Jacob handed the handmade part to Toru. "Here. I didn't get the part exactly, but I met some guys that looked like they knew what they were doing, and one of them made this and gave it to me."

Toru stared at the computer chip. "This is handmade? Are you serious?" He held it up to the lightbulb in the room. "This looks factory-quality, or even better. Jacob, I can't thank you enough for getting me this! Who made this?"

"I think his name was Yusei, from this thing called The Enforcers."

"The Enforcers, eh? Isn't that the group West is always going on about? He'd probably get a kick out of hearing that- I need to install this baby. I'm going to give my Into the Sunset a test run later- do you want to try it out then? Because, as a friendly warning, that's probably the only time you'll get to. I've already gotten most of my stuff packed up, and as soon as I can get my baby tuned and ready for the trip, I'm outta here."

Jacob looked at the Duel Runner his friend and he had built from scratch. It was, in their minds, the greatest piece of machinery to ever be created. Jacob had worked for money to buy parts, while Toru had spent hours upon hours combing the desert around Crash Town and the mines to find parts they could use. Toru had also studied engine design and building, learning everything he could, absorbing knowledge like a sponge; the engine that was sitting in the Into the Sunset had been built by hand by Toru. Jacob had spent almost all of his extra time building the body of the Runner, welding and shaping pieces of metal to create it. It was a machine three years in the making, and it was theirs.

"I have to say," Jacob murmured, "I'm going to miss working on it."

Toru looked at Jacob. "I know what you mean. This has been everything for the past, what, three years? And now that it's standing there in front of us… it's beautiful."

"Yeah."

"It's ours."

"Exactly."

"It's… perfect."

"You really met The Enforcers?" West asked for the fiftieth time.

"Yeah. I almost Dueled two of them when I thought they were going to jump me at their garage."

West stared at Jacob. "You're lucky you didn't, they'd have killed you on the spot!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence West. I'm just glad it was my fate to meet them the way I did."

West rolled his eyes. "Do you chalk everything up to fate?"

"Yes. Because there's not much else it could be, now, is there?"

"What if someone changes their fate?

"Then they were fated to make their fate change, I guess. I don't try and think into stuff that gets recursive like that. I just know that I'll end up where I need to, when I need to. No later, no sooner. Like a puppet, maybe, or a character in a story."

"But what if you screw up?" West asked. "Would you get angry at fate, because you couldn't do anything else?"

"Listen, West. Stop trying to think this into itself; what I do is go with the flow. I do what comes to me, because I believe that's what I have to do. My deck is just an extension of that belief; I believe that what I draw is what I need, or at least what I can use to wait until the right field comes up for me to win. If I draw what I need, though, I don't need my hand, so Infernity cards are a good choice."

"I… don't quite follow your logic on that last bit," West said.

Jacob laughed a bit. "Yeah, now that I said it, it sounds kind of stupid. But ever since I found that Infernity Randomizer at the mines, the cards just felt right, so I started building a deck from them. And tell me again, West, how many times we've sparred?"

"Twelve."

"And how many times I've won?"

"…Twelve…" They arrived at the hideout that Nico was at, and West ran up to her. "Hey Nico, Jacob met The Enforcers when he was in town! Can you believe it?"

"Actually," Jacob said, "there's something even better I have to tell you two. Toru and I just finished the Runner, and we're testing it later today. You guys aren't big enough to ride it, but I thought you guys would like to see us test it."

West's eyes went wide, and Nico beamed. "Really?" they asked.

"Yeah. I bet if we head back now, we'll get to his house right about the time he gets the CPU finished. We'd better hurry, though," Jacob said, looking at the sky, "because it's only an hour or two before sundown." Nico and West nodded in sync, and the three of them turned and headed back to the southern entrance to town.

As they arrived at the Crash Town sign, they heard the rumble of an engine, and Toru rode by on his Runner. Noticing them, he braked and u-turned to return to the sign.

"Do you guys like it?" he asked, smiling widely as he took off his yellow helmet.

"Dude, that's so awesome!" West yelled, running up to the machine, while Nico just smiled.

"How'd you guys manage this?" she asked.

"Well," Toru said, "I found the parts, and Jacob worked for money to buy anything else we needed. I did the engine, Jacob did the body, and we bought the CPU. It's been a lot of work, but this baby's worth it- we actually used the design that we're pretty sure our parents designed. I hit about seventy miles an hour just now, and it's an amazing feeling. Jacob, do you wanna ride?"

Jacob nodded. "I have to try this thing out before you leave, don't I?"

Toru laughed and tossed his helmet to Jacob. "Just don't crash. I wouldn't want our machine getting wrecked."

Jacob grabbed the helmet out of the air as he grinned back at Toru. "Because I was planning on crashing it." He climbed onto the machine and revved it, feeling the power of the engine Toru built. He kicked up the kickstand and started the Runner forward, quickly gaining momentum. He glanced at the speedometer; about 50 mph. He smiled underneath his helmet as he sped across the desert, pushing the machine and watching the speedometer climb. 60, 70, 80, 85… Jacob felt the wind, the speed, the adrenaline… he felt amazing. On the Runner, at that time, it felt like the world was right. Everything was in place. Nothing could go wrong. Jacob looked at the speedometer again. 95. That was crazy. Their pieced-together scrap was performing better than some factory builds. Jacob inhaled deeply, breathing in the desert air and letting the perfectness of the situation run through him.

Jacob looked forward, and saw that he was feet away from a large boulder, easily twice his side.

Jacob would remember the next few seconds for the rest of his life. First, everything slowed to a near-stop. Jacob saw every tiny crack and dimple in the side of the boulder. He saw every speck of dust kicked up by the wind. The world in front of him was like a still picture.

Second, Jacob reacted, but even his trained speed seemed slow to him. He saw his arms start to steer the handlebars to the left. Jacob also noticed, almost casually, that he wasn't seeing in color.

Third, thought stopped. Jacob began feeling like he was only an observer as his body worked.

The Runner began tilting to the left, ever so slightly, but it would never escape hitting the boulder the way it was going.

Then, within Jacob's head, it clicked. What he was going to do. Where he got the idea, he had no idea. With any other Runner, it wouldn't work, but because of the design… Jacob was infinitely grateful Toru and him had used their parents' blueprints.

Jacob jerked the handlebars to the right, hitting the brake that stopped the front wheel from spinning- a design feature unique to their Runner- and gunned the machine, sliding sideways and drifting around the back of the boulder and turning back to Crash Town.

As Jacob started back, he inhaled, realizing he hadn't been breathing. As he pulled up to the entrance of Crash Town, Toru, West, and Nico mobbed him.

"Oh my god!" "Are you alright?" "How'd you do that?"

Jacob dismounted the Runner and stood shakily. "I-I don't know, really. Everything just… happened. I'm beyond lucky to be alive right now."

"Well, then," Toru said, patting Jacob on the back, "at least you're not a human crash test dummy, and our machine is still in one piece. That was an amazing maneuver, too. You're a natural, Jacob."

"Yeah," Jacob breathed. "That sounds right. I reacted, and it worked out."

"I guess that fate thing you're always talking about might just be real."

Toru finished stuffing his things into the bags he had attached to the Into the Sunset, then loaded his bokken into a hidden compartment and added a roll of duct tape as an afterthought. Just in case.

"Time to leave," he muttered to himself. He rolled his Runner out of his house and to just beneath the Crash Town sign. He turned to look at the battered town where he had grown up; the buildings in shambles, the two unpaved roads, and the mountain mine looking ominously in the distance. "Goodbye forever," he said.

"I hope it's not forever." Toru spun around, bokken drawn from his bike, to see Jacob.

"Oh. It's you," he said, resheathing the bokken. "Are you here to see me off?"

"In a way," Jacob said, walking up next to Toru. He stared at the flat horizon south of Crash Town along with Toru for a moment, before breaking the silence again. "It's going to be different without you here, Toru. We've been just short of brothers for seventeen years. Never apart. And now you're heading to Neo Domino…"

"Don't forget that we're in this together, in the end," Toru said. "The extra engine is beneath my bed. Lift up the floorboards."

Jacob nodded. "Well, I guess this is the last time we'll see each other for a while." Abruptly, Jacob hugged Toru. "Here's to hoping for a better future… brother."

A/N: Thus ends what is more or less the extended prologue. The next arc will be delayed for at least a week, though, because I have summer camp. And I can't promise the quick updates will continue.