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Episode 4: A Deal With the Devil


As he arrived at the base of the volcano at night, he gently put down the sack he was carrying. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't this.

Miles knocked on the side of the suspicious windowless cargo van the man had self-evidently, by some miracle, driven through the forest. He would assume he had just levitated the thing over the treetops somehow if it weren't for the tire tracks. They were faded and hard to notice by now, especially in the dark, but the ones sheltered beneath the van were more apparent. He walked over and knocked on the side of the van loudly. There was some loud shuffling, followed by a bang, before finally, the driver's door opened on the opposite side. He walked around and, just like the van's exterior, the man was a bit of a disappointment. He made the decision to come here after guilt ate away at him from multiple angles, after days of sleepless nights and his duel spirit getting so much more annoying than usual, only to see that the mysterious cloaked figure with a millennium eye was... just some bum. The man winced at Miles' flashlight, yawning tiredly, a dark circle under his... eye. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an eyepatch, putting it over the millennium eye. "I've been practicing. I can't explain why, since I can see right through it, but the eyepatch helps remind me not to pry."

God, he was making a mistake.

"So why'd you come knocking at the break of midnight? I can barely get enough sleep with all the duel spirits harassing me as it is."

"I held up my end of the deal. You need to hold up yours."

"Your end of the...?" He noticed Miles gesturing to the sack he had left on the ground and watched as the man looked back at him, confusion on his face at first, followed by full-blown panic. "Jesus Christ, kid, this isn't what I fucking meant!" The man ran over to the sack.

Miles knit his brows. The man had definitely used his eye again, and he seemed like he was worming his way out of their deal. He had brought his backpack loaded up with stuff. His actual luggage would attract too much suspicion, but he was ready to never return. He needed this to work.

The man peaked into the sack. Sure enough, some red head girl was passed out inside it and despite seeing it in Miles' memories he grimaced. He was hoping beyond hope that that idiot didn't just kidnap some random girl because- because of him, but he was lying to himself by not looking into the bag with his eye to begin with. He stood back up, turning to stare at the boy. "What in the fuck!?"

"What do you mean, what in the fuck!? You're the one who asked me to do it! That was the deal!”

“No, no, no. That wasn’t the damn deal.”

Miles took a steadying breath before he lost his shit completely. “I bring you a girl, you let me use the eye to make a wish! That was what you said!"

"No, you fucking idiot! I said that I needed your help to find one of the girls on this island, not just any girl! What the fuck did you think was going to happen to her!?"

"I don’t know!" Pinpricks of moisture were assaulting his eyes already, because yeah, he was a fucking idiot. "I didn’t think about it, okay!? A human sacrifice! Some demon summoning ritual! Outright cannibalism! Maybe something worse! Is that what you want me to say!? I didn't want to bring her! I didn’t want to bring anyone, but you’re the fucking mind reader! You knew I’d give myself up, but that wasn’t good enough! So yeah, I didn’t think about it! I couldn't or else I knew I wouldn't go through with it! How was I supposed to know you were after someone specific!?"

"You were supposed to come talk to me first, like I told you to!"

"You didn’t tell me to do that!" He really didn't. "What was I supposed to think when some creep in a cloak who wouldn’t even show me his face offered me demon magic!”

"It’s a Millennium Eye! You’re in a duel academy for fuck’s sake! You should recognize it!”

"Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize the pharaoh’s brand of fucking shadow magic was supposed to make me trust someone I took for a fucking cultist as they hung around a literal pillar of tortured souls!”

"God, this is so fucked. What did you even do to her!?"

"Can’t you read my mind?”

“I’m asking you.”

He couldn't keep the moisture in his eyes from spilling over. He hated it, because he was still willing to go through with it. He was feeling guilty because he messed up, not because he felt bad about his actions. It was disgusting. "She's fine.” He said it a second time, “she’s fine. I stole sedatives from the school nurse. I gave her more than recommended, but I made sure it wasn't a dangerous amount."

The man pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off an oncoming headache. "Ugh…"

"Why are you even looking for a teenage girl!?"

"BECAUSE! Because. I came to this island to talk to her. I messed up something of hers, and I wanted to make sure I didn't make things worse for her... and I need my van to do this, but as you might have noticed, I'm not supposed to be here. I had to bribe someone to get the van on the island to begin with, and I was only supposed to be here to tour the place for one day. I'm already a breach of security, and I've been flying under the radar, but people will probably begin to take notice after a fucking child abduction!” His words were laced with venom, and they stung just as much. It was deserved, honestly.

"..." He fell to his knees as if stabbed, the weight of his choices gradually settling onto his shoulders like a pile of bricks. The weight he had decided to willingly ignore. His duel spirit loomed over him, staring down at him with neither a smile nor frown. "FUCK YOU!" He stood back up to disperse the mirage, swiping through it as if to kill it. It was partially her fault for guilt-tripping him like this. Well, no. He hated the thing, but he was just looking for something to blame. He really fucked up this time. "What… what do I do?"

"What the fuck do you think? Take her back before anybody notices, and if you succeed, come back, because we're having a long conversation about this."

He took a deep breath, wiping his face clear. He picked up the sack, hoisting the drawstring over his shoulder carefully. Maybe he could take her back and pretend this never happened. Maybe no one, not even Roché, would notice.

Chris
"Roché and Miles are missing!"

Prof. Sartyr and damn near every student in Ra Yellow was woken up by Chris' yelling. It wasn't his fault, strictly speaking, but Professor Sartyr could sleep through a hurricane, and he needed to wake the man up. He was the only Ra Yellow student up and lounging in the Ra Yellow lobby at such a late hour, and while he didn't think much of his two friends...

...and while he didn't think much of his friend Roché and that Miles guy not showing up by the curfew - few students actually abided by it - he decided to call it in once it hit midnight. They've been gone all day, the school was warning them about mysterious figures spotted in the forest on the daily, and it did not take that long to find a good place to conduct a quality shag. He didn't want to narc on them, but he was getting tired and figured it was his moral obligation to say something before he went to sleep.

Professor Sartyr tiredly nodded as Chris repeated himself, called campus security to inform them of the situation, then went back to bed, simply thinking the students were up to adolescent mischief outside of his control.

The white hair brothers were still up. Although it was typical for Jon to be up this late, Kaison even stayed up to pay attention to his riveting tale of the star crossed Ra Yellow lovers who proceeded to stumble on a tree branch and land face-first in a cultist's demon summoning ritual. Chris sent them one last update before heading to bed.

Kaison
"We should go looking for them."

@Crimson Flame

All other Slifer Reds
The walls of the Slifer Red dorm are too damn thin.

Caleb
Damn. Jon's story was wild. He had to send it to Alexis.

Hmm. For some reason she wants to go looking for them. He texted her back, reminding her that that wasn't a very smart thing to do in this instance. They had campus security for exactly these situations, and arguing 'we should go looking for them' was pretty dumb, and could easily make a bad situation worse.

...

That girl and her hunches.

Caleb and Lexa discreetly left their respective dorms. That being said, they didn't necessarily go unnoticed.

@Darkmoon Angel@Eviledd1984@Goose@King Cosmos@Psyker Landshark@Scarifar
Midori Hibiki & Donte
She was in the middle of greeting Haruko's grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Furukawa, bored out of her mind by their glacial elderly conversational pace but smiling politely when she heard a scream coming from outside. She politely excused herself, cALMLY WALK- WHAT THE FUCK.

She had said it out loud without realizing it and cringed as Haruko's grandparents gasped. She turned, forced a smile and told them "sorry! Emergency!" before slamming the door closed and running over while fumbling to get her PDA out of her pocket and contact the campus' emergency services.

She ignored Helena and the ensuing realization that this was her doing and began assessing Donte. He was still conscious, which was a good sign, though his face was twisted in agony. She batted away his hands, which were clutching at his wound and began applying pressure, which elicited a pained groan. She probably should have warned him it would hurt. He grabbed her wrists with his own, which were soaked in blood, but he didn't push them away, knowing better.

She looked up, looking Helena dead in the eye with a withering stare. Donte was an asshole, sure, but this? This was beyond the pale. "Helena Ries."

"W-wait" Donte spoke up, coughing between pained breaths. "This one's... on me."

She gave him an disbelieving look. Donte's a lot of things, and one of those things is a fucking liar. She's already punished him when he didn't deserve it a couple of times before, only finding out the truth later on from someone else's mouth, but every conversation with him about it ends up in the same aggravating four words.

"I ain't no snitch."

It doesn't matter if the true culprits were already punished, or if he got into a fight with them, the boy is incorrigible. She doesn't believe for one second Helena's not at fault here, though. She looked back at her, the same stern gaze locked onto hers.

"You need to promise me that you will come to me or another teacher when you want to duel someone. Have I made myself clear?"

Medics arrive shortly thereafter, putting Donte on a stretcher and loading him into a van. Donte's father arrives just in time to witness the scene and chase after it as it drives towards the academy.

@Darkmoon Angel

Miles
A few nights ago...

The pillar of light was truly awe-inspiring up close. It pierced the heavens with a ray made of spirits - duel spirits, he now knows, which disappeared into the aether behind a black screen of cloud cover. Perhaps more bizarre however, was the man behind it.

He looked back over at the man wearing a black cloak. His only distinguishable features were his stubbled chin and millennium eye, glinting from within the shadows cast over the man's face by his cloak. He was suspicious as hell, but the eye was no fake. His own useless duel spirit could tell him that much, at least. "Why me? Because I'm here at a convenient time?"

The main chuckled and lifted a finger to point at his millennium eye. "Because I can relate to you."

His face fell as he realized the man knew exactly why he was interested in such a dubious offer. Then, he got mad. "Stay out of my head, asshole."

"Sorry, force of habit."

He grit his teeth. This might be a bridge he couldn't afford to burn, or it might be the biggest, most obvious scam of his life. He sighed. "Whatever. Lemme know when you achieve world domination, I'll send you a greeting card to congratulate you." He turned to leave, though as he walked away, the man called out one more time.

"If you reconsider, I'll be camping out by the base of the volcano. Just come find me there."

"..."


Name: Arius de Fürst

Setting(s): D&D

Gender:

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Race: Halfling

Background: Sailor

Class: Rogue

Subclass: Swashbuckler


Personality: An upright and uptight individual, Arius takes matters of honor seriously, but does not expect others to conform to his own moral code. He isn't afraid to bend or break the law and is willing to adapt to the circumstances, but he is strict with himself and those under his jurisdiction, not allowing any moral cutting of corners. He subscribes to the notion of honorable duels, and prefers to settle things in such a way, with a rapier in one hand and the other behind his back. That aside, his definition of an honorable duel is one without interference, and his actual fighting style tends to be frustrating to deal with, since it primarily relies on hit and run tactics. The idea that this isn't honorable is foreign and confusing to him. Despite being a rogue, he dislikes ambush tactics, and will usually only rely on stealth after combat has already begun, if at all.

History: A former sailor of a certain country's navy, he recently suffered a defeat that made him reconsider his own capabilities. Disbanding his crew with a mutual promise of reuniting one day when everyone has grown stronger, he has begun travelling the land in order to expand his horizons and better himself as a captain.
Donte
Donte frowned. Was this girl threatening him? With what? Her wimpy noodle arms? What was she trying to say, anyway? That she was a violently sore loser? Would explain why she's in Slifer, he guessed. In any case, if she thought she could take him, he wouldn't take offense. He did just invite her to pick up a weapon and assault him - it was about as unpleasant as pretending to be a creep, but this was different. "I'm no masochist. I think I'll wait here a bit longer for my old man to get lost. He might still be harassing Ms. Hibiki right about now, and I wouldn't mind spending the whole day here just to be safe." His eyes wandered towards an empty wall as he said this, distracted by the mental image of his father haranguing the poor woman over him.

He turned, making eye contact with Helena, a smirk on his lips and a fire in his eyes. "But if it's a fight you want..." he raised his duel disk. "I'm down to tango." He didn't exactly like to get into fights with girls. It was lose-lose for his rep, but despite what he was just telling Ms. Hibiki minutes earlier, he did like to duel. He wasn't afraid of a brawl either. Certainly not with someone so... waifish.

He didn't peg Helena as the type to get physical, but you know what they say about small dogs. A girl who can't control her temper suited him, he thought.

As an dueling opponent, of course. Better him than some of the wimps he's seen running around Slifer Red. Even if it was coming from Helena, that kimono girl with the glasses looks like she was a single punch away from breaking every bone in her body. Hell, Donte was worried just being around her would give her have a heart attack. It was like watching a rabbit or a hummingbird breathe in and out at speeds that would have a human hyperventilating.

Or was that just because of him?

He frowned, pushing the thought from his mind. "We could duel here and now, without duel disks, though if we do, we'd have to keep any fighting afterward quiet." Normally he wouldn't agree to this - keeping a fight quiet was like trying to keep popcorn kernels from going off in a microwave, but he was a strong, physically fit teenage boy a year older than the rest of his grade level, while she was... Helena. He should be able to stop her from making a racket if she lost all self control. Probably.
Donte

Donte breathed another sigh, this time of relief. "Chivalry isn't dead."

He sat back down, now nonchalantly looking over the cards on her desk curiously. "I'll hold you to that. Fair warning, he doesn't give up easily."

A muffled yell. "IF YOU DON'T COME OUT HERE DONTAVIUS, SO HELP ME."

Donte visibly cringed. What was Ms. Hibiki doing? Just sitting around in her office, hoping he'll go away? He changed the topic, to distract himself as much as the girl. "So, you got a name? I'm Donte, as you might have gathered. You making deck edits?"
Donte

Donte sighed. He pocketed his PDA and pulled up a nearby stool, having a seat with an elbow on his knee, holding up his head.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Probably not with him. He should probably explain himself a little.

"Look, I've got some... family issues..." His father interrupted him, yelling his full name from outside one more time, clearly angry and audible to everyone in Slifer Red. Donte winced. "The bottom line is that I ain't going nowhere unless it involves grievous bodily harm or immediate expulsion." He waved his hand nonchalantly, like none of it mattered. "Dealer's choice. You can just say it was self-defense or whatever."

He settled back into a glum, bored expression, hand propped up his head. "Another concussion would suck, though."
Can't decide on an element. EDIT: I'm thinking Lightning.

No real preference for temples either, though the backstory I had in mind would favor Omi's, if only slightly.
I'm tentatively interested.
@Goose Looks good. I agree that Powerload Ogre's gotta go - after that, you can drop them in the character's tab.

I've never really explained it on the forums before so our main two benchmarks for balance are:

1. Set normal monster > pass on turn 1 (usually) won't immediately lose you the game (though it's not necessarily a good play) - mainly just something to measure a deck's immediate swarm against. A lot of the decks in the RP rely on slow starts when they can't draw their combo pieces, and while they're expected to draw them quickly/put up some kind of defense or lose, being able to stall a little helps.

2. Nothing is super difficult to remove; if it's unaffected by card effects, for example, then its attack should be moderately low, and the deck shouldn't be capable of buffing it. Crooked Cook and Libromancer Firestarter are about the upper limit for this, and cards like Left-Hand Shark or I:P Masquerena would require you to limit the contents of your extra deck accordingly. Once-per-turn negates aren't as bad, unless they are also omninegates, in which case they may need the same restrictions. Naturally, other aspects of the deck can easily push them off the table entirely. For example, Libromancer Firestarter, Libromancer Bonded and Libromancer Fireburst aren't allowed in the same deck, since Fireburst would be able to achieve immunity to destruction by battle or card effect, as well as immunity to banishment. I don't want everyone to be forced to run Lava Golem/Kaijus/Effect Veiler/etc. to deal with particularly ornery monsters.

The rest is mostly balancing guesswork.

Nobody has submitted an anti-fun deck (e.g. burn/mill/exodia) yet but we'd probably be harsher with them, such as Fonda Fontaine's nurse burn deck that doesn't actually have a lot of burn or control cards.

Jon in the NPCs is a temporary exception to these rules mainly because it ties into his character arc, his deck is a (very inflexible) gimmick I really like, and because I thought it'd be cool if there was an unreasonably strong NPC available to duel against. Nobody has dueled against him yet though, so maybe I thought wrong.
Donte
It was such a relief to be out of the line of fire that Donte didn't even notice the girl sitting at her desk until she spoke up. "Oh. Hey."

What was she doing here?

Well, obviously, it's gotta be her room, but he and his father didn't waste much time coming here. It took some time to ditch him, but the bottom line is that if she's here alone, her parents were probably no-shows, which meant he was in the clear. Not as lucky as finding an empty room, but he could work with this.

He stood up, dusting himself off. "-And naw, this is right where I'm tryin' to be right now." He casually took a few steps into the room and started leaning against the foot of the bunkbeds. "You don't need to mind me, though if you do, make sure it's scandalous." Despite sounding like he was coming on to her, his tone was matter-of-fact, and his body language was disinterested. He had said it without even looking in her direction, pulling his PDA out of his pocket and fiddling with it as if hanging around uninvited was a perfectly natural thing to do.
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