Crash and Burn

Introduction

Yusei POV

It had been almost six months since I or any of us last heard from Kalin and we all were getting worried. I never wanted him to go on that trip with Grieger in the first place. I wanted him to stay here so I could make sure he got better. Plus, the four of us really did want to mend our bonds and make up for lost time. But Kalin, after he had gotten out of the hospital, was very persistent to get away from the city and Satellite. Jack was the first to agree to let him leave and Crow soon followed suit. After that, I had no choice but to let him go. Arguing with Kalin never did work for us. I knew that first hand.

He promised to stay in contact. Kalin would message us every once and awhile, but overtime they became less and less frequent. It had gotten to the point where we had no idea where he actually was or what he was doing. It was like Kalin was trying to avoid us.

Part of me wanted to go out into the world and look for him, but with the WRGP fast approaching, there was no way any of us could start up a manhunt. If only we had tried to get to him sooner. I could tell Jack and Crow were worried about our friend's whereabouts as well, although they did not like to show it. I guess we were all hoping that Kalin would just turn up one day, back to the way he was before he lost himself.

Before I knew it, the WRGP Preliminaries were in full swing. After registering our team, Jack, Crow and I wrote out a long email to Kalin, telling him about Teams 5ds, the mess with Ghost and Iliaster, meeting Bruno and practically everything else that happened since we last heard from him. We invited or more so begged him to come back to New Domino City to watch us participate in the tournament. Crow joked about strapping a tracker on Kalin the next time we saw him so we would never loss him again.

We got no response to the email.

The first day of the Preliminaries came and Team 5ds were up against Team Unicorn. Before the duel started, I looked through the stands, hoping that Kalin would miraculously show up. Unfortunately, he was not there. After an intense battle, Jack, Akiza and I came out on top. I honestly thought Jean would have taken the duel by destroying my deck, but the spirit of a true duelist must have overtaken him, because he made the stupid move of attacking me.

Next up for us was Team Catastrophe, which I was nervous for because Crow was trying to turbo duel with a busted shoulder and this team may have been the reason why Andre, Jean, Akiza and even Crow crashed their duel runners. However, after Team Catastrophe lost automatically once their duelist's runner was destroyed, an army of Ghosts started riding through the city wreaking havoc.

I, along with Jack, Officer Kaz, Sherry, Elsworth and eventually Vizor, battled the army of Ghosts. Suddenly, a new enemy challenged me to a turbo duel and used his Meklord Emperor against me to take Stardust Dragon. I thought I was prepared for this, but the first time I tried Accel Synchro summoning, it failed. I was beating myself up hard for being unable to preform an Accel Synchro summon. Luckily, after trying again and giving it my whole heart and Clear Mind, I was able to successfully Accel Synchro summon, busting out my newest ace monster, Shooting Start Dragon and beating Primo.

After the destruction of the Ghost army, the WRGP Preliminaries were postponed indefinitely. It was during this break when I received an email from Greiger about Jack of all things. Apparently, Grieger recently had a dream about Jack needing to find a new way of dueling or he would be destroyed by his own power. After flying to Nazca, Peru and meeting up with Greiger and his younger siblings, Jack went through a transformation of his own. He was tricked into fighting against the Crimson Devil and was able to achieved a new power, Burning Soul. This ability let him Synchro summon Red Nova Dragon, a monster that had abilities to counter the Meklord Emperors, similar to Shooting Star Dragon for me.

After the Crimson Devil was defeated and everyone was saved, Jack and I were about to make our leave when Greiger asked something of me. He asked me to say hi to Kalin for him. I was shocked. Did Grieger think Kalin was with us? I told Grieger that we had not heard from Kalin in months and that we had no idea where he was. Grieger became very concerned, as were I and Jack after uncovering this revelation. Grieger told us that he had not seen or heard from Kalin in months as well. I could feel my stomach drop hard when he said this.

We never should have let him leave. Now nobody had a clue where Kalin was. I started to fear the worst and I could tell Jack was too.

After returning to New Domino City, we told Crow what we had learned, or what we had lacked to learn about Kalin's whereabouts. He immediately said we should start tracking him down, talk to anyone who might know where he could possibly be and figure out why he would disappear like this in the first place. But where would we even begin? Grieger was apparently the last person to have any sort of contact with Kalin. He could be anywhere after all this time.

I went to Trudge and Mina. They were originally helping us figure out Bruno's true identity. I asked them if there was anyway they could look Kalin up and see if he had made himself known somewhere. Unfortunately, just like Bruno's lost identity, they had nothing on Kalin, except the data from when he was first arrested all that time ago. I was at a complete loss.

Jack, Crow and I would sit around the garage for hours, trying to think of where Kalin could have gone. Of course, no one could really predict his actions. I started beating myself up again for letting him leave...for letting them take him away. It was just like before. The three of us sitting around, wondering how Kalin is managing in prison or now out in the world...if he even was.

Sometime had past and Bruno reminded us that Iliaster was still out there and that we should be getting more information on how to defeat them. However, my mind had checked off of Iliaster since the whole debacle about not truly knowing where Kalin was came to light. Besides, Iliaster had been quiet ever since Primo attacked the city with his Ghost army and the WRGP was still not starting up again anytime soon.

One night, I decided to take a walk through the city by myself to clear my mind. After making my way through the more maintained, well-off areas of the city, I found myself walking through back alleyways beneath the skyscrapers, through rough parts of town with stragglers roaming around and through the known black market district. It reminded me of Satellite back when we were kids. A small part of me wanted to bust out my duel disk and start street dueling again. Boy would Kalin be proud to see that.

Kalin.

At one point, I wandered by three men who were trapped in a heated conversation. Something about having some of the 'goods' they were transporting being stolen by a gang from another city. It did not really interest me much at first. Apprehending the black market was Jack's thing. As long as no one got hurt, I would stay out of it. That was until one of the men mentioned a duelist the gang used to attack them and how that duelist was able to pull of a Handless Combo.

I stopped in my tracks. Handless Combos were once a nightmare of mine and I knew of only one person in the world insane enough to use them. I stuck around until the conversation had ended. I saw the man who had mentioned the Handless Combo walk off on his own. Now was my chance. Hopefully what I thought I had overheard was the truth and not my desperate mind playing tricks on me.

I approached the older man and told him I wanted to know more about this duelist who pulled off a Handless Combo. At first, he would not tell me anything, but his talkative mouth began to betray him. He started telling me about how the gang attacked and cornered him. I wanted nothing to do with his exaggerated story. I cut him off, asking him if the duelist who used Handless Combos also used Infernity monsters. He nodded his head yes.

It was almost too good to be true. After going months without hearing from Kalin and now getting information about the use of a Handless Combo and Infernities somewhere was surreal. Could it really be him? Was destiny at work here? Would I really be able to find Kalin off of this information?

I demanded for the man to tell me where all this took place. Where was the duelist who used Handless Combos located? He told me that it happened in a small rundown city, maybe about an hour or two outside of New Domino. But there was a problem with that explanation. There was at least four or five smaller cities that I knew of that were outside of Domino. I told him to be more specific, but then he started laughing. It was all some joke to him.

Before I could get any more information out of this guy, he took off running. I tried to catch up with him, but he managed to disappear into the shadows. I could not get anything else I wanted out of him, but I suppose I had gotten just enough...hopefully.

There was a duelist in one of the smaller rundown cities, about an hour or two outside of New Domino City, who is part of a gang, uses Infernities and a Handless Combo when dueling. If that did not sound like Kalin, then I did not know what would.

I ran back to the garage to tell Jack and Crow about what I had accidentally discovered. They both immediately questioned what I was telling them. It did sound way too good to be true. I assured them that it had to be true and that Kalin was closer to us than we originally thought. Bruno pulled up a map of the cities within a two hour driving distance from New Domino City. Five appeared on the map. We immediately eliminated the city that was actually a small farming town with no history of gangs, leaving four cities left to search.

Not wanting to waste anytime in finding Kalin, Jack, Crow and I decided to split up, each taking on our own city and looking for our lost friend there. Bruno reminded us that it would be safer going together, especially since we would most certainly be running into gangs who might not like us city boys. However, that could not stop us. The three of us knew how gangs worked and how to take them down. It was almost like going on a solo scouting mission Kalin would occasionally send us on.

Realizing he could not sway us away from our plans, Bruno offered to visit the final, safest city for us. After seeing all the stress we had been going through, being concerned over where Kalin was and how much we had told him about Kalin, Bruno was eager to finally meet him. We let Trudge know what we were planning in case anything were to go seriously wrong. He too encouraged us to go at this a different way, but just like Bruno, his pleads were to no avail.

We wasted no time jumping on our runners and heading out to find Kalin. I swore to myself that we would not only find him, but also bring Kalin back and make sure we never lost him again.


AN: This story is written as if the Crash Town Arc (originally set prior to the WRGP and Bonds Beyond Time movie) never happened. This Introduction chapter was created to set the time reference for the events in the story. Point of View for each subsequent chapter will be most likely from Yusei's perspective, but occasionally through the third person or through another character.

WARNING: This story will contain cursing, drug use, violence, suggested adult themes, etc. It's rated M for a reason!