School Work

Squall's eyes scanned the book before him, pausing only to scribble down notes every so often. Professor Vari had been kind(cruel) enough to assign a three page paper on monsters types. He had split the class into pairs and Squall had ended up with Kylie de Ché. He didn't know her too well, but she was an obelisk as well so he wasn't too worried about having a bad partner. Squall and Kylie had agreed to meet an hour after class to start the paper. The only reason Squall was here early was to study up on their assignment. Their group had been assigned Warrior type which was not his strength. Thus he found himself here, trying to brush up on the type.

Squall shot another look to his bag where another paper wait for him. Sirius had asked for a full report about the new duel disc as well as it's functions/improvements. Squall gave sigh in annoyance. One paper was more than enough for him, but he had to finish the report to make sure he could keep the duel disc. With gritted teeth he continued his research waiting for his partner to arrive.

The door opened, and Kylie's head popped into the lecture hall, checking if anyone was around. Upon seeing Squall, she smiled, gave a little wave, then came through the door entirely and walked up to where he was sitting. She had a normal bag with her, the long end of her Duel Disk poking out the top, dropping it next to the seat she took, at Squalls left. "Hey, you already working on the assignment?"

"Something like that," Squall replied as he jotted down another piece of information. "The requirements for the paper are quite lengthy this time," Squall mused as he looked over the list. "We need to detail famous monsters of the warrior type, as well as well known support monsters and magic and trap cards." He gave his notes a look thorough before turning to Kylie.

"I don't know the Warrior type too well. Do you know two cards contain the artwork for Marauding Captain aside from the monster card? Reinforcements of the Army was the obvious one, but can you think of another?"

She pulled out her own notebook, and then continued rummaging through her bag whilst replying. "Warrior Returning Alive is one, then there's First-Aid Squad, and I'm not sure if it qualifies, but Mauled Captain if I remember has the same character art." She finally emerged again with her laptop, hooking it up to the powergrid under their desks and opening it. "There's more, guaranteed, but that's what I know from the top of my head."

"That should be more than enough," Squall replied, quickly copying down what Kylie had said. "I was using as a base for why Marauding Captain was one of the best warrior supports." He looked back to the assignment with grimace.

"So how did you want to go about this?" Squall asked. "Did you want to split up the work or try and tackle each topic one by one?" Squall had done both types of partner work and each had their benefits and down sides. He didn't care for one over the other so he decided to Kylie choose. No need to force a decision on her.

"Going through each part together is better. One person types, the other looks up the information, so we'll be fast and there will be consistency in the result. Otherwise you have the problem of my language use then yours, then mine again. This way we'll avoid that. And we're both here now, so it's a lot easier to do."

Squall nodded his agreement. Because they were together they could move faster working as a team. Seeing as Kylie already had her laptop out Squall made the assumption that she was going to type leaving him with research duty. Squall quickly looked to the first topic.

"Popular Warrior monsters..." He thoughts quickly went to Yugi, the most famous duelist of all time. "That would include monsters like Celtic Guardian, Gaia the Fierce Knight, and Black Luster Soldier." His eyes went to his notes trying to track down more of the 'favorites.'He frowned as he came up short.

"Any other ideas?"

She started to type down text, making it as smooth a read as possible. "Don't forget Wheelers Deck, with cards like the Flame Swordsman, Gilford the Lightning and Gearfried, the Iron Knight. Those are some of the more iconic Warriors there are I think. And then there's always the comedic relief in Swordsman of Landstar." She giggled at the thought of a high caliber duelist like Joey Wheeler actually using a card like Swordsman of Landstar and still getting as far as he had. The man must've had some real skill.

The project progressed slowly but steadily, Kylie filling in the blanks in Squall's research with her own knowledge. It was shameful, not knowing half of this information was going to come back and bite Squall. If only their project was on machines, he could have been a lot more useful. Well it didn't matter. At least this wasn't stressful, in the least. He had to admit that having Kylie here was certainly helping. He would be struggling without her help. He blinked as a thought occurred to him.

"Sorry if this is a bit too direct, but what deck do you play?" Squall asked. "I don't think I have ever seen you play and I got curious."

She looked at him, a bit caught off guard by the sudden and random question. "Cyber Girls. And, if I remember, you run Ancient ... Ancient somethings. I don't know anymore. Why the sudden interest in my Deck, though?" She asked the question half laughing, still somewhat perplexed at the timing of the question.

Squall gave an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I was just curious. I was thinking I could be more help if this had been a report on machine type monsters. I play Ancient Gears and therefore I know a lot of the cards relating to the type. My thoughts then spilled over to what deck you played, and I realized that I had no idea."

He gave a small laugh. "Sorry for asking so suddenly, I know we are supposed to be working, but the thought caught me and I decided to act on it." He tapped his chin. "I don't think I have really talked with you aside for this project. I suppose there was no real reason to though."

She dove back into her bag and fished out a deck box, adorned with a few girly attachments, and handed it to Squall. "There, you can look through it if you wish. It's not as strong as those Cyber Dragons, or Cyber Ogres, but I like them a lot. Gift from my mom, so I cherish them. Wouldn't want to use anything else."

Squall received the cards in surprise. While not an official rule, many students kept their decks close, often not even revealing their archetype until a duel occurred. Students rarely showed their decks to one another unless they were receiving help or they were close friends. Kylie's outgoing attitude stunned Squall. Should he show his deck to repay the gesture? Refuse to look at her's? He finally relented deciding it was fine. The school already knew his deck and showing his deck to Kylie wasn't going to have any huge consequences.

"Thank you," Squall fanned out the cards before him. They were well cared for, that much was obvious. Each corner was pristine and each card surface seemed to glisten as if they had just been removed from the pack. After looking over the deck for a bit, he returned it.

"You're deck is well cared for and quite interesting. I wouldn't mind dueling you sometime." Squall then reached into his own deck box and offered his own deck. "If you want you can take a look at mine as well. Mine may not be passed down like yours but I am still proud of it."

"Thanks." She took his cards and carefully sifted through them, one by one, looking accurately at the art, more than the effect or its stats, before going to the next. Going through his Deck cost more time than he used, without any doubt, but by the end she was thoroughly amazed. "Those are some really strong cards, and they all look really cool. Ancient machines, like an old civilization that was long lost, now finally revived in your Deck, ready to release their judgment upon those unworthy." She talked quite theatrical, and brought life into the cards in a whole new way.

Squall smiled, her creativity was quite astounding. "Personally when I was younger, I always imagined them as guardians, protecting me and dealing with attackers." He gave a small laugh. "I like your version better, it gives them more life. More purpose." He received his deck back with a smile.

"While some people think they are just rusted pieces of junk, I always thought they were treasures. They were growing more exquisite with time or something along those lines."

"Just think of the amount of time and effort there would have gone into building them. That means dedication and love, so they would never be junk." She shrugged and looked back at the laptop, making a few grammar corrections. "People are dumb, they don't see the story behind a card, or the soul of a card. They just see a card they can use to win a game, but they forget all the stories of the creatures in ancient Egypt, and what Pegasus had really created. But, to get us back on track. we'll agree that Warriors heavily rely on equip spells because of the concept that a warrior requires weapons, yes?"

"Yes, I read that the archtype of the Noble Knights have their effects exclusively based on having an equip spell card on the field or equipped to them. Furthermore the Elemental Heros series is known for their very specific equip spells such as Bubble Blaster and Spark Blaster." Sirius tapped his chin trying to remember his notes.

"Most warrior specific equip cards represent swords and sometimes even shields. It is very focused on the idea of the knights of old from the medieval period. Not sure if that is the most accurate, but it definitely keeps warrior decks interesting."

She nodded, and rampaged over the keyboard yet again. They'd gotten a lot of work done now, and it would show in the result. As she thougt about the result, she took a second to look back at what they'd already written down, and came to the realization that they'd already crossed the required 3 pages by an additional page, putting them at 4. Turns out they were too good of a team.

"All right, so we've covered everything from art design, to base effects and stats, all the way up to their sync with Equip Spells and the history behind that, but we're on 4 pages now. So we may have to do some cutting of the less essential parts, or, we hand it in as is and hope to hell Professor Vari doesn't mind reading a bible worth of text. What's your idea?"

Squall suppressed a vindictive smile from emerging on his face. He was more than happy to send Vari an extra long paper. Besides, they wanted as much detail as possible so it could hardly be argued that their paper was long.

"We can leave it at four pages," Squall replied. "There may be a minimal page limit but no maximum. I would rather have the teacher read more than necessary instead of us accidentally cutting something and losing points for it. Besides it would show that we were overachievers."

She put a slight smile on, as she saved the file and forwarded it to Squall for printing and finalizing. "Looks like that's done. So, I'm quite busted. What about you?"

Squall cracked his neck, letting out a sigh of relief. "I am happy that we're done. I'm glad that you agreed to work with me right way. I don't like it when my partner procrastinates till the last second." He stood from his chair and stretched feeling his aching muscles relax.

"I will probably head down to the docks for a duel or two. After that I would be more than ready to rest as well." He also had to collect more data for the report to Sirius, but Kylie didn't need to know about that.

She stowed her laptop away and put her Deckbox along in her pack, getting up from the seat and slinging the bag onto her shoulder. "Well, I'd totally take you up on that duel, but I'm afraid I won't be able to tell a Ritual Spell from a Counter Trap right now. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see." She handed him an USB drive with an additional copy of their work. "Back up, in case the mail service decides to kill itself. Wouldn't be the first time."

Squall gave a small laugh and accepted the USB stowing it into his backpack. "No kidding, great job on thinking ahead." He shouldered his backpack before he spoke again.

"I will be more than happy to take you on. Send me a PM or flag me down after class." He gave her a two fingered salute. "Nice working with you, looking forward to doing so again." With that he exited the room and left down the hall.