It was a rather foggy day in the harbor, as it is almost every day. Seagulls squawking in the distance and the sound of a horn from a ship far offshore were the only sounds to be heard. Usually the harbor was much busier. There would be ships being loaded and unloaded, several sailors walking about, and trucks taking cargo out into the city. But it was quiet today, on account that everyone had gotten the weekend off for the Fourth of July. Mid-day was fast approaching, and the fog was beginning to lift, revealing an odd looking figure walking amongst the alley in between the warehouses. They wore a long, black cloak with a purple eye on the hood, and a gold chain that hung across the hood as well.
They walked through numerous alley's, often retracing their steps to make sure they were not followed. After determining that they weren't, they proceeded to a cellar door that led under one of the warehouses. The robed figure approached the side of the doors where a keypad slid out of the warehouse wall. They looked around once more, then put in the password. The cellar doors slowly opened and the figure walked down into its depths, the keypad hiding itself in the wall once more. The robed figure descended into the dark depths as the doors slowly closed behind him, the steps dimly illuminated by small lights along the sides of the steps. After what seemed like forever, they finally reached the bottom of the steps, and entered a long hallway. At the end of the hallway, they came across a door but, unlike the cellar doors, had a normal doorknob.
They opened the door and entered the room, being hit with a wave of bright light. Inside was a large room with several computers, papers, and other objects. There were also several other robed figures, each working at a computer or comparing notes. However, the most noticeable thing in the room was the large tube at the end of the room, holding what appeared to be a human body with several wires and tubes connected to it.
"What's the diagnosis?" the cloaked figure asked loudly so that all could hear them.
"Vital signs are normal, and there has been a significant increase in brain activity," someone reported.
"It shouldn't be too long now before he wakes up," another said.
"Excellent..." the cloaked figure said. "Soon...we shall have a new, unstoppable leader for the Rare Hunters!"
Domino High: 04-12-04: Monday: 8:20 a.m.
The halls of Domino High were bustling with activity. Students walked the halls, obtaining books from their lockers for their needed classes, or just stood around inside the classrooms talking, waiting for the first class to begin. Yugi, however, just sat at his desk in his first class, reading a book that had been handed out to the class last Friday. The teacher told them to have at least half of it read before class today, but Yugi knew that he was more than likely the only one who 'did' read the book over the weekend.
"Hey, Yugi!" a voice shouted. Yugi looked up from his book and noticed one of his other classmates running up to him, who just so happened to be his best friend, Joey.
"Did you manage to read that book that got handed out on Friday?" he asked him.
"Yeah, I'm just about to finish it now," he replied.
"Aw man!" Joey shouted, gripping his hair on the verge of pulling it out. "I've only gotten through about a fourth of it! What am I gonna do!?" Joey was on the verge of a super meltdown.
"Relax, Joey. I doubt anybody else even managed to find the time last weekend to read it, so maybe the teacher will extend the deadline," Yugi told him, trying to calm his friend. Joey let out a sigh.
"Whatever you say, Yug. Hope you're right." The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class. Joey took his respectful seat beside Yugi as everyone else filed into his or her own seats. The teacher walked in a few seconds later.
"Good morning, class," she greeted, sitting her teaching bag down on her desk. "Now, before we begin...exactly how many of you got through at least half the book this weekend?" Joey was now feeling confident that nobody had read that book. In fact, he was grinning ear to ear with his eyes closed like an idiot.
"So, all of you but Mr. Wheeler then?" Joey's eyes shot open and took a quick look around the room. Everyone but him had his hands up!
"Wha!? But I was too busy to read it!" Joey yelled. Yugi couldn't help but chuckle as his friend over-reacted. Honestly, Joey should know by now that, unlike all the other teachers, Mrs. Cornette was very linnet when it came to homework.
"First of all, Joseph, you don't need to raise your voice. Second, I can understand if you were too busy. It is understandable, since it 'was' Easter weekend and all. Don't worry, I'll give you more time to read the book," she told him with a small smile.
"Oh, thank you!" Joey cried, breaking into tears. "You won't be sorry!"
"You're very welcome, Joseph." Mrs. Cornette turned around and began writing on the board. Joey slumped down in his seat and let out a sigh of relief. Class went on without any further events. They discussed the book that they were reading, Frankenstein, and Joey was quickly taking notes so he could understand what the heck was happening in the book. Yugi, however, already knew a lot about the book, so he didn't pay much attention. So instead, he chatted with the spirit that resided within his millenium puzzle.
"Shouldn't you be paying more attention to your instructor, Yugi?" Yami asked him. Yugi shook his head. They were chatting inside of Yami's soul room, as they had done many times in the past.
"Nah. She doesn't call on me for anything anyway. I doubt she'll notice," Yugi replied.
"Still, you shouldn't waste your education like that," stated Yami. "So what is on your mind?"
"Nothing much. Just wondering if you are making any headway with finding your lost memories," Yugi replied.
"Not much I'm afraid. Even though we possess all the items that will help me, it is still rather difficult," he said, looking up at one of the doors. "I've searched so many doors, yet there are just as many that have not been searched."
"I'm sure we'll find them in time," Yugi replied. He hated to see Yami so depressed. He looked up at all the doors as well and some time when by before anything was said. Yugi casually walked up to one of the doors and placed his hand on it in deep thought.
"I wonder..." he whispered. Yami overheard him.
"Wonder about what?"
"Well...you've been looking in all these doors, constantly searching for the right one," Yugi stated. "But...have you ever thought, even for a second, that your memories might not be here?" Yami raised an eyebrow at Yugi and rubbed his chin in thought.
"I've thought that on a few occasions. But if indeed they are not here, then where else could they possibly be?" Yugi turned around and walked back towards Yami.
"I don't know. But we'll find all the answers to our questions eventually!" Yugi told him with a smile. Yami smiled as well.
"Yes, as long as we work together, we'll find the answers. Now, I think it's time you get back to class." Yugi nodded and left Yami's soul room, waking up, so to speak, just in time for class to end.
"Now tomorrow, we'll have a quiz on the first five chapters of Frankenstein, so study tonight, and then-" Mrs. Cornette was interrupted by a loud knocking on the classroom door. The students turned their heads to look out the glass window of the door to see who it was, but none of them had a good angle. Mrs. Cornette walked over and opened the door.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm looking for a room 214. Is this it?" asked the stranger.
"Yes, it is. Let me guess, you're the new student I was supposed to get this morning but didn't show up, correct?"
"umm...yes..." came a rather embarrassed reply.
"Well, it's okay. At least you showed up. Most new students chicken out on their first day. Come on in and introduce yourself to the class." Mrs. Cornette stepped away from the door to allow the new student in. The moment everyone got a clear view of his face, about all the girls in the classroom let out a gasp, for in their eyes, he was drop-dead gorgeous! The guys, however, were not all that excited. Yugi took a closer look at him though, for he had some rather startling features.
First off were his eyes. Although you couldn't tell their color from the orange sunglasses he was wearing, they were 'exactly' like Yami's! In fact, he had a very similar face construction to him! The other thing was his long purple hair that came halfway down his neck. It reminded Yugi of Pegasus in some odd way. Top it off, he had a build very similar to Joey and Kaiba. His clothing was an orange shirt under a purple overshirt and a pair of army green khakis, and he had orange shoes with a purple stripe going across the top. They also had a metal arch on them for grinding down rails and such. Yugi thought about getting himself a pair of shoes very similar one time but decided against it, figuring he'd hurt himself trying a stunt like that.
"Why don't you introduce yourself?" Mrs. Cornette asked him.
"uh, yes Ma'am," he replied, turning towards the class. "My name is Rahn, I moved to Domino from Washington D.C. for my fathers new job at the Kaiba Corporation. I'm...sorry I was late, I had a little bit of trouble finding the school. The directions my father gave me were...pretty bad to say the least." Some the class snickered at Rahn's misfortune, only to be silenced by Mrs. Cornette.
"Well, it is nice to meet you, Rahn. I'm sure you'll get acquainted with the rest of the class throughout the day." The bell rang a second later and all the students filed out of the classroom. A few of them, mostly the girls, introduced themselves to Rahn and made him feel welcome. Yugi would have greeted him as well, though he had to get to his next class, which was clear on the other side of the school. Joey had to go there as well, so the two chatted in the hallway as they went to their next class together.
"So, Yug...what do you think of the new guy?" Joey asked him.
"He certainly seems nice. Wish we could have introduced ourselves to him though," Yugi replied.
"Did you notice some of the features that guy had? Kinda creepy, huh?"
"Yeah, it is. But that's just the way he looks. I'm sure there are others that look like him too," said Yugi. The two proceeded to their next class without saying another word.
Kaiba Corporation: 04-12-04: Monday: 10:17 a.m.
Seto Kaiba sat at the desk of his office working on his laptop. He wasn't one to go to school anymore. Afterall, he had a company to run. Besides, all the assignments were put up on the school web page, and he could just simply do it at work or at home and e-mail the completed work to his teachers. Which is what he was doing now. Mokuba, on the other hand, did go to school. This gave Kaiba a little bit of much needed away time from his little brother. He did love him, but every brother needs a break from a sibling. And until 3:45, when the bus dropped Mokuba off hear at the office, Kaiba was on older brother break.
"Frankenstein, huh?" Kaiba mutter to himself as he looked at the next assignment for his English class. "I've already read it...three times even. I could probably type up a report now and be done with English for the rest of the week." Kaiba, just like Joey, didn't complete any of his work over the weekend either. He was busy at an Easter company picnic. Strangely enough, he invited Yugi and his friends to come as well. Kaiba paused from his work at this thought.
"...it still seems strange...a year ago, I wanted to stomp Yugi into the ground while wearing a pair of golf shoes. But now, I just don't seem to care anymore." Kaiba had loosened up quite a bit since the Battle City tournament a year ago. He no longer saw Yugi as a rival, but more as a friend now, which is still hard for him to admit to. In fact, while at the picnic, he had a normal duel with Yugi. No fancy duel disks, no holo images, just slap the cards down in front of yourself on a sturdy wooden table. Kaiba had to admit, it was nice just dueling for the fun of it. He hadn't had any real fun since...well, a long time ago.
"I can do this Frankenstein assignment later. Other than that, everything else is completed." Kaiba put all his work into an e-mail and sent it off. However, he immediately got a failure of delivery notice in his in-box. Thinking nothing of it, he just saved it all to a floppy disk and decided to send it later.
"Now," Kaiba said, picking up some papers on the corner of his desk and looking them over. "Time to do some 'real' work." The papers that Kaiba was looking over were from the Supreme Court. The government had investigated into Pegasus's Duelist Kingdom tournament, and discovered every single one of his sleazy attempts to try and take over Kaiba Corp., including kidnapping Mokuba. Apparently, one of his guards couldn't keep his mouth shut. Because of this, Pegasus lost all right to produce and distribute the duel monster's card game cards. Now the rights to produce the cards were wide open, but the courts would decide who would gain that right. Right now, Kaiba Corp. was the most suitable candidate. Until a decision is made, all production of the cards would cease.
"Real shame for Pegasus," Kaiba stated, flipping through the pages. "Not really though. That bastard deserves anything that gets dished out to him." Kaiba started wondering where all of this was a year ago. Had the government found out sooner, and Kaiba Corp. were to gain the rights to make the cards, then Kaiba would more than definitely have defeated Yugi at Battle City. But if they had...he probably wouldn't be at peace with Yugi and the others right now. Kaiba set the papers down and decided he'd better make a memo and send it through the building. He was about to type it up on his laptop when he noticed the screen starting to glitch.
"What's this?" he asked himself. He went to the screen display settings and attempted to fix the problem, but nothing happened. Curious, he wondered if it was possibly the Kaiba Corp. mainframe. Though he doubted there were any errors in a system that he himself designed, he pulled the plug from his laptop, severing its connection with the mainframe. The glitching screen had stopped now. Kaiba grunted and shutdown his laptop. He was about to go down and see about the problem himself when one of his employees's busted through the door.
"Mr. Kaiba, we have a problem!"
"Does it have anything to do with the Kaiba Corp. mainframe?" Kaiba asked.
"It does, sir. Someone is hacking into the mainframe and re-routing all commands to another source!" Kaiba's eyes widened and he immediately shot from his chair and bolted into a run out the door, his employee following him. The two entered the elevator and proceeded to take it down to the floor in which the mainframe central computer was located.
"It started only a few minutes ago," the employee explained, "Whoever is doing this, they are good. 'Really' good! I would have alerted you through our phone-line, but that's down too!"
"What was the total extent of the damage before you came up to get me?" Kaiba asked.
"We lost about 35% control of the mainframe, and all of the duelist profiles and duel disk commands and specifications had been downloaded to an unknown source and wiped from –"The elevator lights suddenly turned off and came to a complete stop.
"Terrific," Kaibi grunted. "Did I leave 'everything' in the building under the control of that thing!?"
"Umm...yes, Mr. Kaiba. You did," Kaiba gritted his teeth and reached up to push a part of the ceiling off.
"Remind me when we fix this problem to keep major building functions 'out' of the mainframe's control." Kaiba pulled himself up onto the top of the elevator and helped his employee up as well. There, they entered a ventilation duct and crawled out on the eighteenth floor, just two floors from where they needed to go.
"Quickly, to the stairs!" Kaiba bolted towards the stairs, making ninety-degree turns around cubicles, hoping over mail carts, and dodging other employees. He found the stairs and practically leaped down the remaining two floors, reaching his destination. He opened the exit out of the stairs and proceeded to the room in which the mainframe CPU resided, the very same room in which he oversaw the proceedings of his Battle City tournament. Upon arriving, he saw the very same women who were assigned to oversee the tournament struggling and typing away furiously at the keyboards in front of them to keep this hacker from getting in.
"What's the situation!?" Kaiba asked.
"75% of our mainframe has been taken over, and every file regarding the duel monsters card game has been downloaded to another source and erased," one of them answered. Kaiba growled as he ran over to an empty station and started typing away furiously, putting every firewall and password he knew around what was left of the mainframe while trying to retrieve what was lost. The women worked along with him, trying their best to keep up. After what seemed like several minutes, the hacker's little trot through the Kaiba Corp. mainframe seemed to have come to a halt. For Kaiba had set up approximately thirty firewalls, each one protected with a twenty-digit password. Kaiba couldn't help but smirk. It didn't matter how good this hacker was, there was no way they were going to get by this.
"Great job, Mr. Kaiba! The takeover seems to have stopped!" one of the women yelled. They started cheering and clapping their hands, but stopped abruptly when Kaiba turned his head over his shoulder.
"We'll celebrate later! Right now, we have to trace that hacker and get our files back!" The women quickly nodded and set back to work. However, one just looked at the screen in front of Kaiba.
"Umm...sir? You might want to take a look there." Kaiba turned his head back to the screen and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Twenty of the thirty firewalls had been breached!
"Who the hell is this guy!?" Kaiba yelled. He set back to work, trying to set up any means of stopping this hacker, but Kaiba had been outmatched. He was too slow for the hacker. The hacker broke through his firewalls and took control over the rest of the mainframe. Kaiba Corp's main computer was now under their control.
"I can not believe this!" yelled Kaiba, slamming his fist into the keyboard, breaking it in half. At that moment, the whole mainframe was downloaded to another location, and all the lights in the room turned off, leaving Kaiba in darkness. One of the women happened to have a cigarette lighter and illuminated the dark room.
"I think this is what F.D.R. would call...'A day of infamy,'" she replied. Kaiba sighed and slowly turned around.
"I believe he would," he replied. He turned towards the mainframe CPU, barely illuminated by the flickering light of the lighter. The employee that came up to get him from his office finally arrived a few seconds later, looking around in the dark room.
"No success, sir?" Kaiba didn't show any signs that he heard him, but continued to stare into darkness.
"Tell everyone in the building to take the day off," Kaiba replied, a hint of defeat in his voice. "...there's nothing we can do now." His employees nodded and quietly walked out of the room, leaving Kaiba to stare into the darkness and contemplate his thoughts.
Domino High: 04-12-04: Monday: 12:15 p.m.
Yugi waited for Joey by the water fountain outside the cafeteria. It always took Joey a few minutes to get from his fourth class to the cafeteria. Yugi's fourth class, however, was just across the hall from the said area. He thought back to earlier that morning at the end of the first class.
"Rahn...there's just something odd about him, but I can't quite put my finger on it," he thought out loud. Yugi's thoughts were soon interrupted as Joey had finally arrived.
"Hey, Yug," Joey greeted as he rounded the corner. "Sorry to keep you waiting like that."
"It's alright, Joey," said Yugi as the two walked into the cafeteria. Yugi went to go find the usual place that he, Joey, and the others sat as Joey went up into the line to eat. Yugi couldn't understand how Joey could eat the school food, as it was kind of...not good, at least to Yugi's taste it was. As Yugi located the seats, he spotted someone else also sitting there. Usually nobody but them sat here, as it was way back in the corner. Upon closer inspection, Yugi noticed the long purple hair and the orange sunglasses. It was Rahn, the new student that had shown up in the first class that morning. Yugi thought of this as a good time to introduce himself and casually walked up to the table. Rahn had his head bent over a laptop computer and was casually typing on it with a rather satisfied smirk on his face.
'He must really like whatever it is he's doing,' Yugi thought. "Um, excuse me?" Rahn stopped typing and moved his glance to face Yugi.
"Hi there, may I help you?" asked Rahn with a smile.
"Is it okay if I sit here?" Yugi asked. Rahn waved towards a seat.
"Go ahead. Free country, afterall," he replied. Yugi sat down and set his book bag on the floor beside his seat.
"Thank you," said Yugi, extending his hand across the table. "I'm Yugi Mouto. Who might you be?" Rahn extended his hand as well and shook Yugi's.
"I'm Rahn. You wouldn't happen to be the same Yugi Mouto who won the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City tournaments, would you?" he asked.
"Yup, that'd be me," Yugi replied with a smile.
"The famous Yugi Mouto..." Rahn let go of the handshake and slowly closed his laptop. "I've always been wanting to meet you. You're practically a legend in the dueling world."
"Well, I'm sure there are others in the world who are much better than me," said Yugi. "So what were you doing before I got here?"
"Oh, just writing a little bit of code. Nothing special," he replied. Yugi was about to ask another question when Joey finally arrived with his meal, accompanied by both Tristan and Tea.
"Well, we seem to have a guest at our table today," Tea announced.
"Hi, guys," greeted Yugi. "This is Rahn, he's in me and Joey's first class." Joey raised an eyebrow.
"Oh yeah, the guy with the strange purple hair," Joey said, thinking out loud. Rahn chuckled a little.
"Yes, I admit, the hair is kind of odd." He then turned his eyes towards Yugi. "However, I've seen odder hairstyles." Yugi laughed a little.
"Well, I guess that's one thing we have in common."
"And who might you two be?" Rahn inquired towards Tristan and Tea.
"My names Tea, and this moron here is Tristan," Tea replied with a grin.
"Hey, if anybody is the moron here, it's Joey," Tristan announced. "If anything, I look like Einstein compared to him."
"That's right, rub it in..." Joey muttered as he took a seat beside Rahn.
"Woah! Wait a sec there!" shouted Rahn. Joey stopped midway, puzzled. Rahn reached over to the seat Joey was about to sit in and picked up a deck of duel monster cards. "Wouldn't want these to get harmed," he said with a smile.
"Sorry about that," apologized Joey, "I didn't see those there."
"It's okay, no harm done."
"So you're a duelist too, huh?" Yugi asked. "Well, yes, but I'm afraid I'm not all that good. I only just recently learned how to play and got my own duel disk from my father," Rahn replied.
"Well, me and Yug here can show ya the ropes!" stated Joey as he closed his eyes, leaving a smug look on his face. "I'm sure you know of our reputation." Rahn looked at Joey oddly.
"I know of Yugi's reputation...but I don't think I can recall anything about you, Joey." Joey practically fell out of his seat in shock.
"What do ya mean you can't recall anything!?" Joey yelled. "I was runner up at the Duelist Kingdom tournament!"
"Which you entered illegally," stated Tristan, taking a drink from a soda.
"And I was one of the Battle City finalists!"
"Which the only reason you were in the finals was because it was proven later that the rare hunters just changed your star level so you could enter and they could take your Red-Eyes," stated Tea.
"...you two are not helping."
"Oh, we know!" Tea replied with a smile.
"Well, I'll take your word for it, Joey," said Rahn. "Wouldn't want you falling out of your chair again." Joey groaned and took his seat once more. As lunch went on, Yugi and Joey taught Rahn the basics of the game and some good beginning strategies. They were also amazed that Rahn had a deck filled with such rare and unusual cards and were quite surprised he was just a beginner.
"So playing this Reigeki magic card would destroy all of Joey's monsters...and let me attack him directly?" asked Rahn. Yugi nodded. "That's right. However, you have to remember that he has a card facedown on the field, and it could be a trap. Though sometimes, with such an opportunity, you may want to take that risk." Rahn tapped his chin in thought. As he was about to decide on what to do a kid wheeling in a television from the audiovisual room swung the cafeteria doors open.
"You've all got to see this!" the kid yelled, pushing a tape into the VCR. "They reported this just a few minutes ago!" Everyone in the cafeteria gathered around the television. The tape was playing a news report that had aired a few minutes ago, as they boy had said.
"I wonder what's going on?" Tea asked nobody in particular. "I don't know. Maybe it's another one of those terrorist attacks? You know, like the World Trade Center or something," stated Tristan. The two were quickly hushed as the tape played.
"We have just received word that the Kaiba Corporation, the company that formerly produced weapons for the government's military and is now one of the worlds leading businesses in holographic programming and gaming, has just experienced a massive computer crash," said the news reporter. "From what inside information that we have received, it seems that a well experienced hacker had entered the company's main CPU mainframe and stole every last kilobyte of information inside. Not only that, but the entire computer system has been completely erased."
Joey whistled. "Man...poor Kaiba. The guy is probably torn up all to hell over this." Yugi and the others slowly nodded their heads. Kaiba prided himself on his computer skills just as much as he did with his duel monsters skills. If anything, his self-esteem has probably been totally destroyed, along with his computer.
"It is expected that stock in the company will fall considerably, and if the powerful corporate giant can't get itself back up soon, it is likely too fall into bankruptcy. In other news..." The kid who brought the television in turned it off. This was a major upset to the students and there was an immediate uproar. Kaiba Corp. provided almost all of their parents' jobs, and if the corporation went under, then there would be some serious hard times ahead.
"Wow, this really blows," said Joey. "What do you guys think we should do?"
"Maybe we can go and visit him when school closes out today?" suggested Tea. "He's bound to still be there, even if his computer isn't working."
"Probably trying to bring it back up no doubt," mused Yugi. "Hey, wait, Rahn? You said earlier during the first class that your dad worked there. Is that going to affect your family in any way?" Yugi turned to Rahn but noticed he was just starring at the blank screen of the television, much in the same manner that Yugi had found him looking at his laptop when he first walked into the cafeteria.
"Hello? Earth to Rahn?" Joey waved his hands in front of Rahn's face. It took a second, but Rahn finally snapped back to reality. "Hmm? Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I don't think it will cause too much of a problem. We still have much of the money my father made while we were living in D.C., so I think we can survive."
"Hey, the bell for us to go to the next class is about to ring," Tristan announced after taking a look at the clock. "Yeah, we should get going," Yugi stated. "We'll meet at the front of the school later and take a bus to Kaiba Corp."
"I'll have to pass on that," said Rahn. "I barely know the guy for starters. Plus, I was planning on visiting this card shop of your grandfathers that you mentioned earlier, Yugi. Maybe I can get your grandfather to teach me a little bit, since you hold him in such high regard."
"Oh, that's right! You need directions to it, don't you?" asked Yugi, going back to the table to get his backpack.
"Directions would help considerably," Rahn replied smiling. Yugi opened his backpack and pulled out a pencil and paper. He quickly scribbled the address of the card shop on it, then handed it to Rahn. "There you go! Hope you find it easily, I'm not too good with giving directions."
"Oh, if I can get just within the general vicinity of it, I'll find it. Besides, can't be as bad as my dad's directions," said Rahn, pocketing the piece of paper in his shirt pocket. "I guess I'll see you guys later then!"
"Alright then, we'll catch ya later," said Tristan, giving a wave and walking out. Tea walked up to Rahn and planted another piece of paper into his hand. "Talk to ya later!" Tea smiled and walked off. Yugi and Joey followed her out, giving a wave back as they did so.
"Hmm...such a nice little bunch," Rahn mused to himself. He unfolded the paper Tea gave him and looked at it. It was her cell phone number. "This is the twelfth one I've gotten today. Heh, made me too handsome for my own good I suppose." Rahn pocketed the number and walked back to the table. He sat down and opened his laptop back up then began typing on it once again.