Tagging Up 19

"No nerves?" Alexis asked.

"None actually." Yarden shrugged, arms crossed behind his head. He glanced passed the beautiful blonde in front of him, eyes landing on the television cameras set up all around the duelling arena, each one manned by at least two people.

You'd think that he would have some nerves. Not only was he going to be duelling in front of practically every student at the academy, it was going to be broadcasted to practically the whole world. Duelling was just that popular, and it was legit champions going up against up and coming duellists of Duel Academy, the premier duel school, where the best of the best of all up and coming duellists gathered.

Yet, Yarden found he was not at all nervous. He'd always been pretty damn confident in himself, but, before he would have had at least a little stage fright with this kind of thing. But no, there wasn't even a tingle of nerves in his stomach.

'Did you really think you would?' Serpent Night Dragon scoffed, 'The most abundant of spirits you have, are dragons. You have the instincts of a dragon there and waiting to be called upon. Do you think a dragon would have something as pathetic as stage fright?'

Well, he wasn't wrong. But; 'What about Decoy Dragon?' he asked. Yarden loved the little cute dragon to death, but confidence wasn't exactly his forte.

'A young whelp, the youngest of all of we spirits serving you,' Hyozanryu snorted, 'But when combat starts, even the shy skittishness of Decoy Dragon disappears. We dragons are the pinnacle species of monster spirit, the strongest on average of all monsters, we are born fighters.'

Well, fair enough. That did all line up. Lore wise, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon was supposed to be capable of putting up a fight against the gods one on one. And when Kaiba had summoned his Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, it had been strong enough to hold off and even briefly overpower Zorc Necrophades, whom had just gotten through slapping around the three Egyptian Gods. To say nothing of the Signer Dragons and the Crimson Dragon.

'Well, I can't disagree, when it comes to raw power and fighting ability, dragons are usually the best on average,' Dark Magician Girl hummed, 'They're never much any good though when it comes to using all that raw power beyond blasting everything in sight though~' she added with a giggle.

To the outrage of Serpent Night Dragon and Hyozanryu.

"Lucky you," Alexis snorted, crossing her arms, "I can feel the sweat forming on my neck."

"Don't be so worried," Yarden replied, "We've got this. There's nothing these guys can throw at us that me and you together can easily deal with." this had to be like the sixth time he'd said something of this variation to her, but if it helped her calm down, he didn't mind repeating himself.

Honestly, now that he thought about it. He was actually excited to get this duel under way. He was about to get his name out there by crushing multiple time tag team champions. And the amount of money he was going to make off of this duel was insane.

He'd managed to reach up to just under forty thousand DP by duelling Obelisk Idiots over and over. And there were many jealous punks outraged over how he had Alexis, Jasmine and Mindy literally hanging off of him the other night.

And according to Professor Wade not ten minutes ago when he was placing his bets on him and Alexis winning, the odd were at seventy-nine to one.

It was so amazing he had to outright stop himself from bursting out into great big peels of evil laughter. Everything was going according to plan.

"These are test conditions!" Professor Wade's voice suddenly rang out over the intercom before Alexis could respond, "This is a sudden expulsion match. Should the tag team of Alexis Rhodes and Yarden Odhar lose this duel, they will both be expelled!"

The crowd of students went wild. Full of people cheering for Alexis, and idiots booing Yarden. Alexis steeled her expression despite her nerves and waved to the crowd, while Yarden just snorted and crossed his arms and let the biggest smug smirk he could muster spread across his face as he jutted his chin out defiantly.

If 'Hell Kaiser' was anything to go by, the people watching duels truly loved a bad boy. And it was an image he could easily keep up just by acting like himself. In other words, a massive tool.

"Now, without further adieu!" Doctor Crowler made his way up onto the stage, microphone in one hand, his other raised into the air, "Allow me to introduce our guest tag team duo!"

Just then, a pair of blurs launched the air to land on the duelling, from both sides opposite Yarden and Alexis. Two tall, well built men in orange and green acrobatically flipped backwards multiple times to go slightly passed each other and then land in a pair of crouched positions right next to each other.

"The great Paradox Brothers!" Crowler announced.

"Salutations you fools." The one in orange smirked over at them as they both rose up back to back, arms crossed over their chests.

"Hope you're ready to duel." the bald in green finished for his brother.

"Did you practice that in front of the mirror?" Yarden shot back with a snort, not even bothering to uncross his arms from behind his head.

"No, it comes naturally." the one in green returned without missing a beat.

"The same way you'll be duelled to fatality." the brother in orange added.

"Now now," Doctor Crowler cut in, "Let's hold the trash talking until the duel actually starts, okay?"

Yarden shrugged while the brothers merely stayed silent.

At their silence, Crowler nodded and pointed one finger into the air, "Duellists, prepare to battle!" he announced, and directed them to take their positions, "The rules for this tag team duel are really simple. There is no sharing your strategy or which is in your hand. No sharing of advice and no sharing of any card that is not yet in play. What you may share is your field and graveyard, and each pair will share life points."

'So pretty much standard tag rules then.' Yarden thought. Basically, the same kind of thing as the Tag Force games.

"I understand Doctor Crowler." Alexis nodded, activating her duel disk.

"Got it." Yarden nodded as well. He unfastened his hands from behind his head and activated his own duel disk, the gauntlet folding out into the dragon wing duel disk.

The Paradox brothers merely nodded and did the same.

"Then you may begin, duel!" Doctor Crowler said into the microphone. He lowered it then and shot both Obelisk Blue students a worried look, "Good luck." he whispered quietly.