A/N: I hope that this chapter and the whole idea of how dueling works is clear. More detail will be added later as Yuugi and the others see more of them, but I'm basing it around the Virtual World arc's idea of having a deck master (which would be the duelist's partner monster). Enjoy!

The whole idea of settling in at Central Academy was a lot easier said than done. Ryou hadn't admitted as much to her friends, but she had some private concerns about how she would do at the school. Namely, the fact that Yuugi and Jou were a hundred times better at dueling than she was. Even Malik was better, though that wasn't really saying a whole lot. To be perfectly honest, Ryou was pretty sure that she sucked at it. Her friends were just too polite to say as much to her face. That did little to change the fact that Bakura was in green, a whole level above where she was, and Ryou didn't think she was going to be joining him up there anytime soon.

"Look at it this way, Ryou," Malik said, bouncing lightly on Ryou's bed. They were due at their first class in ten minutes. Yuugi had gone to make sure that Jou was up and awake. Naturally, once she was paying attention and realized something was wrong, it had taken Malik all of two minutes to weasel the truth out of Ryou about what was bothering her. "At least you know who your yami is. I don't even know the name of mine. You have it a lot easier, trust me."

"That's easy for you to say," Ryou muttered, because then there was the other part of the problem. Malik was charismatic. People gravitated towards her (not that they stayed once they knew what she was like, but still). And besides, her yami had already sought out contact with her. Then there was Yuugi, who was sweet and naturally friendly, and Jou, who was a protector and confident enough that she could approach anyone. Ryou was just... Ryou. She had no particular skills that would cause people to want to be her friend. There was certainly no reason for Bakura to be interested in her.

"Oh, come on. Stop being so nervous. I promise you that it will all be fine." Malik jumped up and gave her a light clap on the shoulders. "As long as you remember to keep your shirt on."

Ryou blushed at the thought of taking it off. Illusion or not, there was no way she was going to be naked from the waist up in front of anyone - especially considering that, while pretending to be a boy, she couldn't wear a bra. Malik gave her a smirk like she knew exactly what Ryou was thinking and walked over to the door. One of the few saving graces about Central Academy was that each student had their own, if small, bedroom. The bathrooms, on the other hand, were communal. Ryou didn't think she was going to be showering much.

Once they'd caught up to Yuugi and a sleepy-looking Jou, the four of them headed out to their first class. It was taking place on one of several fields, the water field, to give them a taste of what it would be like to be able to really duel. Central Academy had the best of the best, of course, and each field was amazing in how realistic it looked. The water field was comprised of an enormous pool of salt water with two small islands spaced about twenty feet apart, ten feet from the shore. Each duelist had to be taken out to the island on a boat. It would be difficult terrain for anyone who couldn't summon a water or flying monster.

One glance at Yuugi told Ryou that the girl was already thinking about what it would be like to duel in such a cool place. It hurt to think that Yuugi wouldn't get the chance, might never get the chance, and all because she couldn't summon anything without her yami. It was incredibly unfair. Yuugi could beat anyone when they dueled using holograms or the cards, but she'd be at a serious disadvantage if they stayed here for much longer than a month or so. Central Academy was serious about training their duelists, and it was widely recognized that their preferred method was fighting with real, summoned monsters.

It was so unfair, Ryou thought angrily, that the four of them had been born without partner monsters. She didn't understand why both yamis and hikaris seemed to be lacking the one thing that made nearly everyone else in the world feel like they weren't alone. Most people just thought that they were waiting to find soul mates, and Ryou would have preferred it that way. Because having a soul mate meant that you also had a partner monster, you just couldn't summon it without your mate because the two monsters needed to be summoned at the same time. As a hikari, she didn't even know if she had a partner monster. This was unexplored territory and no one else had written the book yet.

An elbow jabbed her in the ribs, breaking her out of her thoughts. Ryou looked up, startled, to see that their professor had arrived without her notice. It was a large, muscled man wearing only a pair of swim trunks. He had wild hair and a big, friendly grin. "Good morning class!" he boomed loudly, waving a spear at them. "My name is Mako, and I will be your teacher when it comes to survival. I can see that some of you are wearing confused looks, well. Let me tell you right now that being here at Central Academy is not all about fighting. You need to be able to know how to keep yourselves and your partner monster fed, alive and sheltered. If you make the trek out to a field in the middle of nowhere and lose your supplies, where would you be without the proper skills to back yourself up?"

He stuck the spear into the sand and folded his massive arms. "Now, to give you a general idea of how the next four years of your life will run, you'll have class with me every morning. You'll be schooled in dueling, but you will not be starting off with real monsters." He chuckled when some students groaned loudly in protest. "Yes, I know. But we have to train your magic before you can summon, or you run the risk of burning yourself out. Along with survival, you'll be learning about strategy, dueling tactics, the different kinds of monsters, how they work with magic and trap cards... Not to mention a healthy dose of the boring, real world stuff that will help you get the good jobs." He wiggled his eyebrows.

One of the students raised his hand, and when Mako pointed to him he asked, "When do we get to decide on electives?"

Mako laughed. "Not for quite a while, my young friend. Your first two years at Central Academy will be spent giving you a taste of everything. You might decide that you want to be a Healer for monsters. Or you might decide you want to work on learning more about flying monsters. But you won't be able to decide unless you've experienced a variety of different things. That's the whole reason you're here."

"I'm here because I want a job at Kaiba Corp," one of the boys standing beside Ryou muttered. Mako didn't seem to hear him.

"But the first thing we're going to do is show you a real life duel. Now, I did mention that you won't be dueling by summoning for quite some time. You'll be starting off with cards, before moving to holograms and then, if you're very good, graduating to summoned duels. This is just to get you excited."

"Oh my god, this is going to be so cool!" Yuugi squealed, clapping her hands together. Jou looked pretty excited, too. Malik and Ryou exchanged amused looks as Mako turned and trotted down to the water. There were two boats waiting there. One boat already had two occupants, two figures cloud in identical blue cloaks that masked their faces. Mako got into the other. The two motors were switched on at the same time, and Mako and his opponent each drove out to one of the islands.

Mako got there first. He leapt nimbly from the boat and scaled the island with ease, standing tall and proud upon the rock. "Legendary Fisherman!" he called out. The waves before him churned violently as something large rose to the surface. In the next instant, a duel monster riding an enormous fish with several sets of razor sharp teeth exploded out of the water. Several students leapt back screaming. Mako just laughed heartily as the duel monster landed with a splash. It began making several large circles around Mako's island, never venturing too close to the other competitor who was only just arriving at his island.

"Show yourself, my opponent: Ghost Kotsuzuka!" he called out.

The blue cloaks were promptly discarded, revealing a very pale boy and a duel monster. Ryou bit back a groan of disgust. Even though the duel monster was quite a distance away, she could easily smell the scent of decay that was coming off of it. The creature was bright green and rotting, its skin barely covered in dull red armor that looked like it had seen better days. Apparently the boy was used to it, because he didn't seem overly bothered when a chunk of rotting flesh hit the rock right in front of him. The fresh splat sound carried clearly across the water, and Ryou clapped a hand over her mouth. She had to. She thought she was going to throw up. It didn't help when she heard one of the guys standing a few feet away start gagging and heaving.

"What the hell is that?" Malik asked after almost a minute of horrified silence.

"I think it's Armored Zombie." Yuugi looked like she was working hard to keep a straight face. "I, um, knew that there was a possibility we'd run into someone with that kind of partner, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. Zombies partners are pretty rare."

Malik shook her head. "Is that... what... what happened to that monster?"

"Well..." Yuugi paused for a moment, watching as both competitors summoned their first duel monsters to the field, before she responded. "Once in a while a person can actually be born with a zombie for a partner monster, but that's extremely rare and it usually means the person is extremely sick. More often, a zombie monster is the result of when someone has been through something so traumatizing that they literally cannot cope with it. Sometimes it's the loss of someone important, or they get sick, or... anything, really. They fall into a deep depression, some of them get suicidal. It's like their duel monster starts to degenerate to reflect what's happening to the duelist's mind and body."

"That's horrible," Ryou said softly, wondering whether Ghost Kotsuzuka was physically sick or depressed. He certainly didn't look like he was healthy, considering that he was even paler than she was - and that was saying something.

"It also puts him at a disadvantage," said Jou.

"What do you mean?"

"They're fighting on a water field. I don't think zombies do too well in water," Jou replied. "He'd be better off fighting in a cemetery."

"But that's the whole point of Central Academy." The speaker was a young man with brown hair and brown eyes who'd been standing beside them and listening. He folded his arms and looked past them at the duel, adding, "They want you to fight outside of your comfort zone. If you're always dueling the field that's best suited to your monsters, you'll never actually learn anything and you'll be at a severe disadvantage when you do end up somewhere else. I've seen Ghost fight before. He's a lot better at it than you think he is."

"We didn't think he was bad," Yuugi said, looking surprised. "Especially if he's capable of cross-summoning. And even if he's not, there are a lot of different ways to get around that."

Cross-summoning, Ryou knew, was when duelists had the ability to physically summon monsters outside of their partner monster's type. Not everyone could do it, only those with a strong affinity for magic could. Those who couldn't usually relied on magic and trap cards to help make up the rest of the duel. "Can he?" she asked, curious.

"Unfortunately, no." The man extended his hand. "Honda Hiroto."

"Sasaki Shingo," Jou said, gripping his hand immediately. "That's Itou Akihiko." She nodded towards Yuugi. "And Kobayashi Hitoshi" Ryou "and Tanaka Kin." Malik.

"It's good to meet all of you," Honda said with a nod. "I'm guessing that we're going to be classmates for a little while, at least." He indicated the yellow port that was hanging around his neck. "Though I have to admit I'm hoping to make it to green before the end of the year. My older brother went here, and he was able to get all the way to blue before he was here for six months."

"I've heard it's hard to move up," Yuugi said, hoping that Honda would share a little more information with them. "Your brother must have had a lot of special skills."

Unfortunately, it seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Honda's face shut down and he just nodded before pointedly turning back to look at the duel. Yuugi looked at Ryou, who could only shrug in response and follow Honda's gaze. Mako was taking full advantage of the field by summoning water monsters that were hidden beneath the surface, making it nearly impossible for Bones to attack. Since he could only summon zombie monsters, the air was quite full of flying zombies and the smell was absolutely disgusting. The hot sun was beating down on the decomposing bodies, and the fact that they were standing downwind only made it even worse. Even Yuugi didn't look like she was enjoying the duel very much.

Mercifully, since both Mako and Bones had started the duel with only 1,000 life points, it ended fairly quickly with Mako as the winner. All of the creatures vanished except for their partner monsters, and suddenly Armored Zombie didn't smell nearly as bad as before. It was almost bearable. Mako gave a little speech about how soon they would be the ones facing opponents, and then he let them go. Ryou nearly broke her ankle trying to scramble up the path in the mad rush to get away from the ocean, but it was worth it. At least at the top she felt like she could breathe something other than the stench of death.

"My sister," Malik said as she stormed by, "is going to die."

"Just make sure you bury her fast," Ryou muttered, suppressing the urge to smell her hair. It was still long, even with the illusion that had been set up, and she was pretty sure that it would take a full bottle of shampoo to get that stench out.

Jou had gone off with Honda, so it was just Yuugi who caught up to Ryou. Now that they were alone, Ryou took the chance to ask. "You never said how it went with Yami last night. By the time you got back, we had to go have supper and then they had that party." And by party, she meant that all of the new Yellow boys had been summoned into the courtyard and given a long, thorough lecture on the rules by the headmaster. She, Jou and Yuugi had spent most of it trying to keep Malik from having a panic attack, even though Hafiz hadn't paid them a bit of attention - or really, even gotten close enough to be able to distinguish his daughter from the 50-odd other students there.

"It was okay," Yuugi said.

"Just okay?"

Yuugi shrugged. "I'm not sure what you want me to say. I helped him with his bag and then he walked me back to the dorm so that I wouldn't get lost. He's in Blue. We didn't really talk that much, just stupid shit."

"Yuugi -"

"I just don't get how we're supposed to do this," Yuugi burst out, so loud that some of the other students turned to look at them. Ryou stopped walking and, by unspoken agreement, so did Yuugi, waiting until everyone else had mostly passed before Yuugi continued. "Yami's a nice guy, I'm not going to lie. But I'm never going to be around him. He's in Blue for god's sake. You heard Honda, it took his brother six months to get up that far. I can't even summon anything. How am I supposed to get up to Blue in the next couple of weeks?"

"Maybe you'll really surprise them when we start dueling," Ryou said lamely. She knew even as she spoke that she wasn't doing anything to bolster Yuugi's confidence. It was hard to think of anything that would do that when Ryou was feeling the same way. Bakura was in Green, and Ryou didn't have a hope in hell of getting that high anytime soon. She'd be fortunate if she got up to Green before she graduated in four years time.

"Yeah right." Yuugi shook her head and sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be taking this out on you. I know you're in the same boat as me. I just think that Isis really underestimated how hard this is going to be."

"All we can do is try our best." Ryou pointed out. It was going to be hard, though, make no mistake about that. "You heard Mako. It sounds like there are some classes that Yami, Bakura and Seto might be in along with us. Just because they're in different colors doesn't mean they know any more about the school than we do. We've only been through one class. Maybe it will get better."

"Maybe." Yuugi didn't sound convinced. "Look, you better be careful about calling me that."

"What?"

"You said my name."

"Did I?" Surprised, Ryou thought back over their conversation and realized that Yuugi was right. It had slipped out without her noticing. She couldn't help it. Even though she'd practiced calling Yuugi 'Akihiko', it still didn't feel natural. It probably never would, but it was something she was going to have to watch. She made a face. "Is it too late to, like, change our names for good and move to Canada?"

Yuugi gave her a grim smile. "Just say the word and I'll buy our tickets."

A/N: Fun facts! The last names for our girls were randomly chosen based on popular last names in Japan. But the first names were chosen on purpose:

Malik = Kin (which means 'gold')
Yuugi = Akihiko (which means 'bright prince')
Ryou = Hitoshi (which means 'even-tempered, level')
Jou = Shingo (which means 'humility')

Please review!