(23) Action Duel Class

I spent the rest of the weekend lazing around. It was refreshing after the intense back-to-back incidents.

The only interesting thing that happened the weekend was a particular text conversation with Yasuna.

[{So how are you settling in?} Yasuna]

[{Fine, got to my room *Selfie*} Yuumi]

[{Oh my god the natural sunlight… *jealous*} Yasuna]

[{Just synchro summon, won’t be difficult to get Elo with your deck.} Yuumi]

[{Wow, thank you didn’t think of that… Also, rich words coming from a natural} Yasuna]

[{Sorry, that was kind of insensitive.} Yuumi]

[{Yes it was. So how did the dorm greet you? I heard they do some crazy shit with the new girls.} Yasuna]

[{*Sigh*. Well, first of all, Aya was the one leading them.} Yuumi]

[{This is going to be good.} Yasuna]

[{She was like, “Well, well, well” and then when she saw me she just said the most depressing “Oh…” I have ever heard, after that she just told them to let me pass and other than one smacking me on the ass nothing happened. Oh, actually, she knocked on my door later and gave me a tour of the dorm.} Yuumi]

[{Woah, you got it easy…. I don’t even know what to say. Are they that scared of you?} Yasuna]

[{Yasuna, when I was walking around the lobby, it was empty… completely empty. I asked Aya, and she said that they went back to their dorms after Aya told them she was going to give me a tour….} Yuumi]

[{Wow…} Yasuna]

[{Yea…. Oh BTW I’m going to action duel class next Monday. see you there!} Yuumi]

[{YOU WHAT!?!!?!?!} Yasuna]

And that was the end of that.

————

15/Ago/35MT

It was now Monday, so I went to grab my sporty uniform from the clothes dispenser. Action Duel class was right in the morning from 8 to 13. Yes, five hours straight.

I put on the white T-shirt that was loose enough to not press my boobs if I used a sport bra underneath, but even with a sports bra it had some overhang that showed a little of my tummy. I didn’t worry about that. Yasuna had the same thing when she wore it.

The yellow miniskirt was there just as decoration as it ended right before the end of my buttocks, covering absolutely nothing. The bike shorts were made of a rubberized cloth material and tightly hugged my form. I had gotten access to the sport uniform options yesterday, so I had already tested the bloomers and no, I won’t be using them. While bike shorts barely leave anything to the imagination, the reflection of me wearing bloomers is burned into my mind and not in a good way. They just make my butt look too big and my overhaul appearance too endearing and weirdly sexualized. So no thank you, I will go with the more exposing bike shorts.

For action duel class, we also get some fingerless gloves, kneepads and elbow pads. I put them on and then slip on a weird pair of sneakers that look like they're made to be more breathable and have a lining on the inside that make them conformable to wear without socks, they also tighten back-to-the-future-style.

I look like your stereotypical tomboy. To end the look, I tie my purple hair in a ponytail.

“Looking good.” I tell myself, after doing some Tekken poses in the mirror.

After having a light breakfast, I make my way down to the lobby, which is more lively than yesterday, but it's clear that nobody even wants to look at me. It kind of bothers me and kind of doesn’t? I mean, better than having to show them I am not weak, but still. I would have liked to decide myself.

A decently long walk later, I get into the open field and spot Yasuna with two other students waiting.

“Ayo!” I shout and wave at Yasuna as I walk onto the field.

She looks over and her face goes from gloomy to cheery in a split second.

“Yuumi!!!!! She yells and runs into me for a hug.

“*HUghf*” I exhale after being smashed by a muscle head running at full speed into me. We both fall to the ground… Our breasts are touching…

“Hmmm? Yasuna? Please?” I say after her face turns bright red and freezes on top of me. I’m having a difficult time breathing here.

“Y-Yasuna c-co-come one… I have trouble here…” I whimper.

She finally notices and snaps out.

“OMG, SORRY!” She says after standing up and offering me a hand.

I take her hand and bring myself up.

“R-Right… Nice to see you again, too.” I stutter.

“Y-Yea…” Yasuna responds, scratching her head.

…

…

‘Hate these awkward silences.’

I look around to find something to talk about.

‘Bingo’

“So Yasuna, it’s already 8:02. Why are there only two other students here?” I ask.

“O-Oh, yes! The professor is always late and the others are still changing.”

“Why? Can’t they just get ready before coming here?”

“Well, when I say ‘changing’, I mean they’re lazing around in the locker room where it’s warm…”

Oh right, yeah, technically it's still summer but the days have been getting colder and colder, and at this time of day the wind is really chilly. Also, this skirt doesn’t seem to have the same support as the uniform’s one as it’s flapping in the wind like normal and my overhaul outfit is made to be breathable, not isolating…

“R-Right” Now that she mentioned, and we’re just standing around in an empty field, I’m feeling it.

“Why don’t we go sit over there were it’s less open?” She offers.

“Yes.” I quickly accept.

—

After five more minutes of waiting, where we just spoke about some miscellaneous things. A tall, muscular man wearing shorts and a tight fitting T-shirt walks onto the field with a notebook in hand.

“Good morning everyone. Looks like I’ve got even fewer students this year.” The professor jokes with a simple smile.

He looks at Yasuna.

“Hey Yasu, can you go tell them I’m here?”

I look at “Yasu”

“Yasu?” I ask with a little chuckle.

She Sighs, “Just a sec!” and runs over to the locker room.

He then watches over the remaining students.

“And who might you be, missy? I swear I’ve never seen you before.” He asks, glancing at me.

I get up and greet him. “Good morning professor. My name is Yuma Matsunaga, First-Year.”

“Oh, really? This early in the year? I thought you freshmen had your schedules full with classes… Wait, are you the one that beat professor Chamberlain?”

After giving a deep sigh, I respond, “Yes, that would be me…”

“Wow, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m professor Mark Brown.” He offers a handshake that I accept. “A penta-summoner interested in action duels. Well, let me warn you, you will not have it easy here just because of your natural ability.”

“I understand.” ‘Thank god!’

He gets closer and then whispers. “Between you and me. Professor Chamberlain fully deserved that. Thank you for shutting that guy up about his ‘strategies’. Oh, also I will work you to the bone. Can’t be seen having a penta-summoner underperforming in my class now, can I?.” He backs up. Giving me a ruthless smile.

I provide a worried “Y-Yes” back.

‘Why is everyone in this academy a sadist?’

Looking back, I see Yasuna return with the rest of the class, interestingly none of the girls wore bloomers… I will ask her later.

The professor starts with a few snarky comments to the students that just now arrived and after that, asked me as the new student if I had a health monitor; I revealed I had a FruitWatch and, after a few words of innocent jealousy, told me to put it on and accept the remote health monitoring request. Afterwards we started with some warmup laps.

Now something strange happened here… I enjoyed myself. Really, I was expecting this to be grueling. I wasn't really in the best physical shape back then, so I got tired quickly… But that didn’t happen. It felt good to run around the track many times. It really did. The air tasted crisp and my body cooperated with me…

‘This may be more enjoyable that I first expected.’

5 hours later…

‘Fuck that professor, fuck this class, fuck exercise in general!’

My muscles are ALL aching relentlessly, my lungs are burning and my heart feels like it was going 200BPM for half of the class, also my clothes are DAMP, DRIPING with sweat.

I fell straight into a trap. While in the start, I was feeling good as the class progressed and the exercises continued; I felt strained. It didn’t help that apparently I did about twice as much as a normal first-year student is supposed to do, according to Yasuna. Who, by the way, stayed ahead of even the third-year students. Mind you, the action duel course is only two years. Those were the ones that stayed one more to hone their skills.

I don’t know how she’s smiling after that. The others are all feeling about the same as me, miserable.

After class, we all limp back to the locker room and after some shuffling, we one by one throw our clothes into various laundry chutes and enter the showers. I don’t even care that I’m naked in a shower next to some really hot and sweaty naked girls. All I want to do is wash myself.

I open the water to shower and freezing cold water covers me.

“Eeek!” I shriek and jump back, not expecting it. This elicits amusing looks from the other girls.

“Eh. Get used to it, newbie. Helps revitalize the muscles.” One says.

I force myself to get back into the stream, and the cold water covers my body. It’s miserable!

After a few minutes where I and the other girls just took it, the stream reduced by half.

The same girl from before then told me. “Hey newbie, try to take it and don’t let the stimulant hit your privates.”

“What?”

I quickly got what she was talking about. The shower started emitting some kind of green liquid. It didn’t feel like anything, but the other girls started spreading it and I copied them, being careful to keep her advice in mind.

Suddenly, my muscles started burning. “Nng” I groaned.

This time, I wasn’t the only one. The pain kept getting more intense. Some girls quietly sobbed while others just screamed. I fell more into the quiet, sobbing category with groaning periodically.

I felt like my entire body was being stung by fire ants. I was burning up.

Just as I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, the cold water returned, cooling me back down.

After a few more cycles of “Stimulant” and cold water, the shower ended after a long cycle of cold water.

We all slowly limped to the multiple clothes dispensers and took out our normal uniforms.

I asked the other girl what that was all about, and apparently it’s so your muscles healed quickly after the overly straining exercise. The pain is a consequence of the initial rapid muscle healing that the concentrated substance starts before it’s gets diluted in the body. Basically, without it, the exercise we did would cause muscle injury.

Let’s just say I didn’t expect this kind of power training when I signed up for this, but boy am I in for it now. It’s even worse when you consider I signed up for this EVERY MORNING! As I wanted to power through this course in a single year.

I try not to think about it as I meekly walked out of the shower building with Yasuna. Who is strangely fine.

“So how was it?” She asks.

“Is it like this every time?” I say in a pained voice.

She shrugs. “Mostly, but with parkour training on top.”

‘Joy’ I thought to myself.

“I have that every morning….”

Yasuna stopped and looked at me with a smile. “You fucked up…”

“Yes, I did.”

“Guess it’s too late to change it now?”

“I think so.”

Then, the girl from before that helped me in the showers came up to us and smacked me in the back.

“AH!” I let out a pained scream and sharply turn to her.

“WHAT WAS THAT FOR!” I demand.

“Relax, just wanted to ask you something. You're the natural Penta-Summoner everyone is talking about, right?” The tanned, tall, curvy girl with short pink hair wearing a blue uniform inquires.

“Why did y…” tried to ask Yasuna.

“Shut up red tra… I’m sorry, force of habit.”

I turn my back to her.

“WAIT! PLEASE!” She pleaded and grabbed me by the shoulder.

I turn around, duel disk ready.

“Oh, come on!” She whines.

“You come to me, smack me in the back and then call my best friend trash. The nerve to think you are the one in the right here is insane.” I laid down the facts. Making her face twitch.

“I’M SORRY OKAY!” she yells.

“Say that to Yasuna and do it properly.”

She cringes, but instead of walking away like I expected, she actually bows to Yasuna and says. “I’m sorry for insinuating you were worse than me as a person because of my rank…”

I can see her friends cringing as she says that, and Yasuna gets visibly flustered.

Stunned, I tell. “G-Good, now what was that you wanted to ask me about?”

“*Sigh*, as the leader of the cheerleading club, I would like to invite you to join us.”

“Cheerleading? Isn’t that a highschool thing?”

“IT ISN’T! WHY DOES EVERYONE SAY THAT!?!?!” she asserts.

“Err, I don’t know?” I faint ignorance scratching my head.

“*Sigh*, no we handle the commentary on cross academy duels AND cheerleading, plus, as an Action Duelist, you’ll find that the extra flexibility helps you immensely! Here.” She passes me a flier.

It says:

“JOIN THE EXCLUSIVE CHEERLEADING CLUB TODAY…”The flier had the normal marketing “Do something! Make yourself better!” Stuff like that.

At the bottom, there was a blurt that I found pretty funny: “Applicants must be Blue rank or higher and are subject to full body examinations before entry.”

I give a smug smile to her and ask. “So did I pass?”

This makes her confused. “Pass what?”

“Your preliminary body examinations? Honestly, there are better ways to say ‘Ugly girls need not apply.’”

She sighs. “Come on now. We’re cheerleaders. You know what that means!”

I give a sigh back. “Fine, I’ll think about it.”

This makes her gloomy face brighten up. “TRULLY?”

“Why not?” I tell.

“THANK YOU!!!! By the way, my name is Haruna. You’ll get to call me Haru if you join!” And she walks away contently, joining her confused friends.

I store the flier.

“Yuumi, I know you're mad for her calling me trash, but it’s really rude to give people false hope.”

I turn to Yasuna. “What? I meant all of that.”

This stuns her. "Oh… Sorry, I just didn’t take you for the kind of person who would show off like that…” she trails off.

“Eh. I’m not expecting much. I mean, I will play in most tournaments, anyway. So it’s not like there will be a lot of opportunities for me to perform to the public, if at all. I’m mostly doing this for the extra flexibility.” - There were regular sports events, but they were far in between, and more importantly, this being a dueling academy meant there weren’t any sports teams besides dueling related ones.

“That’s… Yea, now that you point it out…”

“Well, if there are any other red flags other than that one, please tell.”

“I mean… Other than they being known for being the bitchiest and most elitist group in the entire academy, not really.” She speeds up on the last part.

“Oh… That’s not….. reassuring….?”

“Well, you haven’t accepted it yet.”

“Would… would it be that bad?”

“Yuumi, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. If you want to do it, do it. All I ask is that you don’t suddenly turn into a massive bitch.”

‘Now that she points it out, why am I so draw to this? I kind of just accepted it on instinct, even after she insulted Yasuna. Normally I would just look at that flier, give it back, and tell her to first learn some respect before looking at me again… why I’m so attracted to this… Strange.’

After that talk, we go find the twins, which results in a Mia rocket smashing into me.

We have lunch together for old time's sake.