Predictions and Observations:
Night of the Living Duelists

A brief summary for anyone who would like one:
The eyeball formerly known as Marcel ventures out of its lair in the library and duels and takes control of a couple of students who wander down a back hallway. Meanwhile, Bastion is working on calculating a way out, Blair’s condition is worsening, and Chazz is guarding the limited stores of food. Just then, a handful of tired-looking students show up and challenge Chazz to duel. Chazz accepts, creams the lot, and they get right back up and challenge him again. Each duel drains Chazz’s strength through his bio-band, and feeds it into the zombie-like students. Jaden, Jesse, Jim, Adrian, and Axel return to Duel Academy to find it overrun with weary-looking students who speak in dummy-talk monotone and seem barely capable of walking; Duel Academy has been zombiefied. They meet up with Hassleberry and Alexis, still in their right minds, and discover that Chazz and Syrus have become zombies. Surrounded by hordes of zombies, they can’t reach the infirmary, where Blair is waiting for her medicine, Ms. Fontaine is panicking, and zombies are banging at the door. According to Hassleberry and Alexis, the gym and Crowler’s office are also strongholds, but they’re boarded up tight and we haven’t heard from Dorothy, Bastion, Crowler, or Bonaparte.

So which dragon monster is that that they saw out in the desert? My opening guess is Crawling Dragon, another monster associated with zombies, crazily enough.

Bastion doesn’t have a deck or duel disk. He can’t borrow someone else’s? That’s an interesting thing to add to my list of properties. Is it because no one wants to lend him theirs when they could need it anytime? Or can he actually not use someone else’s because it isn’t his? This reminds me of a quote from Everything’s Relative: “How could your heart live in cards that belong to someone else?” It’s not just duel spirits, unless Axel’s Blaze Accelerator and Volcanic Shell are. Maybe it’s not a matter of duel spirits only (which by the way, it isn’t), but a matter of cards with heart.

Oppenhelm’s algorithms and the string theory differential. Yes, I looked them up. I found an obscure reference deep in the dense text of a patent, to a text on Goertzel algorithms written by a guy named Alan V. Oppenhelm. So I went from there. There are many pages on Oppenhelm that are in a language of characters not recognized by Firefox. The ones I could read all referred to this text on Goertzel algorithms. I’m guessing, if our dude exists, this is our dude. The Goertzel algorithm, I found on Wikipedia. As far as I can understand it, it’s used for identifying the frequency components of a signal, such as identifying which number was dialed on a telephone based on the accompanying beep. Now, string theory and differentials. I found this on string theory on a website of Calculus and complicated physics for idiots. I sort of understand what it means: “Relativistic quantum field theory has worked very well to describe the observed behaviors and properties of elementary particles. But the theory itself only works well when gravity is so weak that it can be neglected. Particle theory only works when we pretend gravity doesn't exist.
General relativity has yielded a wealth of insight into the Universe, the orbits of planets, the evolution of stars and galaxies, the Big Bang and recently observed black holes and gravitational lenses. However, the theory itself only works when we pretend that the Universe is purely classical and that quantum mechanics is not needed in our description of Nature.
String theory is believed to close this gap….
Think of a guitar string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across the guitar. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be excitation modes of that guitar string under tension.
In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or excitation modes of elementary strings.
In string theory, as in guitar playing, the string must be stretched under tension in order to become excited. However, the strings in string theory are floating in spacetime, they aren't tied down to a guitar. Nonetheless, they have tension. The string tension in string theory is denoted by the quantity 1/(2 p a'), where a' is pronounced "alpha prime"and is equal to the square of the string length scale…” (http://superstringtheory.com/index.html)
It’s not a matter of understanding what all this is as much as why Bastion might be using it and what it says about the nature of this dimension. The string theory regards gravity, and the Goertzel algorithm involves frequencies of sound. The monitor in Eisenstein’s lab also showed different dimensions as different frequencies of sound combined, I think. So maybe they’ll escape by making the proper difficult-and-impossibly-unlikely noise when the gravity is aligned just right, or something weird like that.

So Bastion got a haircut after all.

“Striking fear into those students is the only thing I’m good at anymore!” Oh, come on, Crowler, give yourself some credit. If you got out and dueled more often, you could be a good duelist! Sheppard will know that the school getting transported to another dimension couldn’t be helped; he runs a school on top of every weird mystic portal known to man, and a few that weren’t until just now! What he’ll judge on is whether you took charge, kept the school together and the students safe……..well, um…no, actually, you’re pretty sunk.

What about Blair? *She’s* Marcel’s friend! If anything happens to Blair (besides what already has, which we’d have to assume Marcel doesn’t know about)

“…To resolve all conflicts by dueling…” Y’know, that part of the school motto seems to be coming back to bite them in the rear. “When in doubt, duel it” is a rule that can’t apply here, and the sooner they realize that, the easier this will be. *Will* they? Not a chance.

“Marcel. Where did your accent go?” Kind of an interesting observation, especially since in retrospect the only other evil alter ego of someone with an accent *keeps* his accent. So we either have to wonder how Bakura is so different, what it is about this, or how an ancient Egyptian spirit who created the Shadow Realm ends up with an English accent also. Or, we could say, they’re technically the same person so therefore same accent, or, we could just say he talks that way because it’s fun, which, I can vouch, it really is!

Infernal Incinerator. Wow, we haven’t seen *that* monster in a while. Not since Formula For Success, I believe.

Chazzercized. Another thing to add to the list of Chazz-related puns. I really oughta make a list like that. This is what I’ve got, just from ten seconds off the top of my head. I know this isn’t complete; can anyone help me add to it?
-Chazz it up! – Originally from School Duel I
-Chazz-anova
-Champion or Chazz-Been?
-Chazzberry Pie – The Hands of Justice I
-Chazzalicious – The Hands of Justice I
-The Chazzmanian Devil – The Hands of Justice I
-to Chazz (as a verb. As in “Hold that thought. Before you *Chazz* me…”- Head in the Clouds II)
- Chazzed
-Chazzercized – Night of the Living Duelist

“I really think you should give ‘em some food!” This is Ojama Yellow being smart about when to avoid a duel, again. Listen to him, Chazz—he’s a sharp one! It reminds me of I’ve Seen the Light; Ojama Yellow tried to get Chazz to duck out of that duel, too!

Duel ghouls. Yeah, a light or two went on in my brain for Duelist Kingdom. Come on, Jaden—swap their attack points and defense points! Hack into their duel disks and destroy their monsters with computer viruses and psychic powers! That’s all, moving on.

Speaking of which, the duel disks are probably not functioning at all right now; this dimension is powered by magic, not science, therefore the duel disks wouldn’t have electricity and wouldn’t need it. The pact of a declared duel summons or creates the energy necessary to play it.

I have so much to say on this, I’m going to try and keep it structured.
Part One—The Properties of Zombies. As far as I can figure it, the zombies are students who have been drained of energy to the point of unconsciousness, and then reanimated in only the loosest sense of the word by energy from the eyeball’s reserves. They wander the school in search of opponents. They seem only ‘reanimated’ enough to manage minimal speech (unless, I guess, the eyeball gave Syrus a bit more, just to mess with ‘em), crappy dueling, and some small amount of walking-related coordination. They seem to be remotely controllable; the eyeball can amass them at a given place, send them after a certain person. It seems readily apparent that they aren’t in their right minds (duh). Therefore, I hypothesize that either the energy that animates them can be told to avoid the part of their brain pertaining to identity or memory, that said energy combined with evil magic scrambles or subjugates their brains, or, in the grand GX tradition, the evil magic creates an unshakable but powerfully fragile hoax. The only real evidence we have, besides, ‘they walk around and duel and swell their numbers’, is Chazz’s Ojamas and Syrus’ little prank there. The Ojamas’ presence suggests, if past theories can be leaned upon, that Chazz maintains enough energy as a duelist to allow them to continue to stay near him rather than in his deck. However, that may just be a property of the dusty dimension; they may not need to be tied to Chazz’s energy here, and that wouldn’t be surprising. What’s even more interesting is that the Ojamas themselves are zombies. That suggests that they, too, are running off the eyeball’s energy. Syrus’ momentary normal speech suggests that either the eyeball gave him a burst of energy and played a little joke on Jaden and company but it wasn’t enough to have the important parts of his brain wake up; that the control is not due to a tiny, barely-functioning-person drop of energy (because Syrus could be given more without snapping out of it); and that the control is complete (if Syrus were in control, he would have been telling them to get the heck out of there). Symptoms of zombieness consistently include shadows under the eyes, which according to science also are the symptoms of rubbing your eyes too much, trouble sleeping, various allergies, having pale skin (which makes anything natural more noticeable), aging, dehydration, or they could be genetic. It wouldn’t surprise me, baking under those triple suns with a limited water supply, for a bunch of people to get dehydrated. They also include difficulty walking, monosyllabic sentences, obsession with dueling, and general zombielike behavior.
Part Two—What Can Jaden and Company Do About the Zombies? Dueling them would be an exercise in futility, unless one were to duel, sacrifice him or herself, and attract their attention while the others run for it. However, that ploy may not even work, if I’m right about the eyeball being able to directly and remotely control the zombies. It’s not like it doesn’t have enough for everybody by now. They could take a leaf out of Adrian’s book and fight without duel disks. We already know, and so does Adrian, that the bio-bands won’t activate. If they can keep smacking the zombies down, eventually they will run out of energy to get back up because the bio-bands are their source of energy. However, it’s not likely to be anytime soon; think of all the dueling that’s been going on while they were gone. The energy of every single student that’s a zombie is currently at the eyeball’s disposal, and we’ve already seen that it can make them a bit smarter (Syrus) by giving them a burst of it; the eyeball could just give a bunch of strength to the ones closest to getting socked, and they’ll sock back way harder. I can only assume that if someone gets knocked out it would convert them as readily as fainting by bio-band would, which also brings up ideas about vulnerability of minds. I’ll note that they’ve actually got quite a bit of fistfighting power going: we’ve all seen Adrian’s muscles, Jim and Shirley wrestle wild animals as a hobby, Axel trains by putting himself in danger, and Hassleberry’s a soldier himself. They could try to win Syrus and Chazz back over, but even if they were to buck the eyeball’s control, it’s likely that it’s the only thing keeping them animate at the moment so they’d faint again and get taken over again. I think the only way to win back the students is to cause the eyeball to run out of power, which, we’ve got a long way to go. I think Hassleberry and Alexis were onto something with the cart-and-ladder thing to get through the crowds, and the fact that they could would say that either the zombies weren’t too bent on attacking them and/or that physical damage would, as I think it may be, be easy to inflict, drain the energy necessary to animate them, and not provide them with more. Even so, they’d have to scare the zombies away from Fontaine and Blair’s door, and it’s not like you can run a cart and ladder into the wall. For another idea, what about a distraction? It might work because the zombies are stupid and drooling and only capable of small words; it might not work because they’re under the control of an evil force that could care less about flashy lights or explosions. Then again, if they could somehow temporarily blind or smokescreen these guys, that has possibilities. My other idea was, if these guys were to get their energy back, it might break the eyeball’s grip, because this sort of control seems based on the fact that it is the zombies’ only source of energy. Adrian made it through his first survival duel and dodged lasers the next day; if he hadn’t turned slightly evil, he may be a huge help here because he might have some energy-boosting chemicals or something up his sleeve that allowed him to do that. The main question is, what happens if they don’t duel? If either duelist doesn’t accept it, it isn’t a duel. Therefore, what’s keeping them from just elbowing through the crowd and saying no to the challenges? Will the zombies try to hurt them? It depends. Without energy the zombies will eventually just sort of faint and stay that way until the people regain consciousness as themselves, as far as I can tell. Therefore, if they tire these guys out without dueling them, or kill them, or whatever, that’s a bunch of energy they don’t get. However, the argument *for* the zombies fighting back is that the eyeball wants to hurt Jaden, which probably means that, unless the eyeball has something even nastier planned that requires it not to harm Jaden, the zombies will have no problem beating him up and even less of a problem with doing nasty things to his friends.

Properties of dueling. Damage seems to be restricted with regard to duelist-to-duelist (based on past stuff), but walls are apparently still fair game.

What about Bastion? What about Crowler and Bonaparte? What about Ms. Dorothy and Pharaoh? We haven’t heard from them, so I add them to my, “people we’d really like to hear from because we have no idea how they’re doing” list.

What’s Adrian going to do next? What would his goal be, here? Get to the Library, probably, and figure out how he can help. Whaddaya wanna bet the eyeball will answer by zombiefying him?

Oh, no, it’s the Society all over again!! No, wait—the Society’s goons were dumber.

As an almost entirely unrelated sidenote, the Saturday night that directly followed when this episode showed somewhat paralleled it. Every Saturday night, my extended family and friends all get together and chat and play games. Tonight, for the first time in a good long while, we played one of my favorites, a game called Betrayal at House on the Hill. Basically, the plot of the game is that several explorers set out to explore this creepy haunted house, discovering rooms, useful objects, pitfalls, disasters, and omens. Soon into the game, the “haunting” starts, and one player (randomly chosen) turns traitor and is given special powers/minions/etc. His or her mission becomes, usually, to kill the other characters, fulfill a strange ritual, and so forth, and the other players have to try and stop them. It’s kind of creepy, but also quite amusing, to think that Duel Academy has just turned into a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. But then, I keep asking myself, where does Adrian fit in?

The next episode is School Ghoul Duels. Not to be confused with the School Duel, Jewel of a Duel, or even Duel With a Ghoul. Though I’m sure by now everyone is cool enough to realize that their duel school has become a school of fools, and it could be grueling to get it back to its normal self. At the moment, chaos rules, energy pools in the eyeball’s tank of goo, and cruel plans are woven on their figurative spools to use the students as tools to get revenge on Jaden. Indeed, this plan seems like quite a jewel, because as long as the zombies are stubborn as mules and can get people to duel, extracting joule after joule of energy, they have an endless source of fuel, and thus when they’re knocked down, instant renewal, and they can continue to drool right on until Yule, if they don’t need food. Well, this is the dual blessing and curse of going to the best duel prep school in the world; people who’ll rule the duel tend to attract trouble like Duel For Jewels did fools. Heeheehee… fun with rhyming.

Well, that’s about it. The next episode is next Saturday and known as School Ghoul Duels (Seriously. Try saying it five times fast.). That’s game! -Clio