Shadows of Friendship

by Codex

Time to Duel

“No problem Twilight!” Spike nodded, keeping a tight grip on the saddle bag as he returned to Dark Moon’s side.

“Since this is just a demonstration duel and apparently your letter is so important, how about we both start with just two thousand life points?” Lightning asked as he stepped into the red circle on the other side of the grid and stepped on his sigil. His side of the grid lit up in a blue that was so light it was almost white, the same colour that White Lightning’s magic had always been before his horn had snapped. “Mares first, of course.” He gestured to her in a mocking version of a bow.

“Two thousand points is fine by me.” Twilight agreed, only to become startled when the box in front of her lit up with the number ‘2000’ in it.

“No more having to do life points manually.” White Lightning boasted to the crowd, “The DuelRune grid does that for you.”

Twilight was actually impressed as she placed her deck on the square of solid light that had appeared in front of her. It was hard enough to make runes do anything like addition or subtraction without manually putting in the input, yet alone making them remember things. Somehow he was literally getting the runes within the grid itself to change in order to provide the life point counter and while it would mean that you would have to reset the grid for every duel, which meant a little more maintenance, the purple unicorn could quite easily see the benefits and doubted that many ponies would object.

“I summon the Coltic Guardian, in attack mode!” Twilight called as she played her card. The DuelRune grid shone brightly for a moment, then a young Earth pony stallion appeared before her in a swirl of autumn leaves, with a deep, mossy green coat and long, neatly platted, yellow mane and tail, protected by impressive looking silver and green armour and holding a sword between his teeth, over which he glowered at White Lightning.

“Since my Guardian can’t attack this turn, it’s your move.” Twilight continued, gesturing to her former classmate.

“You really have let your duelling skills slip.” White Lightning smirked at her, “Come forth, my mighty Blue Eyes White Dragon!”

Twilight gulped as her Coltic Guardian was dwarfed by the huge white scaled dragon that appeared in a blaze of light and a crackle of electricity. The mighty dragon seemed to peer down at the opposing creature as if contemplating whether to eat him for lunch. To her Guardian’s credit, he did not do anything more than peer up at it in reply as if considering the best way to strike the beast down.

Though Twilight did not appreciate the difference, the crowd did and while some outside the ring of spectators were terrified of the dragon, those who knew enough about the DuelRune grids to know that before the monsters had always been kind of static and nowhere near this interactive, were impressed.

“Blue Eyes!” Lightning called, over confident grin plastered across his features as his three thousand attack point beast stared down at Twilight’s fourteen hundred attack point Warrior, “Destroy her Guardian!”

The huge dragon, which was easily the same height as the nearby buildings reared back it’s great head and opened its maw, building up a blast of light and electricity before loosing it to strike the Warrior below who did not stand a chance.

Twilight could feel the heat emitting from the light as it passed by her, cutting out as it hit the edge of the DuelRune grid. In front of her, the numbers in the box rapidly dropped, until they were resting on ‘600’. When the light died down her Guardian had disappeared and Twilight slipped the card into her ‘Graveyard’ space.

“Well, I guess this will be a short demonstration.” The white unicorn looked bored. “Such a shame, I was hoping for a proper challenge from my old rival. It’s your move, Twilight Sparkle.”

She tried not to grimace at his insulting tone. She was rusty and rising to his bait would not help her win the duel. He had insulted her teacher, yes, but if she did not keep a level head, she would not defeat him.

“One card face down.” Twilight spoke after drawing, internally wincing when she failed to draw anything that could help stop the dragon, “And one in face down defence mode.” The back of the card appeared on the floor, sideways.

“Is that all you can do?” White Lightning snorted, amused as Twilight considered her hoof full of low level, low strength monsters and seriously regretted not having updated her deck recently. “I don’t even need to summon another monster to defeat you, Blue Eyes! Destroy that card too!”

“I activate Spellbinding Circle!” Twilight’s voice could barely be heard over the roar made by the huge monster, whose scales shimmered brightly in the sunlight, making the ponies watching almost believe that the dragon was a real creature, rather than just a rune produced illusion.

The noise cut off as the dragon was encircled by a set of glowing concentric circles. Runes appeared between the two rings, while a pentagram appeared in the middle one, freezing the Blue Eyes White Dragon in place.

Its summoner scowled as he beheld what was basically now a dragon shaped statue, “Fine, I play one card face down and end my turn.”

Twilight nodded, thinking as she drew her next card, trying not to reveal that she had drawn something good. Instead she put another card in defence mode, “Another card in defence mode and one face down.” She called, stalling for time since his dragon could not attack her. “Your move.”

“You’re wrong, Lightning never loses!” Gloating caught her attention as she watched Lightning draw his next card and she glanced over at the sound to find a white unicorn foal with a long, messy black mane and tail and no cutie mark was gloating to Spike.

“Twilight has beaten him every time they’ve duelled.” Spike reminded the colt, who he had regularly hung around with before The Incident, “Besides, she’s only just getting started.”

“So am I.” Lightning drew Twilight’s attention back to the duel by crowing, “Halting my dragon won’t save your monsters. I summon Battle Ox, in attack mode!”

A massive minotaur appeared on the grid, wielding a massive axe and glaring around at not only his adversary, but the ponies surrounding the DuelRune grid too. The 1800 attack point monster launched itself forward without direction from his summoner and cut through the face down card which exploded into shards.

“See?” Lightning smirked, “And that’s not even the worst my deck can do. If I were you, I’d give up now.”

“No way, Lightning.” Twilight shook her head, drawing a card and grinning, “I summon the Dark Magician, in attack mode!”

There was nothing for a few moments, then a dark swirling vortex appeared which deposited the unicorn stallion on the card in their midst. The unicorn, whose coat was a sandy, creamy gold, was clad in armour of a purple that was not far from being the same shade as Twilight’s coat and clung to his form. His short tail, which was a slightly bluer purple than the armour, poked out from within, while a robe of a different shade of purple went over that. His mane was hidden by a pointy hat of the same purple as the armour and part of which doubled as a face guard and he held a green, metallic staff with his right foreleg, much like the royal guards held their lances in the palace. The stave had an emerald embedded in one end, probably as a focus as his sharp green-blue eyes scanned his surroundings.

He scowled at White Lightning the moment he saw him. The opposing stallion grimaced back, recognising the Magician as one of Twilight’s most powerful creatures.

“Dark Magician, Dark Magic Attack!” Twilight grinned as she called the attack. The stallion pointed his staff at the minotaur and blasted it with a ball of purple magic. Lightning’s minotaur faded away, taking 700 lifepoints with it.

Before Twilight could even call the end of her turn, White Lightning had drawn, summoned a second Blue Eyes White Dragon and blown her Magician away, taking Twilight down to just 100 lifepoints.

“Lightning! That wasn’t fair!” Twilight protested as she realised the equip card she had been saving to activate on her next turn, when she had planned to attack the dragon was useless now.

“Your turn was over. You’d had your attack.” He shrugged in reply. “And now your magician has gone and you are one turn away from defeat! Especially after I do this…” He activated a spell card from his hoof, Mystical Space Typhoon, which destroyed her Spellbinding Circle. “Next turn my dragons will end this duel!”

Twilight tried not to wince as she considered the state of the duel. White Lightning could have ended the duel already. He was dragging this out in order to toy with her. The fact of the matter was that he was right. She could not win. Even if she played a card in defence mode next turn, one of his dragons would destroy it while the other wiped out her life points.

“Told you.” The unicorn colt gloated at Spike, “My brother ALWAYS wins.”

“Just you wait, Flicker,” Spike shot back, irritated by his former friend, “Twilight will turn this duel around and win, just you wait!”

Spike was right. She had the tools in her deck that she needed to turn this around. She had a hoof full monsters, but all she needed was the right trap card and she would turn this duel around.

She just needed to believe that she could draw the card she needed…

She took a deep breath and pulled the top card off her deck.

“I play one card face down, one card in defence mode and end my turn.” She spoke slowly, hoping that this last trick would work.

“Is that it? Is that all the great Twilight Sparkle can do? I thought you were going to show us just how good a teacher Princess Celestia was?” White Lightning crowed as he drew, “I’ve been looking forward to a rematch with you for over a year. What a waste…” He drew and smirked, “Well, I might as well make this interesting if you won’t…I summon my third Blue Eyes White Dragon!”

Twilight could not help stepping back with one hoof as the third dragon appeared on the field. She had never been able to get over just how imposing it was to have the trio facing her down and now was no exception.

“Now, my first dragon, destroy her face down monster!” Twilight’s defence mode monster exploded and she flinched back, watching the dragons with hints of fear. “It’s all over. Attack with White Lightning!”

The second dragon launched its attack, drawing back its head and firing off the beam of light and electricity directly at Twilight. Ending the duel.

Or would not have done if Twilight had not called out, “I don’t think so!” with a grin as she activated one of her face down cards, “Magic Cylinder! It negates your dragon’s attack and you take the same amount of life point damage as its attack points!”

The beam of light entered one of the two multi-coloured cylinders and exited the other, shooting straight back at the dragon, who let out a furious roar and shattered into a million tiny, shimmering pieces.

White Lightning’s life points hit zero almost instantly.

“I don’t remember that being in your deck.” Lightning commented, his tone neutral though his expression was anything but. Instead an odd mix of curiosity, anger and excitement featured prominently upon his face as Twilight stepped off of the sigil and packed away her deck.

“I might not have played much since you left school, but I’ve kept upgrading my deck.” Twilight replied with a nervous smile before turning to her companion, “Spike, we need to go.”

“But Twilight…”

“Now, Spike.” Twilight’s tone brokered no argument. The dragonet scurried to Twilight’s side as she settled the saddle bag back on her rear. Before he could climb up the unicorn levitated him onto her back and the crowd parted for her again, this time more in awe than anything. Before anyone could say anything about how she had won that duel, Twilight galloped away to somewhere a little more private.

Author's Note:

Author Note: Sorry this took so long, but I had to rewrite the duel because when I wrote it for NaNo it was over far too fast. Literally all done in two turns. It ended like this…

“Blue Eyes!” Lightning called, over confident grin plastered across his features as his three thousand attack point beast stared down at Twilight’s fourteen hundred attack point Warrior, “Destroy her Guardian!”

The huge dragon, which was easily the same height as the nearby buildings reared back it’s great head and opened its maw, building up a blast of light and electricity before loosing it to strike the Coltic Guardian below who did not stand a chance.

Or would not have done if Twilight had not called out, “I don’t think so!” with a grin as she activated one of her face down cards, “Magic Cylinder! It negates your dragon’s attack and you take the same amount of life point damage as its attack points!”

The beam of light entered one of the two multi-coloured cylinders and exited the other, shooting straight back at the dragon, who let out a furious roar and shattered into a million tiny, shimmering pieces.

White Lightning’s life points hit zero almost instantly.

I couldn’t post it like that. So thanks for your patience.