around for what everyone else was doing for a few more minutes, Ethel was busy trading, probably looking for cards to screw him and others over. Clever girl. Perhaps he should say hi... Hayato's promise of food could wait. Or perhaps he could not risk getting decapitated by her, Food seemed like a safer option. "Er yea I guess I can go for food" Vincent said obviously a little annoyed someone else was paying but oh well free food is free food. "So where should we go eat?" he asked bluntly wondering what the others preferences were.

Hayato Shrugged at Haas asking if he got any good cards and responded by saying "I'm not sure I haven't opened it yet... I'll open it when we get the food" Hayato noticed Michelle behind Hayato inquiring about food "yeah we were about to get some food but Haas is paying for himself though, i think there should be some good places up at the shops on the first 10 floors" answering both Vincent and Michelle.
Hayato looked at the map of the building pointed at the fourth floor and followed up by pointing at the 5th and 6th floor as well "on this floor is the cafeteria and these floors house the shops, Maybe we should take this time to explore the academy a bit"
He started to suggest a few locations giving a bunch of details on the shops and food being served at every shop but started to wonder and asked the other 3"You think we can get some others to join us? if it's this early in the morning people are bound to be hungry after the long duels" Specifically mentioning the people who had the longest and painfull duels like Ethel

The youth's face brightened up from embarrassment as soon as he saw the 'Ivy Shackles'; it was as if some miracle had happened. "Yes! Yes! That would be amazing!" He took the card and handed Gozen Match over to Ethel, joyous over another addition to his collection. "Also, don't sweat it, I think everybody gets beat up about losing, but there's no need for you to worry about not winning, as long as you know that you've got an amazing deck that could be anybody if you had the chance." Floyd didn't want her to feel hurt over another loss - he was comforting himself, as well, as he knew that without his partner, he would have lost. "Sometimes, the best thing we can do about losing is just to keep practicing and get to know our cards better." It was all emotional stuff he was saying, but honestly it was coming from the top of his head as an attempt to make her feel better. "If you'd like, we could duel later, just a one on one session, though. You'll probably win, since I must admit I'm not particularly fond of my deck. There's nothing wrong with the cards, they're just not my style." He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck.

Haas nearly jumped as Michelle seemingly instant transmission'd over-okay not really, he just never notices when she's right behind him, and shuddered a bit. Quickly regaining his composure, he straightened out his uniform, having not done so when he got punted by Transformer. "Yeah, we were just talking about that." he says briefly, stopping to listen to Hayato's breakdown of the food situation. Completely fine with anything that wasn't spicy, Haas just figured he'd let the others pick where they wanted to go. Not like every Indian and Central American dish was spicy after all. At Hayato's mention of inviting the others, Haas smiled just a bit. Sure was nice of him to think of them like that. Thinking of himself in some of the other loser's shoes, it made him glad that he had already made some friends. Nodding, he says: "Sounds like a great idea Hayato. Want me to go spread the word around?" as he puts his Gravekeeper and Mecha Phantom away on the S/T zones on his inactive duel disk, he'd store them later, and he'd rather not get them bent in his pockets.

Ethel slid out a card from her deck and replaced it with the Gozen Match, giving Floyd a nod. It seemed she was content with this trade. What he said after though, kinda struck her with surprise. Her deck was amazing...? The girl glanced down at the heavy piece of machinery on her wrist, focusing her eyes on the cards still stuck in it. No... No it wasn't. People were laughing at her when she took it... And now Ethel's lost twice, horribly. "Thanks but... You don't need to say those things... Just to make me feel better..." she softly murmured, having a barely audible voice. The bluenette's eyes sank a little, looking down instead of directly at Floyd's face now. Right after he offered a duel. Ethel's surprise rose again, and this time you could actually see it written on her face. Those little eyes widened and her lips actually curved up slightly... Actually, no, she gave an actual smile! "I'd love to duel!" This person was a lot nicer than that other male Ethel dueled, and she already took a liking to them. She bowed her head to show her content, those long rabbit ears following her up and down.

Ethel was starting to feel a bit weak standing up for so long, and was beginning to feel it. Blood started draining from the head and reflexively the girl shot up her left hand to hold it. "I-I think I'm going to head back to my room..." Ethel glanced around quickly, as if searching from something. "Wait here for a second." She ordered, walking over to a nearby chair and pulling out a pamphlet from it. Near it, for some reason, someone had dropped their pen. She scribbled something on it, then went over to Floyd and gave it to him. "Bye..." Ethel's expression was still a smile when she gave it to him, but once she turned and walked away it turned back to her usual, cold gaze.

When Floyd looked at what Ethel wrote, he'd see she wrote down her number.

Around this point in time, Transformer would be coming close to finishing handing out the cards to the students.
At place 67 in the Loss Line™, Venwyn would have been the last to receive his three cards.

Would have.

Upon giving the 3 cards to whoever was in place 66, it was found that:

• Venwyn was still not in the hall.
• Transformer had only handed out 198 cards. The final three were missing.

It wasn't difficult to piece together what had happened. The academy's ninja had taken them. The cards were shuffled, so Venwyn wouldn't have been able to collect cards that he wanted in particular. Still, Transformer was far from happy about it.

"That... DAMNED KID!" Transformer yelled, performing a single stomp on the ground as he did so. The hall seemed to shake slightly from the strength put into the stomp, and a rumble could probably have been heard in other rooms. For Transformer, Venwyn was simply a troublemaker, and was growing to be a frequent one at that. Or maybe Venwyn was simply trying to avoid Transformer, and in turn avoid wearing the academy uniform. The latter would prove to be correct, as Venwyn was currently in the cafeteria, viewing the cards he had managed to "liberate" whilst he ate (that rhymed).

"Vertical Landing, Brilliant Spark, Five Brothers Explosion..."

"Not useful." The boy uttered. It was true. None of the cards would have much use in his deck. Perhaps if he had had a chance to look through them before he took them, he would have gotten something better. Of course, he didn't want to risk it; he was fast, but so was Transformer. Being caught probably wasn't really one of Venwyn's objectives. Still, cards were cards, and Venwyn would still be able to archive them for the Ael Clan.

The boy continued to eat. Alone. He was trying something new to him. A burger. As one could probably guess, the Ael Clan weren't really big on fast foods. Even so, it tasted pretty good. Maybe he would try another sometime.

@Ostarion

Megan glanced at the ninja boy who was probably the source of the loud yell from below. He seemed like the aggravating kind. Still Megan didn't like the thought of eating alone so she walked over and sat next to him. "Hey, I'm Megan, guessing from your face you didn't get anything too helpful from your packs either." Megan said sympathetically. "At least the food here isn't bad right?" She said as she took a bite of her roast beef sandwich. Everyone always said school food tasted bad but she didn't see what the big deal was. Megan didn't have any particular reason to talk to him aside from not feeling lonely, but hey, his little scarf was cute.

Hayate noticed the 2 people he was considering to invite started to trade cards with each, after noticing Ethel leaving Hayato sighed slightly disappointed "well you can spread the word i'll start by asking around here, You were Ethel's opponent once right? You wanna try asking her? Though... i think she will be hard to convince" Hayato responded to Haas scratched his head and looked around the arena and quickly decided to just go to the closest person he could see and walked to Floyd "Yo, erm... Floyd right? Me and my fellow duelists here decided to go for some food after our long duel and i decided i wanted to have some more people to join us, you care to join? you are bound to be hungry after the duel this early in the morning" Hayato never was good at starting conversations and just instead of starting with idle chit chat just jumped to the point, If she wasnt acting as Hayato she'd be more willing to start with idle chit chat "it'll be fun, maybe we can duel there, on the table like how me and my parents did it. oh yeah i'm paying for the food, maybe you want to get some sweets with me?" Hayato started to suggest dueling and getting sweets though really Hayato shouldnt really be talking about sweets Hayate was in the mood of it and couldnt really hide it

After the girl's departure, Floyd was almost at a lost as to what he should do with the amount of spare time he had realised he had accumulated; perhaps he could find another person to talk to, maybe there were more cards to be found. Luckily, he did not have to put in any effort as a person approached him already - he believed they were called Hayate or Hayato, perhaps? Either way, their offer was something that he could not refuse. Free food? How could he deny himself that? "Well, that sounds like an extremely tempting offer, let me think on it for a few seconds." The boy didn't have to actually think about it, he just wanted to make it look like he wasn't too greedy. "Yeah, I'm in. Sounds like fun!" Floyd gave a thumbs up, delighted that he didn't seem annoying or redundant to others. "I hope I'm not too much of a bore."

Haas scratched the back of his neck. That... Wasn't quite right. "A-Actually, I was Megan's opponent... But yeah, I'll go talk to her!" After settling that little misconception, the boy gave a cheerful reply and proceeded to jog over to Ethel. The girl was nearly at the door before a "H-Hey! Hold on a second!" came from behind her. Ethel flinched as the boy neared, turning around to see who it was. She didn't recognize them. Her mechanical gaze just sort of pierced through the boy, although a small frown was on it which caused some rather... Hostile tension.

"E-Ehm... Hey! You're uh, Ethel right?" Haas tried to break the ice, being met with a short "Yes." in response. Things were going great already, showing quite neatly with how much patience Ethel is losing with every passing second. Things got awkward really fast. The boy tried once more: "Great! You see, err, we were thinking of grabbing something to eat and were wondering if you'd like to tag along." Haas tried to give a friendly smile. It wasn't very effective, as Ethel just replies with "I only see one person." in response. Haas had to think for a moment on what she meant and then quickly held his hands up in front of him, palm towards his fellow student. "N-no, when I said 'we' I meant me and them! Oh, and uh, I'm Haas, by the way. Nice to meet you." To show what he meant, Haas used his right index finger to point at Michelle and Vincent. Ethel followed the trajectory of his finger and noticed the one person she did NOT want to see.

The blue-haired girl bit on her lip as she turned back to Haas. Her face was now a full-on scowl, brimming with anger. "Is this a joke?! Go away!" She yelled at Haas, turning and walking away through the door. The guy didn't... Quite know what he did or said wrong there. Actually, he kinda felt hurt now. They were only trying to be friendly... There was no need to yell at him. Sighing in defeat, Haas was about to go back to the group... When he noticed Yin. Maybe she would want to join them?

The boy walked over to what's probably the most fancy clothed female in this entire school, holding up one hand to wave and cheerfully saying 'Hi!" from a little bit away. Once a bit closer, Haas disclosed the reason as to why he walked up to Yin. "Hey, uhm, me and a couple of friends were thinking about going to the cafeteria to get something to eat. I was thinking you'd maybe, uh, like to join us?" He smiled sheepishly, holding out his hand for a handshake. "I'm Haas, by the way."

---

While he was eating his burger, someone had approached Venwyn. It was one of the students. She introduced herself as Megan. Venwyn thought back, she was definitely in one of the duels he watched, and it was something he was able to recall with some level of accuracy. Still, why was she here? It seemed like it was just to start up some friendly conversation. Venwyn wasn't really accustomed to her - despite watching the placement duel she partook in once, although, he didn't have a reason not to reply. She was asking about the cards he had taken. The "not useful" ones. Venwyn shook his head.

"Unfortunately, the cards I obtained aren't useful..." Venwyn said in response.

"...Still, I can archive them." Venwyn went on to say. It never occurred to him that Megan probably wouldn't understand what he meant by "archive." It was pretty vague of him to say - not to mention the fact that archiving cards wasn't something that the average Duelist probably did with such a serious fervour. He took another bite out of his burger.

The female Duelist went on to talk about how good the food was. His mouth was full, so Venwyn could only nod in response.

Megan turned her head slightly, archive? Did he have a library or something? "Archive them where exactly and why?" she asked curiously. Perhaps he was one of those who liked to have cards simply to have them. She still didn't know his name yet, which made this really awkward because she would either have to ask him his name or simply continue conversation without referring to him as anything other than 'you'. Frankly she was surprised at how few other students were here. Megan would've thought that after such a rude wake up call that the first thing on most peoples' minds would've been breakfast.