While most of the students were cheering at the duels dramatic finish, the front row of the Water dorm section was mostly quiet.
Jasmine was the first one to react, politely clapping for Ms Nonaka while she watched their teacher disappear in a cloud a smoke with a sympathetic look on her face. “Aww, poor sensei. I hope he’s ok.” Despite his intimidating appearance Wataru was a lot gentler than most people realised and she hoped he wasn’t going to take his loss too hard. She wasn’t sure if his loss being to a former student was going to make it worse or give him a sense of pride.
The next to move was Touma, who shifted in his seat and began clapping as well, his large hands producing a much louder and deeper sound that Jasmine’s. “It sucks that she had a deck that could use his field spell as well; he might as well have not played it.”
In the seat between the two of them Kanna remained silent, though she had repositioned herself so that her hands were clasped in front of her mouth. Looking closer Jasmine could see that Kanna was biting a thumb, a habit she displayed whenever she was thinking hard about something, usually duelling, and which Jasmine thought of as her ‘analyst pose’.
“Field spells affect both players equally; it’s important to consider that your opponent might benefit from it as well and how they might use it against you. Or how you might use their field spells against them…” Kanna always fell so easily into little lectures like that, thinking out loud for the most part but she always had some tip or trick to share with them. Jasmine had always thought that Kanna would make a good teacher herself one day, if she could ever think about anything other than becoming a pro-duellist. “That said the level changing effect of A Legendary Ocean is more powerful than the attack point boost. Sensei’s deck was better equipped to take advantage of it, but the duel was over before he could do anything. She had him on the run from her first turn.”
Touma turned to look as Ms Nonaka again, seeing her in a different light now that he had seen her so thoroughly thrash their teacher. He reached up to scratch the back of his head nervously before speaking. “Man, pendulum decks are scary. No matter what you do to their field they just bounce back twice as hard. Their cards don’t even go to the graveyard when they’re destroyed.”
The rest of the students were still cheering with the loudest shouts coming, unsurprisingly, from the Fire dorm students. It was loud enough that gradually their attention was pulled away from the centre stage and towards the rowdy students. Even Kanna was looking at them. “I’m going to challenge the Fire dorm first. Everyone’s going to be impressed with the new teacher after this. We can’t let Machi’s head get too big.”
Jasmine turned an exasperated expression on Kanna, not that the other girl was paying enough attention to her to notice. “You’re thinking about challenges already? The year hasn’t even started yet!”
Kanna finally turned to look at Jasmine, sitting back in her chair and giving her friend a look that made the taller girl sigh. It was impossible to try and turn Kanna away from a course of action once she had decided on it. “There’s no reason to wait. I want us to show everyone how strong the Water dorm is this year. I won’t settle for anything other than the best.”