Disclaimer : I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, GX or 5Ds in any way, shape or form.

Warnings : AU, violence, gore, death, racism, torture, yaoi, mpreg. Rated M for mature.

Author Notes : This will be a lengthy story arc which I hope to have finished out before 2012 is over, with due reason if the title is anything to go by. Do not worry, you won't have to wait till 2024 for Arc 2 at least. If any of the above does not appeal to you, then do not read. As far as pairings go, the core pairing of the Arc is what's in the FFnet placement, otherwise it should be fairly obvious. This is not affiliated with the LORE story by Reppa.

Year of The Dragon

Arc 1 : Legend of Red-Eyes

Prologue : A Documentation of Explanation

2012 had been the year. It was the year that, according to the Chinese calendar, belonged to the Dragon. It was also the year that the Mayan calendar supposedly ended and with it the end of the world. Man…The Year of The Dragon. That was so absolutely fitting it was unreal…

But let's talk about the whole Mayan calendar bit…People believed cataclysmic or even events that would bring about a transformation would take place that year. It was all the rage, one of those Armageddon hypes, like the whole Y2K deal. Some said it would be the start of a time when Earth and its people would undergo a physical or spiritual transformation, marking the beginning of a new era. Others said it marked the end of the world as we knew it. The planets would align, solar flares causing a geomagnetic reversal, or amazingly enough a planet ramming into the Earth. Honestly, there were well over a dozen theories. A lot of it was dismissed by scholars, astronomers and scientists.

They had no idea what would actually happen though.

Now I'm not saying that the world ended like it did in all of those doomsday movies and crackpot theories. Far from it. There was no fire and brimstone, sinking cities or flooding lands. The weather was certainly crazy, even to the point hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million or two, died as the year went. Not like The Day After Tomorrow proportions, but there are some similarities. There were widespread tragedies perpetrated by Mother Nature, there were unspeakable acts from the shores of California to the isles of Japan, there was a senseless war on the horizon. But none of that was what ended the world that we knew, most of that actually came afterwards, much later in the year. What had kicked everything off...

It was a change among mankind.

It was a significant change that had come about that made mankind treat his own, or former own, no better than animals. If anything, they were treated worse than animals. At the dawn of our new era, we were no better than lab rats. We were herded like cattle into cages, experimented on... The spent, maimed carcasses were tossed into unmarked pits like we were casualties of the Plague, though technically to them, we were. We were treated like pariahs when it turned out we were infected with it. People were scared to get it, frightened of the change. Granted, they had some pretty good reasons to be afraid.

Dragon-Blight, so they called it. They considered it a blight. It made you anything but human. We too first thought it was a blight, a curse. I wanted nothing more than to go back to being the way I was. Shit happens though.

When many of the infected realized their fate, they were seized by fear. They hid away, disappearing into the shadows. Some killed themselves, by the bullet or the pavement. Others embraced it, even sought it out. They reveled in the power they eventually got from it. Although some of them were rather dangerous to boot.

When the transformation came, it was long and painful. In most cases, it killed the infected when the mutation just went too far off the track and what was left was far from recognizable or pretty. Infected were first hit with flu-like symptoms. They'd feel like they got hit by a train, their eyes would be all puffy and they would be horribly flushed...Over time they became overcome with crippling pain that radiated from the bone out. The skin became scarlet red from irritation, flesh burned like it was on fire, bones broke and shifted and grew on their own. Their heads, gums and fingers bled as weapons literally grew out of their flesh. Sometimes the pain drove them crazy, feral, if the change took too long to finish and that was the only time I would say mankind's fear was justifiable. It was called Dragon-Blight for a reason.

Other fears of it were, of course, understandable. With the threat of a feral, or even a sane one on the defensive, coming along and biting you…Humans considered Dragon-Blight a species killer. For whatever reason, and I am no scientist by any means, women didn't change from it. They either got really sick and in some way debilitated by it or they died. I would wager that maybe it's some internal chemistry that winds up backfiring on them. My sis, my poor, poor sis…Well, I need to stay on track for this. In any case, humans figured that if the Blight kept spreading, then they would die out and us as well, given time.

As it went though, some of us caught wise and we learned things that they did not, even with their cutting us open like science experiments. We realized we weren't really cursed, we were blessed. We were the next evolutionary step on the ladder for humanity. Well, maybe not. Maybe it's more like we jumped their ship onto our own ship and said goodbye. We were stronger, faster. We were nature's allies. One of us could single-handedly decimate over a dozen of them...Provided they didn't have guns mind you. We're not exactly bullet-proof. We were leaner machines, expending less energy and thus requiring less intake. We thrived in extremes on the bare minimum while they were left to struggle and waste away. I believe that in all actuality, it was more fear of us than fear of becoming like us that made mankind continue to despise us. I recall one time, I was talking with Kaiba, he said something about humans no longer being the ultimate apex predator. I didn't really know what the term meant at the time, I hadn't really cared.

Now that I'm older and wiser, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. I feel kind of bad for humans…They're too stupid to know when to stop digging their own graves. It's a constant push and push, and while we're being rather forgiving for all of the suffering they put us through...I think the majority of us are starting to hit out limits. It'll only be a matter of time before we give them something to really be afraid of...With all of that said and done, I took the liberty of having the next several pages sort of document how we got to where we are today from when the insanity all started. I'd recommend a seat and a meat shank while you're reading. When you're done, whelp, you'll be a little wiser. You'll come to understand why I'm such a hardass and why we do the things we do. From here on out, humanity's woes are not our problem. Only safety, only survival. For now. Soon enough, glory and security will be ours.

Win, thrive, conquer, survive.

~ Jonouchi