Phil ended up walking to a hardware store about a mile away from the station and using a pair of metal snips from aisle 14 to cut the coin in half. He wasn’t completely sure what would count as ‘destroying’ it, but cutting the object in half seemed like a good start.
As it turned out, Phil was right about that. The metal snips, ones made specifically to cut through tin or thin sheets of harder metal, sliced through the coin like a hot knife through butter. Immediately there were physical changes in his surroundings. The lights in aisle 14 sputtered and dimmed. Ghostly screams echoed through the nearby aisle 13, which was for some reason selling various audio equipment. He still couldn’t understand why a hardware store would sell stuff like that, but more power to them.
The screams intensified, and then all of a sudden, the store was quiet once more aside from the faint echoes of old ‘Beetles’ hits playing over the store intercom, like how it had been when Phil first walked into the place.
“Thank you.”
Phil jumped a few inches in the air as the faint, ghostly voice of a woman whispered in his ear. His right shoulder became bitterly cold, the sensation moving slightly to make him almost think that someone, or something, was patting it. Then, the cold sensation vanished, and Phil was alone once more with echoes of ‘Hey Jude’ spinning through his ears, looking at Lumina, who was sharing a similarly shocked expression.
Phil gingerly placed the metal snips back on the rack with the others and speed-walked out the door.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil stretched and twisted his body, practically jumping off of the twisted iron of the bench he had been sitting on for what felt like an eternity. Forty-five minutes past midnight. Showtime. It was finally time to get out of the damned city. Every second Phil spent in St. Louis felt wrong. Like he was being watched. Throughout the time Phil had spent waiting and watching the train station, he had seen several cars slowly circle the station. Over and over again. As if they were looking for someone.
It could just be some weirdo drug dealers.
But the paranoid part of Phil remembered the words of Conspicuous Sam. See, the thing about men who knew of their rapidly approaching and inevitable death, was that any words spoken by them could be treated in one of two ways: they're telling the truth because they don't have a horse in the race anymore and don't care, or they're lying as one last 'fuck you'. One of two, with a potential third option of telling the truth for the ‘fuck you’ if the truth is more dangerous than a lie.
The weird part about it all was that even if Conspicuous Sam was indeed lying and no one else was looking out for Phil, it still legitimately did not hurt him to keep a lookout and hide from potential enemies. All he had to do was ask Lumina nicely to keep her eyes peeled, on account of the fact most people couldn’t see her, and then hit the ground pretending to be a passed-out homeless guy whenever she warned of a car approaching. He certainly looked the part by now.
That strategy had worked more times that day alone than Phil had fingers to count with, and by the time his train was pulling into the station to swap crews, Phil had managed to avoid dueling even a single time while in St. Louis.
“Goodbye St. Louey, you won’t be missed, and fuck you for good measure!” Phil hollered as soon as he hopped onto the side of the train, flipping his middle finger at the city to drive his point home. The train rumbled, chugging and heaving away at its load of cattle cars to pick up speed and leave the city behind.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Similar to his stay in St. Louis, the train ride to New York City was strangely uneventful, which unnerved Phil to a serious degree. He was pretty sure there were people in St. Louis looking for him. No other reason for the area around the train station to have as many cars slowly driving around as it had during his stay. Conspicuous Sam had mentioned a psychic was in play. A psychic that was specifically tracking Phil. So why wasn’t there anyone stopping him? Hell, if Phil was in their shoes and knew about the train, he would have just blown up the fucking tracks and called it a day. Tannerite was easy enough to get, and legal too. Pack enough of that stuff around the tracks to go boom and Phil would be stalled for a few more days at the least, maybe stretching to weeks at most if he was forced to walk or hitchhike.
But there was no Tannerite packed around the tracks, and the train arrived in one piece at the yards outside New York City. Unfortunately for Phil, there was however one difference in his arrival in New York City compared to the other places the train stopped - someone actually noticed him chilling in one of the cattle cars.
Lumina watched with a deadpan look as Phil was thrown bodily from the empty cattle car by the annoyed conductor, hissing and spitting like an angry cat being chucked into a large body of water. Unlike a cat, Phil did not land on his feet, but it did not take long for him to regain his footing and start sprinting away from the train as the conductor began to scream about calling the cops.
“What a way to stick the landing!” Lumina giggled once the train was out of sight.
Phil shook his head. "Yeah fuck that dude. I was on my way off anyway. Why’d he have to throw me? What a dick move. How rude.” He shook his head again in irritation. "Right. The next step is to figure out where in the city the American Duel Academy is. Then I'll start the stakeout and see if I can contact David Rabb. Hopefully, he hasn't been caught and re-possessed by Tragoedia.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil spent a few hours poking around the city and getting the lay of the land before he realized someone was following him. Lumina saw him first and instantly called out a warning to Phil.
“Phil, eyes up. I see Dimitri.”
His blood ran cold upon hearing the words he had been expecting for days. Still, a part of him was a little bit surprised to hear them so soon after arriving in the city.
“Where?” Phil whispered discreetly to Lumina, making sure to avoid turning his head so that Dimitri wouldn’t realize he had been spotted.
“The alley you just passed. He looks rough. What’s your plan?”
“Not much of one.” Phil readily admitted. “Get him in an area where I don’t have to worry about collateral damage and finish things. If I can still save him by icing Dark Necrofear, I’ll do that, but if not… at this point it’s a mercy kill.”
Lumina nodded grimly and gently patted him on the shoulder. Phil pivoted to face the alley and took the plunge like he was jumping into a lake of pure ice water.
“Dimitri. Or is it Dark Necrofear now?” Phil verbally acknowledged in a neutral voice once the boy came into view. Lumina mentioning he looked rough was a bit of an understatement. Various parts of his body had large dents, with the biggest one being on the upper part of his skull. His clothes, still appearing to be some sort of scavenged cop uniform, were filled with bullet holes surrounded by clots of dried blood. An entire eye was missing from his face and his left arm, which still somehow had a duel disk strapped to it, was bent at a 90-degree angle in a direction Phil knew for damn sure arms weren’t supposed to bend in.
“I am her. All your fault all your fault my child will not wake up.” The same creepy and unearthly voice tumbled out of Dimitri’s bloodied and cracked mouth once more, just like how it had on the train. “Would you be so kind to fall, now? He has made great promises in return for your demise. He shall wake my child and bring back the master.”
Phil let out a disdainful snort. “Yeah, whatever. Cut the bullshit, let’s finish this.”
Phil: 4000 Dark Necrofear: 4000
“Heh heh, such an aggressive child today.” Dimitri’s mouth moved up and down in robotic motions to mimic the ethereal words said by the duel spirit. “You shall look quite wonderful once I spread your organs across the ground. I draw!”
Phil made a slight nod of his head to show his acceptance of his opponent taking the first turn. This would suit him just fine.
“Ahaha! I activate the field spell Dark Sanctuary! Then, I place four cards face down! End turn!”
Dimitri – no, Dark Necrofear, was overtaken with a fit of maddened giggles upon activating the field spell that had given Phil so much annoyance the last time they dueled.
“Okay. Draw phase. Standby phase. Going into main.” Phil momentarily closed his eyes, opening them quickly with a resolute gaze. It was clear whatever tenuous grasp of sanity the enemy duel spirit had was slipping away. “Like I give a fuck. Rule number one of GOAT format. Never set your entire hand. I activate Heavy Storm.”
Right as a dark castle shrouded in fog had finished forming in the distance, a mighty gale burst through the alley like a hurricane had decided to park itself right over the city, causing every single spell and trap card Dark Necrofear had set to be destroyed. Dark Sanctuary, Nightmare Wheel, The Golden Apple, Call of the Archfiend, and Hate Buster. All were destroyed simultaneously before they could be used.
So great were the winds from Phil’s spell card that the darkness brought by the abrupt shadow duel momentarily dispersed, allowing for the faint glimpse of a far-off summer sun to shine through for a second. Phil closed his eyes, drinking in the warmth of the sunbeam landing on his face. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the shadows closed in once more and the surroundings were silent apart from the scattered panting and giggling noises coming from his opponent.
“Next, I activate the spell card Confiscation. By paying 1000 life points, I look at your hand and force you to discard a card. Since you have only one card left in your hand, just pitch that one. I don’t care what it is. Then I normal summon Skilled Dark Magician (1900/1700) and go to battle phase. Direct attack. Enter main phase two, set one card. End turn.”
Phil: 3000 Dark Necrofear: 2100
As soon as the silent, blue-robed magician finished blasting Dark Necrofear with arcs of yellow lightning, it was her turn once again. Dark Necrofear’s free hand began to claw at the remains of Dimitri’s face as she drew a card.
"Mhm, it hurts so good! If this child meant so much to you, perhaps I should have hurt him earlier. I summon Spirit Reaper (300/200) in defense position. End turn.”
“It leaves you wide open! Always set Spirit Reaper!” Phil roared out. “During your end phase, I activate Ring of Destruction! The target is Spirit Reaper!”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
A dark ring of grenades formed around the neck of the zombie grim reaper, detonating the monster and peppering both of the duelists with cruel pieces of shrapnel from the monster’s scythe.
Phil: 2700 Dark Necrofear: 1800
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Lumina watched Phil dismantle his opponent with wide eyes and stifled breath while she hid behind a trash can. It was just like against Bernardello. Not a duel. An execution. Brought forth with surgical precision. Her mind whirred as she processed it all. Was this what Phil was capable of, even without his strongest deck? What about the train? What had been different?
The potential answer to the question in her mind arrived instantly. Was this… was this Phil acknowledging that there was likely no hope of saving Dimitri anymore?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil began his turn. In the back of his mind, he noted with mild interest that the Spirit Reaper must have been following the errata’d card text that made it self-destruct on the resolution of a targeting effect, instead of immediately upon being targeted. The front of his mind utterly disregarded that pointless bit of trivia, instead focusing on moving his hand to draw a card.
“And it’s over in four turns.” Phil coldly announced. “Draw phase. Standby phase. Going to main. I normal summon Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer (1800/700). Battle phase. Skilled Dark Magician, attack directly.”
That was it. The very second Dark Necrofear’s life points were drained to zero, Phil sprang into action.
“D.3.S. Frog! Avoid the kid, it’s open season on Dark Necrofear!”
The lightning from Skilled Dark Magician’s staff instantly halted in thin air. It was still able to completely set his opponent’s life points to zero, but not even a single electrified tendril latched onto Dimitri’s body. It was like the attack itself hit an invisible, impenetrable shield. A suffocating shadow burst out from under Phil’s mustard yellow uniform, heedless of the showers of coal dust that drifted off the fabric with its every move. The surroundings became as cold as ice and Phil’s breath billowed out into the air as he stared intently at the proceedings.
Then, he saw it. By now the sight was no longer as terrifying as it used to be. It was familiar. Almost comforting. The sign of his most powerful ally, the harbinger of victory.
D.3.S. Frog burst through the thin sheet of reality with a furious, croaking roar of hunger. His pink eyes blinked and moved like the targeting system of a missile launcher searching for an airplane. Gigantic spikes that seemed like the size of grown men littered his forearms. In fact, Phil was quite sure they were the size of grown men, for there was a body impaled to one of them. It bore a face he hadn’t seen for months at this point, and the last time he had seen it, the owner of the face was experiencing his body being torn apart by forces beyond mortal comprehension. It was Bernardello. His mouth was set in a wordless scream, and his eyes wept constant streams of blood, even though there was no life in his face. A dead man stuck in an endless cycle of torment. Phil tore his eyes away from the hideous shape of Bernardello’s body and moved them along. The tan underbelly. The two whiskers next to the gigantic frog’s mouth wiggled in the air like tentacles.
D.3.S. Frog’s mouth opened to reveal a cavernous maw. It opened further, and further, and further like a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow prey larger than its own body.
Phil shuddered as Dark Necrofear let out a horrifying, ear-piercing scream of rage and hatred so loud that every inch of glass Phil could see in the distant streets shattered like they had been hit by a wrecking ball. Dimitri’s body lurched, but it was like it was being held in an invisible vice grip. Bit by bit, the air in the alley picked up speed until it felt like Phil was standing in front of a jet engine.
Just as it began to feel like Dark Necrofear would resist the pulling force of the frog’s breath, the faint outline of a blue woman with smooth, porcelain skin detached from Dimitri’s body. As soon as the last bit of Dark Necrofear detached from Dimitri’s flesh, there was an instant change in the duel spirit’s behavior. Her skin cracked like it was a piggy bank being hit with an iron hammer. Her screaming intensified to the point that the bricks making up the walls in the alley began to crack from the force, and each one of her limbs were pulled in so many directions that the tendons connecting them began to snap like thin ropes one by one with high-pitched ‘cracking’ noises.
Dark Necrofear’s eyes were the first to go. They popped like blood-filled grapes. Her jaw followed next, dislocating from her smooth, blue face as it tore away from her head and flew into D.3.S. Frog’s maw.
After that was her skin. Chunk by chunk it peeled away from Dark Necrofear’s broken skeleton and flew into D.3.S. Frog’s mouth like a box of gore-soaked chicken nuggets. Her bones splintered into tiny, thimble-sized fragments. Her organs spun through the air, freed from the confines of her spiritual body to race into the maw of the frog.
Once Dark Necrofear’s screaming cut off, Phil tore his eyes away from the scene and ran over to Dimitri, who had collapsed in an unmoving heap once the duel spirit had separated from his body.
“Hey hey Dimitri you reading me dude?” Phil kneeled next to him and roughly slapped the kid’s cheeks. There was no reply. Undeterred, Phil placed his index finger and middle finger on Dimitri’s wrist, and leaned over to place his head over Dimitri’s heart to listen for something. Anything.
Phil’s shoulders shook as he desperately clawed through fading memories of the CPR class he had taken while in Boy Scouts all those years ago. He began chest compressions with his elbows locked and his hands centered on Dimitri’s chest.
Halfway through the first set of compressions, he could feel one of Dimitri’s ribs break. A normal side effect of CPR. Phil soldiered on, finishing the compressions and moving his head to force some air down Dimitri’s lungs while one of his hands held the boy’s nose shut.
Again, and again, and again.
But there was nothing. Phil leaped to his feet and ran out onto the street. He grabbed a thick shard of glass from one of the windows that burst, the first one he saw. The edges of the shard cut deep into his palm, but he ignored the stinging sensation and ran back to Dimitri. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Phil brushed past Lumina, who was looking at him with unspoken pity in her eyes. He kneeled down next to Dimitri once more, and held the glass directly over the boy’s lips, close enough that the glass almost touched skin.
There was still nothing.
No pulse.
No heartbeat.
Not even a slight fogging of the glass from an outgoing breath.
Phil stumbled backward and sat with his back against the hard brick wall. His hands ran through his hair with mechanical motions. He closed his eyes.
“D.3.S. Frog, can you see Dimitri’s soul? Is it around?”
The duel spirit shook its mighty head, offering a croaking rumble before fading away into the darkness of the alley.
Lumina carefully moved towards her friend. “If the big guy didn’t see it, his soul must have already entered the cycle of reincarnation.” She offered. “The souls of the dead do not tend to stick around long. I doubt Dark Necrofear was sane enough to think about carding it.”
Before Lumina took more than a few steps, she halted as Phil rocketed to his feet.
“Gotta leave.” He was halfway out of the alley before Lumina could process his words. “Gotta call Roland.” Phil elaborated while sprinting towards a payphone.
Phil dug out the business card Roland had given him before they parted ways at the airport. Each coin sounded like the tolling of a colossal bell as Phil slotted the change into the machine.
Roland answered on the second ring. By the sound of it, the man was frantic. Worried.
“Phil! Where are you? We lost contact with the man Mr. Kaiba sent to watch you. Are you hurt? Do you need extracting?”
“No.” Phil’s voice was cold. Almost robotic. “I need a favor. There’s a dead kid here in an alley near…” He poked his head out of the booth and squinted at a sign in the distance. “Near Tenth and Broadway. The police might be picking it up soon. Can you… can you take care of it? The kid was a student in duel academy if that justifies your involvement. His name was Dimitri.”
“Wha-“
Phil slammed the phone into the receiver before Roland could finish his sentence. He turned back to look at the alley in the distance.
“Fucking hell.” He muttered. Phil violently kicked out at the door of the phone booth. Being glass and already weakened by Dark Necrofear’s scream, it predicably shattered, with several shards embedding themselves in his ratty pair of tennis shoes.
“Fucking hell.” Phil repeated.
“Phil… I can… I’ll check with my bosses. If Dimitri’s soul really has entered the cycle of reincarnation, there will be a log of it somewhere. Paperwork. Some forms. Even if my company wasn’t involved, someone should know something about it. I can’t do anything to bring him back, but I’m sure he’ll be sent somewhere nice. His only mistake was to trust the wrong man. Everything else? That was on Dark Necrofear. And with how pissed D.3.S. Frog was, I imagine her fate is worse than anything the cycle could conjure.”
Phil sighed. The tension in his body bled out in one fell swoop until his shoulders sagged with exhaustion. “Thanks.”
Lumina followed behind Phil as he began to walk down the road, away from the increasing sound of sirens.
“So… what now? Tragoedia?”
Phil shook his head. “No. Not today.”
“Then wh- oh.” Lumina’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates once she saw the sign across the street and put two and two together. “No. No! The last time this happened, you were a mess! If the professors had caught you, Syrus, and Jaden trespassing at the dorms, you'd have been expelled! Just think about how hard it would be to get involved with the Light of Destruction and Yubel events after that!”
“Today, I don’t care. I’m going to get a drink. I’m going to get blackout fucking drunk and do my best to forget that I killed a kid. I killed him on the roof when I didn’t have D.3.S. Frog penalty game the duel spirit. I killed him on the train when I took too long to close out the game. I killed him in that alley back there when I was too stupid to think of a way to get his soul back. And I want to forget that. All that stuff you’re saying, I don’t care. I just don’t fucking care right now. I’ll deal with it tomorrow when I’m unfortunately sober.
Lumina closed her eyes and let out a long, steady breath as Phil pushed through the doors of an extremely shady-looking bar.
“Fine, you idiot.” She muttered and followed him in. “But I’m sticking with you to make sure you don’t get killed. And if you turn into an asshole again, I'll beat you unconscious with my flip-flop.”
Phil acknowledged her words with a nod and slapped his last bit of cash from Roland on the counter of the bar.
“Cheapest you’ve got. Keep it coming.” He despondently said. The bartender, a real rough, biker-looking fellow, stared at Phil hard, but ultimately shrugged and took the money.
“You got it boss.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ninja Nan watched speechlessly from the roof of a nearby skyscraper as the boy walked into the seedy bar. She blinked, looked away from her binoculars, and then looked back through them.
“It was that easy?”
Big Shoe had mentioned Phillip Jenson’s weakness, but she hadn’t expected it to be this effective. Dark Necrofear wasn’t even an asset at this point. A liability, more like. She knew, Big Shoe knew, everyone knew that Tragoedia wasn’t going to keep his promise of bringing that Dimitri kid and Zorc Necrophades back. Because of that, it was her job to make Dark Necrofear disappear after her usefulness faded away.
But this was hitting two birds with one stone. Nan only needed to guide Dark Necrofear to the boy, and she managed to neutralize herself while destroying the boy’s morale. She could just… go in there after another hour and finish things quickly, but…
Best to call it in just in case. She dialed the number every asset working for Tragoedia knew by heart.
“Hey hey hey, this is ya man DJ Bigggggggg Shoe! You are lucky caller number thirteen! Can I get a good name and address to send the prize to?”
“This is Nan. Cut the crap, Big Shoe. The enemy is isolated in a bar. Body language suggests he’ll be extremely drunk within an hour. Before that, he made a phone call, but the enemy has yet to meet up with any friendlies.”
Big Shoe laughed a big, wild laugh through the phone. “Woah woah! Listeners, we’ve got the very picture of competence here, on the phone with us right now! Hey, if you think you can take him, then go ahead tiger. The cards are still giving me one big empty black hole around him, so no telling what happens. Just, eh, just make it discreet. Word on the street is that crazy bitch iced one of Kaiba’s guys on the way over here.”
Ninja Nan hung up on her grandiose associate without another word and considered the scenario with the new intel at her fingertips. Seto Kaiba was involved. That made things much more complicated. The question at the forefront of her mind was worth considering. Was Seto Kaiba’s involvement simply on the outskirts? Or was he personally involved?
Personal involvement would be bad. Very bad. It would require Tragoedia’s direct intervention. But word on the street was that Kaiba was busy with some sort of project. His public appearances were practically nonexistent now.
The other thing that bothered her was that even though Phillip Jenson was isolated and inebriated, Big Shoe still found it impossible to directly scry or read the fate of the boy. They were in the same city by now. It should be a piece of cake for a psychic as powerful as that man. And if Big Shoe couldn’t apply his abilities directly to Phillip Jenson while they were in the same city, then Nan would have to increase her caution a hundredfold.
She nodded to herself. Yes. A hundredfold. Nan hadn't lived as long as she had without being cautious, listening to her gut, and fully understanding every bit of intel she was given. She brought the binoculars back to her eyes and settled in to wait.
Yes. Perhaps the bar was a distraction. Perhaps Phillip Jenson was using it to check for tails instead of getting drunk. It would be a masterful act to put on, but possible. Ninja Nan finished making up her mind and settled in for the wait. She would watch. She would listen. And when Phillip Jenson found those allies Big Shoe mentioned, she would be able to hand the defenders of the American Duel Academy a full report of the enemies’ capabilities.