365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Getting Data

3/27/19

"I shouldn't be surprised considering you said it was like a war zone, but damn is that a lot of duel energy," Johan stated, staring wide-eyed at the readers in front of him, "I've never seen it so concentrated before."

Yusei looked on in surprise at the screens as well, recalling the averages that Johan had listed off to him from before; these numbers completely blew those out of the water, and he couldn't help but wonder if such a high concentration was dangerous - he certainly wouldn't be surprised if they somehow were, at least.

They knew the numbers were very accurate too since Yusei and Johan had made quick work of joining their different devices so they'd work together, not only making them more efficient, but also more accurate.

"It's unnatural," Judai said, giving the facility a relentless, wary stare from where he sat on top of Yusei's runner, "I don't know anything about how it'd look in number form like you guys, but I've got a theory that the reactor is somehow keeping it from dispersing. Floating duel energy isn't supposed to stick around for five minutes, let alone nineteen years. Acts like a hive-mind, too, if it's interested in you."

Yusei grimaced slightly at the reminder, glad that his core situation had been solved as quickly as it had been once Judai'd figured out the issue. He didn't want to know what might've happened if he kept going to the facility for long periods of time with part of the reactor's core still latched onto him.

Speaking of Judai, he looked over slightly worriedly at him for the third time since they'd been there, noting how tense he sat and the way he kept crossing and uncrossing his arms. This was the most restless he'd seen Judai be so far, with the exception of his reunion with his friends (nothing could really match that, he believed), and Yusei half-expected to see green and orange eyes with flickers of gold every time he took a glance back.

"A hive-mind, huh?" Johan hummed in thought, tilting his head slightly as he looked down at the monitor before turning to Yusei, "Think your stuff could pick up on movement like that?"

"Yeah, but it'd probably need a trigger of some sort. I've done tests here before and never picked up on anything that would suggest that kind of behavior, even though it definitely does," Yusei replied, tapping a few keys to change a few settings on his movement recording devices, "Any ideas for doing that?"

"Maybe dueling would do it? Or having duel spirits materialized, maybe there needs to be a spike of energy in the facility to make it interested-" Johan suggested before interrupted.

"No," Judai growled, still not looking at them and instead leveling a hard glare at the building with a frown, "The last thing we need is to aggravate it. As it is now, it's not dangerous to people, but if you make it active it could be - learned that one the hard way, just don't do it."

Well, at least that answered Yusei's question from earlier about whether it was dangerous or not. On the other hand, he was now left with wondering what happened to Judai for him to even have experience with aggravating old, concentrated duel energy in the first place.

"We won't, then," Yusei reassured him, and thankfully it was enough to make Judai calm down to the point of being only antsy again instead of looking like he was two seconds away from storming the reactor room and destroying it.

Yusei shared a look with Johan, who'd also noticed how uncomfortable Judai was in the place, before mumbling just low enough that Judai couldn't hear him, "We should probably set something up here to collect the data and leave - besides, this way it'll give us more to work with later."

"Good idea," Johan replied back, glancing back at Judai for a moment before looking back at Yusei, "Judai looks just about ready to bolt, we really need to get him away from here. I'm guessing something happened here?"

"Yeah," Yusei answered, stopping for a moment to point at a few things he needed him to set up, "We ended up needing to strip away some outer parts of the reactor to get a look at its energy core. Let's just say Judai was very reluctant to let me anywhere near the thing and took quite a bit of convincing."

"That bad, huh?" Johan winced, picking up the modified set-up and standing up from where they'd been on the ground, "Alright, I'll just hide this thing in the bushes over there. If you'd like, I can just pick it up a day or two from now and bring it over so we don't have to come back - I get the feeling Judai won't let you anywhere near here without him."

"It's for a good reason," Yusei admitted, though he shook his slightly when Johan gave him a curious look.

As fascinating as duel energy and energy cores were to Yusei, he really didn't like thinking about how he'd essentially had a leech on him his whole life. He was still extremely grateful to Judai for helping him to not only realize it existed, but get rid of it too.

Johan shrugged, not taking any offense to the lack of information before shooting him a grin and waving him off with a wink, "Alrighty then, off you go - make sure to take his mind off of all this!"

Yusei stared uncomprehendingly for a moment before flushing red at the implication and leveling the other with a glare. Unfortunately for him, it only made Johan laugh as he turned around and left to go hide the energy reader.