Dueling life in a futuristic world

 From an ambiguous wooden door exited a tall purple-haired woman wearing a white dress. She was clutching her head as she walked and had a satisfied look on her face.

 A maid waiting by the door greeted her with a bow. “Mistress Miranda? Master Liam calls for you in the dining room. The chef has prepared a lunch of carrot cream soup and a light fish dish.”

 The woman smiled at the maid but sighed. “He’s treating me like I’m sick again. That worrywart… Well, I will be making my way there, regardless. I’m famished.”

 With that, the woman left the maid behind and made her way through the classically decorated lobby to an out-of-place looking transparent tube which runs up to the ceiling. She carefully stepped into the tube before saying. “Dining room.”

 A blue-ish aura surrounded her and, not a moment later, she rose through the tube at a relaxed pace, up to the ceiling, before the inside turned dim and illuminated by a single blue light.

 A moment later, she descended through another similar tube and arrived at the modern-looking room dominated by a long table with many chairs around it backdropped by an enormous window with a view of Dragoon City from the 135th floor.

 She gracefully descended from the high ceiling through the tube, stopping at ground level.

 The only other person in the room called her. “That took longer than expected. I’m guessing you two had a lot to discuss.” He was a unit of a man wearing a dark suit and tie.

 She gracefully walked over next to him, another maid pulling back her chair before she sat down on it. Only then did she answer him. “You can say that.”

 …

 …

 …

 An eerie silence descended over the room, only interrupted by the sound of plates being placed down in front of the two by trained servants…

 Breaking through the silence, Liam asked. “So how was she? From the brief time I talked with her, she just seemed a lot stronger than before.”

 Miranda, who was about to grab her spoon, put her hands on the table and replied. “Strong would be an understatement. She’s very mature. I don’t know what happened to her, but she looks like a completely different person now.” She looked down at the table. “I don’t know why that is, but my best guess is that she was underselling what she went through.” Her teary eyes turned to Liam again. “I-I wanted to see her grow up, but now that’s gone… She no longer needs us, Liam.”

 His wife’s declaration made Liam stand up. “That’s not true and you know it!” He walked close to Miranda and kneeled close to her. “Listen here. I screwed up today. I’ll admit that. My assumption that she would be just another eighteen-year-old teenager may have been wrong, and now she hates me forever and there’s nothing I can do about it. But you, Miranda, love of my life, she still needs you. She still needs her mother!”

 Teary-eyed, Miranda sought. “And what makes you say that, Liam?”

 He shook his head. “Until I brought you up, she wasn’t even considering coming back.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Do you know what that means? She loves you more than she hates me, Miranda. She loves you more than she hates the person who shut her out! If that doesn’t tell you she needs you, I don’t know what will!”

 Miranda closed her eyes tightly. The only reason for her makeup not running being its advanced nature. She wiped her tears away with her bare wrist, voicing out a meek. “Okay…”

 The man sighed, nodding, before getting up and sitting back down in his chair at the end of the table. “With Yuumi returning, we have to be careful about how to disclose what happened to the press. We’ll have every single scavenger at our doors as soon as the announcement goes out, and maybe even earlier.” He looked up at Miranda. “I will handle this part alone. Please continue your work with the negotiations with the Union army. Last I heard, they just had a disastrous counter-offensive near Cy City. I couldn’t get exact numbers, but there’s enough hearsay going around to at least estimate over a division’s worth of equipment loss.”

 The sudden change in topic made Miranda frown, but, as the chief of sales for Katayama Armaments, what he told also grabbed her attention. “When did you get that? I knew of the counter-offensive two days ago when it started, but operations like these take weeks.”

 Liam shook his head. “Not this time. Haven’t you gone out lately? There are recruitment posters everywhere for duelists and the union just sent out a general draft order for all cities. The Union is getting desperate for duelist candidates, and they’re getting put on read by our Academies. I don’t know how they didn’t expect that, after they went against the academies in the uprising, but I’m not sure bad blood is the only thing in play here.”

 Miranda stroked her chin in a thinking mood before sighing. “Well, we’ll handle it as news come in. I can’t act on rumors, Liam. How about we finish lunch first and then look into this?”

 Nodding, Liam agreed. “Sure.”

—

 It was already the middle of the afternoon. Birds chirped in unison with the sound of high-speed transit on the many projected high-ways of Dragoon City.

 On the backseat of one of these many vehicles, a woman yelled into her headset. “We’re not going below 164 per! I don’t care about if you need one hundred or a million, prices are already as low as we can go! N— War profiteering!? Are you seriously threatening us right now!? I’ll let you know we’re a private corporation! Fulfilling private contracts! You can’t just show up requesting fifty thousand IFVs out of nowhere and then expect us to keep our rates from before when the contract was one hundred a month! Either eat up the new rate or shelf it! Tooling costs money, and we’re already accepting your stupid bonds. Now come back to me when your commander wakes up from fucking lu-lu land!”

 She cut the call there and leaned back on the luxurious black leather seat, her purple hair bunching behind her. “These fucking acquisition officers are delirious! How does the United Army think we can get those numbers up after leaving us for the SV manufactures!? I hope they’re making good use of those duel disks. That was supposed to be our artillery vehicle contract!”

 She kicked the back of the seat in front with her blue stilettos in frustration. But no one cared. She might’ve been in the back seat, but a driver wasn’t needed.

 Liam’s rumor turned out to be correct, much more correct than she could ever imagine. It was Black Monday for the solid-vision arms industry. Just in the last few hours nine sizable solid-vision arms startups had folded when most of their government contracts got pulled, causing panic sells and investor withdraws. The Union had drunk the proverbial solid vision cool aid without a care in the world about the manpower required and now most of their forces were cosmetic.

 *Ting,Ting,Ting*

 [Incoming call. “AA-Liam (Love)”]

 The purple-haired woman hastily accepted the call. “What is it now? I just got out of the call from the 2nd armored company, same ridiculous demands as the 3rd.”

 The man on the other side of the phone only had further bad news. “Then we’re screwed. All four of our MG plants are already running at max capacity; Miranda, we’ll be sending them wagons with no guns if things continue like this. I’ve already called for the conversion of three more factories, but that’s at least three days off from completing.”

 Miranda rubbed her forehead, thinking of a solution. “Hold off the exports and convert one plant for final fitting. Worst-case scenario, we delay by a week and if they somehow complain about delays under these conditions, tell them to shove it!”

 Laughing over the phone, Liam teased. “You’re so attractive when you talk like that… I’ll pass the decision over. Oh, and Yuumi has requested a revision to the contract, she wants to keep her current last name as a middle name, I’ve already passed it over to the lawyers, they say it’s a small adjustment that’ll be ready by the time she gets here.”

 The woman sighed. “If that’s the case, that’s fine. Any news on the frontline situation?”

 “No cigar, they’re silent as a hawk, but my contact thinks the Protectorate might try another push. If they succeed, that’ll put them uncomfortably close to Dragoon City.”

 Miranda shook her head. “There’re 4 big cities between them and us. If they get that far, then the Union is as good as finished.”

 Liam grumbled over the phone. “Arrg. Still close enough for airstrikes. Even with the shields, we’ll be trapped in the city.”

 This observation made Miranda shake her head, even though Liam wasn’t in the car and this was a voice only call. “If airstrikes were the issue, I’m sure some Academies would mobilise. We’re winning the orbital war for now, so that’s not a factor. Anyway, Honey, is there anything else you would want to tell me about?”

 “No, for now, that’s all. I’ll pass your orders along and sit tight… Oh, by the way, if you open up the tournament livestream, you can see our little angel dressed quite boldly. Just thought you would want to know that.” [Call Terminated]

 Miranda leaned back on the black leather seat of the autonomous Sudan driving her around. She pulled up another holographic monitor to join the three others—Which showed real time statistics of their operation—And opened up the latest tournament livestream.

 The window materialized to show an overhead view live from the Arena. Above each duelist was a transparent platform which supported two girls each.

 On the right side of the arena stood a short, blue-haired girl with ghostly pale skin. Above her, on the platform, were two girls each wearing white and blue outfits consisting of short, under-boob crop tops, and box-pleat skirts cut around four centimeters below the buttocks of each of the girls, with flat running sneakers, and matching pompoms on each hand. One of the girls was shorter and had lightly tan skin, while the other was much taller, and had long dark hair which flowed down, ending slightly above her skirt.

 On the left side stood a taller, tanned girl, who styled her radioactive green hair in a short ponytail. Her entourage included two girls of similar builds wearing identical outfits to the other group, save for the addition of fishnets. One of the cheerleaders had brown hair that flowed around her back and a rather full chest, while the other had short, toxic pink hair styled in a pixie cut.

 However, Miranda barely looked at the left side, as on the right, above the arena, stood her precious daughter.

 She could only sigh at her outfit choice, however. “Anf, why do you choose to present yourself in this way? Is this some sort of rebellion against me or your father? If it is… We might deserve it, but you didn’t speak about it that way… Do you really enjoy being watched in those types of outfits?”

 Miranda still couldn’t understand why her daughter, who by all accounts was a dueling genius, would instead choose to forgo dueling entirely in a tournament like this. Was it a statement that she would not take part in such a propaganda campaign? Did she even know this whole tournament was one? Her mother didn’t know, but there wasn’t anything she could do to prevent her. The last time they tried to confine her had ended in the disaster that Miranda and Liam would spend the rest of their lives trying to remedy.

 The mother’s eyes quickly shot up as she heard a familiar voice announce with fervor.

 [“It seems like Yasuna will get to decide the turn order! Today, live in MDS Promotional Space Station Arena! Yasuna Nishioka, The NWDA’s own Synchro Queen! Vs Aiko Nagasawa, also the NWDA’s own Bot Mistress! Ready!?”]

 Hearing her daughter’s voice again, she could only smile. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? As long as you’re our little baby, we’ll support you either way. No matter how you look.”