Rex Raptor and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Island Tournament (A Yu-Gi-Oh! Quest)

Vote closed.

You're silent. You can't believe it, you just lost your last chance to make it into the Duelist Kingdom finals.

All this way, all that hard work, for nothing.

Yugi smiles kindly at you, full of warmth and good humour, as he reaches out to shake your hand. He's obviously happy about his win, but his smile isn't one of gloating at all, just friendly and understanding.

"Ryuzaki, that was such a great game! You really pushed me to do my best, you know?" he offers as a condolence, and you smile back, a little. It's a bad feeling to have lost, but you never started playing for the easy wins. You played because it was fun to duel, and this… this was fun.

Terrifying, but fun.

"Ah, thanks, Yugi. I really thought I had the win a couple of times, kind of a bummer to miss them, but I can really see why you're the unofficial champ of the game now," you concede, scratching your nose with embarrassment.

You swap some more compliments and chatter as you pack up, especially intrigued by his risky gambit of working to summon the Black Luster Soldier. In hindsight there were several points you could have played differently, but you're not sure it would have mattered. A Kuriboh in hand to avoid a killing blow, and a back-to-back topdeck of Monster Reborn and Brain Control, those are just the sorts of good fortunes that can sometimes line up in a duel.

It still sucks, but you're not unhappy with your own performance, and that's really what matters.

Yugis friends cluster around him, cheering happily and congratulating him as he exits the glass battle box, and Koyo wanders over to pat you on the shoulder consolingly. You wave him off casually, showing him just how definitely unbothered you are about not qualifying for the tournament. Totally.

"Well, that makes three of us with ten chips, I suppose," Yugi speaks up shortly after getting his friends to finally stop crowding him. He smiles beatifically at Jou, and gives Koyo a nod of respect as well.

"Since we're all here, do you want to head into the castle together?" he offers, and Jou excitedly nods, punching the air.

"Yeah! Koyo, Ryuzaki, you gotta come with us, we've bonded over the game now!"

Koyo glances at you, and you shrug back. Why the hell not, at this point? You can't exactly qualify now, having picked up from some of the conversations between the Domino friends that there'd been mention of someone else already having entered the gate with ten star chips by the time they approached it in the late morning, when Kaiba had emerged to challenge Yugi.

"Eh, sure, can't hurt. If I'm not gonna be in the finals, I may as well watch you guys fight it out, so I can learn more of your strategies to beat you at the next tournament," you grouse lightly, and the others laugh airily. The seven of you start to hike back towards the castle's stone stairs, Koyo settling into chatting with Yugi about their respective credentials and playstyles as you do. Jou, on the other hand, slows down a little, falling slightly behind the others to set pace with you, invisibly drawing you back to the tail end of the group.

You glance over at the blonde boy, and he sheepishly rubs the elbow of his green jacket, seemingly unsure of what to say to you. He pauses for a moment, and then shakes his head, grinning like he's realised he's being an idiot.

"Thanks, Ryuzaki. Means a lot to me that you accepted this," he says, and he looks meaningfully up at Yugi, laughing along with Koyo and Bakura about something or another.

"Real generous of you to not just accept your dragon back, I know it's expensive and you probably worked hard to save up for it," he adds thoughtfully. After a moment, he flips through his deck box, extracting a card from it, and passes it over to you.

You frown as you look at it, a trap card you've not seen before.

"Oath of Companionship? What's this for?" you ask him quizzically.

He chuckles, his smile widening.

"Think of it as a… what do you call it, when you take a loan and have to have something else offered to make sure you pay it back?"

You're fifteen, you've never taken a loan out in your life. Why would you know?

He snaps his fingers as the term he was searching for pops into his head.

"Oh! Security! This is security. Or collateral. I dunno what the difference is, but it's one of those. This card is my guarantee that we'll have that duel for the Red-Eyes Black Dragon one day, and I'll honour my promise if you win," he concludes. He taps the card again, and smiles.

"I had to pull some cards from my deck to fit in the Red-Eyes and the Dragon Nails, so you should take this. It's a bit cheesy, but I think this card really fits. I thought you were kind of a jerk at first, and I know you thought the same, but we're friends now, okay?" he asks.

You stare down at the card, and shake your head with a smile.

"Friends huh? Maybe. Or maybe… it's rivals," you shoot back, and his eyes light up at the thought.

"Heh, yeah! Friendly rivals, I like that! Hell of a better dynamic than between Yugi and that jerk Kaiba," he concludes.

You grin back at him, and you're about to accept, when suddenly a thought strikes you.

"Why'd you take this card out of your deck though?"

Jou shrugs, not thinking much about his reply.

"I haven't dueled against anybody this whole tournament who used fusion or ritual monsters. It's been a pretty useless card, I think I overestimated how useful it'd be."

You pause, thinking about Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon, Psycho-Puppet, and Triple Hecate Gorgon. Yugi's wickedly deadly Black Luster Soldier raises its sword in your mind.

You glance back up at the group ahead of you, fixing your eyes on Koyo's garish red jacket and cap.

[ ] Give Jou back the Oath of Companionship. Tell him you trust him, and you accept his offer of friendship and rivalry, but that you have a feeling he might need it for the finals.
[ ] Accept the Oath of Companionship, it's a gesture of solidarity from Jou and you can't refuse that. But you can't take it in good conscience without trading him a card in return to use for the finals. And you have a perfect card in mind for the trade!

---

The votes from last update will be coming into play in the next update, I just wanted to get a little juice back into the ol' writing bones because I thought of this nice little exchange and I think it needs to happen pretty much immediately after the duel is over.

It's become clear to me how draining big 4-8k updates are in quick succession, so I'm trying to shift to a model of shorter 1-2k updates a bit more frequently. It's mostly a mental shift, since I normally like substantial updates and I'm trying to train myself to be okay with serving up multi-course degustation menus instead of one huge meal on a plate.