Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! I only own my characters and the plot.

Pilot

Hello.? (No Extension)

Before I begin this story, a question I have to ask. 'Is it possible for humanity to achieve and maintain an utopean society?'

People have said the world is in a cycle of its own, that though the events differ the people still go through the same struggle over and over again, that appears to be true.

Scarcity is the first reason an utopia can never be achieved, humans acknowelge this and it gave rise to an altruistic mindset where the good of the majority tales precedence over personal opinions, or is suppossed to. The funny thing about it is that though humans believe themselves to be altruists, nobody ever really wants to be the minority, therefore rebellion is birthed and chaos ensues. Eventually a system is damaged exensively before the fighting stops, after which construction on a new system begins and the cycle repeats itself.

I often wonder if this thought ever occurs to them, if the people see the long term futility of their efforts, as far as I've seen they never really do. A common saying among them is how in life emphasis is on the journey rather than the destination, its worth pondering over I suppose.

Often times I find myself feeling sorry for them, wishing I could help in any way, but I can't because I see and hear but can never be, forever forced to be the observer.

Well then, now that that's out of the way, let me begin the story.

It begins in Japan, in a luxurious and peculiar city, when the seeds began to germinate… when the first signs of growth was observed… from that duel…

Desperation. It changes a man, he begins to conceive plans and think of things he normally wouldn't, he begins to dwell on things he ought not to, and eventually he treads where he mustn't.

This young man was at the end of his straw, out of plans, ideas, jobs and money, and unable to live up to the shame of going back to his family, the same one that had abandoned him. He stumbled across an opportunity, it was predictably illegal and potentially life threatening, normally he wouldn't have given it a second look but he was desperate.

So with an odd looking duel disk attached haphazardly upon the main counter on his motorcycle, he began his foray into the illegal speed dueling ring.

Riding a motorcycle never lost its spark, accelerating to high speed always had a way of giving the feeling of casting off one's shackles. His hands gripped the handle bars tighter and he accelerated even more, finally completing a lap around the track.

It was a hard time for criminals, most seemed to think, and he used to think so too. With Freya's watchful eye cast over the entire country it was believed that even torrenting copyrighted material would be noticed and could get you a sentence, but if that was true how could an illegal duel be done without the very system the duel disk used not notice?

He still hadn't found that out how but he knew it was being done, he had spent a month as a spectator of the duels before managing to get himself a match and he still saw the other participants here, somehow they were successfully evading the system.

"Yo!" As he came to a halt he heard a man yell. "You ready or what?"

He gave the man a thumbs up in reply and the man smiled back, his yellow teeth sticking out even in the evening's darkness. The man approached him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Alright, Ren, I've got my money on you, I'm counting on you, don't fail me."

"I got this." Ren muttered back, his body vibrating as the bike did, if the man heard the nervousness in his voice he didn't seem to care.

"Let's begin!" The man with the yellow teeth yelled.

Grunts and yells of agreement echoed from the floor above, reminding Ren of where he actually was. It was truly magnificent, he had to admit, that an entire speed duel track was present below a single house.

The main track was created in a circular depression two metres below the basement floor level with a diameter of about 100 feet. He definitely knew the man who ran the circle couldn't have built it himself, he probably stumbled upon it and utilized it effectively, he supposed it was worth pondering what it had been used for before, storing servers maybe?

"Ready!"

The man's shout snapped him out of his thoughts and brought his mind back to the duel he was about to participate in.

"Set!"

He revved the bike.

"Go!"

And just like that both duelist took off, their bikes leaving a string of smoke behind them.

Ren smirked as he saw his opponent speed ahead of him, he intentionally took the outer path of the circle closer to the circumference rather than the centre, the first turn possesed too much drawbacks than advantages to him.

"Mark gets the first turn!" The man with yellow teeth, who was probably some sort of MC bellowed. "Now it's time to…"

"DUEL!"

*It was another monday. Another rainy monday, and the sky cried slowly in a never ending drizzle. Sumida Hideo wasn't particularly happy, it was a much needed break after days of scorching hot sunlight but rain just always seemed to make him melancholic, he never knew why.

"… through a number of proxies before rerouting it back to the exit."

"That is correct." He said to the intern sitting at her desk, the girl's face brightened as she heard that.

"Thank you." She blushed.

He wanted to say 'that wasn't a compliment', but he decided against it. Instead he said, "okay."

The girl shifted uncomfortably as the man gave her an expectant look. "Okay?"

"Show me."

"I-I-" she began to stutter, lowering her eyes. "I-We… weren't taught exactly how to…"

'Great,' Hideo thought. 'Another person who calls themselves a programmer yet knows about nothing outside Freya.' He sighed inwardly as he began to leave the girl's cubicle. "Hardly anyone can anyway," he said, unsure whether it was in an attempt to console the downcast girl or if it was just a rueful remark.

Still he'd give her some points for actually remembering the theory, second year in DU that was taught, if he remembered correctly. He'd asked three interns out of the five the firm accepted and out of the three she'd been the only one who knew the process, the others could neither do it nor remember it. He shook his head disapprovingly. 'This generation…'

All five of them were in their fourth year in DU, all were doing their industrial training in the firm he worked in and he felt obligated to check on them from time to time, see how the next generation of programmers were doing. He was disappointed. Nothing had changed, it was still the same thing being taught: Freya, and nothing else.

It was a brilliant system, Freya, he couldn't dispute that, created by one of the most riveting figures and brightest minds in recent Japanese history, he just didn't like what had been done with it and he was sure its creator wouldn't either. Nowadays Freya was everywhere and it was both a good thing and a bad thing, the bad being it had made people complacent, and complacency Hideo considered the bane of society. Bad things always happened when people became complacent, bad things.

"Oy, Hideo-kun, could you take a look at this?" A coworker asked as he walked by.

"Sure." He responded, turning to face the holographic renderation of a screen befor the woman.

Wireframe Security was the name of the firm he worked in, it was originally an internet security firm but soon it became solely concerned with supervising and maintaining Freya. There were many firms like it that were solely concerned with Freya, Kaiba Corp considered it safer that the system be fragmented such that while there was a central hub, failure in one sector wouldn't shut the entire system down.

Nothing much happened to the system, most of the work the people at Wireframe had to do involved correcting minor glitches and occassionally developing patches for the system, nothing much, but Kaiba Corp recently announced developing an update for the system and it involved a bit of actual programming on the part of the branch offices.

Hideo hardly paid attention to the projection in front of him, all he needed was one glance to know what was wrong, but he let his coworker drone on in her unneccessary explanation, give the illusion her problem was actually a smart one. Situations like this had been happening quite often and as such most of his day was spent helping out coworkers and that left him having to finish up his work with his PC at home, granted there wasn't much difference, but there was a certain security he felt using his workplace PC that just didn't apply to his own at home.

"Hideo-kun?"

He pointed at something on the holographic projection. "That's the older version of the function it doesn't allow three arguments."

"Oh," the woman exclaimed. "Silly me." She laughed. "Thanks for pointing it out."

"I'm here to help after all." He said before leaving her to her work, frowning as he did. His coworkers annoyed him, they made so much amateur mistakes and oversights and they appeared painfully inept even when given a simple task. In their defense being releglated to just maintainance work for so long had the detrimental effect of reducing one's creativity and skill, but it was also their job to, as he did, keep the juices flowing in those blockheads of theirs.

He sighed deeply as he sank into his office seat. He blamed the rain for making him have these thoughts, he never really knew how it always induced melancholy in him, he never knew.

"Hideo! Hideo!"

The twenty-something year old man turned in his sleep, what in reality was an earpiercing shout he only percieved as indisctinct.

"Hideo! Hideo!"

He turned again, getting irritated, wondering who could possibly be calling his name, if he remembered correctly Saki was still on her trip, nobody else his key so they couldn't get in…

'Except if it's a burglar!'

Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he sat up in his bed.

The impact sounded way worse than it felt, Hideo was certainly glad about that. "What the-?" He yelled, his forehead had smashed into that of whoever had woken him up. "Who's there?" Instinctively he palmed around the bed for an object he could use as a weapon.

"It's Eiji." The intruder said, one could tell he was in pain by the way he spoke. "It's me."

"What are you doing here?" Hideo asked rather harshly, relaxing a bit but still irritated despite the fact that it was his boss he was speaking to. "Put on the light at least."

"It's not working, everything's out. The power, air conditioning, alarm system, they're all out." The man called Eiji spoke. "We need to get to the office asap."

Hideo slowly got to his feet, rubbing his stinging forehead. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure." Eiji said, his voice shaky. "The system's malfunctioning I think."

Hideo's eyes darkened. There it was, bad things. Still dressed in his pajamas, he grabbed his bag and hurriedly left the house with Eiji. Outside, the view was no different than it was inside the house, to be simply put it was dark.

"What time is it?" Hideo asked his boss.

"I have no idea."

Hideo could hardly make out anything in the darkness, and as both men made their way to his garage he found himself following the older man's lead. He was close enough to see the man properly, and the worry on his wrinkled face was of a magnitude Hideo had never seen, he wondered how bad things actually were.

"Your car will still work, right?"

"Yeah," Hideo answered, said car making a beeping noise as he pressed the unlock button on his key. "Why wouldn't it?"

"Oh, thank goodness." Eiji said, relieved. "I thought you had one of those ones powered by the system. Mine is, and I had to walk all the way here because it refused to work."

Hideo looked on in slight disbelief, the man lived about fifteen minutes away when using a car, judging by the way his clothes were soaked he probably walked as fast as he could, Eiji was already pushing fifty, but at that moment he looked much older.

The car started, the engine humming loudly in the silence of the night, or morning, whichever it was. "Could it be a central thing? HQ's fault?" Hideo asked as he backed out of the garage.

"I don't know," Eiji said. "I don't know anything yet, but whatever is going on we're better off going to the office and checking it out."

Hideo nodded in agreement as he sped off.

"Take it easy." Eiji's voice came as a much needed reminder. "Don't drive too fast, it's urgent but there's no point killing ourselves before we fix it."

"Right." Hideo reduced the amount of pressure on the gas pedal, watching as the digital indicator counted down. They had only the headlights on, the streets lights were down as were the power in other houses, if they sped too fast they could run off the road or smash into something else, Eiji was right, they couldn't kill themselves.

The older man looked out the window as his employee drove, through the light of the headlamps he could see people coming out their houses, calmly, he thought, but he knew it was only a matter of time before something - or someone did something - that sparked panic. They had to solve this quick, somehow.

"Damn it!" Hideo blurted, as his foot struck what appeared to be an invisible metal construct. It was a door, Eiji revealed, and after twisting the knob he opened it. "I'll just let you lead the way." Hideo muttered.

There wasn't any power at Wireframe, not that he expected otherwise. It seemed like nothing running Freya was working, his Rhim, the small, slim, touchscreen device that was a essentailly a cross between a phone and a hand terminal, wasn't working either. He hated how he suddenly felt odd without it, it meant he was getting too attached to it and that wasn't a good sign. It suddenly occured to him that if everything running Freya was down, how would they try to fix it? All the PCs in the office ran it, how were they supposed to access the system?

Before he could ask his superior Hideo got his answer. "You're running a different operating system?" Disbelief was written all over his face.

"Oh," Eiji said, "this isn't my system, I mean look at it." The lights flickered on as the inverter began to work, illuminating the small room.

With the lights back on Hideo saw the setup, the mouse, keyboard, cpu and monitor, like an actual physical monitor, the last time he saw a monitor and a cpu that large and bulky was as a kid when his dad was cleaning out his storage locker, the PC was definitely an old one. "It still works?"

"Of course." Eiji said. "It's mandatory that every firm has one of these, it runs a different os completely disconnected from Freya, of course Kaiba Corp created it but it still serves its purpose well. We'll use this to check out the servers."

The ubiquitous Kaiba Corp logo showed up as the system booted, Hideo wouldn't believe there was anyone in Japan who didn't know what the Blue-Eyes White Dragon was seeing as Kaiba Corp was so intent on plastering their logo on every one of their products.

The PC finished booting and Hideo wheeled two chairs to the table upon which it sat. Both men took their seat, unconsciously flexing their brain cells.

"Shall we?" Eiji asked.

"We shall."

Hideo's fumbled with the tie around his neck, he hated wearing ties, he certainly thought that he had left wearing them at the university, turns out he was wrong. Eiji had basically dragged him along for the emergency meeting Kaiba Corp had called for all the security firms handling Freya after the scare early that morning.

"Keep up the good work."

"Thank you, sir." Eiji replied and the man in the navy-blue suit went his way.

"Can I remove the tie now?" He knew what he sounded like: a petulant child a father had dragged along to his event in an attempt to pass a message across to the child who wasn't getting it.

"Jeez, what's with you and ties?" Eiji shook his head."

"Can I?"

Eiji sighed. "I think we're in the clear."

"I can't believe I actually thought she'd make an appearance?" Hideo said, his tie in his hand as they began to leave the building.

"Who?" Eiji asked.

"Why, Kaiba-chan," he raised his hand in an exagerrated gesture of reverence, "our grace and saviour."

The older man snickered. "Don't let them hear you, some of these people actually believe she is." this got a laugh out his his grumpy employee. "But you know how she is, doesn't like the attention so much."

Hideo shrugged. "It's just that you'd think she'd be concerned about the system."

"She is, how could she not." Eiji said. "She probably tries to protect her family by being as secluded as she is."

Hideo had to admit, Eiji had a point, there were some people who possessed real hate for Kaiba Corp out there. "So…"

"So?"

"What now?" Hideo asked.

Eiji brought a hand to his bearded chin. "Normal work I guess, programming for the update, not like there's anything else to do."

"Right." Hideo said, he didn't believe that entirely.

Surprisingly, all they needed to do was exactly the first thing they did, and that was reboot the servers, easy right? It actually was. They only knew what had happened when they had a look at the logs. Something had overloaded the system and a program consumed more resources than was allocated to it, they couldn't tell which program it was but when it was done running it had the computer in a loop, executing itself over and over again and increasingly consuming more resources each time, even when all the power was being used by it execution went on, only when the rebooted the servers did it stop.

Some people at the meeting thought it was brought about by a hack but no trace of any breach had been found. It was confusing really, and it was the consensus that it was just brought about by a random freak overload. Kaiba Corp urged the firms to tighten the firewall but beyond that nothing was done.

Luckily nobody got hurt during the blackout, that being the greater danger most people were satisfied with how things had turned out. Hideo was happy too, he really was, but he definitely wasn't satisfied.

Eiji and Hideo entered the firm to a rain of applause, accompanied by phrases like 'Good job', 'Amazing work' and 'Brilliant response' being flung around.

As Hideo closed his office door he let out a sigh of relief, he was sure his back would start ache him, no thanks to his coworkers who seemed to love patting him on the back. He didn't see the point of their praise, all they did was reboot the servers, nothing hard.

He sat down at his table and put on his PC. Wasn't it the job of a programmer in a security firm to solve problems? Yet Kaiba Corp seemed content with not even identifying the problem to begin with.

'Freak overload.' He laughed at the thought. "What is the world turning into?"

A knock on his door got his attention and he stopped his musing. "Come in." He answered.

The girl that walked into his office was certainly not a familiar face, at first he'd wondered why anyone would bring their kid to work then he realized she was one of the kids on internship in the firm. "Can I help you?"

"Y-Yes." The girl answered, her crimson irises darting about the room. "You were asking me a few questions the other day, and- and I was just wondering if you could teach me more about programming."

"Oh." He looked at the girl, finally remembering who she was exactly. There were two girls and three male interns, the first thought that had popped into his head was 'the fat one', then he berated himself. 'She's not that fat…' "I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Nomura Kiku." The girl answered.

Hideo stood up from his chair. "Well, Nomura-san, I'm glad that you want to learn more, but with this update due I'm quite busy,"

"Oh, don't worry then, I'll just-" she stopped when he handed her a book.

"It's a bit old, but what it teaches is quite relevant." Hideo said. "Try to keep it a secret." He smiled.

"Sure." She beamed. "Thank you, Sumida-san." She bowed.

"I'm always happy to give to those who ask." He answered. "Maybe when the update's done I can teach you a bit more."

"Thank you." Kiku repeated.

"You're welcome."

Ren: 8000 Mark: 8000

The life points meter appeared in its bright blue box, Ren saw his opponent's name highlighted in white signifying the turn was his.

"My turn!" The man called Mark yelled in the usual exagerrated manner duelists fancied. "I set a monster and end my turn."

"That's all?" He asked. "Boy, let me show you how a real turn plays out." His name was highlighted and he drew his card. He smirked. "First I special summon Jester Confit!"

A small clown balancing atop a red and white striped ball appeared, a big skile on his face. (1/0/0)

"Now I tribute Jester confit to summon Caius the Shadow Monarch!"

A large humanoid figure appeared. Most of its features were shrouded in shadows, the cause of which seemed to be the black orb it held in its hands. (6/2400/1000)

"When Caius is tribute summoned I can banish a card on the field." Ren said.

The black orb suddenly pulsed purple and the reversed card was sucked into it.

"Since it wasn't a dark attribute monster you don't get the effect damage." Ren said. "But now, Caius will attack you directly!"

A purple beam of shot out of the black orb in the monarch's hands, hitting Mark square in the chest, taking the wind out of him.

Ren: 4000 Mark: 4000 - 1600

The tyres on Mark's bike wailed loudly as the rider threatened to lose control and crash, lucky for them Mark was able to stay on the track and they quieted down, and as Mark struggled to catch his breath, Ren laughed.

"C'mon you can't be this weak in a duel like this." Ren shouted as he zoomed past the slower Mark. "Fight back!"

"I will!" Mark yelled back as he accelerated.

"I set two cards face-down!" Ren said, his crimson eyes scrutinizing at his opponent, and as his long brown hair billowed behind him he yelled back at Mark. "Then come at me!"

Author's Notes

Hi, as my name connotes I'm just your average blue-eyed, shadow-lurking being and this my latest foray into the Yu-Gi-Oh!-verse. This story is quite influenced by The Dark Side of Dimensions, it could be said to be a loose sequel of sorts set several years after the end of the movie.

There will be various duels throughout the story and they will feature 4000 lifepoints, the current rule of two field spell cards able to stay on the field simultaneously and the lack of drawing on the first turn. Some canon characters will appear at some points in the story but it'll be best not to expect anything, I'd like to surprise.

Feedback is welcome, I'd love to hear your opinions on it, and thank you for reading this, till next time.