Chapter 152: Amano's First God Card
When Amano Rei opened his eyes again, he was lying in the upstairs hallway.
Before opening the front door, he had used Rin Seiya's body to move his own unconscious form up to the second floor, specifically to keep Finesse from finding it in the living room. The problem was that Rin Seiya, unlike Finesse, did not possess the kind of strength that let someone haul another person's body at a sprint. On top of that, she was currently running on the debuff of being sick. Getting the dead weight of Amano's body up the stairs at all had taken everything she had. There was nothing left over to carry it the rest of the way to a bed.
So Amano had spent the past hour lying on a cold hard floor, and every muscle in his body was registering its objection.
But the physical discomfort was not what was occupying his mind.
He lay there listening for sounds from downstairs. What was happening between those two? The last thing he needed right now was a confrontation breaking out in Rin Seiya's living room. Come to think of it, this was not the first time a situation like this had developed around him. The first time had been genuinely his own fault, the result of chasing affection ratings with insufficient caution. He would acknowledge that.
But this time he had come here to take care of a sick senpai. He had done nothing wrong. And somehow it had still produced the same kind of outcome. He had been discovered because he fought a god-slaying Dark Game. Was there some hidden quality in his nature that specifically attracted this type of complication?
The fear he was feeling right now was not substantially smaller than the fear he had felt standing in front of two Wicked Gods. If anything, there was a certain uncomfortable familiarity to it.
Familiarity?
Why did this feel familiar?
His Eva Terminal, sitting on his wrist in the dark hallway, started blinking without any obvious cause.
He raised it and looked. The Terminal was showing an unclaimed card waiting in storage. He had no memory of putting a card there.
He opened the storage interface and found something sitting inside that should not have been possible.
And then it came back to him. The new system function that had registered after the Dark Game ended today.
IDENTITY: "SOULSWINDLER"
THE ULTIMATE DECEPTION IS DECEIVING THE ENTIRE WORLD.
"Try telling the Eva system you have a god card in your hand."
Deceiving the Eva system. And sitting right there inside his Eva Terminal was The Wicked Dreadroot.
Could you really convince the Eva Network you were holding a god card just by claiming it?
Amano reached out and tried to pull the card through. An enormous mass of deep black data gathered at his fingertips, and there it was: the terrible Divine card, materializing in his hand as though it had always been his.
He actually had a god card now.
It was a Wicked God rather than an Egyptian God, but in Eden's system the Wicked Gods held genuine Divine status and the Wicked God Fiend-Type just as the cards described.
He did not immediately slot it into his deck. He put it in his side box instead.
A god card obtained through a fraudster's identity ability, with entirely unclear origins, seemed like exactly the kind of thing that deserved careful handling. Using it in ordinary duels felt like a bad idea. There was something about that power that suggested careless use would cause problems far beyond what he could manage.
He secured The Wicked Dreadroot and took a moment to let the tension drain from his shoulders.
The sounds from downstairs remained calm. No confrontation had materialized.
Amano made his way carefully back downstairs.
In the living room, Rin Seiya had reclaimed control of her own body. She was not on Finesse's lap anymore. Whether she had chosen to move or whether Finesse had declined to offer was unclear and beside the point.
The two of them were looking at each other across the room. Neither was saying anything. It looked less like open hostility and more like two people quietly taking each other's measure, examining what the other one had, assessing where they stood relative to each other.
Or possibly they were just looking at each other's faces. Evaluating.
When Amano came down the stairs, both of them shifted their attention to him simultaneously.
Finesse spoke first.
"Amano, it's getting late. Let's head back."
She framed the dormitory as home, which was a small but deliberate choice that did not go unnoticed.
"Cough, cough. I'm still not feeling well, Amano..."
Rin Seiya framing a mild cough as a reason for him to stay was equally deliberate and equally noted.
Finesse reached out without hesitation and pressed her hand flat against Rin Seiya's forehead.
"Her fever is completely gone. If you keep insisting you're unwell, Rin Seiya-senpai, I'll simply stay the night to take care of you."
"That... really won't be necessary... I'm feeling much better, actually."
In every arena outside of dueling, Finesse operated with absolute confidence, and she had just used that quality to outmaneuver the top-ranked student at Synchro Academy without raising her voice.
"Take care of yourself, Seiya-senpai. If anything feels off, you can reach me."
Before Amano left, Rin Seiya pressed a card into his hand.
"Take this with you."
AMORPHAGE GOLIATH
LIGHT / Level 1
Dragon / Effect
ATK: 0 / DEF: 0
He could see the reasoning immediately. Rin Seiya had noticed that his deck had no Level 1 Dragon-Type monsters compatible with Convergence Dragon's second effect, the one that recruited from the deck when a Level 8 or higher Dragon Synchro was already on the field. She had borrowed his executor reward, so returning something useful in kind was the natural response. A Level 1 Dragon sitting in his deck was exactly what Convergence Dragon needed to find.
Rin Seiya stood in the doorway and watched them go with a small smile.
"I know tonight ended a little chaotically, but I really am grateful, Amano. Without you I probably wouldn't be standing here right now."
"Don't say things like that. Go rest and come back to school tomorrow looking like yourself again."
"Heh, guaranteed."
RIN SEIYA: Affection +4. Affection: 89.
He stared at the number.
Again? Still stuck at eighty-nine?
He had been circling the ninety-point threshold across every girl's affection rating and had yet to break through it once. Whatever was waiting on the other side of ninety was apparently going to take considerably more effort than surviving a two-god Dark Game.
He said goodbye to Rin Seiya and found Finesse waiting for him at the parking spot where his D-Wheel was parked.
"Strange, Gong-san didn't drive tonight?"
"I sent him back ahead of me."
As she said it, she patted the rear seat of his D-Wheel with one hand.
"I heard you bought a D-Wheel. I wanted to experience it for myself. You're not going to be too stingy to give me a ride, are you, Amano?"
"Of course not. Having you on the back is an honor."
"Ha ha, good to hear."
Finesse took the spare helmet from him and began inspecting it. She paused.
"Whose hair is this?"
Not this again.
"Kikawayu's," Amano answered without missing a beat.
"Oh, Kikawayu's." Finesse pulled the long black strand out slowly and studied it. "Since when did Kikawayu have hair this long?"
Because the person whose hair actually was that long would not be satisfied with being called Kikawayu forever, Amano thought but did not say.
Finesse dropped the hair into the passing wind without ceremony.
"Never mind. I can probably guess. And I'm not blaming you either. I've just been too busy lately and missed my priority claim on your back seat."
Amano had always known, in a general sense, that Finesse was a genuinely good person beneath the sharp edges.
But tonight she was giving him a feeling he hadn't quite experienced before. Something along the lines of: no matter what he had done wrong, Finesse would wrap it in understanding and not make him feel worse for it.
Had something happened at the Wein estate recently?
He mounted the D-Wheel. Finesse wrapped both arms around his waist from behind.
That sensation. He noticed it immediately. The soft quality he had gotten used to from the rare occasions Nanki'in Sakuya rode behind him was notably absent.
The grip Finesse had on him was much closer to what Kikawayu felt like.
This was probably one of Finesse's very few areas of comparative disadvantage, he thought.
Then reconsidered. Perhaps it was not a disadvantage at all.
The D-Wheel roared to life and Amano accelerated into the mid-district night, Finesse behind him.
"You ride really well, Amano!" Finesse called over the wind.
"Thank you, my lady!"
"Any interest in being my personal D-Wheel driver? I'll pay you well!"
"I didn't know motorcycles even had personal drivers!"
"Now you do!"
From Rin Seiya's residential complex to the dormitory district was about a thirty-minute ride. It was already past ten at night, but the mid-district's nightlife was only just getting started and the streets still had plenty of traffic, so Amano kept his speed measured.
There was something genuinely pleasant about riding unhurried through the night with someone behind him.
The pleasant feeling did not last.
A few minutes in, Amano began noticing something was off. Traffic was thinning around them faster than it should have been for the time of night, the other vehicles disappearing from the road without explanation.
One vehicle was not disappearing. A D-Wheel had been keeping pace behind them since a while back, and as the other traffic cleared, it was drawing closer.
The engine sound pulled even with them. Then the black D-Wheel swung sharply to the right and slammed into Amano's side.
He had been watching that D-Wheel and reacted fast enough. He hauled the balance back before the impact could send them over, avoiding a crash.
"What is wrong with you?" Finesse snapped at the other rider from behind. "Can you not control that thing?"
The man on the other D-Wheel said nothing. Under his helmet, his mouth carried a cold, ugly smile.
"Finesse, that was deliberate!" Amano had just noticed something alarming: after being hit, his D-Wheel's duel interface had activated on its own.
A Riding Duel.
Here. In the middle of the city streets.
This was not how things worked in Eden. The mid-district was not New Domino City from the 5D's anime. In the show, Riding Duels generated energy that the city ran on, so when one started, emergency race lanes deployed automatically and all other traffic was forced to clear the road. Eden had no such infrastructure. Street Riding Duels were prohibited by regulation, limited to dedicated tracks with proper facilities.
And the duel had been activated without his consent, which was a separate problem entirely.
That combination of factors carried one obvious explanation.
"Dark Game!" Finesse felt something dark coiling around her feet.
"A Riding Duel Dark Game forced onto open city streets?" Amano's jaw tightened. "He's trying to turn the entire city into a battlefield."
Two Dark Games in one night was an intensity of strain that compounded badly. The physical and mental fatigue from running consecutive Dark Games did not add linearly: it multiplied. But that was not the worst part of his current situation.
The Dark Game had targeted Finesse, not him.
He was the one physically riding the D-Wheel. But the Dark Game had been initiated against Finesse specifically. Which meant Finesse was the duelist who needed to play. And there was no way for him to duel from behind the handlebars while she was on the back, and no way to swap positions at speed.
Dirty tactics. Genuinely dirty.
"Finesse, do you know how to ride a D-Wheel?"
"I don't!"
Worse and worse. And his D-Wheel, the Moonlight Butterfly, had no autopilot function.
A D-Wheel caught in a Dark Game could not be stopped. It had to keep moving. And using Hacker Invasion on Finesse while he was the one riding would knock him unconscious and send both of them off the road immediately.
In a Riding Duel, a crash counted as a loss.
He was still working through the problem when a third engine sound forced its way into the Dark Game's perimeter.
Not a D-Wheel this time. A black sports car, convertible top down.
Finesse recognized it instantly.
"That's my brother's car!"
"Karl's?" The problem cracked open in Amano's mind and a solution fell through.
Karl's convertible pulled alongside them, matching their speed, keeping pace.
"Karl, what are you doing here?"
"You took my student ID and I had a bad feeling about it, so I came to check. I was right to, wasn't I? Dark Game, Finesse! The Puppeteer's work again!"
"Pull in closer!" Amano shouted over the wind.
"That voice, is that Amano Rei?" Karl's eyes flashed with surprise and confusion at the helmeted figure ahead of him.
"No time to explain! Finesse, listen carefully. I'm going to jump to Karl's car. While I'm doing that, you need to keep the D-Wheel upright somehow."
"Me? But I told you I can't ride!"
"You don't have to ride it. Just hold on and don't let it fall over. I need thirty seconds. Less. I'll take over from the other side."
Finesse swallowed once, hard and fast, then pulled herself together.
"Understood. I'll manage. I trust you, Amano."
Amano pushed the throttle up before releasing the handlebars. A higher speed meant more forward momentum by inertia after he let go, buying Finesse a few extra seconds to grab the handles and stabilize. He needed every one of those seconds.
Karl, reading the situation without needing a full explanation, pressed his accelerator down and kept the convertible locked in parallel.
One last precaution before the jump. Amano reached into his side box, pulled a card, and slipped it into Finesse's card case.
"Here goes, Karl! Catch me!"
On a street at speed in the dark, Amano left the D-Wheel and threw himself sideways into the open convertible.
"Amano Rei, you are out of your mind!"
He said it, but his hands were already moving to meet the trajectory, and the catch was clean.
Amano landed in the passenger seat with his pulse at a level he had not previously experienced outside of an active duel. He felt considerably like a stuntman in an action film.
"Why did you leave Finesse alone on that thing?"
"I'm taking over right now!"
He had no time for anything else. His Eva Terminal blazed gold in the dark as he activated it, a streak of light cutting through the night air.
"Hacker Invasion!"
He crossed through Finesse's pale crimson consciousness corridor at maximum speed and completed the handover in her soul room.
"Switching in!"
When Amano's awareness came back, he was on the D-Wheel again.
He could feel it immediately through Finesse's palms: the sweat-damp grip of hands that had been holding on with everything they had.
"You did great, Finesse."
The night wind caught Finesse's pale crimson hair and pulled it out behind him as he steadied the D-Wheel and brought it back under full control.
The other rider had turned this entire stretch of city road into a Dark Game battlefield. That meant holding back was no longer an option.
Amano reached into Finesse's card case, found her deck, and retrieved the card he had slipped in before the jump.
***
can't this guy get a break? lol.