Chapter 1: How It Came To Be

My name is Yugi Motou and I lived with my three cousins Joey, Malik, and Ryou when this happened.

About two years ago, my cousins and I moved to Domino city. We were from a few cities over, and my mom and grandfather were offered new business opportunities. Of course, they accepted, and we had to move.

Things were fairly normal when we arrived here, but when the second week rolled around...I guess you could say that's when it all started to go to shit.

You see, this was around the time we were enrolled in Domino High, a high school not too far from our new house/grandpa's new game shop. In fact, our house was close enough to where we were allowed to walk to school long as we stuck together. It was about a mile away which was perfect for both my mother and our grandpa.

Sometimes my mother wouldn't get off of work until late, and she couldn't drive us in the mornings because she left for work extremely early. My grandpa couldn't drive us because he needed someone to watch over the game shop while he was gone, and mom obviously couldn't do it. We also couldn't take the bus because after the incident with Joey and that one kid with a knife, mom said she'd be damned if she let us ride the bus again. None of us had a drivers license or possession of a vehicle. (And we still don't) Although, in present times, we're currently working on receiving ours. Anyway, we can all drive, we just don't have permits or a license. There is a reason for this, something that will come later in this story.

Anyway, we had been going to the school for about a week with no problems at all. The first day of the second week was when they showed up. The Yamis. The Yamis were a group of four boys who looked like older, manlier versions of us, and apparently they had been going this school for a while now.

They had been sent to an alternative school for about two months, and since we had moved right in the middle of the school year, we didn't know anything about them at all.

But from what we had heard, Atem was the one who resembled me, Akefia was the one who resembled Ryou, Marik was the one who resembled Malik, and Seto was Joey's counterpart. This was later confirmed to be correct information.

The day that they came back from alternative school or 'AS', as we called it, was a pretty normal one. However, everything changed on day number two of their return. That was the day that started everything. The day when they noticed us. My cousins and I had nearly all of the same core classes together, and the only classes that were different were our electives. I was in a health program, Joey was in culinary arts, Malik was in dance, and Ryou was in a photography class.

And by some odd coincidence, the Yamis had the same classes as us, and the ones who resembled each of us respectively even shared our electives despite being a grade older. At this point, they still weren't a bother to us, so we payed no mind.

Day three was when the problems started.

They started bullying us for no reason! In our electives, Akefia wouldn't stop stealing Ryou's shit and photo bombing his pictures in photo journalism, Marik wouldn't stop making inappropriate gestures towards Malik and messing up his dance moves, Seto wouldn't stop verbally provoking Joey and slipping the wrong ingredients in Joey's food, and Atem wouldn't stop bugging me and trying to mess up my concentration. But during our core classes, that's when they were at their worst because they were all together.

Before you go saying, 'why didn't you tell someone?', I will inform you that we did. We told numerous people, but the Yamis got off Scott free just because Seto Kaiba has a shit ton of money. It pains me that some people will ignore basic logic because another person has money. Money does not justify actions, yet this cruel world seems to think so. This just goes to prove that the world is practically made for someone like Seto Kaiba. Someone with a frostbitten heart that's frozen over beyond repair.

Eventually, summer showed its glorious, shining face a good five months later. My cousins and I were SO happy! No more school, no more homework, no more Yami—fuck. That summer was when the four of us made a HORRIFYING discovery.

The Yami's lived on Mill Street.

Mill Street was a street that we had to go down if we wanted to leave our neighborhood. It was probably the safest street in the neighborhood by this point because nothing ever really happened. There was also the fact that the houses on our street were sort of hidden which helped.

We lived near the back of the subdivision and a little ways off from the street behind some trees. The only real safety issue we had was the fact that we lived near the woods. We were more susceptible to wild animal attacks, kidnappings, break-ins, and killing, yet none of the events I described ever happened to us. Well, never happened to us then, but they did happen on the other streets.

There was a drive by on DDM Dr., frequent kidnappings on R Street, and a mass murder at the Yuki household on GX Lane.

Three of our beloved classmates, Jaden Yuki, Syrus Truesdale, and Duke Devlin, were never quite the same after the murder and the drive by. Who would be? I mean, your family members just died right in front of you while you were one of the only ones lucky enough to survive. I wasn't surprised when Syrus moved away not too long after that. He was going to be messed up and haunted by what happened for the rest of his life, and the same same goes for Jaden and Duke.

As for the R Street kidnappings, there's not much I can say about it. There wasn't much hope for the missing teens because the last anybody had seen of them was two months before the summer. Miho, The Tenma Twins, Imori, and Espa Roba. Five of our classmates who we knew, all living on R Street, all went missing within only a few weeks of each other.

The whole ordeal was very strange because we were hanging out with Miho at her house only three days before her disappearance, and we were just joking around with Espa Roba the very same day that he vanished. Someone had to have known something; the whole situation was way too coincidental because all of them went missing in the same way. They were all walking home from school. The disappearances of the Tenma twins attracted the most attention, made the largest headlines, and set an example that walking home from school with just one friend wasn't enough. Suddenly, there were an abundance of ads and commercials that said it was best for people to travel in groups when walking home, and they couldn't stress that enough.

We were pretty lucky that there were four of us, and we were a lot less likely to be targeted by the kidnappers. However, that still did not save us from the Yamis' wrath or anyone who had the same amount people as us, or more, in their group. There were kids at our school who either had social troubles, attitude problems, substance abuse issues, or were just wild or insane. Because of this, support groups starting popping up around our school and more groups were being formed. Things really got out of hand because soon after, the group's eventually became gangs.

That's when the real game began, and nearly all of the gangs were constant at each others' throats. There was some sort competition to reach for the top, the competition for complete dominance, the competition for the title of a ruler.

Because there were four of us, my cousins and I were automatically dubbed as a gang even though we considered ourselves otherwise. We were known by many names, and somehow gained the exact same attention that we were trying to avoid. Generally we were known as the Hikaris, but people such as Seto Kaiba and Ushio dubbed us as 'The Nerds' or 'The Geek Squad'. We generally tried to hide and stay out of trouble but with certain people along with peril, we were always found.

Heh. Yeah, I know I got a little carried away with the previous explanation, but let's back to the summer. A time when gang violence was at its all time high in Domino and at our school.

We were walking to the mall one day

and...