A/N: Written for the GX bingo – the non-flash version, #197 – Duel Academy Island, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b25 - write about at least two canon scenes in the same fic (it's up to you how you mesh them)
Jaden Marks the Spot
Duel Academy Island was at the centre of everything, even after the Sacred Beasts disappeared. Research told them it was the instability the other incidents had caused: the Sacred Beasts, the Light of Destruction, and the Yubel incident that doubled as the case of the Supreme King. But what had kickstarted it all: the Sacred Beasts. And who'd put the Sacred Beast cards there? Them: Kaiba and Pegasus and even Yugi Mutou had a hand in that decision. Of course, none of them had thought rock and a safe would be enough to keep them out of searching hands.
But they hadn't imagined this. This darkness that surged from Duel Academy Island and flooded the world in a way it never had before. And why the Island? Unstable as it was, it wasn't the only place to carry such weighted duels upon its soil. Domino City had taken its fair share of hits. Very many of them. Far more than three. And there were other places, all over the world. The king's tomb in Egypt. Where Noah and his legacy had sunk. The island that had gone up in smoke. The other had had sunk to the bottom of the sea. Lots of places in the world that carried such heavy duels, such heavy challenges, and yet it was Duel Academy Island that became the crack in the crater.
It was the Sacred Beasts, in a way the Egyptian Gods even couldn't pull off. Or it was something else entirely. Like the boy who'd wound up in the centre of all of them.
They'd all met him. Kaiba. Pegasus. Yugi. And all of them before he'd become a student at Duel Academy, though in Yugi's case it was only just and only because Hane Kuriboh had squealed like he was a long lost friend. And then they'd met him afterwards too. Kaiba in passing. So much so in passing that he didn't even recognise him as the eight year old that had won his competition so many years ago, just as the boy from his Academy who'd been in the world-wide broadcasted duel – and had most clearly won before said broadcast cut off. And Pegasus knew that and more, having heard about the Shadow Riders incident from both the principal and a certain co-worker and mutual friend. And Yugi got the occasional visit from Hane Kuriboh and was perhaps the most well informed of them all.
He was, after all, one of a select few who knew exactly what had transpired in that other dimension. The reason why the Light of Destruction had come to Duel Academy, and it had very little to do with the Sacred Beasts, after all. The Sacred Beasts could have been tamed by a lesser duellists. Had, at a later date, been tamed by a lesser duellist. The Light of Destruction, on the other hand, could only be defeated by the Gentle Darkness and Jaden Yuki was the magnet that attracted it. And Yubel. And he tamed the Sacred Beasts. And those three things could have happened anywhere. They just happened at the Academy because he spent most of the school year there.
So it wasn't really Duel Academy Island that was at the centre of everything, after all. Nope, it was all Jaden Yuki.