Disclaimer! All fictional entities featured in this story belong to Kazuki Takahashi, except Sara Scinner and Silpheed, who are mine. Goodness, can you imagine the rental fees I pay to do this? This has been beta-read by ChazzyLuverGurl.

Act Nine

After that incident with the Jell-o, Sara and Silpheed scrapped their messaging business for a brand-new idea that had struck her over the head with a frying pan when she had drained that whole carton of chocolate milk. While it was true that one could probably make a lot of money if he didn’t keep spending it on trivial things like candy, they wound up going back on that rule so that could make money. They were bound to break it some time, anyhow.

They spent all they’d found on chocolate bars.

Chocolate: happiness wrapped in cellophane, thought Sara with a mile-wide grin. If anyone can resist its smooth, sweet goodness, I’d like to know who and how! It’d be a lie to say that she wasn’t tempted once or twice to dig into their stock. Only two thoughts kept her from doing so: seeing the smiles on their potential customers’ faces, and collecting that ten billion yen that she was sure would take no time at all.

The feathered pair spent most of that day wandering about the island, looking for customers. True, most of them were concentrated at the campus or dormitories, but there were some who preferred to stray out a little further, like on the beach or in the woods. Sara figured that if they could sell at least one chocolate bar to everyone on the island, they would make enough.

During their trek through the woods, she had sent Silpheed to flutter on ahead to catch a birds’ eye view with the promise of Silpheed Snacks as a reward. “Wait up, Silpheed!” she cried after him, the wheels of her skates growling along the rugged pathway.

But Silpheed didn’t wait up. Rather, the wind—or some other great impact—blew him right back to her. And all she knew of it was the thundering crack of holograms and a mouthful of cockatoo feathers as her partner was thrust into her face. It wasn’t long before they were both on the ground: her on her rear, him on her lap, dazed and flinching.

“Love of Farley, what the heck was that?” she sputtered, spitting out a few white feathers. “Silpheed, are you okay?”

Silpheed’s feathers fluffed up until he looked like a duster. “RAWK! Man!”

“Ah, did you find somebody? Awesome-nity, Silpheed, old buddy, old pal! You deserve two Silpheed Snacks for that!” So she whipped out the bag to pinch two Snacks in her fingers, which Silpheed destroyed almost instantly. He was never too dazed for Silpheed Snacks, as long as Sara helped to get them into his beak.

As soon as the two found their feet again, they headed for a patch of thick foliage, parting the branches as they peeked over the top. Sure enough, they found a small clearing. A duelist in rags was crouched in the middle of it with Jinzo-like creatures lined up in a row behind him.

Odd; he didn’t wear the standard Duel Academy uniform. Maybe he was a visiting student from elsewhere…a school where the kids went barefoot and wore neat red scarves?

Sara grinned, her hand reaching up to fiddle with her own red scarf as a salesman would fiddle with his tie. She tipped her bucket-hat off of her brow. “Behold: our first customer! I’ll warm ‘im up, and you come in for the kill. All right…ready, Silpheed?”

“THE KILL!”

But before she could spring out of the bushes and yell something random like, “Health to the red scarf," the both of them let out a simultaneous yelp. Something had hissed past her cheek, over Silpheed’s head, and the stinging sensation that it left on her skin felt like a paper cut. Caught off-guard, they were once again on the ground, collapsing through the bushes with a slip of the skates.

Sara found herself eye-to-toe with someone’s grubby foot, Silpheed having retreated to the nearest tree limb to escape the threat. Chocolate bars littered the ground around her, as well as bits of severed crest feathers.

The duelist in rags stared down at her from the tip of his nose, locked in some sort of battle stance. “Who are you?” he demanded. “How dare you intrude in the middle of my training!”

“Hey, hey, easy there, buddy!” said Sara, pulling down the latex beak. “We don’t look for trouble; trouble looks for us, a-ha!” She tried to smile to prove that she was indeed a buddy, only to flinch by the sting in her cheek. Her fingertips revealed small smears of blood as soon as she pulled them away from the throbbing scratch.

“D’oh. Eh-heh…ah, you got us good, didn’t ya? Well, I’m sure you didn’t mean to hit us; we like throwing things, too! Silpheed, see if you can fetch this guy’s…um, whatever he threw at us, will you?”

Respond to contempt with kindness, to hostility with hospitality, to frost with warmth: what better way to sell chocolate?

“RAWK!” Silpheed hadn’t survived the ordeal without an injury of his own, to his body image. His lovely crest was now in shambles, and he was so racked with dismay that that was all he could say about it. But for the sake of selling a candy bar, he did as he was told, dropping the card over the stranger’s head before quickly retreating back into the tree to hide the shame of a ruined crest. The duelist’s reflexes were impeccable, almost like a ninja’s. A snap broke the air as he trapped the card in his fingers.

Sara fumbled around the grass for a chocolate bar, waving it by the stranger’s knee. “We’re, um, we’re selling chocolate! Care for a bar?”

“RAWK! With or without nuts?”

The stranger still seemed distrustful of them. “You expect me to believe that? You might be a spy, sent to weed out my secrets to my enemy.”

Had it not hurt to do so, Sara would’ve crammed her tongue into her cheek by that point. “What enemy? We’re just an independent chocolate-selling group, friend. Oh, here!” She tore away the wrapper at the top of the bar, exposing the chocolate rectangle underneath. “How ‘bout a free sample? If you try it, you might like it.” Shuffling onto her knees, she broke off a piece and held it out to her customer.

The strange duelist plucked the chocolate out of her hand, examining it like a suspicious kitchen knife at the scene of a crime. “There’s a chance that you may be offering me a poisoned chocolate bar. On the other hand…all of this training has left me a bit famished.”

He sniffed the chocolate. Licked it. Nibbled a corner of it, then the other, and the other…and before long the entire chunk had vanished, and the duelist sucked his fingers clean.

“Hmm…your chocolate doesn’t taste poisoned…so I’m assuming that you are indeed just a chocolate salesman; a rather poorly dressed salesman, at that. But I must say, thank you. I’ll need all the nourishment I can get if I’m going to secure the victory and finally destroy my enemy.” He proceeded to gather five chocolate bars off the ground and slide them each into his pockets.

Of course, Sara misinterpreted his smirk as a genuine sign of happiness, her face glowing with happiness of her own (and because her scratch was becoming inflamed). Five chocolate bars sold already! What a giant waddle down the path to stardom!

“Awesome-nity! That’ll be five hundred yen, please!”

The stranger stopped to fire her a glazed look. “Excuse me?”

“Well, you wanted five chocolate bars, and each one is a hundred yen apiece. Five times a hundred yen is five hundred yen…I think,” said Sara, like a little elementary girl solving a math problem. She pushed herself off of the ground and shook herself off. “Silpheed, isn’t five times a hundred, five hundred?”

“Oh…you want payment?” he jeered, unlocking his duel disk as he assumed a sort of battle stance. “All right, I’ll pay you, believe it, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you by giving you the honor of being my practice target!”

The air around the clearing fell deathly still, the way it would seconds before a relentless battle commenced. Sara’s honest response to it?

“Okay, so will that be cash or check?”

____________

The day had finally reared its head. In only a matter of hours, Syrus and Makoto would duke it out by the seaside, locked in a decisive battle over whose dojo was the most superior. In those final hours, Jaden had come to see Zane, to check on his progress while Syrus remained focused on his preparations.

Zane had to admit, while he was proud of Jaden for maturing as much as he had, it felt a bit alien at first to talk to him, perhaps because he had been so accustomed to that trademark twinkle in his eyes that it felt strange to see the edge that had replaced it. Perhaps it was because he didn’t ask if he was going to finish his dinner. Either his appetite had been tamed, or it had just gained a sense of subtlety.

It didn’t bother him that much, though. With everything he had been through, the boy had had to grow up eventually. Everyone had to.

Though that didn’t necessarily mean that everyone did.

Besides, not everything about Jaden had changed. He still had his unfaltering loyalty to his friends, and dueling (that went without saying). In fact, it sounded as if he had been watching Syrus for those past few days.

“He’s doing the best he can. He won’t let you down, Zane, I know he won’t.” Something about the tone of his voice implied that he knew a little more than he let on. So far, the truth about Zane’s deck had only been disclosed between him and his little brother.

But he wouldn’t be Jaden if he didn’t know things, would he…?

Knock-ka-knock-ka-knock-knock!

Thud-dud!

Zane only knew one person who knocked like that, and just as Jaden was rising from his seat, he told him, “Don’t answer the door.”

Jaden raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I just wouldn’t open the door, if I were you.” She’s like a pigeon: the more attention you feed her, the more she keeps coming back.

Jaden stayed frozen for a moment or two, as though pondering what Zane had meant by that.

“What’s wrong? Is someone bothering you?”

Zane was too proud to admit when he had a problem, particularly one as petty as Sara. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he didn’t need to say a word; she made herself known by pressing her face against the window, her knuckles softly rapping on the glass. She always found a way to make herself known. Silpheed was with her, her red scarf over his head like a hood.

“Hey! Hey, Ziti! Hey, Jaden! How’s it going?” The window muffled her voice, but not enough to quell it. She was too loud to be quelled.

Zane noticed the Band-aid on her left cheek, and how scuffed up she looked. The feathers of her cape were in disarray, her bucket-hat perched on the right side of her head. Latex beak dangling around her neck, her lips were sprung into a sort of half-smile, as if it pained her to show a full one, and her eyes were crossed, like she were coming down with a concussion.

She always acted like she was having a concussion.

What kind of trouble had she and the bird gotten into, this time?

Another part about Jaden that hadn’t changed was that if someone knocked on the window, he was bound to answer. Perhaps that came with his role as a big hero? He undid the lock and swung the window open.

Predictably, she lunged in until only about a half-inch gap remained between the tips of their noses. “So how’s it going, Jadey? Still playing the good game?” She blinked, peeking over his shoulder to give Zane a wave.

Jaden looked them up and down, a bemused smile teasing his lips. “Sure, the game is always good…are you all right? What happened to your face?” It seemed he still held that natural solicitude for others’ welfare.

He might as well have launched a bottle rocket. “Awesome-nity is what happened to our faces, fellas! We just started selling chocolate bars today, and we already sold five, all to this one guy we met out in the woods! He was so happy that he let us have the honor of being his practice targets!”

She paused. “Ziti, you’re a rich guy, aren’t ya? How much is that worth in yen?”

Jaden looked back at Zane, silently curious about the odd name she kept addressing him by. Meanwhile, Zane’s hand twitched with the temptation to apply it to his face. It was one thing to get pushed around by stronger people, but to not even know that one had been pushed around…exuded such outrageous levels of pathetic that he only had two words for her:

“That’s worthless.”

A brief, uncomfortable silence plunged between the four of them. Sara appeared stunned. Even Silpheed had to peek out from under the scarf, having been uncharacteristically quiet the whole time.

“Whoa,” breathed Sara. “Didja hear that, Silpheed? We scored a fortune! We’re on our way!”

“Feathers…RAWK! Worthless…”

Why do I even bother?

“It’s okay, Silph, they’ll grow back. I know! I’ll buy you a wig with the extra cash!” She dove into the box she had been lugging around with her throughout the day and wiggled a chocolate bar underneath Jaden’s nose. “Would you boys like some chocolate? Only a hundred yen apiece!”

Zane figured that Jaden only said yes because he liked chocolate, and because he pitied the girl, ever the red-clad Samaritan. “Why not? I’ll take one.”

Sara grinned. “It’s good to know that you haven’t lost your sweet tooth!”

“RAWK! With or without nuts?”

Zane leaned over from his wheelchair and muttered, “Whatever you do, don’t pick ‘with nuts.’”

When Jaden looked back at him with a mute ‘Why?’, he answered, “Trust me: you’d just be setting yourself up for another banal dirty joke.”

“How ‘bout you, Ziti? A little choc-o-latey might do your heart some good! Wikipedia says so!” She said this as if Wikipedia were the fountain of all universal knowledge…one that happened to get its knowledge from random jerks surfing the Internet.

“No, thank you.”

“Sorry, guys, but Zane doesn’t eat chocolate.” Why, oh why, did Jaden have to tell them that?

Sara cupped a hand over her mouth and gasped. “Un-possible! You! Have! Never! Eaten! Chocolate?! Silpheed, is it possible to string those words together like that? Mother of Mirth, no wonder you’re always miserable! Here, just for you, we’ll sell at half the price!”

Zane replied by wheeling his chair so he had his back turned towards them.

“Quarter of the price?”

Not even a snort. His eyes shifted towards the digital clock. 9:25. Thirty-five minutes left. He needed to start the trek to the beach now if he was going to see the duel. But there was no way he could hope to leave the room with those pests spazzing outside.

“Okay, Stubborn Stan, how about a free sample? Come on, don’t knock it ‘til you try it!” huffed Sara, something she hardly ever did. Something small and square sailed across the room, slicing the air like a butterknife—

Thump!

—and made contact with the top of his head. While it did no real physical damage, the instant it tapped him before plummeting to the floor, Zane tightened up like a spring, his grip on the arms of his wheelchair tightening until his knuckles lost their coloration.

“Oops. Th-That was s’posed to go in your lap.”

“RAWK! No lay!” Silpheed squawked in dismay.

“Here, lemme try—“

“Ah, you know? I think you better go. It’s late, and he’s really not feeling too well. Here. Hope this helps.” Jaden’s pocket rattled as he fished for the two hundred yen to pay for both chocolate bars. That Jaden--always winding up having to save them all.

“Make sure he eats the chocolate, will you, Jaden? Ziti really needs it.”

Oh, how he wished he could storm over to window and make her pay, to show her that Zane Truesdale was not someone to throw chocolate bars at and make it out unscathed. But just a few seconds later, he relaxed…physically, anyway. She wasn’t worth it. If she would allow others to run over her, to use her as a “practice target,” she’d be slaughtered, one of these days…especially when—if ever—she found herself in the show-biz world. Eaten alive and spit out, as he had undergone so long ago.

And even if he did go through with hurting her, how could he? One couldn’t accomplish very much in a goddamn wheelchair. He couldn’t even make the journey to the beach without Jaden’s assistance.

He had more important things to worry about, besides.

TO BE CONTINUED…

This chapter might not be very much, but I wanted to leave you guys something before I leave. My dad and I are heading off to Costa Rica, and I won't be around a computer for two weeks.

Adios, amigos! I'll miss you all! Hopefully, this new chapter is a decent parting gift.

Kudos to ChazzyLuverGurl for beta-reading on such short notice for me.