Predictions and Observations:
Dueling With the Dark Army

Even though the comet's still burning brightly, Jaden is determined to head for the prison camp. His friends talk him out of it, but the moment they leave him by himself, he's gone. Syrus, Alexis, Chazz, Hassleberry, and Atticus go after him. Jim and Axel are more uncertain, knowing that this is most likely a very stupid move; however, if there's a fight brewing, count them on Jaden's side. Sir Freed seems to agree to come with them, but actually he gathers the villagers and leads them to a safer hiding place. Jim and Axel follow, but realize he isn't going to help them and take off. Kyle asks Sir Freed why he doesn't help Jaden; Freed replies that Jaden is different from him because he follows his heart, but it will only end in defeat. Jaden arrives at the prison camp to find it deserted, except for one prisoner who was left behind because he wasn't a warrior. This stranger looks so much like Jesse it's downright scary. Zure and his minions show up, having seen Jaden coming a mile away, and send Jaden's new acquaintance to the stars. Zure tries to do the same to Jaden only to find that he can't; Jaden is too powerful, just like someone else with whom he recently crossed paths. So they duel. Zure puts together a powerful combo, Jaden's on the ropes. Syrus, Alexis, Hassleberry, Chazz, and Atticus sneak up to watch, and get captured. Jim and Axel arrive to find the situation dire. Sir Freed is not far behind, and, having been seemingly inspired out of his apathy, relinquishes his energy to become a card in Jaden's deck, which wins him the duel and sends Zure to the stars: Freed the Brave Wonderer. Zure dissipates, leaving five little white magic spheres. Freed, also, disappears to the stars. Jaden declares that he'll scour this entire realm in search of Jesse; Alexis, Syrus, Hassleberry, Atticus, and Chazz look concerned. Each of the little white "ping- pong balls" vanish as Alexis, Syrus, Chazz, Atticus, and Hassleberry quietly disagree…

They should know better than to leave Jaden by himself, I said to myself at the time, considering how all of you got here in the first place. But that reflects that Jaden is becoming increasingly reckless, and I confess that I'm a bit worried myself. If Jesse is out there, he wouldn't want Jaden to get himself sent to the stars or anything. Amusingly enough – and I'm about to seriously weird people out – the thought briefly crosses my mind that Jaden's friends find themselves in a similar position to that of Captain Ahab's crew: Jaden's their leader, and he's sort of hard to argue with, but if one of them doesn't step up and talk some sense into him, someone's going to get hurt. Luckily, that could be any one of them.

Alexis *does* seem to be falling for Jaden again.

What on Earth? That guy really does look *exactly* like Jesse. If Jesse and Jaden are twins, what does that make this guy? Congrats, Jaden—you're a triplet! But no, seriously. What was that little vision there when the guy vanished to the stars and Jaden saw Jesse? The guy looks a lot like him; I guess it was a bit too close to Jesse being the one who got starstruck for comfort.

Warriors. Okay, based on further observation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a "warrior" is someone who has the ability to duel to defend him or herself, a duelist. The only wrench in that works is that Scarr looked at a big group of trained duelists who had decks and were wearing duel disks, and named Axel as the only apparent "warrior" in the group, even though, by this definition, Scarr would have been able to very clearly see that they all fit into the category. So it seems to be more of a `presence' thing. So I reevaluate: a "warrior" is an individual with the inner strength to require a duel to send them to the stars. Any weakling can just be starstruck, like Zure did to that guy, but Zure tried and could not starstrike Jaden, therefore Jaden is a warrior. Since you can't tell until someone has resisted being starstruck, Sir Freed has sort of gone for the "better safe than sorry" approach and not taken the chance that any of the people in his group are not warrior material, and that makes more sense than just `the guys who wear the armor are warriors'. And of course, this follows the pattern of duels leveling the playing field; even a warrior can be starstruck if defeated in a duel.

"Capsule-Monsters-esque" is a term that occurred to me. It seems almost like this was a test; Sir Freed was a hidden asset who was won over through being inspired by the hero's actions, and that almost seemed to be his purpose for being there. He had his own motives, he had his own cynicisms, and these were stated in his getting the villagers to safety instead of going after Jaden, and in what he said to Kyle there: "Jaden follows what his heart is telling him. Though, surely, in the end he will find nothing but defeat." — and yet somehow Jaden won him over, and that inspiration is what saved their bacon. Freed's seeming almost like a CM test sort of calls into question the reality of all of this; were those villagers all duel spirits in disguise, an illusion altogether, or actually innocents transported there unawares?

Zure's seen Jesse, I think. I could be imagining things, of course, but Zure did say that he met someone with power a lot like Jaden's a little while ago. Unless perhaps Yugi's wandering around here somewhere (went to the store to get olives three years ago, stumbled into a dimensional portal…could happen…Crowler went out to get eggs (or dance in the moonlight with the chickens, whatever…) and got here…), who else would it be?

Power Annihilator has a built-in Skyscraper effect? Okey-dokey.

Justice-Bright, is what Freed won the duel with. Is that the same thing Lars played before? That, according to last week's post (I know I went to great lengths to write down the right thing; I remember), was Justi-break. Related? Two people saying the same thing differently ("Marshmelon." I rest my case.)?

The ping-pong balls. What the heck is with Zure's cursed ping-pong balls of doom? And they sense, I think, that Jaden's friends are less than enthusiastic about all this, starting to get worried about him, or so forth. They zero in on doubt. This is probably not good; it looks like they figure big in the next adventure, and not in a good way.

So, having defeated Zure, who will come after them next? Looking at my list of Dark World cards, I'm thinkin' maybe "Reign-Beaux, Overlord of Dark World" (cool puns!), "Kahkki, Guerrilla of Dark World"; "Green, Tactician of Dark World"; "Renge, Gatekeeper of Dark World"; "Beiige, Knight of Dark World"; "Broww, Huntsman of Dark World"; "Brron, Mad King of Dark World"; "Sillva, Warlord of Dark World"; or "Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World" I like the color theme. It's interesting.

The next episode is Turning the Page I. Ominous, ominous. What page? Real page or metaphorical page? Usually when one is said to be "turning the page" it means kind of moving on or leaving something behind. Since it's what came up right away, is anyone going to act on their nervousness or under the control of these ping-pong whatsits and walk out on Jaden? Or, turning the page as in a new chapter of this grand little tale of adventure, duel spirits, and lots of very fine blue dust. But that's sort of vague, too general for a specific occurrence; it's like naming an episode "The Plot Thickens" or "Foreshadowing" or "Exposition" or "Suspense", and even those would imply what happened in the episode. This would be more like "The Adventure Continues" or "Someone Duels". Or, `page' in what sense? Page in a book? Are we book-punning here and is there a special book they need? Page as in medieval footman? Well, we've had knights and shining armor over the past few episodes… Page as in beeper? Unlikely, though someone may be attempting to contact them from Academy Island by now, and if anyone in Jaden's party with a chance to had had a lick of sense, they will have brought something to facilitate communication and get them home. Page as in web page? Doesn't seem to be very tech-savvy, Dark World, but wouldn't put it past Bastion to rig something, or, they brought at least one student notebook and it's canon they have wireless internet. I doubt they'd get a connection from another dimension, but since I thought it was amazing they had hundreds of students all with small portable wireless internet to begin with, what do I know? Duel Academy tech is approved, if not created, by a guy who was making smelly holograms ten years ago.

Okay, sending it off before it shows. Right. `Til tomorrow, everybody! -Clio