A/N: Written for the Writing Academy Challenge at the GX Writing Academy (link in profile). Wasn't quite what I started writing, but some fics have a funny habit of mutating like that. :D

things that have changed

A lot of things had changed, but the salty breeze still felt the same and he took a moment to enjoy it. His hair, recently cut and damp, tried to find a comfortable dance with it and his skin tried to readjust itself to Japan's moist autumn after a month of trekking about the Sahara.

The sea air was nice and cool by the cliff side, but the humidity of the forest and sweat from the climb still clung to him.

'A shower might work better,' Yubel said with a laugh. Hot, dry, wet – none of those things mattered to her in her incorporeal form, but Judai's state was obvious.

'Maybe so,' Judai said ruefully, before sighing. 'Oh well; this view isn't going anywhere at least.' But he didn't move.

It wasn't going anywhere, if it had lasted for the three years he'd spent at the Academia and who knew how many before that. Who knew how many people might have stood where he was standing now – where he'd stood in his student years, looking out at the world beyond.

'I used to wonder what sort of world was out there,' he said to her. 'That was when all I'd seen were the places in town, a bit of the city, and this island.'

Yubel smiled in tender amusement. 'I should think so,' she commented, 'remembering how you'd beg for stories about faraway lands and space before bed.'

A bell rang in main building and footsteps followed. Judai stretched, then laughed. 'Now this is familiar – though they've changed the bell. This new one is more – ' His brow wrinkled as he tried to come up with a word. 'Annoying,' he decided eventually, relaxing again…a little uncomfortably, now that his skin was starting to dry. 'I think I will take that shower.'

.

As a guest he was offered the best, and that meant the facilities of Obelisk Blue. He asked for Red anyway and Principal Chronos was more than happy to oblige. The Orisis Dorms had changed though, since he was a student. Shower stalls weren't creaky wooden boxes lined in a row and little taps above their heads and little holes with moulds growing all round. The walls had new strong wood and were painted, and the taps looked like the water saving ones he'd last seen in Australia. And the holes were clean.

He wondered if someone had complained about the sanitation issues – not that they really were sanitation issues. Tome always saw to that, if the students themselves didn't.

The dorms had changed as well. The doors still creaked and there were still three to a room but the place had been spruced up a bit. Manjyome's extensions had been removed and the dorm had gotten a little more space as a result. There were also new facilities: a library to help the ones struggling with the current teaching levels, a few recreational things – not as much as the other dorms, but it emphasised the point a lot better he thought.

The students were happy to be in Orisis. That was more than he could say for most of his classmates – before they advanced into Ra or Obelisk of course.

'It sure looks different to the last time I saw this place,' Yubel said, looking around his old room. It wasn't a dorm room anymore; someone – Chronos or Samijima he presumed – had decided to immortalise it as a museum of sorts instead. Something other Orisis students could be proud of, and aspire towards. Something that showed that Orisis wasn't the bottom of the barrel for anything.

'It sure does,' he agreed.

.

Judai got to the first year's classroom in time for Asuka's last class of the day: right on time. The classroom looked pretty different as well. Not the physical appearance so much though there were some differences he could spot. The biggest thing that had changed was the fact that all the students – red, yellow and blue – sat together. There was no sections for each of them: reds at the front, blues at the back and yellows in between. Everyone sat everywhere: a red next to a yellow, a blue next to a red.

Asuka saw him and smiled. Judai smiled back. Yubel hovered beside him, looking around. 'Classrooms look different,' was all she said, in the end. Different than what she'd seen from Martin's eyes in the Three Sun Desert, she meant. Different to the sparse classes Judai had attended in the second half of his final year, and all the one-on-one make up classes he'd needed by the end of it.

'A lot of things change,' Judai replied, aloud. He was used to talking to her aloud, because that was what they always did. People learnt to get used to it. Some were already expecting. Like Asuka who had a knowing look in her eyes. Like the students who were staring at the space around him.

'Is that Yubel?' one asked, pointing to his right. Judai chuckled a little at that; Yubel was, in fact, to his left. But the boy sounded eager enough. So were others; a few who looked like they could in fact see her, and the rest who simply wanted to.

But everyone knew about Yubel, about duel spirits – it wasn't him talking to himself or hearing voices in his head… That was just another thing that had changed over the years.

.

The cafeteria was probably the thing that had changed the most, physically. It wasn't in the same place; that one had been knocked down as part of extending the main Orisis building. It had a transparent roof so they could see the birds land and clunk their way around. The tables were round and the chairs plastic. And it didn't help that he'd been having his last few meals on boat or plane or desert sand before that.

It was still comfortable though, and the food was delicious too. Not like Tome's fried shrimp, but Asuka was a decent cook in her own right. She was a great teacher too; popular with the students. So was he; the two of them barely managed to talk through their meal.

They wound up back at the cliff after student curfew so they could catch up on things. He told her how they'd been in the Sahara, helping out a boy in one of the small tribes there who'd discovered his power to see spirits. One of the many places in the world where acceptance of spirits had yet to reach. She told him about how her brother had stopped by a few months ago on his concert tour, and how the Marufuji brothers were coming in a few weeks.

'Are you staying for a bit?' she asked.

'Maybe,' he replied. 'Probably not.' He didn't have any plans, but that could always change. Things always did change; that's how the world worked. But some things also stayed the same, like the salt breeze, parts of people…

Duel Academia was still the Duel Academia he'd last seen on graduation day, despite the changes.