Luna braced herself, ready to stop Joey from attacking Marik. But the blonde boy simply looked Marik up and down once before turning to Luna once again.
"Care to explain what's going on?" Joey asked as all three of them ascended at a slow but steady pace. "Last time we talked about this guy, you seemed certain that he was behind everything, including my sister's death."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I didn't kill an-" Marik paused for a second as if thinking things over. "Was this before or after my Ra attacked Domino?"
"My sister Serenity died last year while I was at the Duel Kingdom Tournament!" Joey raised his voice, making Luna's anxiety go slightly over the edge.
"Joey-" She was about to explain how Marik was also played by Noah.
"Was your sister in Egypt?" Marik asked, seeming genuinely curious.
"What?" Joey looked more confused than ever. "No, why does that mat-"
"Then it wasn't me!" Marik opened his arms as if he had been absolved of some divine sentence. "At least, I don't think it was me. I think it's fairly certain that it wasn't me, directly."
Joey looked incredulous as he looked back again to Luna.
"Just, exactly, how many people has this guy killed?" Joey asked, seeming more overwhelmed than angry. "He has to pay for all that."
"He will." Luna assured him.
"I will?" Marik asked.
"Again, dude!" Luna yelled, not being able to believe how oblivious Marik seemed to social cues. "Not helping!"
Marik looked like he wanted to ask something before he pursed his lips and shrugged.
"What matters right now is that Marik agreed to help us until we can put a stop to Noah Kaiba."
"Who?" Joey asked, maintaining his confused look.
Poor guy is more lost than a blind guy in a fire fight.
"The big twerp in the sky." Marik explained before turning to Luna. "See, I'm not the only one that didn't know him, stop throwing that name around like its common knowledge."
"There's yet another Kaiba?" Joey looked more like his old self making statements like this. "Who can handle that many Kaib-"
A huge explosion interrupted them from a few floors above them, making them shudder just from the sheer noise of it all. Shards of glass rained down on the three as the smoke and blast separated them from Jaden and Mokuba.
"Mokuba!" Luna yelled and flew up faster, but another explosion happened right beside her, making her dragon back away.
Before she could look up again, two more explosions happened, one near Marik and another near Joey.
"Stay away from the building, something is targeting us!" Marik yelled.
"Molten Fireballs!" Joey yelled, making his dragon shoot into the building despite Luna not having been able to see anything moving inside.
"We should get to Mokuba and Jaden!" Luna interjected before her two companions could go full attack mode on the Tower.
"You don't think we'll just be easier to hit if we clump up together?" Marik asked, still not easily conveying whether he was being sarcastic or not.
"Maybe we should separate, go different directions and regroup with Jaden and Mokuba." Joey suggested. "Once we are all together again, we can try to coordinate an attack."
"Okay, go!" Marik said without losing a second as he started to fly counter clock wise and up, leaving Joey and Luna behind.
"Damn, him!" Luna yelled in frustration. "Go, Joey! Fly that way!"
Joey, also looking frustrated, simply nodded and started flying clock wise and up.
Luna hoped that the other two would serve as a diversion and tried to fly straight up again, but yet another explosion blocked her way almost instantly.
"Inferno Fire Blast!" she yelled in frustration, having her dragon shoot three blasts into the building, hoping that Seto was a rich as she always imagined him to be.
The inside of the building lit up and exploded from her attack, the building itself was large enough that she didn't think an attack like that would do much to the structural integrity of the tower, but she figured she should still keep the damages to a minimum.
She tried to see through the debris and smoke for any kind of movement, but quickly remembered that she was alone there. She had to make her way back to the others and not be such an easy target. She started to fly in a zig zag motion upward, but before she got too far, an explosion happened a few floors below her.
Did they miss?
Her momentary curiosity made her look down just in time to see a Luster Dragon come out from the smokes and shoot green beam of energy right back into the building. Before she even had time to wonder what that was about, she noticed a familiar quick black streak coming out of the building and attacking the Luster Dragon.
Is that-
Luster Dragon seemed to dodge one of the attacks, but ultimately got struck and started to disintegrate. And with that, Luna's suspicion was confirmed as Serpent Night Dragon stopped and hovered by its quickly disintegrating opponent.
Rex is still- Could he? But I saw him get ripped apart.
But once the Serpent Night Dragon turned its head towards her, Luna realized that the person riding it was not a person at all, but Jinzo.
Her initial thought was that perhaps Espa Roba and Rex Raptor were somehow working together to clear the monsters from inside the Tower.
That must be it. But where are they?
Suddenly a giant ball of fire came from inside of the building towards the two monsters, but Jinzo easily slapped the attack away from him. Immediately, the Serpent Night Dragon blurred up again as it flew forward, then back up. When the dragon and Jinzo materialized once again, Luna realized that Jinzo was holding something- no, it was holding a Harpie Lady by the neck.
"I'll kill you!" Someone yelled from inside of the building as a red dragon burst forth towards Jinzo.
Instantly, Luna realized that the person attacking Jinzo was Mai and flew in to try and help her. Both the Serpent Night Dragon and Jinzo had much higher attacks than her Harpie's Pet Dragon, she wouldn't stand a chance.
Jinzo seemingly flicked his wrist, bending Harpie Lady's neck with a snap and making her disintegrate. Mai visibly flinched.
Luna's dragon shot a beam toward the monster duo, who seemingly blurred out as it dodged the attack. The entire time, a frightening thought plagued Luna's mind.
Jinzo suddenly laughed, sending chills down Luna's spine.
"Two against one, is it?" Jinzo asked with a chuckle as it rubbed its chin.
It talks.
Her suspicions had been correct, this Jinzo was an entirely different monster, it was intelligent.
"Does it not make you wonder how many are fighting against your friends?" Jinzo asked before turning that hideous face to Luna. And though she couldn't see its eyes through the red lensed goggles, she felt like it was intruding into her innermost thoughts.
Sure, she was worried. But Jaden was with Mokuba, and if everything had gone right, Joey and Marik had probably joined them by then as well. Currently, the manic and battered state Mai was in was more alarming.
"What happened in there, Mai?" she risked asking. "Did you come up alone?"
"Focus, child!" Jinzo yelled as dark energy formed in each of its hand. "You will need all of your concentration when facing me!"
As it threw the balls of dark energy, its dragon quickly turned around to attack Mai. Luna dodged the attack, but even as the attack flew past her, she involuntarily closed her eyes and clenched her entire body as it felt like her brain was getting electrocuted.
She knew Jinzo's attacks were psychic, but she hadn't expected such an effect. She quickly forced one of her eyes open, just in time to see a Cyber Harpie Lady get struck by the Serpent Night Dragon. Mai had been quick enough to send out a monster to protect herself, but from the expression on her face, each monster of hers that was getting destroyed was taking a big toll on her. Luna had to get to her before Jinzo's next attack.
But even as she flew toward Mai, Serpent Night Dragon was circling around them so quickly that she could only catch glimpses of its after images.
"I am in a whole different level than anything you have faced so far!" Jinzo said, his voice seemingly coming from several different places at once. "Your monster may be stronger, but I am much-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Luna yelled as her dragon started to emit an intense heat off of its body. She was sick and tired of seeing the characters that she had grown up watching, dying like it meant nothing. She was sick and tired of all this endless monsters and getting attacked over and over like she was a punching bag. But above all, she was sick and tired of listening to these arrogant villains monologuing and babbling on and on.
"Struck a nerve, have I?" Jinzo seemed to have regained his composure from having been interrupted. "You'll be glad to know that-"
Luna's slash dragon shot forth the biggest energy beam she had ever seen it shoot, the immense heat coming off of it seemed to match the intensity of her anger.
"I said, shut up!" She put all of her anger behind those last two words, making her dragon's red energy beam increase in size almost three fold.
Jinzo blinked out of existence a split second before the monumentally large red energy beam utterly dissolved the Serpent Night Dragon. Her slash dragon was not able to maintain the intense red energy beam for long, she felt drained after her attack. Jinzo appeared at a distance as it put a glowing hand up, out of which a new Serpent Night Dragon came forth and took Jinzo away.
She wanted to yell at it to come back and face her head on. But exhaustion slowly crept its fingers around her mind, and with it, her anger quickly faded. She glanced back towards Mai, who didn't look like she was having a grand time either.
"Are you okay?" Luna asked as her dragon slowly approached Mai's dragon.
"Just dandy." Mai replied as she massaged her neck. "That dragon is even more impressive than when I first saw it on the ground floor."
"I don't think I can pull off an attack like that again." Luna admitted before pointing up. "We should go find my friends before more monsters come back. That Jinzo talked like other monsters are attacking them as we speak. Did anyone else make it up here with you?"
Mai pursed her lips and shook her head.
"Most duelists are probably still holding down the fort on the ground floor." Mai explained. "I came up with two others when it felt like the monsters were slowing down. But three monsters appeared riding dragons of their own. They were much quicker and faster than any monsters we faced until now. They killed the other two duelists, and two of the monsters went on ahead. That Jinzo stayed back to finish me off. What happened to the crazy hair guy that was with you before?"
"Hopefully he is helping Joey and Mokuba." Luna said, taking a second to look around to make sure there were no monsters sneaking up on them. "I won't blame you if you want to head back down. I have a feeling things are going to get a lot crazier when we reach the top."
Personally, she wanted Mai to go with her. But thinking objectively, Mai was already looking pretty roughed up. Not to mention, her monsters at this point in time probably didn't stand a chance against the stronger monsters that they were most likely going to face up there. She could become a liability and honestly, she didn't think she could fight for much longer herself, let alone protect someone else during a fight. She just felt so tired.
"I guess I would be a bigger help down there." Mai said, seemingly breaking character in Luna's eyes. "I couldn't even touch that Jinzo. I would definitely have ended up like the other two duelists if you hadn't appeared."
Luna swallowed hard as her eyes drifted away from Mai. She didn't know whether to disagree to be polite or to agree to keep her safe.
"What's your name?" Mai suddenly asked, making Luna look her in the eyes. "You never told me yours, but you knew mine, so it felt a little awkward to ask back then. But I figure one must, at the very least, know the name of the person that saved their life."
Luna did her best to smile and hoped it wasn't too obvious that she had thought that Mai could have been a liability.
"Luna." She answered before taking a deep breath. "Just Luna."
"Well, Luna." "Mai said with an equally effortful smile. "You better get going to your friends. I can make my own way down. And uh, sorry for not being of much help."
"Don't worry." Luna said, remembering that though she was not from here she was one with better cards, she was one of the few that could fight and actually make a difference.
Like Ben Parker said to Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility.
"I'll put an end to this." She said with new found determination. "I will save everyone."
Mai smiled back with a genuine smile this time.
"I'm counting on it."