Disclaimer/Author's Note

How was that for an introduction. ::Reads:: Well, not that good. You didn't even get to know Adriel's character! But that's okay, I'll try to introduce it more in this chapter when I add two more into the fray. And Adriel gets his DuelDisk!!!

Chapter Two introduces two of Adriel's classmates, Aldrai and Aarion.

YuGiOh: Hallowed Darkness

In Your Best Interest

Over the course of the night, Adriel found himself looking at the cards he had taken over and over again. After a few furtive glances, he noticed they seemed to fit together as a whole.

"Guess this is a deck, then." he muttered, getting ready for school the next morning. After a moment, he tossed the deck box into his backpack and left his house, remembering, as always, to take a key.

Class was just as usual. Adriel sat at the front and took notes, some girls behind him were muttering to each other like idiots, and a few guys in the back were sleeping. When lunch rolled around, Adriel pulled out his old lunchbox and quickly devoured his tiny meal. Putting it away, his hand brushed the cold steel of the deck box and he pulled it out.

"You too now?" asked the teacher in between bites.

"No," he started, realizing he couldn't tell the true story. "Some guy just gave me these last night, like it was his job to tell the world about this dumb game."

His teacher chewed slowly while Adriel said this. "Y'know, it might not be a bad idea for you to play. Maybe get some new friends?" Of course, what the teacher was alluding to was the fact that Adriel didn't seem to have friends. Adriel merely grunted.

As Adriel was thinking about the cards, two guys from his class walked up behind him.

"You know, that's a pretty good card." said Aarion.

Aarion was almost six feet tall, but not as tall as Adriel, shorter by about an inch. The two probably weighed about the same, Adriel being light and Aarion compensating with more muscle. Aarion's hair was dirty blonde and messy, a contrast to his blue eyes. His clothing was American. Ever since Japan dropped the dress code, American imports had skyrocketed. Aarion wore baggy blue jeans with a matching red tee shirt and open, white button-down with long, rolled up sleeves. A large brown leather belt with a steel buckle completed the look. His entire wardrobe was from Abercrombie and Fitch. Now that Adriel thought of it, he remembered that Aarion was an American transfer.

Rapidly, Adriel collapsed his fanned-out deck and stuck it in his pocket, turning to talk to the intruders. "Who asked you?" he stated curtly.

"No one, but since when do you play Duel Monsters?" replied Aldrai.

Aldrai was also a transfer, but he hailed from Ireland. As such, his attire was a bit more formal than that of Aarion's, but still much more casual than the old school uniforms. He wore simple khaki shorts and a navy blue tee shirt under an unbuttoned red overshirt. No logos to be seen, while Aarion was a walking billboard. Aldrai was the shortest of the three by an inch, making the unofficial trio look like a set of stairs if lined up in the right order. His hair was brown and straight with green eyes.

"Since I felt like it. Maybe I've been playing all along. It's none of your business." said Adriel. Inwardly, Adriel sized himself up against these two. He was truly Japanese with spiky black hair pushed forward into a Caesar cut and dark brown eyes. Adriel wore black cargo pants with a black tee shirt under a shortsleeve black overshirt, which he usually had buttoned up. Everything on him was black, from his watch to the lanyard around his neck. Attacked to it was an ornate silver medallion of sorts. As the tallest of the three with an intermediate attire, Adriel was fairly more mature looking, perhaps seeming as if he really belonged a grade higher than he was actually enrolled in.

"Fine, then duel me if you're so confident." challenged Aarion.

Adriel thought for a moment. Beating the two of them would get them off his case, but if he lost...Adriel didn't want to think about it. "I don't need to waste my time playing games with you.:

"In other words you don't know how to play. We can teach you," offered Aldrai.

"It's in your best interest," added Aarion.

Again Adriel receded into his mind for a moment. "Fine, teach me how to play this pathetic game." That way I can defeat you and every other fool in this city.

Aarion grinned. "Well," he started, pulling out his deck. "The first thing to know is there are three major kinds of monsters..."

Over the course of the next week, Adriel learned the basics of Duel Monsters and also that his deck was filled with rare cards, but lacked strategy.

Finally, Aarion and Aldrai decided that it was time for Adriel to duel. "Adriel, your practice duels were really good for a beginner. I think it's time we found you someone to duel for real." said Aarion, proud of his work. "Now then, how about that guy over there?" he asked, pointing to a random face.

"Fine. My first victory will be today." said Adriel, walking over to the unsuspecting opponent. "Hey you! I challenge you to a duel!" he shouted.

Several people turned their heads, shocked that Adriel had finally joined in the hype. "Uh, sure..." said the boy, pulling out his DuelDisk. "I'm ready...where's your DuelDisk? Aren't we going to duel?" asked the boy.

Adriel felt blood rush to his cheeks. "You didn't tell me I needed one..." he muttered to Aldrai and Aarion, who had only trained him in tabletop duels.

"Eheheh...you can use mine!" said Aarion shakily.

"No, wait..." said Adriel, remembering that night in the alley. "I have one....sort of. I need to pick it up though. Can I duel you tomorrow?" he asked the boy.

"Sure! I'll hold you to it, though." he responded. Adriel nodded thankfully and sighed.

"Eheh....sorry Adriel!" said Aldrai overcheerfully. Adriel's eyes narrowed and he began to run after Aldrai and Aarion, who screamed and started running in the other direction.

Later that afternoon, school had let out and the three walked to the KC shop in downtown Tokyo. "So Adriel, what kind of disk do you have?" asked Aldrai.

Adriel pulled out his deck box and produced the white slip of paper. "Uh, it's a drake except it's made of titanium instead of steel and it has a custom paint job. I don't know what 'self-projector' means, though."

Adriel turned around and noticed his...friends...had stopped moving and their jaws were wide open.

"Dude, how did you get that?!" shouted Aarion.

"Yeah, that's gotta cost like...two thousand dollars!" added Aldrai.

"Two thousand five hundred to be more exact. Uh, I never told you how I got these cards, did I?" asked Adriel.

"No, not really," said Aarion, jogging to catch up to Adriel.

"Okay, one day after school, I was walking home from the library and this guy jumped me in the alley. He thought I was that Hunter guy that came to our school that one day."

Aldrai noted out loud; "Yeah, you do kind of look like him, now that I think of it."

"Whatever. Anyway, he tried to make me give him some cards, but since I didn't have any, I couldn't give him any. Then he tried to beat me up, but I was a better fighter than he was. So he got knocked out and fell over, and this box flew out of his pocket. I went and picked it up and this was inside."

"Whoa," was all Aarion could say. Aldrai was equally speechless.

Adriel opened the door of the KC store. "Hello," said the woman at the front desk. "How may we help you?" she asked.

"Yeah, I have an order for a DuelDisk and was told to pick it up here," said Adriel, doing all the talking.

"May I see your order confirmation please?" the woman asked politely. Adriel gave her the slip of white paper.

"Thank you." She typed in the order number and, sure enough, "Adriel's" order popped up on the screen. "Now then...you already paid for this but there's a password to pick it up...? Well I see the order form has the password written on it so I guess that's okay. One moment, please." The woman retreated into the back room and the three took a few moments to look around.

A few minutes later she emerged carrying a large box. "Here's your order sir, and congratulations on receiving a state-of-the-art Kaiba Corp product."

Adriel took the box. "Thank you," he said. He left with Aldrai and Aarion. "Hey, I'm going to go home, alright?" he said.

"Can we come with you?" asked Aldrai. Both Adriel and Aarion looked at him dumbfounded. "Uhh...I mean...why don't you open the box first?" he said.

"No, I don't want to do it here. I want to wait until I get home, but you'll see me duel with it tomorrow."

Sadly, Aarion and Aldrai nodded, turning at the corner where Adriel continued going straight. When Adriel got home, he went up to his room and opened the box. Forty black card sleeves were the first thing he pulled out. Nodding to himself, Adriel put them by his deck box.

Next was the User Manual. Adriel didn't bother. And finally, after piles of bubble wrap, Styrofoam, and those packaging peanut things, Adriel's hand made contact with something cold and metallic. He slowly wrapped his hand around a thin part and pulled it out.

His new DuelDisk was beautiful. There was no other word for it. It matched him perfectly! It was fairly large, but the card pads had telescoped into each other and stored themselves in the main compartment, only the top one protruding a bit. Most of the disk was black, with the card pads being a charcoal gray. This model moved the LP tracker from the main disk to a case that covered the card pads when they weren't in use, and added a tracker for the opponent's life points as well. It was solar powered, and the solar panels were located on the top of the disk where the KC logo was printed black on a circle that was the same charcoal gray as the card pads. Logically, this meant that the circle and the card pads were both solar panels.

The disk was already charged, as Adriel discovered when he attached it to his arm and the pads shot out. Adriel saw for a moment that they looked like a sort of shattered sword, connected by a telescoping metal rod. The pads furthest from the disc were smaller than the ones near it, since they had to fit into each other. But metal flaps pushed out as soon as they could, balancing the size. The disk's circuitry whirred to life and glowed silver for a moment. Adriel looked for the self projection system and found it, as he pressed a button and ten pieces of metal attached to the disk via cables shot off of the pads, one on the top and one on the bottom of each pad, and arranged themselves in a two by five rectangle.

Pressing the button again, the cables began to pull themselves back into the disk and the projectors returned to their spots. In awe, Adriel began to experiment with the disk for the rest of the night.