The chapter begins in Yusei's point of view.
Disclaimer: I do not own any Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's characters! I only own my OCs!
Chapter 86: Shadow Hooks
Jack, Crow, and I had hurried to the Kaiba Dome to watch Team Unicorn's redemption Duel the next day, but just as we had arrived the Duel was already over. Andre and Jean had crashed their Runners during the Turbo Duel while their opponents, Team Catastrophe, had escaped unharmed. Because of the crashes, Team Unicorn was out of the Grand Prix so we wouldn't get another chance to Duel them in the tournament.
The fact that two crashes occurred in the same Turbo Duel and only one team was affected by it either meant that Team Unicorn's crew must have missed something while maintaining the Runners or it was an intentional sabotage. I found it hard to believe that someone would do harm to their own team, so I got immediately suspicious of Team Catastrophe. They must have done something, but there was no evidence against them.
Because of the double crashes, Goodwin postponed the next Turbo Duels for every block in the preliminaries, so my friends and I got an extra day to relax and prepare ourselves for our Duel against Team Catastrophe, and give everyone else time to recover from the shock of the crashes.
Right now, Bruno and I were checking Estelle's Duel Runner in the garage. They had come over earlier today so we could prepare her Runner for the next match. Estelle was in the kitchen cooking lunch for us. She looked much better now than the evening of the party, but she was still a little reluctant to tell me what happened. Crow had gone to visit the doctor to get an update about his fractured shoulder and Jack was working at the café.
I sat on Estelle's Duel Runner and moved the hitches to check the engine. The Runner released a nice purring noise without any issues.
"We've stabilized it quite a lot", Bruno said as he worked on the laptop connected to the Runner. "Let's try raising the Fragment Gear a little bit more."
"Sure", I nodded as I got off the dragon Runner.
"How is it going, guys?" Estelle called from above.
I looked up and saw her walk down the stairs to the catwalk before she rested her arms on the railing. She was dressed in a black apron that protected her clothes from the top and down to her knees. Her hair was held up on the back by a red hair clip so it wouldn't get in her face while cooking. The truth is that apron belonged to me, Jack, and Crow, so it felt a little weird seeing her wear something I shared with my foster brothers.
"All good", Bruno gave her a thumbs up. "We just need to adjust a few more parts and then we'll be done."
"Nice. That's enough time before the lunch is ready", Estelle nodded.
I smelled the air when I caught the scent of familiar spices. "What are you making?"
"Japanese curry", Estelle replied. "I thought it would be best to make something easy to eat, considering Crow's injured arm."
"That's really thoughtful of you, Estelle", I smiled.
Estelle returned the smile with red cheeks before she turned around. "I'll call you when lunch is ready. Keep working, you two."
I turned my attention to the double doors of the garage when I heard them open. Crow had just returned from the visit at the hospital. "I'm back!" he called.
"Welcome back!" Bruno and Estelle called simultaneously.
"How'd it go, Crow? How's your shoulder?" I asked.
"Oh yeah. All better now", Crow replied, slightly moving his injured arm. "I can ride at any time! Fit as a fiddl- Irk!" He yelped in pain after moving the arm a little too much.
"Looks like you're far from fine", Bruno said lowly.
"You need to rest your arm more or else it'll get worse, Crow", Estelle told him.
"Did you see Jean and Andre at the hospital?" I asked.
"Nope, still no visitors allowed", Crow shook his head as he walked past us.
"I see…", I mumbled.
"Well, lunch is almost ready, so you returned back in time, Crow", Estelle told him.
"Lunch! My favorite meal of the day!" Crow grinned widely as he walked up the stairs. "I can't wait to eat something other than cup ramen and sandwiches!"
"Don't get too used to me cooking all the time for you, Crow; I'm not your personal maid", Estelle retorted sarcastically before they laughed heartedly and walked up to the kitchen.
"It's a relief to see Estelle is looking better", Bruno commented. "She got all serious after I showed her the replay of Team Unicorn's Duel yesterday."
That caught my attention. "What do you mean, Bruno?"
"I don't know how to explain it, but… She got this scary and determined look on her face before she left the mansion to visit Sector Security", Bruno explained. "When she returned, she looked relaxed, but still said nothing to me. And when Goodwin returned home, he looked like a sergeant preparing for war."
If Estelle went to visit Goodwin and he came back home with such an expression that Bruno had just described… Then that meant Estelle had told him something that might happen soon. Was it something similar to the Dark Signers or Ghost? Why hadn't she told us about it? If there was going to be another attack in the city, we had to prepare for it!
XXXXXXXXXX – Normal POV
Jack was taking his lunch break and sat on one of the tables outside of Café la Geen and had a nice cup of Blue-Eyes Mountain, deducted from his salary. He was still wearing his café apron to make sure he wouldn't accidently stain his white shirt for work. Stephanie secretly watched the blonde Signer from the open door of the café, asking herself whether she should sit by his table or not.
"W-What should I do…?" Stephanie mumbled to herself with pink cheeks. "Jack got really mad at me and that other woman the other day when we wanted to see if he was okay after the crash, but…"
"Jack!" a voice called.
Stephanie stiffened for a second before she peeked out and saw Carly had reached Jack's table and took a seat next to him. The brunette growled deeply while throwing glares at the reporter. "Not her again…!"
"I'm glad I found you, Jack!" Carly said.
"What's the matter, Carly?" Jack asked.
"I'm here to tell you about the cursed Duel Runners!" the reporter replied.
"Cursed Duel Runners?" Jack repeated.
"Yeah, with Team Unicorn crashing twice in a row!" Carly explained seriously. "Everyone's talking about how Team Catastrophe used some weird sorcery or something!"
"Sorcery, my foot", Jack frowned loudly. "Give me a break. Whatever it is, it's going to get pulverized courtesy of Jack Atlas."
"But, Jack!" Carly exclaimed loudly before she covered her mouth shut.
Jack raised a confused eyebrow at the reporter's weird reaction. "What?"
Carly looked around for a moment before she leant closer to Jack, angering Stephanie even more as she kept watching the duo. "You're too close to him…!" the brunette hissed lowly, feeling tempted to throw the tray under her armpit on her love rival.
The reporter held a hand up as her lips were centimeters away from Jack's ear. "Think about it, Jack… When I was a Dark Signer, I had the power to make battle and effect damage real… And then the robot that pretended to be you made real damage too… Don't they have a connection…?"
Jack's eyes narrowed as he remembered his Shadow Turbo Duel with Carly when she was a Dark Signer and the encounter with his fake self. Carly was right about the battle damage and effects being real, but that didn't prove anything, right?
"I think you're getting it all in your head, Carly", the blonde Signer shook his head before taking a sip of his coffee.
Carly moved back and sat down on her seat again. "But my gut's telling me I'm looking at the right path…"
The duo looked up when they saw a Duel Runner drive through the plaza before it parked next to the garage of the Poppo Time shop. The driver got off his Runner and removed his helmet, revealing Breo from Team Unicorn. He spotted Jack by the café and gave him a nod before he hurried inside the garage.
"Breo?" Jack said confusedly.
"You think he found something?" Carly wondered.
"It appears so", Jack replied before he quickly finished his coffee and left the table.
"Hold on, Jack!" Carly called while she grabbed her bag and ran after Jack.
Stephanie gasped in shock before she ran outside. "Jack, wait! The lunch break is over!"
"Tell Master there's an emergency team meeting!" Jack yelled over his shoulder.
Stephanie's lips sank into a sad expression, but she removed it by shaking her head. "I can't stay mad at him…", she sighed in defeat.
XXXXXXXXXX – Estelle's POV
I was relieved to see how the boys enjoyed the curry I made for lunch. I had practiced for a long time to perfect the Japanese curry, so all the cooking had paid off. I was about to wash the dishes when Yusei insisted he should do it since I had already done much for them. I tried arguing, but he won over me.
Ten minutes after we were done with the lunch and the dishes were washed, we got a visit by Breo. Jack and Carly joined us seconds after the last standing member of Team Unicorn had entered the garage, the male Signer still wearing his café attire. Crow had gone to his room when Breo told us what his business with us was.
"What? There was unusual data on their Duel Runner memory chips?" Crow repeated in disbelief after we told him what he had missed.
"I just couldn't believe that Jean and Andre could crash like that in a row, so I decided to check the memory chips", Breo explained.
Bruno had inserted the flash drive Breo had given to him on the laptop he worked on to check the stored data from the Duel Runners. He pulled up the charts of the recorded movement of Andre's Duel Runner where you could clearly see a dramatic change.
"See? Right around here", Breo said, pointing at the charts.
"That's…!" Bruno gasped in surprise.
"Those are traces that the wheels locked up", Yusei figured out by the sight of the chart.
"Locked up?" Crow repeated confusedly.
"Yeah, for example, if something was suddenly caught in the wheel", Bruno explained.
"That would certainly explain the crashes", Jack nodded.
"Then you mean Team Catastrophe stuck something in their wheels?" Carly wondered.
"But there'd be no way they could do that in the middle of a Duel", Breo pointed out.
Crow suddenly gasped in realization. "Wait… When I crashed with the Blackbird, I had the split sensation that my wheels had locked up!"
"What?" Yusei gasped in surprise.
Bruno quickly pulled up the charts of the recorded data of Crow's Duel Runner to compare them with Team Unicorn's charts. There were some similarities with the usual movement, but the sudden lock was definitely identical.
"Sure enough, it's the same", Jack said.
"Which means that it was their fault the Blackbird crashed?!" Crow started shaking in anger as he glared at his arm in the cast before yelling out loud. "Damn it all! They'll pay!"
"Settle down, Crow", Yusei told his frustrated foster brother. "This still isn't enough evidence to label this as Team Catastrophe's doing."
"But how did they do it?" Bruno wondered. "Locking up the other person's wheel without them knowing is no easy task."
"No one here saw the important part of the Duel, after all", Jack sighed.
"Hey, I was by the stadium and recorded the Turbo Duel for you guys to use as reference before you Duel Team Catastrophe!" Carly confessed before she picked up a flash drive from her bag. "Why don't we take a look at it? Maybe we'll find something!"
Everyone, minus me, stared silently at the reporter with a "You-got-to-be-kidding-me" expression. Carly sensed the change of mood in the air and looked a little nervous. "Um… Did I say something?"
"Carly…", Jack began before he snatched the flash drive out of her hands. "If you had this, then you should've hurried and shown us!"
"Right! I'm sorry!" Carly yelped nervously.
Bruno removed Breo's flash drive from the laptop and replaced it with Carly's flash drive containing footage of the Turbo Duel. My friends analyzed it as much as they could around the moments before the crashes, but no matter how much Bruno zoomed in to check the wheels of the Duel Runners in different angles, nothing unusual was spotted.
"I can't see anything unusual at all…", Crow cold sweated.
"But this Monster bugs me", Yusei said before pointing at Hook the Hidden Knight on the footage. "It was on the field both times the wheels locked up."
Bruno immediately checked the card. "Let's see… Its name is Hook the Hidden Knight. A Level 4 Monster with 1600 attack points and 0 defense points. According to the official record of the Duel, the crash occurred when Andre's Monster, D.D. Unicorn Knight tried to attack it. Jean's crash happened on his opponent's turn right when Hook's effect was activated."
"On the assumption that it's related, it seems there's no two ways about it", Jack nodded.
"Jack, Yusei, Estelle, you three need to be careful", Carly spoke up. "Remember what happened to Crow. We have no idea who'd they target next."
"And considering tomorrow is our Duel with them, they might try targeting one of us before that, so we need to stick together and not head out to practice at all, whether alone or together as a team", I added.
"Right", Yusei nodded.
"You don't think they might target Aki's team too, do you?" Crow asked concernedly.
"That's impossible, since Aki and Sherry's team's in a different block of the preliminaries, so they should be safe", Jack retorted.
"Well, whatever Team Catastrophe might do to you guys, stay cautious and be careful", Breo said. "I've got to leave now and see how Jean and Andre are doing."
"If you see them, tell them we said hi and wish for their recovery", Crow said.
"I will. Thank you."
We watched the lone member of Team Unicorn walk out of the garage and closed the door behind him. Now it was time for me to start talking and tell my friends the truth.
However, Yusei beat me to it. "Estelle, do you know what's going on?"
Everyone stared at me after Yusei asked that. I nodded in response. "Yes. Before, I didn't want to say anything about the upcoming events because I feared it would do major damage to the consequences, but after my last encounter with Iliaster the other night, I had a change of mind."
"Wait! You met Iliaster at the night of the party?!" Crow exclaimed in shock.
"Yes", I nodded.
"So that's why you zoned out and weren't responsive", Yusei realized.
I nodded once again. "One of their members made contact with Team Catastrophe and gave them two Shadow Cards; Hook the Hidden Knight and a Trap card that I can barely remember its name. I think it has something to do with 'ring', though."
"Shadow Cards?" Jack repeated.
"Shadow Cards are like cards that come to life and make actual damage, like with Blood Mefist and the two Meklord Emperors we've seen so far", I explained.
"Shadow cards that come to life…", Bruno mumbled quietly.
"But how can Hook the Hidden Knight lock the wheels just as it's about to attack or activate its effect?" Carly wondered.
"From what I remember, a shadow version of Hook hid in the shadows of the Duel Runners and used its hook to lock the wheels", I explained.
"Are you certain about it?" Bruno wondered.
"One-hundred percent", I replied. "They tried using Hook during your Turbo Duel too to cheat into victory, but it failed."
"So we got away unscratched?" Crow asked.
"Barely."
"Then what happened at the night of the party?" Yusei asked. "What did Iliaster tell you?"
I let out a soft sigh, knowing it was time to reveal the big deal. "Primo, the individual who made contact with me, threatened me by attacking you guys if I didn't surrender myself to Iliaster."
"Surrender yourself to Iliaster? Why?" Crow asked worriedly.
"Remember the time they kidnapped me during the Premium Event party? They kidnapped me from Hironori because they wanted to harness my power and use it for their own schemes", I explained. "That's what Primo told me, except he gave me a chance to surrender myself so you and the city wouldn't get seized by Iliaster."
"What do you mean by getting seized?" Yusei asked with his serious expression. "What might happen if you don't surrender?"
"You know how Lazar stole the first engine program, right? It was Primo who ordered the now fugitive Vice-Director to steal it so he could use it to complete his army…of Riding Roids."
"An army of Riding Roids…?" Bruno mumbled softly.
"Riding Roids… Like the time with Ghost that turned out to be a Riding Roid and Jack's imposter?" Crow asked.
"Yes", I nodded. "Primo is also…the original owner of Meklord Emperor Wisel."
"Primo…", Yusei mumbled irritably. "What does Primo plan to do with his Riding Roid army?"
I took a deep breath before telling the truth. "If I go against his words… He will use the army to attack New Domino City."
Everyone got silent after that. They looked at each other while comprehending what I had just said.
"S-So… This Primo…will attack New Domino City…with an army?" Carly spoke up with her voice shaking.
"Yes", I nodded. "That's why I went to Sector Security yesterday to warn Goodwin about the attack, so he can prepare the Security officers to protect the city tomorrow. The invasion occurred shortly after your Turbo Duel with Team Catastrophe."
"Iliaster really likes using violence to get what they want", Jack growled while crossing his arms.
"Yes, but this invasion is Primo's plan alone, so he's going his own way with it", I explained. "You could say he's the lone wolf who prefers doing things his way in Iliaster."
"Glad to hear the other members of Iliaster prefer doing things in a peaceful manner", Crow commented sarcastically.
"What will you do, Estelle?" Yusei asked with a worried expression. "Are you really going to surrender yourself?"
I shook my head in response. "No. I have a feeling that even if I give myself up, Primo will still attack the city and the other Turbo Duelists. That's why I will fight to protect the place I call home."
"This is a big scoop!" Carly suddenly exclaimed. "New Domino City being threatened by an evil organization and might get invaded by an army of Riding Roids! I've gotta write the article right now!"
She was about to run out of the garage when Jack grabbed her by the back of her vest and pulled her back. "Don't do it, Carly!" the blonde Signer snarled. "The public doesn't know about the threat yet and we don't know if it might happen or not, so there's no need to bring chaos already!"
"Actually, Goodwin plans to send a warning to everyone in the city to stay cautious because of this threat", I revealed. "He's going to do that tomorrow morning in the news channel, so it will be public knowledge."
"That way, the citizens and tourists can prepare themselves if the army will strike tomorrow", Bruno nodded.
"We should let Aki and the others know about this too", Yusei said. "And inform Breo about the truth of Andre and Jean's crashes."
"Right, and then we'll kick Primo and his Roids' sorry butts for trying to seize the city!" Crow exclaimed determinedly.
XXXXXXXXXX – Primo's POV
Lester, Jakob, and I have been watching the interaction of the Signers and their friends, so I heard everything the Priestess had told them. This angered me so much. I had hoped she would surrender after my proposal, but apparently she didn't value her loved ones' safety.
I couldn't help but punch the armrest of my throne in anger. "I can't believe the Priestess chose to open her mouth and tell them about my plans! I thought I could manipulate her because of her naïve way of thinking!"
"Guess she decided to grow up a little bit", Lester commented. "Too bad for you, Primo! Hehihihihihi!"
"While it's clear she's on the spectrum, she still has her free will and is intelligent enough to step out of the tunnel vision that many 'special' people have", Jakob rubbed more salt on my wounded pride. "Besides, I'm still very much reluctant about your army of Riding Roids, Primo. Forcing the Turbo Duelists to Duel until they are defeated, just because to add more Ener-D for the Grand Design. We've already collected a lot during the first two days of the World Racing Grand Prix preliminaries. It's proof that the current plan is more than enough."
"But we need to complete the Grand Design much sooner than that, so we, Iliaster, can fulfill our duty", I retorted.
"Don't be impatient, Primo", Lester said. "Remember what happened last time with the Priestess?"
"I didn't expect her to have another form that allows her to combat", I had a tight grip on the armrest before I relaxed after I realized something. "But wait… I could tell by the way we clashed our swords… She is still inexperienced, so…"
"What are you implying, Primo?" Jakob asked.
I felt my lips twitch into an evil smirk. "Nothing that concerns you, Jakob."
I glanced down at the window above the Grand Design that displayed the Signers' garage. Their other friends had just arrived to hear the Priestess' the warning about my army invading New Domino City tomorrow.
The Priestess had been right about one thing; even if she would've chosen to surrender herself, I would still proceed with my plan.
However, there was one thing she couldn't predict, so she better prepare herself or else she could lose a limb or two.