Monotheatre 2 | The High Priestess’s Final Duel
Everything must come to an end.
With the press of a button, a robotic arm launches out and comes to whisk the convicted party away back into the recess it had come from. It’s done with an even faster rate and velocity than it seemed to have been done the last time, though maybe you’re imagining that difference. It’s been a couple of days since you last saw this agent of death; could a few days alone make memories seem that much more cloudy?
With the absence of Ikuko comes a swift replacement in the form of the screens in the center of the room lighting up. They at first show only a blank white flash before you see a dark, grey room. Could this be another warehouse space?
Nothing seems to be happening for a couple of minutes, staying at a constant frame. It’s hard to even tell it’s video footage with how still it is. However, a large electrical noise comes from the above and the camera shifts, rotating swiftly to the source.
Out of the ceiling comes out a platform. It looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi film; it’s a metal open elevator with a light-up blue tiling floor that is small, barely enough to fit a single person. It smoothly descends on its supports at the corners, a chain moving behind it. On the platform itself you can see Ikuko as she rises to her feet, using the fencing around her platform to help herself up. It also appears as if on her arm is some kind of toy? Oh, a duel disk.
The camera takes the opportunity to look around a bit, though it’s clearly fixed in whatever location it is, only rotating. There’s a large square hole beneath Ikuko’s platform which has now suspended about three-fourths the room’s height above said hole. Between the hole and wherever this camera is is a light-up grid composed of tiling similar to flooring of Ikuko’s elevator.
Bizarrely enough, that’s not where it finishes as the viewpoint goes a complete 180 away from your so-called “murderer.” There’s a large, red button low on a wall behind where this camera had initially been looking at but more noteworthy is the sight of a pale hand reaching down to take a duel disk almost identical to the one Ikuko had been fashioned with. The mystery person picks it up off the railing of their own platform and after a bit turns back around.
When the camera returns to its original angle, it’s just in time to show you Ikuko’s expression turn into one of surprise. Perhaps the music playing deafens her, but one can imagine that she might have been gasping or maybe that guess in itself is completely wrong but it doesn’t matter.
Numbers flicker until they are hologrammed clearly for you all. ‘8000’ it displays next to Ikuko and backwards next to your mystery player’s. This number also matches the one depicted on your cameraperson’s duel disk.
And with that the game begins.
The screens flicker a bit and when it stabilizes, you realize you’re no longer bound to the perspective of the mystery person you had once been. You’re closer to Ikuko, aimed more at her than at the scenery around. If you believed this would give you a glimpse of her opponent, that turns out false when it’s revealed a hologram of a large monster is in front of their lift, obscuring them from view.
It’s a bit hard to follow the game without a commentator or even worse if you don’t have an understanding of the rules, but by the scowl growing on your classmate’s face, you gather this isn’t a fair one. Any card drawn from her deck seems to be not Yu-Gi-Oh! cards but rather the same tarot cards that have been displayed by your two chaperones.
Placing them on her disk either portrait or landscape style doesn’t seem to produce any holograms the same way her opponent’s do. The projection of the creature moves and draws its sword down on your peer. Of course, as artificial as it is, its blade doesn’t cause her to flinch but the next thing you know, the 8000 next to her drops down to 5500.
That rolling number seems to trigger something with Ikuko’s platform. It plummets, the sudden movement of it seeming to knock the champ off her balance briefly but she saves herself by grasping onto the support rail around her. Still, although she saved herself from that first surprise, that doesn’t stop it from coming back as with no usable cards in her hand, Ikuko cannot defend herself against the onslaught of attacks in the turns that follow.
Her number drops and drops, closer and closer to an uncertain fate but whatever it is, it can’t be good news. After all, you had all seen what had happened to ZenZen. If she were to be given a punishment just like him, then even if the presentation wasn’t the same, surely that still meant the same end result.
The aura of futility begins to cloud and dawn and with the rate that the math is going, it would only take one more attack against a defenseless Ikuko to take that number down to below zero.
Maybe it’s a desperation born out of knowing she’s about to lose if she can’t figure out something and fast, but whatever motivates her, you watch as the champion removes the duel disk attached to her arm and chucks it forward with a tremendous force and speed. She’s no SHSL athlete of any kind but fate might as well have made her one in that moment. It’s a stroke of luck no different from a miracle but the contraption hits the big red button from before with enough accuracy and force to actually press it. It could be a sweet turn, a last-ditch attempt at breaking out of this fate…!
Instead, the floor beneath Ikuko’s feet collapses to hang at the sides of the platform, leaving nothing for her to stand on, and she plummets down into the hole below. It’s deep but you soon see a spray of blood coming up, indicating her fall.
Though you can’t see her, you’re left with the knowledge that her gamble made upon intuition, made upon hope, would be her last– that no matter how anything worked, she was doomed from the start to the grave they had made her.
Ikuko Ueno, the Super High-School Level Yu-Gi-Oh! Champion, has been executed.
