(Past Chapter 6): Wrath of the Gods: Part 1
The first time I met the royal sisters, I came closer to death than ever before.
Eclipse Flash is walking down the tunnels to her new home after today's lesson with Weiss, where he explained how that giant black fire in the newly renamed "Hidden Palace", the first Cell that had been constructed, now given an official name, her parents almost grounded her after the dragon incident, for getting them everypony kicked out of their old homes in Cell Two.
For whatever reason, though, Weiss suggested that she had been more than punished by what had happened. If he thinks pity is going to win her over, though, then he really doesn't understand how annoying it is when somepony pities you.
As she walks along, she spots a sign carved into the wall. "Duel Monsters Tournament Today Only! Tunnel 13-B Center Stadium."
Well, it's not like she had anything else to do today after her lesson with that moron. Ergo, she'll check it out.
Walking down the tunnels, she reaches a central area where she can spot the tunnel in question, and make her way to the Center Stadium from there.
The "Center Stadium", as it's so aptly named, is a big empty space dug out near the crossroads where the ponies of Hidden Palace can host small gatherings and events, Eclipse remembers from her brief study.
Looking around, it seems the normally empty center of the stadium has been filled with some huge square box with a grid etched into it, and some stairs leading up to booths on either side. A bunch of ponies of varying ages are hanging around the box thing, talking and trading cards between them on hastily assembled tables.
Two ponies that aren't trading, however, are a scruffy looking red colt, and an older looking blue colt who are arguing. Both of which have odder-than-normal hairstyles.
The red one looks especially upset as Eclipse approaches, shouting something she catches the tail end of.
"-and my bro helped me figure out this deck, so you need to stop badmouthing it, Ok?!" The red one says.
The blue one laughs at that. "Yes, a deck constructed by a Hauler and his little-kid brother. I suppose that would explain why your deck is inferior compared to one designed by actual mathematicians. I would look forward to trouncing you in the tournament, but with a deck as awful as yours, it seems to my dismay that you won't even make it past the preliminaries."
They shake their head mock-sadly, before the red colt tackles him to the ground, and they begin to scuffle physically before their friends pull them apart.
"Jerryrig, he ain't worth it! Save it for the tournament!" The colt's yellow-coated friend says, pulling him back until he calms down.
The Blue pony and Jerryrig glare at each other with a few bruises and one bloodied lip in particular, before Jerryrig breaks free of his friend's grip to speak. "Fine. You hear that Cabal?! I'll finish this on the field, and you'll see just what my deck can do!"
The thus-named Cabal retorts, wiping his face clean with a handkerchief from his saddlebags. "Yes, I'll see all the nothing it can do. I hope you've enjoyed playing Duel Monsters, because after I destroy you, you'll be too humiliated to shuffle a deck, much less show your face in the Dueling club."
Eclipse is shocked at this. They just got finished pounding each other to the ground, and they're still going to play some dumb card game together?
She's never seen two ponies who obviously hate each other's guts act like this before.
She supposes that this must be what Weiss was talking about, and pulls out a book to start her research as she walks into the stands, taking a seat near the front.
As two ponies completely unrelated to her current object of study step up into the box, and everyone else shuffles into the stands, a bizarre tan pony with a mustache pops out from somewhere, with a cutie mark of two checkered flags crossed over one another.
With a surprisingly large leap, the pony flips up onto the edge of the Field, pulling out a crystal that they shout into to amplify their voice.
"Good afternoon fillies and gentlecolts and welcome to Duel Monsters! Today's tournament has been declared a Super Expert Tournament, this means that during moments of unsure rulings and acts whose logical portent is sound but which cannot yet be reflected by the Field's automatic processing and calculations, I, will act as referee! Me! Mr. Referee!"
"The rules are simple, the first pony to have their life points reduced to zero, or who lose the ability to play, draw, and activate any card is the loser, and must submit one Duel Monsters card to the winner, for keeps!"
He looks between the two ponies in the Field Booths and nods exuberantly.
"Duelists, are you ready?! Then, it's time to duel!" Mr. Referee shouts, swiping down his hoof and leaping off the Field as it erupts with powerful illusion magic, constructing the illusion of a grassy field, and a block of numbers above both Duelists, and their names as well.
The filly with a bright cyan coat, a makeup brush for a cutie mark, and a bird's nest of a mane, Powder Keg, and the grey-coated, green-maned stallion with a black pillar for a mark, Obsidian Obelisk.
The illusion of a giant coin is thrown into the air, flipping around before it lands on the side with the rightmost pony, Powder Keg.
"Oh goodie! It's my turn first!" She says, hopping a short jig as she draws a card and squints at her hand.
Eclipse mostly decides to tune out the duel while she considered why those two ponies were acting the way they were, but she's interrupted when Jerryrig's friend, who had apparently opted to sit next to her, speaks up. "I haven't seen you around before, you a Duelist, or just interested in the game? The name's Oil Slick, by the way."
Groaning internally at the now-required social activity, Eclipse figures that she's not going to be left alone until she answers the yellow stallion.
"I didn't have anything better to do, so I thought I'd check it out. I'm more interested in those two ponies who were going at it earlier, though. What's their deal?" She says, realizing she could get valuable information out of this pony.
"Oh yeah, those two. Cabal Counter thinks just because his dad's helping make the game that it somehow makes him better at it than the rest of us. And Jerryrig's awfully fond of his brother, Heavy Hauler. His bro's super into his new job for the boss, so he hasn't had much time to hang out, but on a whim, he bought a bunch of cards, thinking it would be a good hobby for him and Jerry to share, and well, that's the story."
"Hauler's a real monster at the game though, none of my friends can beat him at it! Jerry can every once in a while, but I think Hauler just lets him win."
His piece said, the stallion returns his gaze to the game, which had started to heat up since it began.
"So, um, yeah! I'll just activate my trap card, Gunpowder Plot, destroying all monsters on the field, and that means I get to play two more rubble scavengers, since I blew up the one rubble scavenger I had on the field!" Powder Keg says, giggling as the field erupts in simulated explosives from buried barrels of gunpowder, destroying Obelisk's Stoneskin Warhorse and Awakened Gargoyle, while giggling ponies in rusty cloaks crawl out of the rubble of the field, taking their place on Powder's side.
Obsidian's stern face doesn't change, but it's clear that he's nervous.
Eclipse turns to the pony who had been talking to her before. "You guys sure take this game pretty seriously, huh?"
They shrug slightly. "It's something to do. If you can't fight, or you're too young to work, or you just aren't good at something we need, you have to find something to do with all of the extra time."
"Otherwise, we're all just waiting around for bad news."
Eclipse pales a bit at this, but nods.
After a long time quietly watching, several more games pass after the one Obsidian managed to eke out a victory in, Duelist after Duelist, even Oil Slick himself had been entered for a match, though he lost to some mare named "Heartthrob".
She pulls out her book, having studied the matches enough that she feels confident in eking out something from this grudge match between Cabal and Jerry.
Mr. Referee turns between the two glaring colts. "Duelists, are you ready?! Then, it's time to duel!"
Cabal ends up going first, which makes him smirk as though it were a much larger achievement than it actually was. "I'll place two cards facedown, and end my turn."
A few more turns of similarly mundane or unassuming moves and quiet inner monologing from both sides, and the field is stocked with cards and both players are inching towards their first major plays.
"I sacrifice Fluff Soldier and Lost Swordsmare, to summon my new monster, Swordsmare Heiress, with a whopping one-thousand five-hundred attack points!" Jerry shouts.
The holographic images of the fuzzy looking pony with giant flowers for armor and the white-robed pony with a katana disappear in a flash of light, while at the same time, a larger version of the one with the sword rises up from the floor, wearing thick golden armor and a tiara, growling with their sword held in their teeth as the upper half of their helmet flashes with light.
"I then activate the spell card Metal Lance, changing your Cruel Armor from defense to attack mode, and preventing it from being switched back!"
The Heiress suddenly obtains a giant lance, which it uses to crash into the hollow suit of armor's shield, shattering it into pieces and throwing it back with a groan.
Eclipse makes sure to jot down how, yes, the two duelists are still visibly displeased. So it's not the game being enjoyable that's making them play in spite of their animosity.
"It doesn't make any sense..." She says to herself.
Slick chimes in, answering what he thinks is her question. "Oh, that's an easy one, Jerry's Swordsmare Heiress has a special effect that prevents trap cards from going off on the same turn she's summoned, even if one of Cabal's facedown cards was a trap card, he wouldn't be able to use it. It's a smart play, considering how many of them he's been using this game."
Eclipse shakes her head. "No, not that, the fact that they're even playing a game in the first place. If they really don't like each other, I would think they wouldn't want to be sitting down to play cards at all."
Slick thinks about that for a moment, as Cabal plays a card that lets him stop Jerry's Heiress from attacking.
"How else would they settle this? I mean, Jerry might have gotten mad enough to try, but it's not like beating up Cabal would solve anything. They have to settle it in the duel. That's where one of them's going to get proven right or wrong. Jerry and his bro, or Cabal's math buddies. One of them is going to come out on top, and the other one will be humiliated," He explains, making Eclipse ponder his words.
The Duel continues, before entering the final stretch, the showdown.
"You're a fool Jerryrig! This is it, now, with Cruel Armor, Cruel Soldier, and Cruel Blade in my graveyard, I can activate my ultimate gambit, Chilling Gasp!"
The ponies in the stands gasp at this, but Eclipse instead watches Jerry's reaction, shock and despair. Maybe Slick has a point about humiliation after all, he looks way too invested in what seems to be something bad about to happen in the game.
The grassy field turns into a frozen set of ruins, spikes of ice jutting from the ground.
"By banishing those three cards in my graveyard with this spell, I can change the field type to the Hateful Ice Field, and by sacrificing my three token monsters I can summon a monster straight from your nightmares! Come forth, Elder Windego!"
The block that appears alongside the new monster displays its attack points and defense points. The number is higher than anything Eclipse has seen on the field so far, implying that this may be it for Jerry.
"So what will you do now, Jerryrig? It doesn't matter if your Swordsmare Heiress or your Silver Prince attack, my monster's special effect would still freeze them solid! I hope you're as excited as I am, because your next turn is also going to be your last! Take comfort in the fact that your malformed deck is going to be beaten here, by the best deck there is!"
Cabal laughs in a way that absolutely does not suggest sound mental health to Eclipse.
Jerryrig's expression, though, gives Eclipse some pause. The colt is just staring at his deck, and for a moment, she wonders if he's thinking about conceding.
Well, whatever he's thinking about so hard, it seems he's done thinking now.
"It's not about how good my deck is Cabal, that's what you don't get. It's about having fun, and enjoying the hobby!" Jerryrig claims firmly.
"My bro helped me make this deck, so I'm going to trust that it's got exactly what I need to turn this around!"
That said, he reaches over, and swipes the top card off of his deck, drawing it dramatically.
Jerry grins like he's opening Hearth's Warming gifts. "Your Windego might freeze any monster that attacks it, but it can't survive without its frozen den!"
"What you've underestimated is the care between my Silver Prince and Swordsmare Heiress. When both of them are on the field, that caring is proven, through this card, Magic Kingdom!"
He flips the card in his hand around, revealing it as he slams it into the table.
"When played, no facedown trap cards can prevent its activation, and the field type is changed to the Magic Kingdom field-type!"
"And without your Hateful Ice Field..!" Jerry continues.
Cabal actually double-takes as the ice on the field is blown away, revealing red carpets and golden chandeliers in their place.
"Your Windego is no more!" Jerry finishes, before thrusting a hoof out as Cabal's Elder Windego erupts into light and disperses with a mournful wail.
"Silver Prince, Swordsmare Heiress, attack Cabal's Lifepoints directly!"
The two armored ponies rush towards Cabal, swinging their blades and making the field erupt in light, as he wails about how impossible it is.
Cabal's Lifepoints rush towards that loss-incurring "zero", and then hit it with a beep of finality.
Cabal plops down onto his rear in shock as Mr. Referee jumps in. "And the winner, and champion of the Duel Monsters Tournament is... Jerryrig!"
Everyone in the stands cheers loudly as Jerry leaps up and down, laughing happily at how he eked out the victory.
Eclipse is ready to conclude her study, but then something strange happens. Jerryrig actually approaches the stunned Cabal, and instead of mocking him, he puts a hoof on the pony's shoulder, talking in a tone that implies something other than mockery.
After Jerry finishes talking, Cabal actually starts to laugh a bit, and, before long, the pair of them are laughing loudly, and looking through one another's decks.
Their laughter is only slightly dampened when their parents rush into the Center Stadium and begin chewing them out for the fight they had before, having found out about it from someone or other.
At first, Eclipse is confused at how they seem to have become fast friends, when before, they were at each other's throats, but then, realization strikes, and she leaves to write a letter, waving a friendly goodbye to Oil Slick.
To Weiss Noir,
Today I learned that colts are dumb, and don't consider fighting a very big deal. I saw a couple of them that beat the shards out of each other over some dumb trading cards, and a few hours later after they tried to win some tournament thing, they were laughing together like chums while their parents yelled at them. Their behavior was almost as dumb to watch as their spiky hair was to look at. I guess for some ponies, it's easier than you would assume to just forgive and forget.
Your traitorous student, Eclipse Flash.
I stand inside a hidden chamber of the newly constructed Cell Three, or, as I'll be calling it from hereon, the Wacky Workbench Zone. With the new influx of resources, we can afford to properly dig into research and development, and crack the code on new tricks to help us out.
But that's not what's important to me right now. What's important to me right now is the glowing green Crystal Tube, filled with gem-saturated fluid, the highest grade magical healing crystals that we can create right now, and, in the center of the fluid, suspected by tubes, a single, cloned dragon arm.
Dr. Real approaches me, clipboard in hand. "Sir, it's simply incredible, I've... I've never even considered that this was possible. It defies everything I know about healing magic..."
I shake my head softly. "Don't worry, Absolutely, it doesn't defy a thing. Cloning fails because DNA fails, typically. But if your tissue samples come from an immortal creature?"
The doctor just nods in understanding.
After a few moments just staring at it, I decide to continue with my questioning. "Doctor, how goes the studies into cloned dragon's blood and plasma, are they compatible with ponies in any way?"
He shakes his head sadly. "The hormones and chemical balance is all off, it was a long shot that your idea would work, I'm sorry to say, sir."
I grimace at that, but continue my questioning of his progress so far. "And how about the reverse? Did the cloned dragon tissues take well to pony blood?"
Again, he shakes his head. "I'm afraid not."
This is quite a bit of a setback, but I'm certain I can still work this problem out, given enough time.
"Continue your research, and keep me posted, Doctor," I say, before moving on to another locked chamber, where the two guards standing at attention wait for me to give the password.
I give the wrong password, of course. "Salmon Sniffer," I say.
The guards both stand to one side and let me in, like they're supposed to on odd-numbered days exclusively, and only if I don't give a password included in a list that they're all trained to remember.
The next room's security, however, isn't quite so trivial.
Two of the guards in this room immediately tackle me to the ground, blades pointed to my neck. They accuse me of being an infiltrator, and shout about how I'll die where I lay if I don't reveal myself immediately.
I sit and wait for the next tier of security to be cleared, and when I don't resist or struggle, they let me up and stand aside, as they are supposed to do when someone on their list of registered individuals enters the room, and doesn't attempt to defend themselves against the guards that accuse them.
The third room out of the three security checks I have placed in all the secure areas is the only one that doesn't involve a confident bluff, the only guard at the entrance requesting an actual password, which I give.
"Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure," I say, to which the guard responds;
"Ponies love in haste but they detest at leisure."
I smile at this, which concludes the final level of security for my secret lab. The guard repeating a line back to me was a test for me specifically, as I had chosen him as the most effective cold-reader on record. If one of us had been compromised, then we wouldn't give the appropriate facial expressions at the receiving of our passwords, indicating a breach.
The theater of security complete, I enter my secret lab, where I had been working on a special project for a while now.
Having finally cracked enchanting and by extension, true Golemancy, I had been ready to start preparations for the biggest evacuation we had attempted so far.
I go over to the control panel and examine the readouts for my greatest weapon yet. one-thousand out of one-thousand were describing themselves as fully operational, and their internal pressure at twenty-thousand PSI each.
I didn't explain why exactly I had set my R&D teams on figuring out radio communications, but thankfully, it wasn't that complicated for them to figure out.
Those radio communications will be key in this, my greatest plan.
I trot over to the next component of my plan. All of the scorpion meat from the monster we killed a while back, frozen and preserved. On the table next to it, a fake pony corpse has been put together using the scorpion parts, and coated in replicated crystal-pony fur. A flawless substitute, at first glance, for a mangled crystal pony.
Though my gut is clenching with nervousness, it's matched with an equal amount of eager anticipation.
I just have to stitch together a few hundred fake bodies, and then, tomorrow...
I sat inside a small, cold hole in the ground, barely big enough for the only two ponies that were in it, myself and Iron Diamond, the both of us coated in white camoflage and only enough of us free of snow to breathe and move.
While I sat near the crude radio I had managed to have built, listening for reports and repeating the "all-clear" code phrase every once in a while, Iron used a telescope to watch the Crystal Empire, and the skies around it.
We were waiting in these little watch-holes for Sombra to make another pass around the Frozen North in search of the Shadow Realm, as he had started doing after our third attempt at evacuating civilians from The Empire had succeeded. By this point, we had freed enough ponies to genuinely hinder his ability to draw in slaves from the populace to keep up with his mines, and it seems that was enough to prompt him into action, in the form of a violent, daily search for our hideouts, a mistake that will cost him tonight.
I already had started establishing these little boltholes scattered around the north for exactly this reason, to keep tabs on Sombra's whereabouts. This, however, had been the first time that I personally participated in the watch. A necessity considering my plans to exploit Sombra's increased level of alertness this time.
"I still don't understand why we aren't just using the cubes to hold Sombra off while we evacuate everypony in broad daylight, if you're so confident in them," He says, scanning the horizon.
I pause for a moment. Iron Diamond had always been a skeptic of my plans. This makes me glad, because my plans suck. That's why I have ponies like him to make them workable.
"Because I'm confident that Sombra will think they're a genuine threat, instead of a fake one. We'll be able to disguise his new alarms going off as being because of them instead of us. I'm also operating under the assumption that he will destroy anything we throw at him with contemptuous ease in the end," I say.
He retorts quickly. "They are a genuine threat. I was there when you demonstrated them to the rest of the team leaders, what makes you think Sombra can even best them?"
I shake my head. "It doesn't matter if he can or can't. It's about risk. That's why I put so many resources into a weapon that won't survive past this day. It's expensive, deadly, and powerful. That's why Sombra is going to think it's the cause of his missing captives while we quietly evacuate more ponies under his nose."
"Right now, we've evacuated close to a third of the unenslaved ponies in the Crystal Empire so far. Tonight, we'll be taking an entire, additional third in one fell swoop."
"No risk can be allowed to enter my plans, Iron, not when the reward is this great."
My radio crackles, and a scout speaks through it. "Shadow Spotted, Sector Thirty-seven, approaching Sector Forty-nine."
I turn to Iron Diamond. "It's go time."
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is part two going up tomorrow?
9660908
I typically release chapters in a Past, Noir, Present, Weiss format.
Part two would be coming out in four days, on that schedule.
If enough people want it, I can alter that schedule for multipart chapters specifically, to release them back to back, but it would throw off my flow by a small amount.
9660911
well, I don't want to mess up your schedule I was asking cause most part arch chapter go side by side mostly in my experience but a bit of wait help get you hype and worry for what happens for part two.
THAT VERIFICATION SYSTEM SEEMS SO OBVIOUS.
HOW HAS NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE
Necro-Mancy! Necro-Mancy! Necro-Mancy!!!
Nice. Why did he call it dual monsters instead of duel monsters?
9718949
Because I'm an idiot. Editing now.
Man, Mr. Referee was one of the best parts of Medabots. Good to see him getting some love.
Also, I really like that security system. I want one like it XD
Ah, I do love me a game of Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker
9835502
But what are rules anyway?
Hark! Is that a Yugio reference I spy? No, seriously, I don't know, is it? I've never actually watched the show.
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn't the same.
She really is reminiscent of Twilight.
Reminds me of Blitzball. And Ja'La dh Jin. Okay, it's a pretty common theme, but still, neat.
Ah, you're going to make it look like the dragon succeeded. Clever.
...Or maybe it's something else.
Wait, Duel Monsters isn't a renamed Yugio? Huh.
Um. I think you got distracted halfway through this sentence and forgot where you were. Perhaps you should break it up into multiple sentences.
suspended
are
One
And more closing quotations at the end of paragraphs.
Not going to quote every security measure, they are all hilarious of course however it still baffles me why he didn´t bother to obfuscate his notes any further. I guess he isn´t too far gone yet.