ALL NOVEL A Moment of Peace.
'Thoughts'
"Speech"
It's been a couple of months since Annie's first step towards becoming the best duelist there is, with her HEROES by her side she figured that she would prevail. She does have to admit that she did hit some roadblocks in the form of some losses, however, what hero hasn't lost at times. Annie is confident that as long as she keeps improving she would eventually reach her goal of bringing HEROES to the top. There is one thing that she isn't that confident about, and that is figuring out her rival.
For as long as Annie can remember Jack and her have been friends. They spent a lot of time together due to the fact that their parents are long-time friends, meaning that Annie had lots of time to get to know Jack. So Annie likes to think that she knows a lot about Jack, like how he hates to be bored. It always surprise her how quickly he would find something to do if he idles for too long. Even after he started to slowly change a bit after his sixth birthday, Annie is confident she has Jack figured out. However, it's Jack's new interest that confuses her.
When they were younger Jack never really took an interest in Duel Monsters. Yes, he would listen to her when she spend hours talking about it, but he was never really invested in the conversation. There was even a time when Annie thought he didn't know what Duel Monster was, but she quickly realized how silly that thought was. However after the day, Jack opened his first set of packs, Annie noticed Jack's interest in Duel Monster changed. At first, she was happy with the change, as her rival Annie needs Jack to be interested in Duel Monsters, otherwise, their rivalry would fall apart.
However the aspect that he took interest in confused her. Jack does duel with her, and she's happy to see that he does enjoy duelling. But he also took an interest in opening packs and collecting cards. However to Annie, she doesn't really see how just having the cards can be enjoyable, she finds duels way more exciting. But as long as Jack keeps improving as her rival, she doesn't mind Jack's weirder aspects.
Today Annie went to Jack's house to hang out and maybe have a practice duel or two. When Jack guided Annie into his room, he went to the bookshelf and brought out 5 binders. Each with a different label, EVO, Interesting, Annie, Support, and Misc. "Annie have you brought your own cards?"
"HMPH! Who do you think you talking to? Of course, I brought my cards." Removing her backpack, she opened it and took out her deck box and her own binder of cards. "Ok, what do you have for me this time." Jack grinned before opening the binder labelled Annie. Opening it to a page near the end he pointed to a card. Leaning closer she squinted her eyes as she looks at the card. "Elemental HERO Neos?" Her eyes widen and her jaw dropped. She turned to look at Jack in shock. Jack grinned grew as he looked at Annie's expression.
"Yup I managed to trade for it from the kid down the street." Annie nodded, that was another thing she can't really understand about Jack.
'How can he find trading away cards enjoyable? I understand that getting cards to improve your deck, but he doesn't even use half the cards he trades for. Well as long as he's having fun, it doesn't really matter.' opened her own binder. "What's the price?"
"Hmm, do you still have a copy of Unexpected Dai?" Annie nodded, flipping to the end of her binder where she keeps support cards. Taking the card out she handed the card to Jack. Who in return handed Elemental HERO Neos to Annie. Shaking hands as they always do when finishing a deal. "Finally I can't seem to ever pull one of these."
"Whats packs are you opening?"
"Wild." Annie frowned. Wild is the name of the packs that can contain anything. However, unlike more focused packs like the HERO pack she opens, Wild packs contain double the amount of cards. Wild packs aren't popular as no one really wants cards from archetypes they don't use, so people usually just get archetype packs or support packs. "Why would you get those?"
"Because they're more fun to open."
"Wouldn't it be better to get EVO packs?" Jack shook his head.
"I'm pretty happy with my deck and I'm not really looking for a specific card right now. So I figured I might as well open Wild packs."
"Is that why you have those two extra binders." Annie pointed at the binders labelled Interesting and Misc. Jack nodded. She sighed. "Well along as your having fun then I guess there isn't anything wrong with that." Annie was about to ask Jack if he wanted to duel but her curiosity got the better of her. "Is there anything interesting you got from the wild packs?" Jack laughed before opening the misc binder, showing Annie a set of pages. Her eyes widen at the contents.
"See anything familiar about these cards?" How can Annie not find these cards familiar, they were just like her prized shiny card. The only non-HERO card she cares about.
"There's more of them?" Jack nodded.
"Yea I was surprised to see them too. I also found an interesting fact about them." That piqued her interest.
"What?"
"Didn't you find it weird why that card was in a HERO pack despite not being a HERO itself?" Annie thought back to the day she opened the card, She was too excited from opening a shiny card that she never questioned why it was in the pack in the first place. Now that she thought about it, it really was weird that she pulled it from a HERO pack. She shook her head at the question.
"As well as Wild packs that can contain anything, these monsters are also be pulled from certain packs. The packs include Dark Magician, HEROES, Stardust, Utopia, Performapal, and Cyberse to name a few."
"Really!? Does that mean it doesn't have its own pack?" Jack nodded.
"Yea they can't only be found in other packs."
"That's weird, why do you think it's like that?" Jack shrugged.
"Not sure, but I'm guessing that they weren't popular enough to justify it having its own pack. So they just put it in other packs instead of it being a Wild exclusive archetype."
"That makes sense."
"So what do you say? Your interested?" Annie shook her head.
"Nah I'm fine staying with my HEROES."
"Really? Even though you care for that shiny card so much?"
"HMPH! Can you blame me for caring for my one and only shiny card?"
"Well, I think it would be good to branch out to other decks."
"I don't want to hear that from you. It's not like you use any other decks besides EVOs anyways."
"Well I was thinking of branching out, that's what the Interesting binder is for."
"Well, I hope you enjoy doing that, as for me. I'll stick with my HEROES."Jack just shrugged before glancing down at the cards. Annie was about to suggest doing a practice duel before they heard someone downstairs.
"JACK! ANNIE! COME DOWN DINNER IS READY!"
"COMING MOM!/COMING MRS. MARKUS" Annie placed her cards down on the floor before rushing down. While Jack placed his binder down before following Annie.
Unbeknownst to the two kids Annie's deck started to shake and emit a small light. While the cards on the open page of the binder started to glow. This continued before the light died down. A chirp-like noise echoed around the room, before dying out. Leaving the room in complete silence.