I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the other series which may or may not end up as a crossover with this fic at some point or another. I am only writing this for fun. I want to thank Cyber Commander for allowing me to write about his Shadowchasers universe and 7th Librarian for getting me up to speed on what the Shadowchasers in the world of Arc-V are like.

Shadowchasers: Cyber Fantasy

By Ten-Faced Paladin

Prologue: Monster Reborn

I had always been the type of person who believed in what I could see and touch. Science, machines, that sort of thing were all real to me. Things like ghosts, goblins, elves, and that sort of thing were great for stories of Duel Monsters, but it wasn't real. Granted science could get out there with theories and such, but if I could put it in front of me then I was ready to believe it. Up until that night, I thought I had the nature of the world figured out. Holy cow was I wrong…

-Zeke Cunningham

-Systems Coming Online-

-Final Checks…25…50…75…100%-

-Motors (OK)-

-CPU (OK)-

-Data Storage (57% Capacity)-

-Five Senses Algorithm Accepted-

-Final Start-up Complete-

He didn't open his eyes so much as they turned on. Like a video screen activating his eyes were suddenly filled with… a white sheet

"Uhnnn. I feel like crap."

He stopped, although he should have blinked, he couldn't. His body felt strange, like he knew he should have been in pain, but wasn't. His voice sounded…hollow? No, the emotion was still there. There was tint to it now, mechanized? Yes, that was the word one would think when they heard it. His voice sounded mechanized, like he was speaking out through a radio or similar machine.

He shook his head to try and jolt his mind into working properly. Everything felt so fuzzy though. His body felt heavy and loose, like it wouldn't fit and…

-Adjusting to user specifications.-

The words printed across his sight in green lettering, like a computer program. Suddenly, the disorientation vanished and he felt like he was back to his old self. The man blinked and shook his body, feeling as normal as he ever did. Deciding he had enough of resting under a sheet, he lifted his arm and grabbed it to grab the sheet across his body and pulled it away.

A whirring noise came as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change of depth. He soon realized that he was in what seemed to be a sealed vault of some kind. Around him were numerous filing cabinets as well as several cases, all padlocked for security. Looking down, he saw that he was also strapped in. He reached to the strap holding him to…a vertical pedestal of some kind before undoing it and freeing himself.

Free, he stepped off from the pedestal, his body making more whirring noises in the process. Then his footing failed and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. He twitched and wiggled like his body wasn't used to moving. He struggled, but his limbs failed to cooperate. He couldn't feel his hands! Couldn't feel his feet! He couldn't move! Couldn't breathe! Couldn't-!

'No! No! Don't panic! You developed this! You knew this would happen. Don't panic! Don't panic! Don'tpanicdon'tpanicdon'tpanicdon'tpanic!' He thought furiously to himself as he tried to keep his thoughts in order, but not feeling the sensation of movement, his limbs, or breathing made it quite difficult.

-Adjustment complete.-

And like a switch thrown, his limbs started snapping with his flails, allowing him to roll over, staring up at the ceiling. He panted, a simulated breathing as his chest moved up and down with the sounds of servos moving. A few moments of calming down, he dared to sit up. His body cooperated fully, moving with all the ease of a normal body. Sighing with some relief, he slowly pushed himself up to his feet, testing his balance and finding no issues.

He looked around before spotting the door and approached it. Naturally, it was sealed and was perfectly smooth. It was made of steel while the insides were a safecracker's nightmare of electronics and good old fashioned heavy duty locks. The only way out was a small keypad with a set of numbers on it.

He reached for the pad, his hand hovering over the numbers. Should he hit the bright red panic button and get some help? He knew he'd likely kick up a fuss and no doubt a lot of people would begin asking some unusual questions. Questions he couldn't stick around to answer, especially if the wrong sort were looking into it. He'd almost died once for it already.

"Cracking the code it is," he sighed, focusing on the number pad. "Now…how to do it?"

-Retrieving Data-

He stiffened slightly, still unused to the computer words. What came next was a window which opened up. It took only a small portion of his sight and first showed some kind of blue uniform. It then backed away, showing a man wearing a Sector Security uniform.

"There you go tin man. Nice and safe in Sector Security impound."

"Hey, do you mind not talking to the thing? It creeps me out!" another man at the door called, prompting his partner to grumble before throwing the white sheet over him. What followed was a series of beeps before the sliding sounds of a lock undoing and then a door opening. The window then closed before opening a new one with a fluctuation line, one used to measure sound. The beeping replayed, making the line wiggle, showing each individual tone.

"Ah, so it was recording even when I was out," The mechanized speaker nodded. The window minimized as he looked to the number pad. He taped each number, each one eliciting a different sound. Once he pressed all the numbers, even the star and pound keys, the onboard systems began to compare. Soon, each sound the officer had used was identified and the entire code for the door was revealed to him.

"8743519043" he repeated, tapping the keys in sequence. "Lengthy, but less of a chance someone guessing it by accident."

The code was entered and the door suddenly hissed as its powerful locks were unlocked before the door opened. He stepped out of the vault, coming to what appeared to be a warehouse filled with filing cabinets, crates, and other packaging for objects seized by Security for investigations. One object was what looked like a large vanity mirror, likely some item from an investigation. Several parts were marked for fingerprints and there were bloodstains on a portion of it. He didn't need to touch it though. He just wanted to get a look at himself.

His body from head to toe was composed of gray metal. It had all the lines and shape of the human body, but composed of mechanics, electronics, and hydraulics instead of flesh and blood. Metal plating covered his body, but in the gaps like at his elbows, metal cords could be seen, used to ensure complete flexibility like a human could. His abdomen was slightly different, although flat, it was made of a protective rubber which concealed more of the metal cords, but also the bottom half of his electronic spine. Full flexibility. His fingers and toes were fully functional and just as able to move as regular ones could, albeit a little more durable than human flesh. His chest was designed like a human's, twin pectorals which he knew could open to reveal the sensitive machinery which kept him powered and computing. His face in comparison was a little bland, a polished metal cranium which was mostly featureless. His eyes were large round lenses which at the moment were white, indicating function, but the lenses would change depending on if he needed to zoom in or out on something. He did have a mouth, but it was merely an opened line. He opened it and tried copying the feeling of moving lips. He got it as the edges of his mouth retracted, helping reveal almost chainsaw-like teeth. It didn't mean much, more of a psychological comfort to the user, but did allow access to other portions of the head unit in case maintenance was needed.

Most people would be alarmed or even on the verge of a mental break at seeing themselves in such a way. Not him though. He was expecting it.

"So this is who I am for now," he nodded, the mouth moving as his jaw would when he spoke.

-Uploading Data-

A new window opened, revealing the face of a young man likely in his twenties. He had blue eyes and brown hair which had looked a little spiked with hanging bangs, the ones at his temples looking to be red rather than brown. His eyes were sapphire blue and he had an easy grin on his lips. His shoulders appeared to be visible, showing he was wearing a lab coat of some kind.

-Name: Ezekiel 'Zeke' Cunningham

Age: 22

Note: PHD in Robotics and Computer Programming

Alias: The Prodigy

"Well, it at least those degrees did this much for me," Zeke nodded to himself. He was hailed as one of the youngest receivers of a PHD ever, especially in the fields of robots and computers where most people learn enough to put it to practical use, Zeke went all the way for his own degrees. He didn't want to just use the knowledge, he wanted to push it further than he ever had before. "Still…"

Another screen opened up, this one showing a sight from Zeke's own memory, but the image was fuzzy, interrupted. Half the reason was that the computer onboard his new body was trying to bring an image from his memory to screen. Not an easy thing for a computer to do but with time Zeke's onboard systems might be able to handle it. The other reason was because Zeke wasn't too sure of all the details himself.

"Almost done," he heard his own voice say as he worked at a computer console. His memory self looked up and peered at the robot body he now inhabited. "Soon we'll have this baby up and running."

*ZZZZT*

*BOOM!*

"Oh my god!"

"Ahhhh!"

"Everyone down!"

-ZZZT-

"Just give us the robot and the production data and no one gets hurt!"

"Datadyne put you up to this, didn't they?!"

"Don't matter to you now!"

"I won't get my work stolen by a bunch of profiteering bastards!"

-ZZZZT-

-ZZZZT-

*BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!*

"ZEKE!"

-ZZZT-

"C...C…computer…b-begin upload…"

The images were confusing, and didn't mesh well. He saw flashes of people, men with guns, an explosion, not to mention felt the phantom pains of being shot when someone with a hair trigger got jumpy when he tried to block them off from his research. The research which culminated into the robotic shell he was wearing when god knew where his body had ended up.

The GX Production model, labelled GX-01 was a new kind of technology although the concept was in itself not new. The machine worked as a sort of placeholder for a human mind, digitizing one's thoughts and feelings and more or less uploading their minds into the machine. The concept itself was old, the technology having been developed by KaibaCorp a long time ago, although it was considered a taboo technology. After the Big Five of Kaibacorp used it to first try and steal the company from Seto Kaiba, then working with their old boss to try and steal the bodies and lives of the man and his friends after a setback in the system trapped their minds in cyberspace.

Still, when Zeke rediscovered the tech, he saw a lot of potential in it. How many people had slipped into comas only for them to come out months, or even years wasted? Their lives gone, loved ones moved on, and everything changed from how it used to be? What about patients in critical care? They would need very intense operations and half the concern was doing it without killing the patient, a risky proposition no matter how one presented it. Zeke's idea was for a medical project. By downloading a coma or critical care patient's mind into the robot body, they could live their lives as they would while their bodies recovered from their injuries. It was by no means perfect though since there would be rejection issues, perhaps some trauma, but Zeke was only good with the technology side of it. He'd let the medical community work out the kinks on their end once he made sure that the machinery was flawless.

Despite his well-prepared pitch, not many companies were willing to invest in such a thing. The shadow the Big Five put over it was a far-reaching thing despite the years since their plots were crushed. They said it was a good idea, but it wouldn't fit into the markets they worked with so they'd send him out the door with no hard feelings. In the end, only two companies expressed enough interest in the idea to supply him with a budget: Leo Corporation and Datadyne Industries.

Leo Corporation expressed an interest in using his invention for the field of dueling. The plan was to allow professional duelists to copy their dueling thought processes and download the data into the robot. Then they'd be disguised as a copy of the duelist and in various theme parks, patrons could duel with the copies as if they were dueling with the celebrities themselves. Also, they would serve as good dueling tests since they could theoretically be programmed to any skill level so a lot of Duel Schools would also be interested in the technology, opening the first of several potential markets for it.

Datadyne on the other hand wanted to use it for military purposes. A robot which could be trained to respond like a human would. They could send squads of the robots into hostile areas and neutralize enemies without risking any of their own men. Not to mention it would save the military an untold amount of money in training and medical care for their actual soldiers who could in essence, just waltz into areas and clean up the mess after the robots did the heavy work. Families wouldn't be broken by war and lots of soldiers would be safer out in the war areas.

The irony didn't escape Zeke's notice. A technology first pioneered by Kaibacorp was being considered for the two main uses the company pursued. Under Gozuboro Kaiba, Kaibacorp was a weapons manufacturer. Under Seto Kaiba, it was a gaming company. The same two purposes the GX-01 was being considered for.

Datadyne tried to romanticize how much good the technology would do, but Zeke wasn't naïve. He knew the military exercised things such as 'collateral damage' and 'acceptable losses'. That meant that in their eyes, it would be okay if some homes were destroyed or some people died so long as the mission was completed. Soldiers could be counted on to ensure that such losses were minimal and the civilians were left alone if it could helped. Machines on the other hand did not have that compassion and Zeke knew that Datadyne would program the robots to be efficient and consider their missions to be first priority. If it meant gunning down a few civilians to nab an insurgent or blasting away a few houses with people inside for that mission, they would.

Needless to say, he sided with Leo Corporation. Their applications with the tech would give him the funding and reputation he needed to take it into the medical community like he first intended. Datadyne wasn't happy with that and actually harassed him for a while. Several times he was hit with messages about how much money he'd make. Then he was hit with shaming messages about how many people he was allowing to die. Then there were outright threats stating he was against modern democracy and he could be arrested for treason. His home was even broken into and he received a bullet in the mail with his name on it. Still, he ignored it. His invention would be used to save lives, not order massacres coded under 'collateral damage.'

"Didn't think it would go this far," Zeke shook his head as he turned away from the mirror and paid more attention to his surroundings. With the thieves, raiders, or whatnot attacking his lab then it was undoubtedly a crime and he figured his new form was in a police lockup of some kind. Likely he was classified as evidence in case any arrests were made. That was secondary to his main question though: Where was his body?

"A hospital, most likely," he reasoned to himself. "Can't be hard to find. It's probably comatose at the moment, if not in ICU somehow. I just have to look." Nodding he looked around for an exit and spotted one among numerous crates. He approached it, but stopped when he realized something. If he just left the warehouse, someone was going to spot him and if they did, they'd try to apprehend him. Unless he wanted some lengthy and probably violent chase from Security, he'd have to duel any officers that caught him. To do that, he needed a deck. Sadly, his own was most definitely not on him at the moment. His cards were rather special and a little difficult to find. It took him two years to track down all of the cards he needed. Fortunately, most who had them didn't care for the value. He only had to shell out some big cash for the collectors who had them. The ones who wanted the cash though, especially for his ace, were definitely worth it.

Zeke rubbed his chin in thought, "I had it on me, so they probably took it as possible evidence since I do recall dueling one of those clowns before a sneak tried to make off with the robot behind my back."

Looking around, Zeke spied a terminal, likely one which kept track of what was actually in the warehouse. Approaching, he woke up the screen which lit up to an access screen demanding a login name and password. Zeke frowned and prepared to hack the program, but stopped when his right wrist clicked as a small chamber opened, showing a plug-in cable, the kind for USB connections. Snickering, Zeke pulled on the cable, showing that was length to it before he plugged it into the computer.

-Accessing-

Zeke twitched and he felt a bit of vertigo, like he was in two places at once. On one hand, he could see the computer in front of him. At the same time, he could see a Duel Monsters field directly in front of him. The game was played, the security program putting up a fight. However, Zeke knew some unique hacking tricks to give him the cards needed to bypass them. Soon the computer was on the run and its life points dropped to zero. The computer's screen flickered and suddenly printed access granted across the front. Zeke removed the cable and shook his head.

"Woah," he blinked. "I…I was able to hack it as easily as thinking," all he had to do was remember his hacking tricks and suddenly his onboard computer was executing the tricks and cutting off the computer as quickly as it could offer some kind of counter. There was a side effect he hadn't intended. It seemed that by working with a human mind, the computer was able to run quicker than regular models that were just simple computers. It made Zeke wonder if such a function could warp his mind or damage the computer somehow…

"No," he shook his head. "Think about getting your deck back first. Deal with the theory later," Zeke turned his attention back to the wall-mounted computer and scrolled through the options. Quickly he found the manifest of the warehouse, a listing of everything that as in it and why it was put in there. It was easy to find the confiscated Duel Monster cards and decks since nearly every crime committed involved them somehow. Finding his in particular was a little more difficult, but by cross-referencing his name, he managed to track it down to the filing cabinets it had been placed in.

One may wonder why someone in Zeke's position was searching for a Duel Monsters deck when he should be hightailing it out of there before someone saw him. However, if one had to ask that question then others would stare at the one asking and wonder if they had been hiding under a rock. Duel Monsters had evolved since the far past days of when it was just a simple card game created as a means to entertain. In the oldest days it was immensely popular, but soon took a leap forward with the Duel Platforms which allowed the monsters to come to life. That enhanced the game and made it a global sensation, but it wasn't exactly a convenient way to play the game at full throttle. Then the game evolved further with the invention of the Duel Disk, a portal version of the Duel Platform which allowed anyone to duel wherever they wanted. It first gained fame in the now legendary tournament known as Battle City and became popular to the point that one wasn't truly a serious duelist unless they had one of their own.

The game then really began to take root, becoming a facet in society to the point that entire schools dedicated to mastering the game and its components were founded. In fact, Duel Monsters had become such a part of everyday life, it was soon used as the main means of deciding disputes. Guns and other weapons fell out of fashion as criminals would duel the police in order to escape. Feuding neighbors would constantly duel over whatever they argued about that day. High stakes dueling became more popular than sporting events as fortunes were won and lost over betting on duels. Pro duelists who turned the game into their very careers were as famous as international movie stars.

All the while Duel Monsters and the game continued to evolve. The most prominent evolution was the exciting Riding Duel where duelists would ride on high speed motorcycles and duel around racetracks, upping the drama and adrenaline to levels on those with a hardcore love of the game could match. It really got to the point that people loved watching duels so much that it got distracting to everyone when one would start in public. That was the reason for the D-Gazer, an eyepiece which allowed people to see a duel through it, but not get everyone else distracted with the hot action which would come as a result of it. And then with the recent invention of Mass Solid Vision, technology which allowed for the holograms to become real, allowing duelists to interact with their monsters in a battlefield, dueling had evolved yet again.

So for Zeke to seek out his deck was quite an obvious decision. Leaving without it would be like leaving without an arm or a leg.

He quickly tracked down the cabinet where his deck was stashed. It wasn't locked, the cabinet itself being located inside a Security Warehouse guarded by top security technology. Opening it, Zeke parsed through several decks of cards in labeled protective casing before he found the one with his case's number on it.

"Ah, this is a relief," he sighed, removing the deck. Flipping through the cards, he discovered that they were all present and accounted for, even his Extra Deck "Okay, now to see if the Duel Disk function works."

-Duel Disk Activated-

Zeke's left forearm suddenly had a panel slide back before a rectangular screen lifted out, roughly the same size an electronic tablet. The sides extended once the screen was free, the left side looking like a case for cards while the right side had a hollow point for the deck itself. The screen came to life, showing a blank playing field for the game with individual squares for the various cards. On the far side from Zeke, a line in the device flashed before with solid green energy which faded to black in the middle, appeared a traditional platform which monster cards could be placed, constructed with the Mass Solid Vision technology.

"Glad to see this part works too. Wish I had time for a duel though," Zeke chuckled, slipping his Extra Deck into the left chamber while inserting his main deck into the right one. Satisfied, he mentally instructed his Duel Disk system to shut down and it complied, the screen and holograms vanished before the device folded up and vanished back into his arm again. Satisfied one of his most precious possessions was safe, Zeke looked around the warehouse, "Now how am I going to get out of here without triggering an alarm?"

-Monster Reborn: End-

A/N: I know, it's short, but this is the prologue. It serves mainly as an info dump. The action comes next.