Yu-Gi-Oh: Raise of Arcadia

Chapter 1: Beginning of a Legend

HeroSpirit: "Well this is my first attempt at a yu-gi-oh fanfic. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it at first, but I've been reading some others and I'm pretty sure I can do it now."

Haru: "I hope so for your sake."

HeroSpirit: "Quite Haru! You haven't been introduced yet!"

The year is 2023, the world has changed a lot in the past few years. Ever since the incident with the Satellite and New Domino City finally coming together, people have finally prospered. The residents of Satellite have moved into New Domino, and people are working to rebuild the Satellite as we speak. It's about time too, after so many years of living apart, we can finally come together.

I'm Haru Fuki, a resident of New Domino City. I know all of this is rather confusing, but trust me, if you stay with me long enough, everything will come into perspective.

"I'm telling you, Marauding Captain is way better than Nova Summoner in terms of special summoning." Riley sighed as we were on our way home.

"No way! Nova Summoner lets you special summon a monster when it's destroyed, and Marauding Captain is just going to get destroyed anyway with such low attack points." Riley's twin brother, Ryo replied by shaking his head. My friends were talking about a game known as Duel Monsters. Believe it or not, Duel Monsters was the most popular sport in this point of time. Duel Monsters is a card game financed by a company called Kaiba Corp. A multi-billion dollar company for various reasons. I mean for one, when the company was already at the top of the charts it was taken over by a financial genius named Seto Kaiba. This was about the time that duel monsters just started to take off, and when Kaiba took advantage of this by making products to go with them, it made him a very fine amount of money ranging in the billions.

"Guys! Can we stop talking about that dumb argument for just a second! My birthday is tomorrow, and we still need to stop by the game shop and get a new booster pack of duel monsters cards before they're sold out!" I interrupted. As my statement implied, Duel Monsters is a trading card game. Yes, I know what you're thinking. A trading card game as a major world sport? Well it was true.

"Get real man, there's no way there are any more left, that booster pack set was released 2 days ago." Ryo admitted. Yes, Duel Monsters was really that popular. I dropped my head in disappointment, I thought to myself that Ryo was most likely right. Booster packs always contained a few random cards that may or may not be useful to you, but if they were the money you spent on the booster packs was worth it. My friends and I continued our walk back home, I was still thinking about my birthday tomorrow, this would be my 15th, and I knew that somehow, this one was going to be different than all the others.

"We're home!" Ryo and Riley said in unison. The three of us looked around the house, nobody was to be found.

"Looks like your parents are still on that business trip." I observed from the emptiness of my friend's house. Which was technically speaking my house too. I lived together with my twin friends and their parents due to my lack of them. My parents went completely missing when I was just a baby, and my other relatives were nowhere to be found. My only other option was to go to an orphanage, but Ryo and Riley's family decided to house me instead. Even though they haven't legally adopted me, the New Domino City's child services allowed it. Although the problem is the twin's parents are never really around. Both of them are usually on business trips all around the world, but they tend to stop by once and a while to check up on us, it was irresponsible yes, but it was just the way it had to be.

"Maybe our parents will just stop by and drop off a gift for you." Riley theorized. I doubted it, Ryo and Riley's parents wouldn't take time from their extremely busy job for something like that.

"Maybe. It'd be incredible if I got a Duel Monsters deck though. That'd be awesome." I dreamed. Believe it or not, I had to be the only child in the whole world without a Duel Monsters deck. Everyone had their own cards and about half of those people even got their own duel disk. For those who don't know, duel disks are required for an official game of Duel Monsters. Duel disks were used to project holograms of the monsters on the Duel Monsters cards, giving it an extremely realistic feel to it. Kaiba Corp. brand duel disks revolutionized the way the game was played, making it that much more popular.

"Maybe, it's been awhile now, but this year may be your year." Ryo preached. I knew that he was trying to be optimistic for both our sakes, but I just didn't see it happening.

Allow me to skip ahead just a bit to the next morning, as I'm sure you're anxious to guess what happened on the morning on my birthday. You see, as I awoke from my; or rather all of our bedrooms. I sat up and rubbed my eyes slightly before sliding my feet towards the end of the bed. I couldn't hear anything, and nobody was in the room besides me. Which of course was rather unusual, considering I was always the first one up at this hour.

"Hello?" I called as I looked down the hallway in which was empty. I sighed at this, knowing that any second Riley and Ryo were going to yell surprise or something like that. I turned the corner of the hall into the living room, only to see two people yelling:

"Surprise!" I heard the twin brothers yell. I looked around the living room which was now covered with colorful streamers, confetti, party favors and a bunch of ripped up wrapping paper on the floor.

"How did I know..."

"I appreciate this guys, thanks." I gratefully replied. Even though it wasn't much of a party, it's the thought that counted. "Your parents are still gone, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah, but they flew in a gift!" Riley grinned, taking a box from behind the couch. The box was cardboard, and it had an official Kaiba Corp. logo on it. It looked about as big as an average guitar case.

"Your parents flew this over? Are you guys sure it's for me?" I asked as I loomed over this mysterious box.

"Well considering it arrived on your birthday, I think it's a safe bet." Ryo chuckled, leaning on the couch now staring at the box.

"Come on Haru! Open it up!" Riley impatiently ordered. I took a second to examine the box and slowly peel away the tape that was sealing it. Once the minutes I spent struggling to do this were past, I slowly opened up the box to see a bunch of styrofoam pellets inside the box, obviously keeping something either fragile, small, or both.

I dug my hands into the box to find what I was supposed to be finding. The box itself was so deep that the styrofoam went about half-way up my forearm as my hand hit the bottom of the box. I scanned my hand over and around this container to continue my search. Once I felt something hard I arched my eyebrow.

"I think I got it." I claimed as I tried to find a spot on the mysterious object where I could grip it. It seemed rather circular though. As I pulled it outward, I couldn't believe what I saw.

It was a large circular disk that was about two or three inches thick, like some sort of miniature UFO. It had markings on it that made it look futuristic and a single black box was imbedded in the very middle of it. Five yellow thick stripes riddled one of the disk's sides.

"What is it?" Ryo curiously asked as he got off the couch and took to the floor so he could get a better look at this device. I felt my hand across this strange thing and felt on the yellow stripes.

"Could these be... buttons?"

I had to test this thought as I pressed down on the far left of these so called "buttons". What happened next completely amazed me. As I pressed this button, a small door revealed itself on the side of the disk, popping out a small box with an open top. Another one of these compartments revealed themselves on another side in which was a full 90 degrees away from the first one. This nearly made me flinch as I struggled to keep hold of this thing as I heard whirring and buzzing inside it. Suddenly, a small, square, sheet of metal that was about half an inch thick shoot out of another side of the disk and slid itself around about 90 degrees until it was directly in front of one of the revealed compartments. What happened next was the sheet of metal extended itself outward to reveal more sheets of metal that were tucked into the original. This happened twice on both sides of the metal until it extended to about a foot and a half wide. Several lights began to turn on and one red arrow pointing downward suddenly appeared on each of the sheets that had popped out. That's when I realized...

"It's a duel disk..." I gasped. Examining this marvel further as it completed it's transformation. "This is the new K-12 model! I saw this on a Kaiba Corp commercial!"

"Dude! That's awesome!" Ryo admired suddenly snatching the device from my hand and examining it. "I'd like to try this out sometime, it looks pretty lightweight. My disk is so heavy it makes my arm sore." he complained. Riley didn't seem too thrilled about this device that came from the box though. In fact he looked troubled.

"Yo Riles, you ok?" I asked him as he snapped out of his troubled expression.

"Yeah, I guess. What I don't understand is why mom and dad would give you a duel disk when you don't have any cards." Riley realized. I hadn't thought of this yet, and I guess he had a point. The duel disk was useless without a duel monsters deck, and that was the one thing I was short of.

"Maybe they didn't know, and even if they didn't, it's the thought that counts." Ryo reminded as he strapped my gift to his wrist just to see how it felt.

"Hey hey hey careful with that! That's an expensive disk!" I nagged the more reckless counterpart of the twins. Ryo was known for pushing things until they broke, it was something that I both admired and hated about him.

"Relax man, I'm just seeing how it feels, and I was right, it's really lightweight!" he smiled as he waved it around on his wrist with ease. I hadn't even know the duel disk had a wrist strap until now, as it wasn't visible in it's standby mode.

"Just give it back man, I really don't feel comfortable with you playing with it." I sighed as I caught a glimpse of Riley searching the box that the duel disk came from. "Hey Riles, what are you doing?"

"Looking for anything else that may have came with the disk, maybe mom and dad got you a deck to go with the duel disk or something. I'm pretty sure they knew that you didn't have a deck." Riley responded, suddenly quitting his search and scratching his head. "I didn't find anything though, all I found was the instruction manuel."

"That figures."

"Well look on the bright side, if you can't use it, it'll give me some time to try it myself." Ryo joked. To be honest though, I was having trouble hearing as one.

"Look man, I know it's just me, but-." I started, but my sentence was interrupted by a ring of the doorbell. All three of us looked to the door down the hall.

"I'll get it." Riley insisted as he ran to it. He came back only minutes later with a small, pocket-sized cardboard box.

"What cha' got there?" Ryo asked slightly impatiently. Riley examined the box a little and scratched his head.

"It's a package for Haru, but there's no return address or anything. There isn't even an address that tells where this package is supposed to go. How the mailman got it here is beyond me." Riley sighed as he handed it to me. On the cardboard box I saw only a few words poorly written in black marker. The words read To: Mr. Haru Fuki. and nothing else. The only other thing I saw on the box was a strange marking that looked like some sort of...lantern? Yeah, it looked like an old oil lantern that folks used to use way back in the day. The lantern had a small crack in it with a flame flickering inside. That's all I saw though. I began to open the mysterious box that I wasn't even sure I was supposed to be opening. The tape was easier to peel off than the last, so I was able to completely open it in a matter of seconds.

"You're kidding me"

This is what I thought as I saw what was in the small box. There, inside, was a neatly stacked full package of duel monsters cards. I could tell from the dull red backs with the black oval on the back of them along with a dull yellow boarder. The backs of these cards were oh so familiar, and I nearly lost my balance as I saw them. I've been dreaming of owning some of these cards for my entire life.

"Dude, you look real pale, you ok?" Ryo asked a little concernedly as he helped me keep my balance, once he caught a glimpse of what was in the box though, he freaked. "No way! You got a deck of duel monsters cards?"

"You're kidding me." Riley gasped.

"Exactly what I was thinking."

"How... how did you get a deck of cards? Who sent you them?" Riley continued as he peered into the box.

"I don't know. Like you said, there's no return address, no signature, no nothing. They didn't even leave a note." I examined. I took the full deck out of the box. The deck weighted like it was about a 50 card deck, give or take, and I saw at the top of this deck was a strange looking monster.

"Halo... Kuriboh?"

That's what the card at the top of the stack said. Halo Kuriboh. It showed a picture of a little furry puff ball with brown fur and stubby little green appendages. A little white glowing halo was above this monster's head, and a beam of light shined upon it in it's picture like it was some sort of god. I'll say this though, when I looked at the card's stats, it was a weak little thing. Why, it only had 300 attack points and a measly 200 defense points. The thing was useless!

"I don't like the looks of this guys. If there's no sending or return address, how can we be sure that the deck was meant for you?" Riley interjected.

"How many "Haru Fuki"s can there be in New Domino City Riles! Come on, I say we test the deck out." Ryo suggested. I went wide eyed at this as I took my eyes off the deck.

"Wow wow wow, are you sure dueling is a good idea? I haven't even looked at any of these cards and I don't know what kind of cards I have! I don't even know if this is a full deck!" I tried to reason, but Ryo wouldn't hear a word of it. He wanted to see what kind of deck I had, and he wanted to see it right now.

"It'll be fine Haru! All you have to do is wing it and go with the flow, you'll learn how to use that deck in no time flat!" Ryo insisted as he dragged me by my arm out into the backyard. There was where he made me stand and put on my duel disk as he went inside to grab his disk and deck. I saw Riley coming outside to watch us with an uncertain expression. Not only did I not trust how this deck got to my doorstep, but I also didn't trust it in the fact that it could win. Why, there wasn't a doubt in both Riley's or my own mind that the duel that was about to happen wasn't a good idea.

HeroSpirit: "Well, I hope this first attempt at a yu-gi-oh fanfic pleases everyone."

Haru: "I'm sure it will, even if the duel hasn't started yet."

Ryo: "It'll be epic though! My deck is going to rule!"

HeroSpirit: "I haven't even made your deck yet."

Ryo: "My point still stands!"