365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Crafting Cards

1/22/19

"Whoa! So we can craft cards if we get the right combination of other cards? Cool!" Judai said excitedly, going through the new menu so fast that Yusei doubted he was even looking at half the cards. At this point they'd just finished the entire beginner's quest line, unlocking a bunch of new menus like special duel skills, partner skills, ranked duels, and last but not least, the crafting menu. It was pretty cool that they'd be able to trade in cards that they had too many copies of in order to get rarer ones, since they'd found themselves loaded with common rarity cards from doing all the quests.

"You can upgrade cards to be different rarities too, with the highest being prismatic like Quillbolt and Kuriboh's cards were," Yusei noted, idly flicking through the different crafting tabs, "It seems like it's more for achievements than anything else..."

"No way dude, remember how sweet our partners looked when we summoned them? They had all those sparkly effects and were glowing! When we get our full decks we gotta deck them out!"

Yusei snorted at the unintentional pun, which Judai still didn't seem to realize he'd made; the brown-haired duelist stared at him for a few seconds in confusion as to what was so funny before it hit him.

"...I did not mean to make that pun."

Yusei hummed, neither agreeing or disagreeing with him, and Judai pouted at being teased again. Unable to help himself this time, he reached up and ruffled Judai's hair, his duel monster not taking it up at the moment.

"Come on, we should probably craft a few cards then log out for the day, it's almost dinner time," Yusei said, glancing at the little digital clock in the upper right corner of his vision. Time seemed to fly by ridiculously fast, though he supposed that was what happened when you were having fun with good company.

"Ah, is it really? It feels like it's only been an hour or so, damn," Judai replied, blinking up at him after fixing his hair back down. At this, Winged Kuriboh and Quillbolt ran back over from the market stalls across the road where they'd been looking at some shiny accessories, leaping back into their partner's arms.

"Aww, already? You guys'll play again tomorrow, right?" Quillbolt asked, happily letting himself get pet on the head. Apparently the duel spirits could register the feelings as being real and interact with the world around them, so it was a liberating experience for them as they wouldn't wear out their duelists' energy in the process.

With a smile Judai leaned over, letting Winged Kuriboh play a bit with Quillbolt more before they decided to log out, "Of course we'll play again, especially now that we know you guys can do stuff here. Maybe not for as long, but we'll definitely play."

Yusei nodded in agreement, moving his attention back to the crafting screen as he decided what to make. Unfortunately this meant he missed Judai's secretive wink to Quillbolt Hedgehog, which resulted in Yusei getting knocked to the ground through a collective effort by his duel spirit and Judai; the sound of a screenshot getting taken sounded only seconds after.

Later that night Judai would pull it up on the holo-tablet he'd discovered Yusei owned the other day, showing it and several other pictures of the things they'd been doing to Jack and Crow, who then vowed to get the game the next day so they could catch up on their own time. Yusei hadn't even realized you could take pictures in the first place, nor that Judai had been taking them in the first place.

He died internally when Jack and Crow kept teasing him about getting dog-piled by a bunch of duel spirits and Judai - apparently his expression of shock was absolutely priceless, and he flushed in embarrassment when the other three immediately went to order physical copies from the local photo-print store.

He wished they hadn't picked the one where he had Judai on top of him, because now he was going to be reminded of it all the time, which wouldn't help his concentration at all.