The Eclipse
Chapter 1
Table after table lined up with numbers placed on them; duelists ranging in ages anywhere from 5 to 50 or older; cards being played, traded, and sold; every thirty minutes someone has lost their deck box. These are the common things found at any Yu-Gi-Oh! Regional Qualifier tournament. It was the first step towards being accepted in to the national tournament and finally the world championships. However for many people who don't have the cash to spend on the rarest of cards, or don't have the luck to pull them from packs, they never get past this stage out of inability to out play those that do.
A black haired boy in glasses was one such person, currently attending one of these events. Although he knew his chances of victory were slim at best, he still played out of his simple enjoyment of the game. "I'll stack a card to summon Plaguespreader, remove Malicious to summon Malicious, synch into Stardust, play Burial from the Different Dimension, two DADs for game?" asked his opponent, one of those who could manage to get the cards they wanted.
"Yeah," the boy responded as he picked up his cards and began shuffling them. 'Geez, Lightsworns here, Glad Beasts there, Tele-DAD everywhere, lack of originality is a sad thing indeed,' he thought to himself. He cut decks with his opponent and drew his six cards for his turn. "I set one monster and one card face down, your turn." As his opponent began his turn, he looked up due to something or someone rather, catching his attention. He saw two bizarrely dressed people checking the pairings charts that showed where everyone was to be seated and who their opponent was for that round. One was a short, blue haired man with face paint that gave him the appearance of a clown, while the other was much taller with brown hair shaped like a large axe blade. 'I had no idea Jeager and momentum dude had fans that dedicated.'
"Game?"
"Huh?" responded the boy, returning his attention to the duel.
"Two DADs and two Stardusts for game?"
The boy checked his opponent's cards and couldn't believe the "luck" needed to pull such a hand. "Yeah, good game," he said shaking hands with his opponent. Both signed the match paper and the victor took off towards the judges' table.
As the boy got up to look around until the next round, he was addressed by someone behind him. "Excuse me; you are Zack Feral, correct?" He turned around to find the two he had written off as mere cosplayers before. With a closer look, he could now see that were he shown a picture of their anime counterparts, he may not be able to tell the difference.
"Yes," he responded.
The clown-elf chuckled to himself exactly as Zack had seen him do in the anime. "My name is Jeager and his is Akutsu," he said referring to his taller colleague. "Would you be so kind as to step outside with us?"
"Yes, of course those are your names," Zack said sarcastically. "Sorry, but my parents taught me never to leave with strange people, y'know?"
"Do you refer to these people here?" "Jeager" asked, handing the teen a photo. He looked at it and realization of what was happening struck when he saw that it was of his parents and younger brother.
"You bastard," he said, wondering why someone would go so far to mimic this character.
"Now do please come with us, we wouldn't want anything…unfortunate to happen," the man threatened and laughed in his disturbing way. The two "cosplayers" led Zack out of the building and into a nearby ally. The scientist got out a machine of sorts and began activating it while speaking excitedly in Japanese and letting out seemingly random shouts of "Moooooomentum!" He aimed it at a wall and created a large vortex of energy which only seemed to surprise Zack. "After you," Jeager said motioning for the boy to enter.
Unsure of how safe this was, Zack slowly put his left arm in to test it. Finding nothing wrong when he pulled it back out, he stepped through. There was no flash, no sci-fi drug trip of colors. It was just like stepping through a doorway, into the center of a lab, with a bunch of gaping scientists, all staring directly at you.
"What did you expect?" said Jeager's ever annoying voice. "Interdimensional travel isn't your everyday occurrence." Zack turned to see that the clown had made it through with Akutsu following after. Once they had all stepped away from the portal, the machine sustaining it went haywire and began emitting smoke. This in turn made all of the scientists panic, including Akutsu. "We'll just leave them to this," Jeager said as he and Zack left into an elevator.
After arriving on the ground floor, they began walking to the regular elevator. Zack looked around and saw that aside from the occasional number, everything was in Japanese. 'Of course, the anti-thesis to any American fan coming to this world. I won't understand anything will I? Except clowny here, which I guess makes sense, even though he and the rest of this world shouldn't exist in the first place.' After another couple minutes of traversing the building, they reached a door on one of the highest floors and entered.
"Here he is," Jeager announced to a man facing away from them behind a large desk. The man turned and Zack immediately recognized him as, as far as he knew, the root of all evil.
"Welcome, I am Rex Goodwin, Director of the Neo-Domino City Public Security Maintenance Bureau. You must be Zack Feral," he said. He held out his hand, but the boy refused to shake it.
"Tell me why I'm here!" he demanded.
"You are familiar with Duel Monsters, correct? In a few days, I will be hosting a tournament called the Fortune Cup. All I require is that you compete, and then you and your family will be sent home."
"My family's here?!" Zack exclaimed. "Let me see them!"
"I'm afraid I cannot allow that at the moment."
"Then why me damnit? There are plenty of other people better than I am."
"You're not in the position to make demanding questions," Jeager spoke up, chuckling.
"Quite. Now, do we have a deal?" Goodwin asked.
Zack had to fight back some words he'd rather say, but he reluctantly nodded, knowing he didn't have any other real choices. 'At least the duels shouldn't be that hard,' he thought.'No anime deck can beat a real-' He checked his deck box only to find that a single card remained inside. "What the hell?!"
"Is something wrong?" Goodwin asked calmly while Zack proceeded to check every pocket he had.
"Besides the obvious," he said looking to the man darkly. "My cards are gone."
"That is unfortunate. You'll have to come up with a new deck. Jeager shall accompany you to a card shop," the director said while sitting back down in his desk.
"I'm getting a whole couple days to get used to a new deck?"
"That is not my concern," stated Goodwin as he began to use his computer built directly into his desk. "Now, Jeager will show you to your room then take you to get your cards."
-
They took a security car to get to the nearest card shop. Jeager went on and on about facts of Neo-Domino City and Security, most of which Zack already knew from the show or simply didn't care about. They arrived at a large card shop, which surprised Zack before remembering how much more of an impact the game had in this world. As none of the cards were in English, Jeager had to help translate all cards Zack didn't recognize. He found that many specific cards, like the Destiny Heroes, weren't available due to them having only been printed once, for their original owners. Since all cards were being paid for by Security he had all cards there available, but individually good cards were hard to find.
"Finally," Zack said as they exited the card shop. He looked through his new decks, one for ground duels, and one for riding duels. 'These aren't nearly good enough to do well back home, but they should do okay here. At least the duels won't go Stardust, DAD, DAD, game.'As they returned to the car, he saw two kids dueling across the road. "So, will we have to buy me a duel disk too?"
"You will be provided a Security duel disk and a Security D-Wheel as well," Jeager replied.
"Great," Zack responded sarcastically. "Is there anywhere I can at least practice to get used to these decks?"
"The near-by Daimon area is notorious for street dueling. It should suffice for your practice."
It was only a short distance from the shop to find the place. It was an open lot between buildings with chalk-drawn duel fields. Crowds gathered around the duels, cheering for who they wanted to come out victorious.
"Wow, the real Daimon area," Zack said to himself as he went into his fan-boy mode. "This is awesome!" He ran up to a crowd once Jeager handed him a duel disk and stared wondrously at the duelists and their monsters. Although he knew what world he was in, the idea of being able to duel with the hologram projections had not yet sunk in until that moment. The duel finished soon after and Zack tried to run up to the loser's side before he was shoved out of the way by a much larger man who shouted something at him.
"It would appear that newcomers have to wait before they are allowed to duel," Jeager translated.
"How long?"
"He didn't say." They waited duel after duel but the "line" never seemed to get shorter. Zack could even swear he saw the same person go more than once. "It would appear that they have no intention of letting you duel. Perhaps we should-"
The clown was interrupted by the ground shaking violently and people fleeing the area in a hurry. Zack looked over to see an explosion and one person fly back onto the ground. The smoke cleared and revealed a person in a black cloak with a mask and long violet bangs hanging from behind it.
"So, the rumored Black Rose Witch appears," Jeager said as more people ran screaming from the area. Zack however had the opposite reaction, and ran towards the witch, his fan-boying blocking out how dangerous approaching that person actually was.
'Oh my god, it's freakin' Aki!' he thought as he stood before her. He slipped the duel disk on his arm and inserted his deck. The device activated and shuffled his cards automatically. The witch nodded, accepting his challenge and activated her own disk.
"Duel!" both duelist said.
"I'll start!" Zack said drawing his cards.
Turn 1: Zack: 4000 Witch: 4000
He placed a card on his disk. "I summon Herald of Creation!" A barefooted woman in a white robe with a golden staff appeared (1800 ATK). "I also play Foolish Burial to send Treeborn Frog from my deck to my graveyard," Zack said showing the cards to his opponent. "I'll end my turn."
Understanding the words "end" and "turn", the witch drew.
Turn 2: Zack: 4000 Witch: 4000
She announced her move, in Japanese of course, and summoned a small silver haired boy in black armor.
"She summoned-"
"I know what it is," Zack said cutting off Jeager. "I don't need help in my duels at least."
The witch continued her turn by summoning another monster, this time what appeared to be a ghost covered in vines. The boy then turned into three green rings and surrounded the plant-ghost which turned into four stars. As the witch began chanting, the stars lined up and in a flash of light appeared an enormous black dragon covered in rose petals (2400 ATK). "Black Rose Dragon!" the witch announced. Vines spread out from the monster and smashed the ground around it.
"Woah," Zack said to himself, "she really can make her cards real. Dear god, as if the holograms weren't amazing enough!" All remaining people looked at him not in the least bit understanding his joy at what was terrifying the rest of them.
The witch pointed at Zack's monster and commanded her dragon to attack. It drew back and released a stream of purple flame on Herald of Creation, which let out a cry and exploded as all destroyed monsters do. The force hit Zack and he could feel the heat from the fire as his life points were burned away by 600 points, somewhat knocking him back down to reality. "Turn end."
"Ow," Zack said. "I didn't even get hit directly and I felt that. Like when you open an oven as soon as something's done baking. But still, I'm having the time of my life! Draw!"
Turn 3: Zack: 3400 Witch: 4000
A card slid out of Zack's graveyard and he put it on his disk. "During my stand-by phase when I have no spell or trap cards on the field, I can summon Treeborn Frog from my graveyard!" A small frog with wings appeared in front of its duelist (100 DEF). "Now I'll play the spell Instant Fusion! By paying 1000 life points, I can summon a level five or lower fusion monster from my extra deck. So I summon Musician King!" A large cup of instant noodles appeared on the field and a broom-haired man with a red guitar jumped out (1750 ATK). "Now, I'll tribute my two monsters on the field. You have your dragon, and here's mine, my only card to come with me to this world, Light and Darkness Dragon!" The two monsters on Zack's field disappeared and were replaced by a dragon just as large as the one on the opposite side of the field, with its right side white with an angelic wing, and the left black with a demonic wing (2800 ATK).
Upon seeing each other, the two dragons began to roar uncontrollably. Their owners only had a second to be shocked as a searing pain carved into both of their right arms. "What the," Zack let out as he looked down at his arm. On it was a glowing red mark with a design like the sun. "What the hell?!"
"You," the witch exclaimed looking at her opponent. "Another wretched mark?!" She quickly smacked another card into her disk and caused wind to kick up a lot of dust. When it cleared, she was gone, and Zack's mark stopped glowing, but remained present on his arm.
He stared at the spot the witch had been for a few seconds and put his cards away. Turning around, he walked over to Jeager and picked him up by the collar of his shirt. "Take me to Goodwin."
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Well, if you've read this far down, I suppose the first thing to do is to say thank you. This is my first 5d's fic, as well as my first Yu-Gi-Oh! fic at all. Unfortunately I'm only able to come up with OC or crossover fics, as I find I make characters way to OOC if I don't. Just a couple notes:
First of all, for the record, Zack has only seen the anime up to episode 35, which is when I came up with the ideas for this fic. At the time I was worried that I would go too far ahead and have to wait for the anime to move slowly forward every week. So the solution was easy and here I am posting it today. Also, Goodwin and the rest of the inhabitants of that world are unaware of the tv show.
Second, I'm keeping the characters' original names, but using the English version of the card names.
Now that that's taken care of, please review, even if you don't like it. I should have the 2nd Chapter up within a few days.