Cardfight!! Vanguard: Heiwa - Volume II

-Part 3

The year was 2048.

The arrival of summer started with the massive boost in support and advertisement to Vanguard's secondary and much less player format, Premium Format, at the hands of Ryuzaki & Co. and its president Ryuzaki, who thought it'd be cool.

Along with it came the return of the much forgotten Quest System, where fighters could partake in quests, be it made by someone or sponsored by the official branches in Tokyo, to obtain points and increase their fighters grade.

The first week went by without anything special happening, besides some festivals on the branches, titled Stride Festivals.

It was at the end of the first week, with the date for a Stride Festival hosted by the Star Gate branch on the horizon, that a massive event involving anyone who'd like to participate was announced by Ryuzaki himself.

The event was titled "Dream Team Challenge", where players would make teams and participate in quests on the branches to obtain points. Each branch had a different quest, and the quests and special guests changed everyday, meaning a big portion of the quest was left up to wherever a team decided to go.

On the second week, the two top teams of the event participated in one of Zoo's quest, a survival test in a forest outside Tokyo.

One of those teams were Hanabi, made by the Royalty Killer and boxing star Fuchigami Gin, a high ranking student of GEN Academy and legend by name Mikazuchi Kaido, the leader of the runner up team of the previous' year national champion Onizuka Masato from Apex, and the leader of the national champion's winning team and King of Heiwa Royalty Sawada Ryuuga, the leader of Spiral Terra.

The other was Gekkoukan, a small time team made by the middle school best friend duo of Sawada Izuru and Serebryakov Tametomo, with the occasional tag-along of a member of a pro team called Team Dropout.

On the first weekend of the Dream Team Challenge, Gekkoukan annihilated the Dark Zone quest, which settled them with enough points to have a colossal advantage over all other teams, so after a few hours spent on Zoo quest, they chose to leave early.

Because of the excruciating heat that came with summer, Izuru and Tate sat under a shade set up by the Zoo branch employees overseeing the quest. This was before they hit their explosive height growth, so the two looked like good and innocent small boys, the type that didn't read doujins for two hours everyday.

"Good work out there, Tate-kun, Izuru-kun!" The special guest of the day exclaimed, waving at them from the distance.

"Thank you, Aijou-san!!!" Tate replied, waving excitedly at the fact a smoking hot girl praised him. "Dude, I could totally score Aijou-san whenever I get bigger!"

"She's into losers so you might actually have a chance." Izuru sighed.

This was back when Izuru still had a bang of hair covering one of his eyes. Yeah, that pretentious style was already a thing back then, and he even told his mom it wasn't a phase.

"That's mean, Miyuki! Mark my words, when I hit high school, I'll totally date Aijou-san!"

When he hit high school, Aijou-san got totally married to her current husband.

"Go wild. Why not play Darkface without Gredora because she plays her?" Izuru asked. That was a joke, a complete and utter joke.

"...Miyuki, you genius!"

Tate's brain cells didn't evolve that much between then and now.

"...indeed I am. Why not go buy some soda to thank me for my ultra brain suggestion?"