Destined to be Yours

Chapter 18: Star Chip Hunt

"'Scuse me?! Huh? me?" Jounouchi reacted in confusion. He wasn't the only one who was surprised.

"Are you going to run away, boy?" Mai challenged him.

"Hah... I was hoping you'd ask!" Jounouchi exclaimed.

"What? Why Jounouchi?" Akia asked Mai.

"I have my reasons, kid," the older woman replied.

"I'm not a kid!" The black-haired girl retorted.

"Don't get me wrong," Mai started explaining, "as a Duelist, it's only natural that I would want to fight Yugi-chan. But if I lose all my Star Chips, it's all over for me, right? I'll start by Dueling against opponents who look weak to earn Star Chips. Then, I will fight Yugi-chan after that."

"Well, that is smart," Akia mumbled.

"How can you say that to someone who was in the Best Eight?" Jounouchi snapped back.

"In the Local Championship Preliminaries..." Anzu specified.

Jounouchi's shoulders then slumped at his friend's remark.

"You can't win against this woman! You understand don't you? If you lose once it's all over," the brown-haired girl added. Anzu then looked at Yugi, "Yugi, accept the challenge instead of Jounouchi."

Jounouchi and Mai were already having a staring contest. It didn't seem like Jounouchi would just back out of this one.

"I think we should just let those two duel," Akia suggested, "Jounouchi looks dead serious about this."

"Jounouchi-kun, you just got to do it!" Yugi responded.

With the twins' encouragement, Jounouchi's smile returned, "I knew you guys wouldn't let me back down from this."

"Yugi! Akia!" Anzu reprimanded them.

"Jounouchi? Are you serious?" Honda asked his friend.

"I'm dead serious! If I run away from this, I'll regret it for the rest of my life! I'd remember you guys standing strong, and how I ran away like a coward," Jounouchi expressed how he felt.

Honda then looked down, "I see... I get it. Sorry, Jounouchi."

"But you better win, if you're going to do this!" Anzu told the blond teen.

"Alright, Jounouchi, let's have a competition. You take on Mai over here, and I'll look for an opponent elsewhere. The one who beats their opponent first, wins," Akia challenged her friend.

"What's the prize?" Jounouchi asked.

"Nothing, just the satisfaction of beating the other person," the red-eyed girl replied.

"You're on!" The motivated boy responded.

"Akia, you're going by yourself?" Yugi inquired with his sister.

"Yeah, there's no time to waste, Yugi. Jounouchi needs you to be there for him, so in the meantime, I'll get some Star Chips to get to our goal faster," she reasoned.

Yugi nodded at Akia's decision. The faster one of them got ten Star Chips, the faster they'd get to Pegasus' Castle.

"Alright... Who should I take on next?" Akia pondered as she started wondering around, thinking of what her next move should be.

She looked at the Field bonuses around. The only problem was that her deck was kind of all over the place. It didn't really focus on one kind or type of monster. In fact, her deck didn't depend that much on the monsters themselves. It was their effects that made it interesting for her. She already had a strategy that was starting to form in the construction of her deck. She just needed to find other cards that supported that strategy. However, she would have to do that after the end of this tournament.