Episode 1: Dan & Leah's Story
"HAHA... did you see his face?" Leah said, bursting into laughter the moment they were out of earshot.
Dan, likewise, was struggling to maintain a straight face. "Hey now, that's not very nice." He said seriously. Then he, too, started to laugh. "It was pretty funny though, wasn't it?"
"What a complete... AHAHAHA!" Leah gasped, struggling to maintain a coherent sentence through the laughter. "He... the moment he played that card, he knew he'd done it something wrong. It took him forever to figure out what... oh god," she laughed, gasping for air. Dan was laughing just as hard by this point.
The pair of them were walking home after a particularly humorous duel with the school's show-off, Harrison Carter. He was an Insect-type user, and not a very good one. He left gaps in his strategies the size of zeppelins, and was very prone to making mistakes during duels. After he did so, he would become embarrassed and run off home, only to come back the next day bubbling with confidence again.
Today's escapade had been particularly amusing. During a duel with Dan, Harrison had activated the Spell Card Pot of Avarice, shuffled the five monsters into his Deck as per usual, then decided it would be a good idea to put his Deck back into his duel disk upside down. His duel disk then refused to allow Harrison to draw his two cards, causing him to become more and more confused, and eventually became convinced that his duel disk had malfunctioned, before the sniggering of his classmates had alerted him otherwise.
It took him another full minute of head scratching and frantic checking (which caused further merriment from the rest of the class) until he spotted the problem, whereupon he had turned bright red and bolted from the room to escape the embarrassment. The augmented reality faded a few seconds later as the connection was lost.
Most of the rest of the class had immediately collapsed into hysterics the moment Harrison left, but as some of Harrison's friends were still in the room, Dan and Leah had managed to control themselves until the bell went five minutes later, and they were outside the school gates and well away from the rest of the students. At this point they could contain themselves no longer.
"Oh god... I'm gonna die..." Leah giggled, trying in vain to get a grip on herself.
"We've got to rib him about this tomorrow," Dan laughed, "though I bet he won't even remember by then."
"Yeah," Leah agreed, finally getting her laughter under control. "Either that or he won't care. He's like that."
They carried on walking for a bit, chatting about the events of the day, passing through the park – where many of the students had already gathered to duel – and onto the path down by the river, which would lead them past both of their houses. Occasionally, one of them would burst into fits of giggles again, which inevitably set the other one off, until they managed to stifle their laughter again and quickly resume their previous topic.
They walked home together in this manner almost every day, and when they did, they talked about every subject under the sun. Eventually, this particular topic turned philosophical, and Leah turned to Dan and randomly asked, "Do you believe in other dimensions?"
"Of course I do," said Dan, seeming genuinely surprised. "Why would anyone think otherwise?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well you have the dimension we live in, the three-dimensional world. Then, you can take a piece of paper and call it two-dimensional, although that's not strictly true-"
Leah gave him a playful push. "You know what I mean!"
Dan laughed as he staggered and regained his balance. "Ok, ok, in all seriousness... hmm... I have to say I don't know. I want to believe there is, but if there was how would you know? More to the point, how would you search for it?" Leah shrugged, having no more idea than him. "Anyway, if there is such a thing, is certainly something we don't want to be messing with. And besides," he grinned at her, "I have enough trouble dealing with one of you, let alone potentially infinite copies."
Leah shoved him again, but this time with a bit more force than she intended, because Dan overbalanced, slithered straight down the grass embankment and straight into the river. He rose back to the surface, spluttering and coughing, and quickly swam back to the side. Leah collapsed to the ground, convulsing with laughter at Dan's predicament. Despite this, she managed to use her D-Gazer to get a few shots of him struggling to get up the bank, and looking at these pictures only made her laugh harder. As he pulled himself out of the water, she jumped to her feet and ran for it. Dan immediately gave chase, shouting an assortment of threats that he didn't mean a word of.
"HEY! Get back here! I'm gonna throw you off the pier! I'm gonna feed you into a combine harvester! I'm going to pay for you to have your first skydiving lesson and I'm going to pack your parachute! Except I won't! I'll keep it in my pocket and as we jump out, I'll wave it at you, then pull my own parachute and watch you fall! I'll..."
And in this manner the chase continued for another seven blocks, until they both finally became exhausted and Dan's clothes had dried out. Then they resumed walking, laughing at the pictures she had taken and at the whole scenario.
As they continued their walk home and the sun got lower, Dan brought up the topic they had been talking about before. "So, do you believe in alternate dimensions?" He asked.
Leah paused and considered, before saying, "I think there must be. How else to you explain all the unexplainable stuff in the world?"
Dan looked thoroughly bewildered. "If it's unexplainable, how on earth to you expect me to-"
"You know what I mean!" Leah interrupted.
"Of course I do." He replied with a cheeky grin. "But irritating you is so much fun. And don't pretend you wouldn't do the same thing to me."
She had to admit he was right on that one. "Anyway," she said, resuming the topic, "I do think that there are alternate dimensions, but like you said, I don't think it's worth devoting any time to."
"Agreed," said Dan as they reached Leah's house. "So I'll meet you tomorrow as usual?"
"Yep," she said cheerfully, "but remember, it's Saturday, so we're going to the park to get a few duels in."
"Sounds like fun. See you then."
"Later." She called, running down her path and into the house, shutting her front door behind her. She immediately headed upstairs, dumped her bag, sat at her desk and started preparing her Deck for the next day.
Dan was likewise preparing, but was instead doing it in his head –running over strategies, combos, and potential flaws with his Deck – so that he could get straight to work once he got home.
But something was wrong. Neither had noticed it until they had parted ways, but now they both felt uneasy. It was as though the very air was stretched thin and taught, like a sheet of elastic... a sheet with wonderful and terrible things on the other side of it.
And when that sheet tears…
Fun Fact #1: This whole "Fun Fact" format will continue in this manner for all future Episodes. We like it. It works for us.
Fun Fact #2: No, Leah and Dan aren't in a relationship, nor will they be in the future. They are good friends, and nothing more.