In a modestly sized duel arena a muscular, tanned, red ranked duelist stood. Facing her was another red ranked duelist, this time a tall boy who held an expression filled with worry. Between the two duelists were solid vision monsters, four in total, three next to the girl and one on the other side.

Watching this duel was a small crowd mostly composed of red ranks. The duel had been going on for a while now, but everyone knew this was where it ended.

The tanned girl raised her arm up high and declared. “I tune my level three ‘Accel Synchron’, with level five ‘Junk Speeder’ and level four ‘Armory Arm’ to synchro summon!” the aforementioned monsters floated up high, turning into nine green spheres and three green rings. “COME OUT! DRAGON WHO HOLDS DESTINY! LEVEL 12 ‘SHOOTING QUASAR DRAGOON!’” The spheres moved to the center of the rings and then a beam of green light passed through the middle.

“Argh” Various grunts could be heard coming from the members of the crowd who where too enthralled at the scene in front of them to remember they were supposed to look away from a summoning as big as this one and promptly got blinded by the light it had created. But who could blame them? It’s not every day a red rank could look at a level 12 synchro summon in person. Usually these types of spectacles were reserved to the top 3 ranks, elites even, and here was a red rank pulling it off… It was majestic.

From the blinding light came a gigantic white dragon, which, after the summon concluded, did a few laps in the air, like it was showing off to the now very excited crowd.

After the monster landed and the crowd quieted down, the girl shouted. “Battle Phase!”

Her opponent finally snapped back to reality and, anxiously, pleaded. “I-I surrender! Please! I’m sorry ok? I shouldn’t have said that! Please, don’t hurt me!” at the end of it he was kowtowing down on the floor.

This all started when he made a lusty suggestion to one of the girl’s friends, a decision that he, and his 700LP, now very much regretted making.

As the gigantic dragon grew closer, a pleading shout rang out from the other side of the field. “Stop it Yasuna! He had enough!” it came from the aforementioned friend of the duelist.

Yasuna turned to her and asked. “Really Mia? Did you forget what he said? ‘Hey cutie, mind coming closer? I need to appreciate those goods.’ I think it was?”

Mia gave a scowling look at the pleading duelist. It was clear she was still having second thoughts about it. “Argh, yes, let him go.” she confirmed.

Still apprehensive, Yasuna looked back at the field where her dragon was closing in. “Fine…” - she dragged out - “I accept your surrender, but know I’m only doing this because Mia said so.”

With the magic words said, the duel disk on Yasuna’s arm ramped down with an audible buzzing sound and the projected duel monsters disappeared, leaving a groveling duelist on the other side.

Yasuna walked out of the duel arena, silently, not allowing the other duelists to have any stupid ideas about getting revenge for their friend. Mia and her shy twin sister Aiko hurrying to follow behind the athletic girl.

Getting close to Yasuna, Mia started. “Yasuna, you have to stop dealing with these guys. You know we can handle ourselves, right?”

Yasuna hastily moved in. “As your senior, it’s my responsibility to protect you from noisy upperclass—”

“You know that’s not what I mean, Yasuna!” Mia interrupted. “You weren’t like this before… Ever since Yuumi left you’ve been getting more and more careful with us… What happened?”

…

Silence followed, and Yasuna hurried her step, looking down at the ground on the way.

Mia also hurried her step to confront Yasuna.

Aiko couldn’t keep help but question, “Sis, why did you say that? You know she’s sensitive about that, right?” she snapped, now walking at a pace that could almost be called running.

Her sister, without looking back at her, answered. “Come on, you also noticed. Ever since Yuumi left, she never once let us out of the dorm without tailing us. I understand she doesn’t want a repeat of last time, but this is getting ridiculous.”

“Erg…” Mumbled Aiko, cringing at the mention of “last time” by her sister. She couldn’t say that she was over it… Because she wasn’t. Sometimes she would wake up at night sweating and panting. The laughing, the looks, the… humiliation. She shuddered, even thinking about it.

Even while running to catch up to Yasuna, Mia couldn’t help but notice her sister’s reaction. “I’m.. sorry… I shouldn’t have...”

Aiko remained silent, and Mia didn’t need to be told to shut up.

———

Yasuna ran through the busy intersection between the teaching pavilions and then continued until she arrived at the action duel field, with Mia and Aiko following close behind. It was 2PM and the action duel field was being used by the cheer club for their practice.

After entering through the public entrance, Yasuna and the twins, which were still following her, sat down on the bleachers to the side and looked down at the field.

Down on the field stood a group of girls wearing blue and white - the colors of the NWDA - traditional cheerleader outfits. While in other smaller academies the cheerleading teams usually wear way more revealing outfits (usually form fitting, exposing costumes or just straight up showing of underwear) not to mention the copious amount of chromicolor body paint, nanobot piercings and temporary nanobot-based body modifications which include: animal features, strange eyes, triangle-shaped ears and other body mods. In the NWDA, the practice got treated in a more conservative manner.

Yasuna looked down as the girls started their routine, waving their matching pompoms in a chaotic but synchronized manner. They looked to be copying the movement of a tall pink haired girl that was looking at the group and correcting their movement.

To break the silence, Mia commented. “It looks like she’s having fun.” She was, of course, talking about the purple-haired girl in the front row, who was subject to most of the captain’s attention.

“I guess, but I’m still not convinced this was a good idea.” said Yasuna, not bothering to look away from the field.

“Good idea? What do you mean? It’s not like you could prevent her?” Aiko asked before Mia could.

Yasuna straitened up and looked at the twins. “Well, she asked me for my opinion of the club. If I was a lot more imaginative, I doubt she would have joined.”

Mia couldn’t help but butt in. “That not right! Yasuna, I don’t know what came over you, but she’s her own person. You can’t just betray her trust like that!”

Turning her head to face Mia, Yasuna raised her voice in protest. “Better than see her humiliated like this! For fuck’s sake, she’s a penta-summoner. You’ve seen her duel, right?! And now I see her basically degrading herself to an overpaid private dancer!”

Hearing this come out of the mouth of her friend Mia couldn’t help but let her mouth gape open, an expression that was copied by Aiko to a less noticeable extent.

In most other smaller academies you could easily assume what type of jobs a cheerleader worked during summer, however, in the NWDA the club gets reserved for blue ranks and above (barring special one of a kind opportunities like a natural penta-summoner interested in joining), and people with those ranks could easily get dueling related jobs - like private security guards, first responders, and assistant solid vision civil engineers - or they might be from a family that’s rich enough for them to not need to work for tuition money during the summer. With this being the case, it’s natural the club members would think themselves above slutty outfits, resulting in them using more conservative clothing. Of course, this didn’t mean that the NWDA’s cheerleading club doesn’t have access to these types of outfits, temporary nanobot-based body mods, and other cosmetics. Heck, they probably have more in storage than the academies that used them. The benefit of having much more capable and wealthy members is that the club wasn’t short on funding. But the club didn’t force these outfits and modifications on any of its members, so when the cheer captain thought they should employ them the first thing she’d do was ask for volunteers, most of the time this lead to either no-one using them, or one or two particular brave cheerleader(s) being the spotlight for the whole event and the talk around forums that follow these groups.

Mia tried her best to compose herself and asked the only question on her mind. “What is wrong with you?”

…

…

“I don’t know.” After thinking about what she had just said more deeply, Yasuna couldn’t say more than this. There was no excuse she could say that would make up for what she just called her friend. If Yuumi heard this, she would probably have to rethink her opinion about her.

After a few more moments of silence, Aiko, of all people, moved in. “Please Yasuna… Tell us what’s wrong… Let us try to help you.”

Yasuna was hesitant to say the least. But seeing no other way to justify herself, she gave in.

“I grew up with two brothers and three sisters and was the oldest one out of the six. I spent all my life taking care of them.”

“What about your parents?” Mia asked, confused why she was the one to take care of her five siblings.

“Oh they were there alright, but I wouldn’t trust my father with a goddam toothpick and my mother? Well, I still don’t know who she is out of the many women my father slept with.”

This revelation made Mia and Aiko reconsider Yasuna’s earlier words.

“Continuing on, we lived up in the corporate housing sector of Dragoon City. Well, I guess my father is still there, but out of my siblings most of them are already adults, a small blessing that was made possible by him realizing he couldn’t handle raising any more kids and getting one of those old implants. Anyway, I’ve seen what happens when you take the concept of following what your heart tells you to the extreme.”

“And you are afraid Yuumi might fall into that trap?” Aiko asked.

“Precisely. She’s been really lucky so far, but her recklessness has already hurt you two.”

Neither Mia nor Aiko could dispute this claim. Even though the two sisters didn’t blame Yuumi for what had transpired, they couldn’t help but recognize it wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t her roommates. Still, they knew where those types of thoughts lead to and they didn’t want to keep pressing Yuumi on a mistake she had already beaten herself up over and tried to make to them by straight up gifting them two complete decks.

“Yasuna, how about we trust Yuumi for now?” Mia interrupted.

“Can you at least explain why that’s a good idea?”

Mia giggled. “Well, I doubt any of us could do anything about what she does. Yasuna, I know this might be hard for you, but sometimes you just need to trust people and understand you can’t and shouldn’t try to control everyone.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know I’m being selfish.”

“Then try to work on that. Anyway, how about you trust Yuumi? from the looks of it, she’s enjoying this.” Mia was mentioning how her friend down on the field was jumping around with the other cheerleaders sporting a dumb smile on her face.

Yasuna also focused on her. She remembered the last time she saw Yuumi sporting that stupid smile was on her first class of the action duel course. “I guess she is. Maybe I should apologize to her, huh? I called her… that, behind her back.”

“You weren’t thinking back there.” Aiko stated.

After confirming this with a simple nod, the group kept spectating the cheer club’s practice until it was time for their evening classes to start. They weren’t the only ones spectating their practice today. Yuumi’s choice to join the club had already started making rounds in the forums and chat groups, so it’s obvious that there would be some students bothering to take time out of their evening break to see the academy’s newest prodigy dancing around and waving pompoms.