Yu-Gi-Oh! ΔX
Episode 0: A Crease in Time
A/N: This story is part of the Omniverse Event. See my profile for more details on what that is, and how you can participate. This story is also the sequel to my standalone C&H story Calvin's Quest, but you don't necessarily have to read that story to read this one; any relevant details mentioned will be explained in-story. I'm also going to try to write it in such a way that you don't necessarily have to have watched Yu-Gi-Oh! to read this story, but I recommend you check it out anyway because it's awesome. The rules of Duel Monsters will be explained in story, but are also all on the Yu-Gi-Oh! wiki if you don't trust me to give an accurate summary.
A message to Command
The worst-case scenario has indeed come to pass. Rifts are spreading across the universes faster than we imagined. Tell Home Base to dispatch all available agents at once.
The Omniverse Event is under way.
Calvin and Hobbes Universe #00137
Two months after the Quest
As usual, it all started with Calvin being bored.
It was Sunday in mid-October, and Calvin and Hobbes had exhausted most of their usual activities: they'd had all the G.R.O.S.S. meetings one could reasonably have in a weekend (three); they'd thrown water balloons at Susie until they themselves got bored with it; and the Calvinball had gotten punctured and Dad hadn't yet replaced it. After the rush of excitement from the Quest across space and time and the ensuing fight with Nivlac in the Paradox Dimension, Calvin still wasn't quite used to having nothing to do, even after two months. So, in lieu of any other activities, the duo had resorted to their next favorite pastime: insulting fictional characters.
"Seriously, in what world is a card like that fair?!" exclaimed Hobbes, gesturing at the TV. "That's got to be the most broken thing in the whole series!"
As you may have guessed, Calvin and Hobbes were watching Yu-Gi-Oh! reruns on TV. Calvin had discovered the show several months earlier and had quickly done an online marathon of the original series, GX, 5Ds, and ZEXAL. Hobbes was watching the series for the first time; he'd caught up on Seasons 1-4 online, but when he discovered that a marathon of the "Dawn of the Duel" arc was airing on Cartoon Network that week, he decided he would watch it in person. A couple episodes ago, Bakura (the evil one, but not the past evil one; the other evil one) had played a card that gave his monsters ultimate power through convoluted means. Hobbes had been complaining about it for quite a while.
"I dunno," remarked Calvin. "I'd say that giant snake Dartz had in Season 4 was pretty overpowered. Seriously, if the Pharaoh didn't have, like, the exact combination of cards to defeat it, Dartz would have won. Besides, there's plenty more overpowered things in the future series; trust me, you haven't seen Number iC1000: Numerronious Numerronia yet."
"Yeah, I guess," admitted Hobbes.
On-screen, Yugi was down to the last card in his deck. He drew it was a great deal of tension.
"I swear," said Hobbes with a grin, "if that's Exchange of Spirit, I'm going to laugh so hard."
Sadly, it wasn't Exchange of Spirit; it was some dragon Hobbes had never heard of. Needless to say, it was also overpowered.
"I love this show," remarked Hobbes, "but I swear it's ridiculous with these card effects."
"Yeah," agreed Calvin. "If I had a couple of those in MY deck, I'd decimate. In fact, I probably would anyway!"
Calvin had discovered the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game (or, as he insisted on calling it, "Duel Monsters") shortly before the Quest. He had spent a not-insignificant portion of the intervening six months meticulously assembling a deck from the various packs he could convince Mom to buy at the store. Only what he considered "the best cards" could go in his deck and a bin of cards bought off eBay. He wasn't just throwing in Level 8 monsters without thought for sacrifices, either; he had studied the rulebook online and had spent a lot of time refining his "ultimate strategy" and practicing various combo moves. Hobbes had once remarked that if Calvin put half the effort he'd put into studying dueling into his schoolwork, he'd actually have a chance at getting an A. Calvin had slapped him in response.
"Seriously, the protagonists are all such beginners," remarked Calvin, flopping on the sofa with his drink (a delicious can of carbonated fruit juice). "Okay, so there are a bunch of OP cards, but that's usually just for the major villains! I mean, if someone like Weevil was a regional finalist, the people in that world can't be that good at the game! I mean, come on, Yugi doesn't even have Dark Hole in his deck! I could kick his butt in a duel, no problem!"
"Oh yeah," remarked Hobbes. "A six-year-old kid who learned how to duel from the Internet and has a deck made of booster packs versus a guy who possesses all three of the Egyptian God Cards. That sounds one-sided, alright."
Calvin grumbled. "Whatever," he muttered. "Yugi cheats anyway; he has the Pharaoh do all the work." He pulled his own deck out of his back pocket; he began to thumb through the cards, even though by now had totally memorized the contents.
His eyes landed on one of his favorite cards, Red Eyes Darkness Dragon; he couldn't help but smile on seeing that one. He admitted it had been a bit awkward when, halfway through the first season of GX, he had found out that it was the signature card of a major villain, but that honestly just made the card even cooler. Flipping to his Extra Deck revealed another of his favorite cards, Number 9: Dyson Sphere. The second he had seen this card in the anime, he had immediately run to his dad demanding he buy it. He'd even paid for it with his own money. Owning a monster that was larger than the sun, at least in the anime, appealed to Calvin on a fundamental level. Now he just needed a way to summon it, a bit of a problem since it required two Level 9 monsters, while he had precisely one. Still, for now just owning the card was enough.
Hobbes sighed. "Anyway," he said, as the episode cut to a commercial break, "this is getting kind of boring. Want to go throw water balloons at Susie again?"
"Nah," sighed Calvin. "You saw the conniption fit Mom threw the last time; I don't want my cards taken away again. Besides, Susie threatened to call the police last time, and I almost think she might do it." He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Why is this neighborhood so boring?!" he exclaimed. "At least the Quest kept us busy! I really hope something happens around here soon; I don't care what!"
It is a scientific fact that you should never, every say this. The universe absolutely loves this sentence, and will go to absurd lengths to screw with people who give it the opportunity. And this particular case was most certainly no exception.
BOOM!
Without warning, there was the sound of an explosion that shook the entire house. Calvin and Hobbes leapt to their feet at once, partly in alarm and partly in anticipation of finally having something to do.
"What was that?!" exclaimed Hobbes.
"I don't know!" exclaimed Calvin. "I think it came from outside!"
The two leapt to their feet, Calvin shoving his deck into his back pocket, and sprinted for the front door. They quickly ran down the driveway, reached the sidewalk, turned left...and immediately saw the source of the disturbance.
"Oh," sighed Hobbes. "So it's going to be one of those days, huh?"
"Looks like it," said Calvin.
Before them, hovering just above the sidewalk in front of Susie's house, was something that could only be described as a rift.
It was about seven feet long, running roughly up and down through thin air. Strange pink energy could be glimpsed within, and electricity arced from the rift to other nearby objects. It was like a wound in space: a jagged hole through which something impossible was leaking in...or perhaps leaking out.
Calvin and Hobbes ran up to it. Calvin pulled out a ballpoint pen, which was giving off strange noises at a high frequency.
"The Higgs scanner is off the scale!" cried Calvin. "This thing is giving off rare particles like they're going out of style!"
"But what is it?" asked Hobbes.
"How should I know that?" snapped Calvin. "It's not like I've seen something like this before!"
"CALVIN!" screamed a shrill female voice.
Calvin turned to see that Susie was sprinting up the driveway of her house towards the rift. She was out of breath, having clearly run all the way from her room to get to them.
"Oh great, and she's here too!" Calvin exclaimed with a facepalm. "That's exactly what I needed right now: some girl sliming all over our investigation."
"What is this thing?" Susie asked as she arrived, panting, on the scene.
Calvin threw his hands up. "Why does everyone think I'm the one who has to know these things?!"
"Well...do you have any ideas?" asked Susie.
"Maybe," said Calvin ambiguously. "Why should I tell you?"
"Because if you don't, I'll tell both our parents that you were on my property again," said Susie, straightening up to look Calvin in the eye.
Calvin paused for a moment to consider this, as his hatred of Susie clashed with his fear of Mom. Eventually, fear won out.
"It's some sort of dimensional rift," he said, moving the scanner up and down as if that would reveal something new about it. "It's almost as if space and time have been somehow folded, causing two faraway points to slam into each other."
"What, like A Wrinkle in Time?" asked Susie.
"More of a crease than a wrinkle," said Calvin, not at all getting the reference or indeed realizing there was a reference to get.
"Wait a second," said Susie suddenly. "Did...did you somehow do this?"
"Why would you assume that?!" shouted Calvin. "Just because I have a time machine, that doesn't mean I'm responsible for every space-time anomaly in the universe! How would I even do this?!"
"Hey," snapped Susie, "two months ago you broke into my house, and when I chased you up to my room there was some rift thing that looked just like a tiny version of that thing there! I'm still trying to prove to myself that I'm not crazy for seeing that! And now here you are standing outside my house staring at a bigger one with your stuffed tiger, so can you blame me for thinking you may be involved with this?"
"Involved in what?"
Calvin moaned. He desperately hoped the voice that had come from behind him wasn't who he thought it was. He slowly turned around to see who it was...and there stood the man himself.
"What's this thing, Twinkie?" asked Moe.
As usual, the bully's hair fell into his eyes; how he managed to navigate anywhere was a mystery. He wore the same greasy clothes that he had worn every day since Calvin had first encountered him. Calvin wasn't even sure if he owned more than one pair of clothes.
"Something you wouldn't understand, no doubt," said Calvin.
"Is it dangerous?" asked Susie.
"Possibly," said Calvin with a shrug. "Now come on, Hobbes; let's go."
"Wait, where are you going?" cried Susie.
"To pack, duh!" exclaimed Calvin. "I can't exactly stay here now that this ignoramus knows where I live!"
Moe paused for what Calvin realized was probably a long blink. "You live around here?" he asked after a great deal of what passed for thought.
Calvin rolled his eyes. "Great," he said. "I'm missing the Dawn of the Duel marathon, there's a dimensional rift doing who-knows-what next door to my house, and now I have to deal with Annoying Girl and the Wonder Ape here on top of all that. I feel confident in saying this day could not possibly get any worse."
This, as Calvin quickly finds out, is another of those sentences that the universe just loves to hear people say and then immediately disprove.
Without warning, there was a pulse of energy from the rift. Suddenly there was an immense force, as if the vacuum of space had all at once decided to be located inside the rift. All four members of the group realized with horror that they were being sucked back into the rift. As they watched, reality seemed to distort, the rift somehow taking up more than 180 degrees of their field of vision.
"What did you do?!" screamed Susie.
"WHY AM I ALWAYS THE ONE WHO DID SOMETHING?!" Calvin screamed back.
Those were the last things they said before the three humans and the tiger were sucked into the rift and vanished from their universe.
They wouldn't return for a very long time.
A/N: And there we have the premier! If you're wondering how the whole "rules bleeding between universes" thing is being used for this story, you'll start to see it next episode in a very literal way.