Title: Hidden
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX
Genre: General
Pairing/Characters: Asuka, O'Brien
Word Count: 1 433
Spoilers: Uhhh, surprisingly, not really. Set near the beginning of S3, though.
Story Rating: PG
Story Summary: O'Brien meets someone he would do well to not underestimate.
Notes: Last night I had a dream. Now you can see it, too.
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: This story is for Anthony, who shoots straight.

It is the duty of a soldier to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

O'Brien remembers those words as he looks out across the lawn in front of the latest battlefield he has come to, a battlefield full of sheep, full of children who have not yet learned to fight. There is Jim Cook, sitting by the lake with his crocodile; there is a redheaded girl from Obelisk Blue he has yet to meet, nibbling a piece of Pocky and playing a handheld video game. Under a tree he sees those boys who have come to intrigue him as much as they intrigue Cobra: Jyuudai Yuuki and Johan Andersen, sitting so close their knees are touching, tag-dueling on a pair of mats against Tyranno Kenzan and little Sho Marifuji. They turn to face each other and then laugh, loudly and in perfect unison. Andersen puts his hand on Jyuudai's shoulder, and from the lake, Cook raises his head and sends a sharp glance in their direction. O'Brien's eyes narrow. Interesting.

And there, on a bench with a textbook open in her lap and a pad of paper by her side, is Asuka Tenjouin, Duel Academia Main's top-ranked female duelist. She, too, is getting sharp sidelong glances, although hers come from the boy Andersen said he never dueled at North School—Jun Manjyome. She turns a page, apparently oblivious to his attention, and tucks a strand of long blonde hair behind her ear. Then O'Brien sees it: the way her eyes flicker up, across the lawn, and back to her book. No, not oblivious, not at all—simply practiced enough in ignoring unwanted advances that she has learned to appear oblivious.

This girl, then, is not a sheep, not a child. She is a woman with a great understanding of how to care for herself, perhaps even moreso than the boy in the red jacket who just let out a loud peal of laughter and drew another glance from Jim Cook. From that quick moment of watchfulness it's impossible to tell. And yet, he thinks, it might be to his advantage to find out

He crosses the lawn, aware of a multitude of eyes glancing up at him before their owners turn away again into their own little groups, as though staring too long at the silent, dark-skinned champion who has come into their midst will burn them. O'Brien reaches out a hand to put on the Tenjouin girl's shoulder. Before it can make contact she turns her face from her book up toward him, not unfriendly but schooled in its own cautious mask. Even the hazel eyes studying his face give away nothing more than a mild curiosity, and he finds himself more interested than ever in what makes her look that way and how she even heard him as he approached her from behind.

"May I help you?"

"There's a boy there who's been watching you."

"There are three," she corrects him, and although his outward movement is calm as he glances across the lawn—and yes, she's right, the little Marufuji boy is indeed glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, there are at least two—inwardly he jumps as he realises she has observed more than even he. That, too, is interesting—and disturbing.

"And the third?"

She points off toward a tree, where a flash of white indicates some student sitting in the branches—but the leg he can see resting on an outcropping of branch is covered in a trouser leg, and there is only one male student on the campus that he knows of who wears a reversed uniform.

"My brother," she confirms, before O'Brien can speak the name. "He's probably thrilled."

"You have a great power of observation."

"He's probably thrilled because I'm talking to you," she says, and O'Brien tenses internally. The Tenjouin boy is not the same as the other sheep at this school—and as he now wonders about the girl, O'Brien has wondered if the boy is really a sheep at all. There is something that glimmers sometimes at the back of his eyes that makes O'Brien think he has, perhaps, seen a battlefield or two of his own. This is the place where he must feel carefully ahead, lest he give too much away. There is no knowing who he can trust in this place.

"He regulates your social life?"

"He tries to," she answers. Then she looks down at the page of her textbook and sighs. "There's no excuse for algebra to be this difficult."

"You're a maths student."

"I don't believe in dropping standard education just because you choose a specialization," she answers, tapping the textbook page with her pencil and then drawing it to the sum on her pad again. O'Brien reads the page over her shoulder. He gets as far as "In a graph where 2.18 on the Y axis is represented by point A" and then she shifts, and the problem falls out of his sight range.

"Have you covered this in a class?"

"Yes, and Fubuki explained it to me again afterward. I just don't do all that well with fractions. I'll get it eventually." She pulls out a ruler and draws a line across the graph on her pad. Part of him can't help admiring her for not just giving up and pulling out a calculator. Another part warns him that any girl stubborn enough to keep fighting with a piece of maths she finds difficult instead of pulling out a calculator is a girl he should beware of. He can also tell he's being brushed off, lest the boy pretending to read a novel in a tree halfway across the lawn should get the wrong idea. O'Brien obliges her so far as to head toward the tag duel that appears to have gone into a second round. Then he turns back to her.

"You need to flip the numerator and the denominator."

At first she doesn't look up, perhaps not even noticing he's spoken. Then she does, hazel eyes flickering away from the page and onto his face. "I'm sorry?"

"The numerator and denominator," he repeats, speaking English to be sure she will understand him; maths terms beyond long division are not part of the Japanese he knows, and anything beyond addition and subtraction he's not fluent with. "You have to flip them." He comes back to the bench and gets to one knee in front of it so he can better see the page. "See, here—" he indicates a set of figures. "Flip these—"

"And then—?" She scribbles down a new formula, although "scribbles" is, perhaps, the wrong word to associate with her neat and rounded handwriting. He nods.

"Yes."

The smile she gives him starts out perfunctory and polite. Then it spreads, crinkling the corners of her eyes and melting the mask over her expression enough for him to see she's pleased to have gotten her answer without having to concede defeat so far as to turn to the back of the book or ask her brother for help. That, too, is interesting—that because of such a basic kindness she allows him to see past the defence she wears for a reason he wishes to discover. "Thank you."

"Mm." Behind him there is a gleeful shout, and he turns long enough to see the tag group break up. Andersen throws a seemingly casual arm around Jyuudai's waist, his hand coming to rest on the other's hip. Jyuudai makes a comment to the Marufuji boy, pauses, then shakes his head and laughs. O'Brien looks back to the lake, but Jim Cook is gone. Then he looks at Asuka. She also is watching the pair leaving the tag group, Andersen with his arm still around Jyuudai's waist, Jyuudai with an arm slung around his shoulders. There is a knowing in her eyes that tells O'Brien everything he thinks he needs to know about her thoughts on the pair.

O'Brien stands up, brushing the knees of his jeans and bending his mind in the direction of just what Cobra is trying to accomplish here on the main campus. It occurs to him that in the future he might do well to steer clear of Asuka Tenjouin, at least until he knows where her loyalties—where his own loyalties, for that matter—may lie. She either is or could be, he thinks, a dangerous and formidable opponent precisely because she is observant and intelligent in quantities for which she does not receive nearly enough credit.

Perceptive.

Clever.

Interesting.