Chapter 281: Bros Are Made for Smacking
"Wait, is Amano-senpai actually loaded? Do you just run in rich circles all the time?"
The Nanki'in family estate had a track record of leaving first-time visitors speechless, and the pond garden alone, which was larger than a soccer field, was doing exactly that to Saotome Rei.
The contrast hit harder given the impression Amano had left on everyone back at Duel Academy. This was a girl who had watched him duel in a Slifer Red dorm room with a pile of Normal Monsters.
"Senpai always seemed totally broke at the Academy. But what if it was a rich-family training exercise all along? Like his family made him live in poverty to build character? Maybe Amano-senpai is actually even more loaded than Manjoume-senpai, and when he graduates it's going to be a full dragon-lord returns moment!"
"Rei. What you need to do right now is read fewer trashy web novels."
Saotome Rei let out a small sigh. "Honestly, I kind of prefer senpai when he's broke. Rich guys attract the wrong kind of women. If senpai stays poor, nobody's going to fight me for him."
What she was going to do about the ones who had already latched on despite being rich themselves was a problem for another day.
Not that class rep Sakuya was anything but a good girl, obviously.
The weekend visit to the Nanki'in estate had turned into more of a full group expedition than Amano had originally planned. He had brought both sisters, and Kikawayu and Yui had come along too.
Finesse was the one notable absence. The Wein and Nanki'in families had a particular competitive history that made her presence at the estate awkward, so she had sat this one out. Everyone else from the villa was present.
The Nanki'in family had been generous about it without any visible effort. Not only were the numbers not an issue, they had quietly arranged two additional vehicles for the trip.
This was also Amano's first time at the Nanki'in main residence. Every previous visit had been to the smaller auxiliary house where Sakuya lived separately for the convenience of attending school. The main estate where family head Nanki'in Yukihime actually lived was, predictably, in a completely different league.
Just walking from the gate to the entrance hall felt like an outdoor winter excursion.
If he and Sakuya ended up getting married, did that mean all of this would eventually be his too?
That particular thought had him so far gone in a comfortable daydream that he barely registered the firm, deliberate pinch on his backside until it was over.
He turned around. Kikawayu, grinning with exactly the expression of someone who knew precisely what they had done, raised an eyebrow at him.
This had been happening with increasing frequency since the Chronicle. Kikawayu had outwardly returned to male-mode as though nothing had happened, but the behavioral patterns underneath had quietly shifted. The practical result was something like being targeted by a very hands-on delinquent: casual physical contact on Amano's person, always framed innocuously enough that no one watching would notice anything off, always just plausible enough as ordinary best-friend roughhousing to slide past without comment.
Before all of this, Amano would have returned every single one of those at ten times the force without thinking about it.
The problem now was that Kikawayu's raised-eyebrow smirk carried a very specific challenge. The expression said: go ahead, try it. We both know you won't.
An opportunity for payback had to present itself eventually.
"Yukihime-san! I've missed you so much!"
The winter excursion finally came to an end as they stepped into the main entrance hall, and Shio immediately launched herself at Nanki'in Yukihime.
"Look how much cuter you've gotten, Shio. Come here and let auntie hold you."
The Nanki'in family attendants standing nearby were visibly stunned. This was their family head, the woman who ran the household with the warmth of a January wind, who issued orders to have problems permanently resolved without losing a second of sleep over it. That woman currently had her arms around a thirteen-year-old and was radiating something almost maternal.
Then Yukihime looked past Shio to Amano, and the warmth recalibrated back to its usual setting.
"You've brought quite a collection of charming girls with you, Amano Rei. Is this some kind of provocation toward my Sakuya?"
"Not entirely girls." Amano made the introductions. "This is Yui, my childhood friend. This is my other sister, Saotome Rei. Sakuya should have mentioned her. And this one, who looks like a girl, is actually my best friend. Don't believe me? Watch."
The moment he had been waiting for.
Amano loaded up everything he had been storing since the last time and brought his palm down hard across Kikawayu's backside.
From every external angle, this was a completely unremarkable male posterior receiving a perfectly standard best-friend smack.
"Ah!" The completely unprepared impact drove tears to the corners of Kikawayu's eyes. Kikawayu grabbed the affected area with both hands, jaw clenched, a string of spit at the corner of the mouth confirming just how hard that had actually landed.
Yukihime nodded thoughtfully. "That is indeed something only guys do to each other."
It is, in fact, a universal law: a best friend's backside is there to be smacked.
"A new little sister, though." Nanki'in Yukihime's attention shifted to Saotome Rei. "That man of mine used to pick up younger sisters all the time too. Seems Amano has the same habit."
The man she was referring to was presumably Sakuya's father, who had been absent from the picture long enough that his current whereabouts were anyone's guess.
Which meant Rei was not, in fact, a foster sister. But that was not the kind of clarification worth making right now.
"I'm only joking, don't mind me. Nobody stand on ceremony, come in and sit down."
The moment at the door did nothing to disrupt the easy atmosphere that followed.
Sakuya herself tended toward the quieter end of the social spectrum, but Shio and Rei were both the kind of people who made any room feel warmer just by being in it, and Yui had enough experience as a shopkeeper that she was comfortable with anyone. By mid-morning, the Nanki'in estate's main house had generated more noise than it probably had in months.
Amano, though, had his attention on the afternoon.
The dojo challenge. The duel with Kaiser Ryo.
His mental image of Kaiser Ryo at this point in the GX timeline was of someone whose heart was actively failing, whose body was running on what it had left. That was the version of Kaiser who had gone into the alternate world.
And somehow that version had still been cutting through every professional dojo in Eden without dropping a single match.
"Sakuya. When are we heading to the dojo?"
They had just finished the generous lunch the Nanki'in household had put together, and Amano was finally out of patience.
"The dojo?" Sakuya tilted her head. "We're not going anywhere."
"Wait. You told me you wanted help dealing with the dojo challenger."
"That's still happening. Mother just arranged for them to come here instead."
The challenger was being brought to the estate. Of course. This was Nanki'in Yukihime, whose approach to inconvenient situations apparently included the option of not going to them at all.
Yukihime supplied the context: "Tsukiyu Yukishiro, I go back a ways with her mother. The Tsukiyu family is the one that's been sending a challenger after our dojos this whole time."
"Is this the same kind of situation as with the Jinguuji family?"
The Nanki'in were a prominent enough target in the Tower's power structure that this sort of friction seemed to come with the territory.
"The Tsukiyu family is nowhere near the same league as the Jinguuji. Even at their best they've always been a minor family, and right now they're a minor family in decline. No one with real dueling talent has come out of their line in generations."
"Even if Tsukiyu Yukishiro has found herself a strong enough benefactor right now, it's just a last gasp. The kind of struggle that looks impressive for a moment but doesn't change the ending."
"That it's managed to look impressive at all is something," Amano noted.
The compatibility between a family going through a last gasp and a Cyber Dragon deck did have a certain thematic neatness to it.
On that subject: Shio's deck was also Cyber Dragon based. He found himself hoping that watching Kaiser Ryo duel would not give her ideas he would have to deal with later.
Yukihime did not specify the afternoon meeting time.
By the time the sun had moved low enough to paint the windows gold, Ryuuma walked in from the entrance hall and addressed the room: "My lady, young mistress. The visitors have arrived. I've brought them to the rear courtyard dueling ground."
Nanki'in Yukihime set down her tea with both hands and looked at Amano.
"Understood. That's my cue." Amano unfolded himself from the tatami and pushed to his feet.
Everyone else rose with him, and Ryuuma led the group through the estate toward the rear.
The Nanki'in estate's rear courtyard dueling ground was something else. The main residence property was on a scale that made "courtyard" feel like an understatement. It was closer to a plaza, larger than the garden where Amano had dueled Masayo, and at this hour the light from the setting sun lay across the whole expanse in a way that made the air feel charged.
In the center of the dueling ground, standing and waiting: a girl in a white off-shoulder kimono, and a man in a long black trench coat.
Kaiser Ryo.
When Kaiser Ryo registered who was walking in from the far end of the dueling ground, his entire bearing shifted. Just a fraction, but unmistakably.
He had known the venue would be unusual today. The whole campaign through the dojos, challenging one after another specifically to attract the Nanki'in family's attention: it had all been to arrive at exactly this point, a duel on Nanki'in ground. But who that duel would be against had not been part of the calculation.
Finding Amano Rei waiting for him here was something he had not been prepared for.
"Ryo-senpai!"
Saotome Rei, spotting Kaiser across the sunset, kept her voice low but could not keep the surprise out of it entirely. She had not expected the person who had left her to fend for herself on arrival to turn up at the same place, ready to duel the same opponent, with what looked like no time at all having passed.
Saotome Rei's relationship with Kaiser Ryo had started as something close to admiration. That had shifted significantly after the part where he walked away without a backwards glance.
"Amano-senpai has to win. That's all I care about anymore!"
Amano stepped out onto the dueling ground under the sunset, and Nanki'in Yukihime took up a position behind him, mirroring Tsukiyu Yukishiro behind Kaiser. Two trainers facing off from behind their respective duelists.
The conversation that opened across the field between them had nothing to do with the duel.
"How is your mother doing these days, Yukishiro?"
"Not well, Yukihime-san." Something tightened in Yukishiro's voice. "She hasn't been."
"That's a shame. The Tsukiyu line could have gone further. Your mother simply didn't have the talent for it."
"The Tsukiyu family continues through me. And I'm going to prove to you, Yukihime-san, that what you did to my mother was wrong."
The more he heard of this exchange, the more certain Amano became that the relationship between Nanki'in Yukihime and Yukishiro's mother was something considerably more complicated than old acquaintances. The way Yukishiro had said "what you did to my mother" carried a weight that went beyond a business rivalry.
And the name Yukishiro itself had an odd resonance. Taken literally, it carried a faint echo of "in Yukihime's place." Whether that was coincidence or someone's pointed choice, he had no idea.
So is having a woman completely devoted to you also a Nanki'in tradition, Yukihime-san?
"You must be very confident in the duelist you've brought, Yukishiro."
"Completely. Ryo-sama does not lose. Every one of the Nanki'in dojo masters those dojos are supposedly so proud of, not one of them lasted a single turn against Ryo-sama."
She was already calling him "Ryo-sama." Fair enough. It was Kaiser Ryo: walking into a dojo and winning through pure dueling ability alone was enough to earn that from anyone.
"Ha." Yukihime opened her folding fan and raised it in front of her face as she smiled. "Our Nanki'in duelists aren't quite so easy to dismiss either, you know. If you're underestimating"
"I know." Kaiser Ryo's voice cut through it, flat and certain. "Amano Rei: I have been waiting for this rematch."
A brief pause from Yukihime. Then: "Oh, you two already know each other. Then I suppose we can skip the traditional pre-duel declarations. Give it everything you've got, Rei-sama."
Please don't call me that infront of everyone, Amano thought.
"Kaiser: how's your body holding up?" Even now, with Kaiser standing steady in the fading sunlight without any visible signs of distress, Amano found himself asking.
The concern was genuine. Kaiser Ryo's heart condition had not only been the product of a life spent in high-intensity underground duels. It had been compounded by the deck itself. Other people who had used the back-side Cyber Dark strategy described it in terms that went beyond strategy: just drawing the cards felt like a current moving through the body. It was the kind of deck that spent the duelist's life points in the most literal sense, which was why the full version had been sealed as forbidden in the anime.
"The medical technology in this era is years ahead of what I knew. It's not a complete recovery, but more than enough to give everything I have in this duel."
A fully operational Kaiser Ryo from the peak of his power. Even among GX-era duelists, the pressure coming off him standing there was considerable.
"Amano Rei: this duel has nothing to do with what either of our families wants. This is personal. I intended it as my last duel when I set out. That intention has not changed."
"I feel it, Kaiser. Then let's begin."
Both Duel Disks extended, Eva Terminal interfaces activating in sequence. Only now did Amano notice that Kaiser Ryo was carrying a functional Eva Terminal.
Saotome Rei had been picked up by the Bureau because she had no identity in the Eva system and no Terminal to show for it. Kirigakure had found her a cosmetic stand-in at the last moment before she left. Rei's was still a prop.
Kaiser Ryo's Terminal, on the other hand, was real enough to deploy as a Duel Disk and connect to the Eva network. Whatever the Tsukiyu family had done to arrange that was something the Security Bureau probably did not need to know about, but it was deeply practical and, given who they were, entirely in character.
[Eva: Duel Authorized]
[Duelist: Amano Rei]
[Duelist: Kaiser Ryo]
[Network connection established. Duel field generated.]
[Duel format: Dojo Challenge]
[Proud duelists, let the outcome of this duel serve as the measure of your souls!]
[Duel!]
The electronic chime of Eva's synthetic voice rang across the courtyard. In the light of the setting sun, the duel between Amano and the Cyber stream began.
First turn went to Kaiser Ryo.
Letting Kaiser have first turn against a Cyber Dragon deck. Amano's luck was, as always, impeccable.
"My turn. Draw!"
Kaiser drew his opening card, then stopped.
"What is it? What's wrong, Ryo-sama?" Behind him, Tsukiyu Yukishiro's voice had an edge of anxiety.
"Amano Rei is exceptional. No exaggeration: he is the strongest opponent I have ever faced." Kaiser stood with his eyes closed for a moment against the sunset. "A standard line of play will not beat him. I have to go all-in from the first moment. Win through something that goes beyond conventional dueling."
"Ryo-sama?"
"This is the full output of my Cyber stream!"
The decision landed. Kaiser Ryo raised his hand and called the card with everything he had behind it.
"Equip Spell: Future Fusion, activate!"
The anime-era version of Future Fusion worked as an Equip Spell: send all the Fusion Materials from your Deck directly to the Graveyard and Fusion Summon immediately. The summoned monster came with the limitation of being unable to attack the turn it arrived.
For Kaiser going first, that limitation did not exist.
This was not Future Fusion. This was Fusion Summon. Right now. From the entire Deck.
Kaiser Ryo pulled the Deck from his Duel Disk and threw every card into the air above the sunset-lit dueling ground.
"I will fuse every monster in my Deck!"