Chapter 1: A New Challenger

"Now I'll attack your Infinity Dark (1500/1200) with my Elemental Hero- Flame Wingman (ATK 2100)! Attack with Sky Dive Scorcher!"

The duelist commands his Elemental Hero to attack. With one big leap, Flame Wingman flies high into the sky before coming back down in a flaming nose dive on the black fiend. In one big explosion, Infinity Dark is no more and the duelist, Akira, takes a big hit to his life points.

Akira: 2100

Tyson: 3000

"And don't forget about my wingman's special ability! When he destroys a monster in combat you take direct damage equal to your monster's attack points!"

Akira grits his teeth as the pressure of the duel begins to sink in.

Akira: 600

Tyson: 3000

Akira smiles at his opponent suddenly causing him to raise an eyebrow. "I special summon to the field Gorz the Emissary of Darkness (ATK 2700) in attack mode!"

"What!? You can't summon a monster during my turn! Even more so a level 7 monster at…"

"You're wrong! I can and I did. You see if I take damage from a card my opponent controls while I control no cards, I can special summon Gorz from my hand to the field. In addition, depending on what type of damage I take, I can activate a second ability. In this case I get to inflict damage direct damage to you equal to the amount of damage I took."

"WHAT! That's not fair!"

Tyson jumped back as he came to realize that Gorz had leaped up above him. He shields his face with his duel disk as Gorz comes down on his life points with a powerful sword slash.

Akira: 600

Tyson: 1500

Gorz returns to Akira's side of the field as Tyson lowers his arms and recovers from the attack. The fact that he could go from such a huge lead to a small one irritated him greatly. "I switch my Wingman into defense mode and place one face -down. That's all for now, I end my turn."

Akira nods to his opponent and draws a card from his deck. Upon looking at the cards in his hand and to Gorz card on his field, Akira closed his eyes and smiled to himself. "You're pretty good. I'm really sorry to say this buuuut this duel is over." Akira removes a card from his hand and places it on his duel disk next to Gorz, "First I'm summoning Snipe Hunter (ATK 1500) in attack mode!"

A purple imp-like monster in a black leather outfit pops up next Akira wielding an odd looking gun.

"Next, I'm activating my Snipe Hunter's special ability! By discarding a card from my hand, I can select one card on the field and roll a six-sided die. If the number that comes up isn't a 1 or a 6, I can instantly destroy that card. And the card I'm choosing is your Elemental Hero- Flame Wingman!"

Tyson's jaw drops at the sudden change in power. With no other monsters on the field without his Flame Wingman he'd be open for a direct attack. At least that's what he wanted Akira to believe. His face down trap Mirror Force would activate the minute one of his monsters declared an attack.

The dial on Snipe Hunter's gun began to spin. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife as the dial began to slow down and slowly tick between numbers. With one last tick, the spinner finally landed on 3.

"Yes! Now, Snipe Hunter, take out his Flame Wingman!"

The imp-like fiend flew into the air as the number 3 shined at the end of its gun. With one well aimed bullet, Snipe Hunter destroyed Tyson's Flame Wingman, sending it to the graveyard in a cloud of dust. Tyson clenches his fist and grinds his teeth even more.

"You done yet?" Tyson snarls.

"Nope. I'm just getting started actually." Akira takes another card from his hand and plays it, "Next I activate Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy your face-down card!"

Tyson's eyes widened as he watched his Mirror Force along with any other hope of victory were destroyed by a powerful gust of wind. Akira smiles and nods his head as he points to his opponent and gives the final command.

"Now Gorz, finish this!"

***

The teenager Akira makes his way out of the dueling arena and into the waiting lobby where other duelist were waiting. At first glance he seemed like a rather average duelist; unruly black hair, green eyes, with a black shirt, with blue pants and a blazer. However, what set him apart from the rest was his exceptional skill as a duelist. In truth Akira had just assembled his deck that morning and entered the new city tournament that same afternoon. Since then, he'd won all five of his preliminary matches with no prior knowledge of what was in his deck.

As Akira came to an open seat, he sat down and looked at the duel deck in his hand. Putting on a somewhat worried expression, Akira runs his fingers through his hair and scratches his head in thought.

"Who am I kidding? I haven't dueled since Duel Academy. There's no way I'll get past the first round. Not like this anyways…"

The decision to enter the Duel Tournament was last minute and Akira felt he was ill prepared. The last time he was actually in any duels prior to this tournament was during his time at Duel Academy a couple of years ago. Since then he'd but his deck down and spent most of his time developing other skills and talents. Needless to say, he hadn't developed his deck since and was a little behind in terms of the latest dueling trends. His current deck lacked any type of Synchro Monsters and was consisted mainly of older cards. This made Akira doubt his ability to compete.

"Well I suppose it's not a bad deck still", Akira forces a smile; "I may just have to adjust to a few things."

"Yo Akira!"

Akira turns not expecting someone from this area to know him. Approaching him was his opponent from his previous match. Tyson was a boy around his age with blue hair and a baseball cap. He walked with his hands in his pockets and stopped before Akira with a friendly smile.

"Hey dude, you've got some pretty sweet moves. Maybe even sweeter than mine."

"Thanks. Tyson right? I appreciate the compliment. You really had me worried there for a minute."

"Yeah, I might've been able to win if I ran my usual deck but a win is a win right. Oh, and before I forget."

Akira looks at Tyson confused as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card and hands it to Akira. After looking at it for awhile, he takes it and sees that it's the monster card Blizzard Dragon.

"What's this? What are you giving me this card for?"

"Well I've heard that these tournament preliminaries aren't meant to eliminate any competitors before the actually rounds begin."

"They're not?" Akira asks confused.

"Right. They're actually set up to determine some weird kind of tier system. You see, this tournament is actually gonna be based off of the original Duel City Tournament if I'm not mistaken."

"Well that still doesn't tell me why you're giving me this card."

"Consider it a gift of sorts" Tyson says dismissively as he leans against the wall near Akira. "Don't worry about it dude, if this tournament is anything like the original Duel City Tournament, I plan on winning a lot more cards."

Akira laughs slightly and places the card in his pocket. Tyson looks around for a second before looking back at Akira with a raised eyebrow.

"So man, why'd you enter this competition anyway? You don't really seem all that excited."

Akira is taken aback by Tyson's sudden question. He scratches the back of his head as he smiles goofily and raises his head up. His eyes look across the room causing Tyson to direct his attention to the same thing. A crowd of duelist who'd all finished with their duels had crowded around a large monitor mounted on the wall. On it, two duelists had just finished their final preliminary match. As the dust settled, the camera zoomed in on the victor. Standing calm and collected before the arena was the duelist known as the Black Rose Witch, Aki Izayoi.