Important Author's Notes: I forgot to mention. I'll be using OCG/TCG effects, and not anime-only effects merely because I don't like the anime effects. They're purely too much for dramatic effects than strategy. Does this mean there's going to be card games? HMMMM.

Next, I'll be adapting realism for the hair and eye colors of Arc-V characters. Characters in anime don't usually literally have the bizarre bright hair colors they have. They're stylistic choices to express the character's personality. Here is the list:

Yuya: Auburn hair / red eyes

Reiji: Silver hair / purple eyes (unchanged)

Gongenzaka: Black hair / slate blue eyes (unchanged)

Sawatari: Blond hair / slate blue eyes (unchanged)

Serena: Chestnut hair / blue eyes

Kurosaki: Black hair / emerald eyes

Dennis: Red hair / blue eyes (unchanged)

Tsukikage: Black hair / black eyes

Reira: Black hair / dark brown eyes

It seems really odd that I'm doing this since I've let Reiji's slide. The main reason for these changes is for the plot. I don't want half of the cast to stand out other than their clothes, and features are way too important in determining bloodline in ASOIAF (eg. A Game Of Thrones.) Meanwhile, Reiji gets to have his design literally for the sake of the plot. Yuya also intentionally keeps his red eyes.


Chapter 3: YUYA

A familiar dawn did not rise without Jord's bellows of "Wake up! Move your asses, you lazy fucks!" Yuya was always the last and slowest, though he rose with everyone else all the same, stirring among the shadows of a blindingly dark room. He had been dreaming of Sora and Yuzu, but Yuzu was in Serena's clothes since she transferred to a different school. Sora resumed his old antics as Yuya had always remembered him with his lollipop stick, wide-eyed smile, and cocky jests. It angered Yuya, knowing they were lies, and he demanded answers on Academia. Sora was visibly upset, arguing, "You only won because of Pendulum" and Yuya recalled answering coldly, "that's good, isn't?"

He vaguely wondered why he was mean in his reply. There didn't seem to be any context to it. He had definitely been angry at Sora. Maybe more angry than he'd like to admit but Yuya decided that he didn't hate him.

By the time Yuya had finished feeding the chickens and horses, a bright, sun-golden morning had come to replace the dim sapphire landscape. Beside an upturned axe, he saw the bloodied rock they used to lay last night's chicken's neck on. Heyna was squatted in a gray, colorless dress with her skirt bundled between her thighs, her fist closed on the chicken's head while Yuya kept the body steady, holding it by its wings like a ball.

"It was an old butcher that we used to buy our meat from when we have the coin," told Heyna as she readied the axe on her free hand. "But he sold us spoiled meat. Father ate it and shat and puked that he couldn't work. So did my late Mother but she didn't live. I didn't eat much; thought it tasted funny. The butcher said it was an honest mistake. I believe him, but Father never forgave. He was fined then left jobless, and Father used that money to buy chickens and pigs to raise. Never to buy from a butcher again. You sure you don't want to do it? I've never seen a boy refuse the chance to swing an axe. Well, maybe if it were a sword."

"Just do it," said Yuya weakly, his feet shifting away, ready. Yuya had shut his eyes when Heyna brought down the axe, and stood so fast that he reeled backward, staggering to reclaim his balance. He bit back his annoyance when he heard Heyna laughing, but then saw her pointing at the headless chicken that was letting loose a violent spasm on its muscles, a gurgle of blood squirting from its bloody tip.

"Look," cried Heyna, tears on her eyes, "the chicken is dancing!"

After days of cheese, bread, and vegetable stew with bits of boiled egg, the chicken was a welcomed feast to his stomach. He slept full and contented, especially Serena, whom Yuya often had to share his bread with. She received the same portion as Heyna, which was half of what Yuya and Kurosaki get because "boys ate more." Proud that she was, Serena denied being hungry and Yuya joked he'd rather have Serena take his bread than hear her stomach growl in the middle of the night. He didn't know if he'd inadvertently made her mad, but she thanked him in a stern, hard tone regardless.

It's about time for breakfast, thought Yuya. He came across Kurosaki with fresh water from the well, two buckets at once, one on his shoulder and another on his hand, when Yuya had struggled carrying one with both hands. Yuya had woken up to find out that Kurosaki had taken his chore, only a day of rest after he regained consciousness. Maester Senerio commanded at least five days of rest but no one but Yuya had been intent to remind Kurosaki. It fell on dear ears.

"Morning, Kurosaki," he greeted, smiling. He watched as Kurosaki's eyes moved up from staring at the dirt and to Yuya's face, and quietly comprehended him as if he were deciding on an answer. Kurosaki shifted his gaze forward and passed by Yuya without the slightest pause. Just when he thought Kurosaki had ignored him, the wind brought him a reply.

"Morning..." His voice was soft and quiet, a jarring contrast to the fueled roars that tore the stadium in his battle against Sora. Sometimes, Yuya wondered if they were the same person.

"Breakfast should be ready. Let's go eat," said Yuya, hopeful. When only the sound of rushing water answered, Yuya scratched the back of his head and made a wave Kurosaki couldn't see. "Serena and I will wait for you then. Bye, Kurosaki."

However, Serena hadn't waited. She sat alone with Heyna, eating bread with a cup of warm milk. He sat down with them and reproached Serena for eating without him and Kurosaki again. She dismissed Yuya with a shrug as she always did when Yuya complained. "What difference does it make?" she asked, unconcerned.

I answered her before. That, too, must have fallen on deaf ears.

"We eat nothing fancy," added Heyna. Yuya could smell the alcohol from her breath. "What's there to eat together with? Maybe if we had roasted boar with an apple on its mouth, better ale, pie...I don't know what they serve in the castles, but it truly would be the fitting feast."

"It's not about the food," explained Yuya. "No matter how delicious it is, you can't enjoy it alone."

"You talk like it's ale." Heyna drank hers empty. "Ale is good anywhere, but it tastes better with companions."

"Well..." He wasn't sure what to make of that comparison. He never drank. "Should you be drinking?" Heyna was "five-and-ten" which was fifteen in their dialect, a year older than Yuya. "What if your father caught you?"

Heyna shook her head in a loose smile. "He's a queer man. He doesn't like ale."

"Isn't that all the more reason not to?"

"What land would forbid drinking around queer men and women?" laughed Heyna, looking at Yuya like he was a fool singing while standing on his head.

"Yuya," spoke Serena all of a sudden. She had finished her bread and cheese, and probably her milk as well if the white beard lining her lips were any indication. "Didn't you complain about the food in the first night we came here?"

"What? Well, I didn't say it was bad," he hastily said, caught in the moment of surprise and confusion. Did he? He didn't remember. "I mean, I'm grateful. It wasn't what I was used to, that's all. I didn't say it was bad. The soup last night was delicious," he quickly added to Heyna, thankful that there was something honest he could say.

"He did, did he? Do you agree?" she asked Serena.

"Me? It doesn't matter what they taste like. All I can say is they're nutritionally more complete than this." Serena's arms were crossed on her chest like her legs under the table, in the wraps of the cloak she had to don to keep Jord pleased.

Heyna's father had the wrong idea about Serena. Yuya had sputtered on with insistence to convince him. "There's nothing bad about it... It's normal for us... She's a kid like me and Kurosaki... Are you really going to leave her outside because of something like that?... You got it all wrong... She's..." When his reasons ran dry, he went to his knees and begged. A disgusted Jord relented and sent him off with a cloak at hand and a warning to pass. Outside, Serena was curled on a ball, her head buried on her knees. When she saw Yuya, she only said two things. She first asked about Kurosaki to which Yuya answered that they fed him some honey and water. Then she thanked him for the cloak, smiling, "it was getting a bit cold," she said, the first time he ever heard her joke, to which Yuya did not reply.

"So that's why I was getting attention," Serena had remarked thoughtfully when Yuya told her the truth. Yuya had the inkling she didn't understand what Jord thought she was. It was better this way, he thought, but Yuya couldn't help but be mad for her. Why wouldn't Jord listen? Yuya wouldn't lie.

Heyna had been more open-minded than her father, or so Yuya would like to think. They told her where they came from, how they accidentally stumbled in this dimension, their missing friends, Academia, and the dimensional war... Heyna listened, but... "Are the three of you highborn?" she had asked, and they told her there was no such thing in their world. She looked at their clothes. "Everything you have is dyed. Her hands are soft, too... Does your ship fly? Is there such a thing?" They told her no, told her again that they came through teleportation. "Tele...Tele-port-Tele-port – as in a port?" She repeatedly stuttered to get it right, which she did only to forget, so she asked them again. "Tele...Tele-port – ships and port?" They were hoping Heyna would communicate to her father for them, but she did no more than wash cook, and drink, and, once, – when Yuya overheard her talking to a knight on his way back from the well – correctly pronounce her foreign words.

"Did you have roasted boars with apples, mayhaps wine, and pie?" Heyna gaped longingly. "Every breakfast, lunch, and supper?"

Kurosaki appeared through the door, his eyes cast down again as if he did not see or hear the world around him. Quiet as a phantom, he sat down beside Yuya and reached for the bread, and cheese with the other. The conversation had died down then. Kurosaki's robotic silence seemed to steal the atmosphere every time he entered a room. He hardly ever make a sound or look at anyone in the eye.

"Kuro-saki?" The name roughly rolled out of Heyna's tongue. Kurosaki looked at Heyna, chewing. "I will be washing the blankets today. You can give me your sweat-er and it will be dry on the morrow."

Kurosaki broke eye contact, brief as it always was unless he were dueling. "No need. I will wash it myself."

Heyna glanced at Yuya. "Does he mean 'no?'"

Yuya nodded. "Yeah. He appreciates the thought though," said Yuya. "We don't want to trouble you any further."

"Him too? You should do the washing in the dark or in the stables. They think we've gotten new servants. A really expensive one." Yuya blinked when Heyna's eyes turned to him "'Pale as a maiden with skin glowing as soft as moonlight. But no tits.' A boy like that wouldn't be a servant, I told them. He would make better money elsewhere."

Yuya's face turned scarlet. It was one time, one mistake Yuya was never going to make again.

His shirt had been warm and dried overnight, the cleanest since he came to this dimension. So he'd taken it off and ran back and forth from the well, free to sweat without his shirt clinging to his skin and smelling in the afternoon. By his fourth round, when breads cooked in the public ovens and Jord's song of hammer and steel resounded from the forge, the many awake eyes were on him. The girls whispered, the boys gawked, and the men hooted ribald comments behind his back, though they were sure to do it while he was within earshot. He glanced around and saw half-naked workers and builders, but no one took notice of them.

Yuya had forced himself not to think about it for days. Smile, he had told himself, You've been laughed at your whole life. You have something more important to think of. There was always consolation in the distance of which they whispered, gawked, and hooted. He didn't have to confront them. He just needed to smile and protect himself.

This was different. He was being humiliated, unfairly so, right in front of his face.

"Shut up!" he spat. He could feel Serena's gaze on him. Even Kurosaki's. "It's not funny!"

Serena arched an eyebrow. "What are you talking about? No one's laughing. It's not like it's a big –"

"SHUT UP! YOU DON'T – " He choked back on the rest of his words, anger dissipating from his muscles as Serena stared back at him with Yuzu's conflicted eyes. He could hear ringing in his ears and belatedly realized it had been the clatter of the plates on the table when he'd slammed his fists. Yuya thought he had muttered an apology, but it seemed he only said it aloud in his head. Heyna apologized ("Must be the ale") but it didn't make Yuya feel any better.

Yuya's sullen mood persisted for a while. Serena often accompanied either Yuya or Kurosaki with whatever errand they'd been tasked to as long as they weren't in the forge with Jord. But Yuya had not seen her for the rest of the day. She did not appear at lunch or at supper. Kurosaki had been absent at the supper too. Yuya had last seen him hammering in the forge – where Kurosaki was often at since he regained consciousness – trying to pass a squire's message on his lord's damaged shield.

"Did he say his lord's name?" he heard Jord ask.

"Redfort? He gave me his name," shouted Yuya over Kurosaki's loud hammering. "The squire. Domeric Bolton."

Yuya knew he had been on the wrong and thought of what to say to Serena where he sees her, but while brooding, resentment mixed in with his guilt. Why did she bring up the food? She brought it up all of a sudden. Yuzu would probably do it too. If Yuya did complain about the food, Yuzu would have pointed it out to chide him for being a hypocrite, and Yuya wouldn't doubt her for it and stick his tongue out, guilty as charged. But Serena wasn't Yuzu. Yuya didn't know Serena.

Yuzu... Yuya felt agitated whenever he thought of her. He could not care less for his humiliation, for the dancing chicken, for Jord's unreasonableness, for Heyna's drunken chatter, or for Serena's insensitive remarks. She was alone in an unknown dimension, far worse than any of what Yuya was facing.

Yuzu used herself as a bait so that Serena can talk to Kurosaki. What if...What if I never told her about Ute? About the Xyz, Fusion, and Synchro Dimension? He bit his thumb, sitting alone in their shared room. The room had been Jord's brother's who had eloped with a woman years back. I was the one who told her about Hugo. I told her he was a pawn of fusion, but Reiji said he fought the Obelisk Force. Was Ute wrong? Was Reiji lying again? No, even Serena agreed, and Serena wants to help Yuzu too. Then Ute was... then that means...

What could Yuzu be doing now? What had she been doing in the days that he had been wasting in this wrong world? What if the Synchro Dimension was not that different from here? Did they call her terrible names and forbade her from entering houses? Yuzu would know what those names mean. She could be alone, lost, sick, and crying, missing her home, wanting to go back home...

He remembered now. He'd come to only realize it. At some point when Ute "attacked" Sawatari and Sora taught her Fusion Summoning, Yuzu hardly came by the cram school. A rift had opened between her and the principal with Yuya as the unwilling in-between. He'd seen her cry miserably, saying, "I don't know what's going on anymore," but Yuya only listened. She was having problems at home, he thought, so Yuya never asked.

Should have I? He wondered to himself. Isn't it none of my business?

Yuya had never seen Yuzu cry. It was Yuya who always cried. It was Yuzu who always smiled. She was always there. Whenever he ran away or walked out from an unpleasant situation, it was Yuzu who followed after his cowardly trail. When he was twelve, his mom said she cried for him too. Yuya hadn't believed her. As a child, Yuzu was always dressed in bubblegum pink, in skirts or dresses, twirling in place like a ballerina to make her skirt swirl like a blossoming flower. She laughed as often as Yuya cried. When he saw her giggling on the air on the principal's back, he thought of his dad and cried. "Dad," he overheard her sadly say, "Yuya wants a piggyback too." Yuya grounded his teeth and whipped his arms out when the principal tried to touch him. He screamed at him. He screamed at Yuzu. He ran away, a pool between his eyes and goggles. A long shadow covered him in the sunset where he was curled to his knees, thinking of his dad again. He thought his mother had come for him, stern but gentle, reminding him what his dad would say, but when he turned around, it was her, Yuzu. "I'm sorry," she said, as sadly as his eyes.

Yuya sobbed. He pulled his shirt up to wipe his cheeks. He would do anything to be with her right now.

He hardly noticed Serena enter the room. Too much time had passed in his head that he forgot the first words he had prepared to say to Serena. He slid his deck back to his duel disk. "Serena, is Kurosaki with you?"

"Kurosaki?" It was like she'd never heard of the name. "No... Did something happen?"

"Oh, no, not really." Yuya smiled to reassure her. "I didn't see him at supper. I thought you two were together."

"Is that so?" Serena took off the cloak and settled down on the floor under the window. She looked distrait...and her shoes were missing.

"I have a map," said Serena, rubbing her cold, dirty feet together. She showed him a large scroll of parchment before laying it back on her folded cloak. "I traded my shoes for it."

"Oh. That's great," was what he said, but Yuya was thinking how they could replace her shoes, or had Serena intended to walk barefooted until they return to Standard?

The door opened. Kurosaki swept inside the room as hushed as a cloud, but his face was containing a squall. He snatched his trench coat from the bedside, his jaw clenched tight.

"We're leaving. We've wasted too much time."

"Kurosaki?" elicited Yuya cautiously. Kurosaki was angrily pushing buttons at his duel disk, probably trying to get the teleporters active. They already tried that. Not even Reiji succeeded.

"If you two wanted to keep sitting idly, fine by me. I'm going. I've had enough playing this game of house."

"I agree," seconded Serena, rising to her feet. "But just to make it clear, we're looking for the others. There's no point in splitting up and trying to force things we've already tried to work."

Kurosaki threw his hands at his sides, a foot stomping as he turned away from them.

"What about Reiji?" Yuya sounded tentative, looking between Kurosaki and Serena. "What if he came looking for us?"

Kurosaki turned around brusquely. Yuya saw Kurosaki's eyes, the ones that have quietly looked at him and turned away. They were hard and solid, burning and never-melting, locked under sharp brows. "He's not coming back. Akaba Reiji was caught."

"Then they're – "

"No, those knights who were after us aren't here," interrupted Serena, thinking deeply. She looked at Kurosaki. "Am I right? It's starting to make sense. Why they were after us. Or rather, why they were after Reiji."

"That's correct," acknowledged Kurosaki. "It wasn't our alien appearance. It was his face. Silver hair and violet eyes. It is the face of a Valyrian."

"A what?" repeated Yuya.

"I don't know what a Valyrian means, but it has some sort of importance in this dimension. They've mistaken Akaba Reiji for one. With how long we've dawdled here, he might be dead by now."

Yuya's eyes widened into marbles.

"Maybe," said Serena, looking slightly troubled. "He might be the Targaryen I've been hearing in town. How a Targaryen is connected to a Valyrian is a mystery to me. They were talking about a dragon, too. Does Reiji have that kind of monster?"

"He uses a demon deck but I've never seen him summon a dragon. I fought him twice, and he was holding back in both..."

"I didn't see a dragon either," said Serena. "Though I can't tell if he had been holding back. He fought a veteran Academia warrior."

Yuya looked at Serena with surprise. Huh? What is she talking about? When did she see Reiji duel...?

"But the demon family is notoriously diverse," she continued. "Dragon monsters are not necessarily of the dragon clan."

"Enough," snapped Kurosaki. "This classroom talk is giving me a headache." He reached for his duel disk, pushed buttons on the screen, and showed them the woefully wrong time on the duel disk: 9:44 AM. It was the same time on Yuya's and Serena's duel disks. "We leave in three hours."

"It's a full moon," warned Serena. "I have been thinking of leaving soon, but aren't you being impatient, Kurosaki?"

Kurosaki glowered at the corner of the room.

"If we don't leave tonight," he said, "I'll have to sleep with Jord's daughter tomorrow. Our only chance of sneaking out is now."