Dueling life in a futuristic world

After that brief altercation with the cheerleader from the Spring Forest Institute. Me and Haruna went check up on Nanako. We are presently walking through the now busy halls of the space station. After the tournament started, the spacious felling went away, as more and more sweaty dueling fans filled the hotel rooms and restaurants. It’s to the point where you can barely walk from point A to point B without bumping into someone after a match.

*Bump*

Proving my point, I bump into a tall man wearing a sports jersey with the initials of some team on it. I look up and apologize. “Ahh. Sorry.”

Unfortunately, instead of nodding and walking away, he stops in front of me and bids. “Hey baby, do you cheer for one of the teams or are you also a fan?”

“Errr… I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy right now.” I delicately utter.

“So you are from one of the cheer teams!” He exclaims. “Wanna grab a drink later tonight? Me and my buddies have reserved a private room at one of the fancy bars.”

“I-I’m sorry. Hmm, I can’t!” I say and hurry away from this awful encounter and next to Haruna, who’s looking back and giggling.

“What a stud you got there. Did you get his number? If you aren’t going to hit that, I might.” She offers in a sultry voice, looking back at him and flashing a piece of paper with a twelve character hexadecimal number I recognize as a global net ID.

I’m already used to her being like this with guys, so I ignore that and instead groan and question. “Arrg. Are you sure we shouldn’t have changed before coming here? I know you don’t care about getting lecherous looks and catcalls from men, but I’m not interested.”

We continue walking through the station as she shows a shrewd smirk and teases. “So you'd be fine if they were from women?”

I blush and scratch the back of my head. “Yeah, probably. But that doesn’t matter in this sausage fest.”

She does her signature move of smacking me in the back. “Come on Yuumi! Losen up, you’re a cheerleader, you should WANT people to look at you.”

Letting go of a deep sigh, I say. “I DO want people to look at me, but that’s in the arena during a duel. Not after.”

She shrugs. “Then you should get used to it. Come on! You’re naturally atractive. A lot of women would kill to be like that without nanobot modification or genetic treatments. And many still spent hundreds of @’s and take time off work to get the type of attention you gather without trying.”

‘Hundreds of @’s? Not thousands? Fuh, honestly, considering that even the nerds around here look like models, it would be more surprising if something so simple as cosmetic surgery was expensive.’

Anyway, the issue of how people look at me when I’m outside duels has to wait. We finally reach the hospital on board the space station. Its eerily pure white interior with bright white lights is the first thing that catches my eye. The small but noticeable blood splatters around the main entrance, coming in at a close second.

The lobby is filled by many vending machine looking devices with touch panels on them, labels above each identify their function, with names like: 'TheraMed Blood Analysis’, ‘Psy Full Body Scanner’, and a massive machine covering an entire wall labeled: ‘Hatch Auto Pharmacy.’

We go directly to a counter beside a red and white metal sliding door. Haruna navigates the menus on a touch panel placed a top the desk. When she’s finished, a hologram starts to form behind the counter, much more slowly than the ones from a duel disk. The hologram settles into the figure of a short nurse with rosy red hair and crimson eyes, wearing a red and white sleeveless, backless jumpsuit with shorts.

<A/N: Based on Injection Fairy Lily>

She bows lightly and greets. “Thank you for choosing me as your guide.” She turns to the sliding door, which opens for her, she then looks back and offers. “Please follow me into the patient’s room.”

We do so and follow the hologram through the cramped white corridors inside the clinic. There’s the occasional blood splatter, but, overall, the space is meticulously clean.

Meanwhile, I try to sift through my memories to find what the hell this hologram is about, but unexpectingly; I draw a blank. So, turning to Haruna, I ask in a whispered tone. “By the way, what’s that all about?” pointing to the hologram.

She shrugs. “A personal assistant hologram. You wouldn’t find them planetside. They’re used for menial tasks and service jobs, but the operating cost alone is higher than minimum wage.”

‘That seems… Counter-productive.’ “Then why do they use them up here?”

Haruna shrugs. “Something to do with manpower cost in space, but I don’t really know. Naeko is way more knowledgeable on this stuff.”

I’m left with that response while we enter the one of the rooms along the seemingly endless halls of the facility.

In the center of the room, there’s a wide hospital bed with a large screen at the bottom. On it, lays Nanako with extensive bandaging along her tummy coupled with IV tubes and probes. She’s happily conversing with Naeko, who sits on a stool on her right. The room is scarcely populated, lacking the equipment, wires and IV drip stands I’d associate with a hospital room. But the lack of a window and reliance on artificial lighting leaves it with an empty artificial feeling which doesn’t help mask the overly sterile smell of the air.

Naeko finally notices us and stands up. “Hey girls, how was the match?”

Haruna responds by holding up her phone with an image of the result screen. “It was a close call, but Mia pulled it off in the end.”

She nods. “Good, unfortunately Nanako took quite a hit.”

The hologram which entered the room before us holds up a projected clipboard and tells. “The patient has extensive internal scaring. We’re currently treating with sped up natural regeneration maintained by nanobots, but it’s risky to accelerate the process any further. It’ll take at least a week to two for the process to finish.”

This answer leaves me regretting not breaking that bitch’s nose. There was no reason for them not to at least warn us that this was a possibility if one of us got hit and now one of our members was out of commission for at least half of the tournament.

Haruna’s probably thinking the same thing as I notice her tightening both her hands into fists and her face scrunches up. “Fucking jealous bastards! I’m reporting this to the organizers. There’s no way I’m letting them hurt any other squad!”

“Calm down, Haruna.” Nanako speaks. “You know they won’t do anything.” She continues.

She rushes to Nanako’s side. “Sorry Nana, you know that type of stuff hits a nerve with me. How are you feeling?”

Nanako sighs. “I’ve been better, but I’m not feeling bad either.”

We spend a good chunk of the afternoon getting Nanako and Naeko up to speed, telling them about how the duel progressed after they left.

I excuse myself not long after seven O'clock, citing the need to take care of some stuff with the Director. I was vague, but they didn’t pester me about it. Of course, the reason for me having to speak with the Director was the notice from the council Sonia gave me.

This issue has been pestering me since she brought it up. It's not that I fear having to fight in a war. No, it’s just that I don’t want to owe my father anything, and taking his offer would land me right in front of him. Running away is even less ideal. I would be a fugitive in case I just ran away and a political chess piece if I sought asylum. The best-case scenario is the director pulling me out of this, and some research tells me he should be able to do it with little effort. Every academy has a defense force which counts as being part of a unit in case of war. I’m already part of the ADC in the NWDA, so, for all intents and purposes, I shouldn’t be eligible to be taken to another unit. Obviously, the council ‘overlooked’ this little fact, intending to grab by surprise. But if the Director calls them out, I would expect they’d be forced to let me go.

But this is all speculation. I’ve already called him requesting to discuss something important and that should clear this up. I tend to overthink in situations like this, but the multiple options available to me right now allow me to breach this much more calmly than if I had nothing else to fall back on.

Arriving at the Director’s suite, I knock on the door and say. “Hello Director, It’s me, Yuumi.”

I hear some movement on the other side of the door before an audible click and the door slides open, revealing the Director wearing a simple shirt and gym pants. He looks down and offers. “Good afternoon, Yuumi. I got your message. Want to tell me what this is about right now, or do we need to sit down first?”

Nodding, I respond. “It would be better if we sit down.”

He sighs and urges me to enter his room.

I get an urge to say something like. “A director letting one of his students into his room? Oh, my! How lewd!” But the seriousness of the situation makes me let that up. With that said, his room is really impressive compared to ours, but I already suspected that.

He tells me to sit down next to an office desk while he grabs another chair and sits down opposite of me. He crosses his arms and lets go of a deep sigh, then asks. “So, what did you want to tell me?”

I take a deep breath before grabbing a folded sheet of paper from one of my pockets. I unfold it and pass it over to him.

Light deliberately reaches for it and starts reading it over. His face grows more and more wrinkled as his eyes hover over the letters on the page, also narrowing. It doesn’t take an expert to realize he’s pissed.

After what seems like ages, he slowly lays the piece of paper on top of the desk and tightly closes his eyes, rubbing them using a single hand. Finally, he lets go of a another deep sigh and asks. “When did you get this?”

“I got a notification of a snail mail letter arriving yesterday, went to grab it after the duel.”

He nods. “Yeah, that sounds about right for them.”

“For them? Who’s ‘Them’ exactly? The council?” I question.

The Director shakes his head. “Not the council exactly, just the top heads of the council. Directors of the major dueling academies in Dragoon City, to be more precise.”

‘Sounds about right. They’d be the only ones who’d be so jealous they might try something like this.’ “I already have a good idea, but why would they try something like this? Isn’t it self sabotage? Wouldn’t I be better as a propaganda piece in the Union, for example?”

Light nods. “Most likely, yes, but those geezers won’t let common sense stop their little revenge plan.” He spins around on his office chair and grabs something. “As you’ve probably guessed, this is a petty move they’re trying to pull on me to get you to join their side. If their plan had worked, you’d conveniently get an offer to join one of their academies right as you finished basic training and were on your way to the front lines.”

I shudder, even thinking about it. That would be a good way to get myself killed and seeing that in the long term, my only actual condition for reincarnating is not doing that. It would’ve been tragic. But Light was already talking like that wouldn’t happen, so I press on. “How are you proposing to get me out of this? I know about the ADC and that I would’ve been ineligible to be drafted because of it, but how are you going to do it?”

Finally, turning his chair back to me, he simply smirks and declares. “Don’t fret. You don’t need to worry about any of that. I will call my contacts at the council and get this dealt with. One of the four still owes me a favor.”