Shuffle

written by Shaun Garin

Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters and Duel Monsters GX are owned by Kazuki Takahashi. JK Rowling owns Harry Potter.

Turn 03 : Event

"Harry! Good to see you again." greeted Hermione as she ran up to Harry.

"Good to see you too," said Harry as he hugged Hermione. "Did you get my letter?"

"Oh yes," replied Hermione. "I was overseas visiting America when I got it, so I didn't bother sending a letter back knowing that you would be here within a month or so. I did find out some interesting things about the game you wrote me about and... what is that on your wrist?"

Harry held up his left arm and grinned. "Muggle Duel Disk Mark 2. I met Dean at the Leaky Cauldron and he challenged me to a game."

"That's very nice of him, considering he was the one time regional champion," replied Hermione, earning a startled look from Harry. "I looked it up on the internet. Did you win, or did he?"

"It was a draw," said Harry with a shake of his head. His expression then turned serious. "Hermione, come over here. I need to show you the cards in my deck."

Sitting down in the living room, Harry spread the contents of his deck across the table. Hermione picked up one and gasped. "Harry? What is this?"

"It's the new set," said Harry. "Someone knows about the Wizarding World and got Industrial Illusions to make an expansion for the game based around our own world."

Hermione shook her head. "That's hard to do. But if it was anyone else, I'd think it'd be impossible. I checked around with the local wizards. It seems that Pegasus J. Crawford got into everything when he was traveling as a younger man. And I mean everything. Including the magical world."

"So that's it? We're just meant to keep our heads down about this?" asked Harry incredulously.

Hermione shrugged. "The more people know about something, the easier it is to dismiss as fantasy. Everyone knows about centaurs and unicorns and they dismiss it as fiction."

"You do have a point," said Harry. He then grinned. "Want to learn how to play?"

Hermione's eyes shone with the thought of learning something new.

If there was one thing Seto hated more than anything else, it's feeling like an idiot. How long had he denied the existence of magic? When did his ego so utterly dictate his life? Why didn't he figure out that Yugi's other personality wasn't because the boy was 'a little fucked up in the head?' What the hell had he been in his own head that he didn't realize that you didn't need a sledge hammer to win a duel if you can get in close and stab him with a pocket knife?

"What was R&D thinking when they made the Chaos monsters? Do you even have Blue Eyes White Dragon in your deck?" Yugi muttered. Between him and Kaiba rested a large table top with holograms of a dark sorcerer and a dark knight hovering over cards depicting their form. Behind the two monsters were three face down cards. He had two face-down cards on his side of the table, and only one was a monster. While the two playing the game would not seem odd, that they were doing so in a limousine made the match harder. Especially when dealing with potholes in the road shaking the long car.

"This ends now, Yugi!" Seto tapped the knight card. "Chaos Solider will remove your monster card from play.

Yugi sighed. "There goes my Silent Swordsman."

"Good. Now Chaos Sorcerer attacks you for the victory!" Seto announced triumphantly.

Yugi flipped his face down card. "Mirror Universe. It'll destroy your monsters at the cost of two cards out of my hand."

"Denied! I activate Thief's Swiss Army Knife! I lose a thousand life, Yugi, but you're still dead." Seto grinned.

Yugi revealed a card from his hand. "Kuribo."

"You really know how to annoy a person," Seto growled out, since the monster card reduced the damage from an attack to zero when discarded from hand.

"Come on 'Heart of the Cards,'" Yugi chanted as if in prayer.

"I'll activate Lost Property, discard the card you just drew," Seto informed evilly.

"Now who's being annoying?" Yugi pouted at the two cards in his hand. If he had been able to keep the card he drew, he MIGHT have lasted another turn. Now he had a useless magic card that needed the monster he had drawn and a monster that needed a tribute to play. An empty field, eighteen hundred life and staring down fifty-five hundred damage next turn. "Well, that's game Seto."

Kaiba laughed. "That's my fifth win against you!"

"And eighty-two losses. But who's counting?" Rebecca chirped.

Seto glared at her. "Who asked you!"

"Now, Seto, this is just a friendly game to test your new hologram tables," Yugi noted. "No need to make a big deal out of it."

"Not to mention distract the 'guest of honor' of tonight's banquet," Rebecca teased.

"So I donated some money to orphanages. What's the big deal?" Seto groused.

Yugi looked at his 'arch-rival' as if he grew another head. 'Some money' was akin to saying Seto was a 'bit of a control freak.' Orphans that had failed to get adopted were now going to college with a fraction of the money he had given. And it was Seto's inclination to being a control freak that was making the young man so nervous. Seto knew the rules of business and games, having near complete control of any situations that may arise. However, he didn't know the 'rules' when it came to socializing with other people. It left him feeling vulnerable, which the ruthless, young businessman hated.

"We're here," the driver announced over the intercom.

Seto waited for the door to open so he could make his grand entrance. He would not be looked down upon by anyone.

Yugi shook his head as the young man prepared himself, turning his nervousness into false bravado. He would look regal enough for the masses, but those that knew him would be able to tell he wanted nothing more than to jump back into the limousine and drive off.

"Just remember, if you someone tells you insider information, don't act on it. However, if you overhear it from someone else's conversation, wait a few days on it," Rebecca commented, mostly to Kaiba.

"It's your move," said Harry as Hermione tapped her lip.

Hermione placed a monster onto the field. "Eclectic Witch, attack position." A card with a picture of a Witch who looked remarkably like her stared up at her from the field, facing down Harry's arsenal of Phoenix Metamorphmagus and Phoenix Guard. "And I'll play Book of Magical Theory which raises her attack points by one thousand. Also, when a magic card is played, I can add a magic token to the card. That brings Eclectic Witch up from 1700 to 2700."

Harry bit his lip as Hermione declared her attack on the Phoenix Guard. Sending his monster to the graveyard, she set two magic or trap cards and ended her turn. Drawing his card, Harry looked at the field and placed a magic card on the table. "Necromancy. It allows me to special summon four monsters to your side of the field."

Hermione picked through her graveyard and special summoned two more Eclectic Witches and a Master Herbologist to the field and then placed a token on the Book of Magical Theory. Harry grinned as he removed his Phoenix Metamorphmagus from the field and replaced it with a higher level monster card. "Mum had this in her deck. Black Magician Girl in attack position. Then I'll equip her with Pendant of Bliss. For each monster she destroys, she gains 100 attack points."

"That's all well and good, Harry," said Hermione as she flipped over her face down trap card. "Activate trap; Blood of the Unicorn. It decreases your monster by 500 points each of my standby phases and prevents it from attacking the turn it is activated."

Harry grimaced and ended his turn.

Drawing her card, Hermione smiled to herself. "I sacrifice three monsters." Removing both her un-powered Eclectic Witches and the Master Herbologist, Hermione placed a monster on the field. "The Creator of Life - Alchemist with 2450 attack power. For the three monsters sacrificed, I can pull three magic cards from my graveyard and add them to my hand."

Taking out three cards, Hermione used her Jar of Greed to draw two cards and added another token to the magic card. She then used the Rebirth of the Dead to get an Eclectic Witch from her graveyard and then Cycloned Harry's remaining face down magic card. Harry frowned. "What are you planning?"

"Well, since I have three tokens on my side of the field, I can use them to special summon a monster from my deck depending on the die roll. I can summon a monster with a level corresponding from one to five and six allows me to special summon anything level six or higher from my deck."

Harry palmed his face. "Oh boy, here it comes."

Hermione rolled and smiled, tapping the six sided die. "Six. That allows me to special summon Avatar Phoenix in attack position from my deck."

Harry grimaced. "And you're discarding your hand to destroy my field?"

"Of course," said Hermione as she threw away her hand. "Avatar Phoenix is rather good, if tricky to get out."

"I'd say," snorted Harry as he removed his entire field and sent it to the graveyard. Hermione attacked for the win and he gathered up his deck. "Lets see. Having to equip Eclectic Witch with Book of Magical Theory, THEN have to play three magic cards and make a successful die roll. Not to mention that Avatar Phoenix can only be special summoned and cannot be flip summoned or normal summoned or set. That's something of quite a bit of luck. You sure you didn't charm the playing table?"

"My wand is in my jacket pocket," remarked Hermione flippantly.

Harry snorted to himself as he leaned back in the chair. "Care to go again?"

"You just can't stand loosing, Harry," chided Hermione. "This is your fifth loss against me."

"You MUST have had some training. No one is that good right off the bat," grumbled Harry as he shuffled his deck and laid out his first hand.

"Honestly Harry, you're not the only one who had a duelist for a mother," said Hermione. "I never got into it but mum was a rather good duelist in her time. She earned the money we needed to start our practice."

"What was her decktype?" asked Harry, shuffling his deck.

"Medical, centered around life gain and Injection Angel Lily."

"What, everyone I know has some Dueling ties all of a sudden?" groused Harry.

Hermione giggled.

There was one thing that Yugi 'failed' to warn Seto about the parties for the rich. But he didn't really want to scare Kaiba away, either. As such, the owner of Kaiba Corp. found out on his own that he was far from the most socially unaware person at the party. However, while he was aware of his own inability to deal with people in a context outside of trying to 'defeat them,' there were some people who didn't know they should just shut up and hide in a corner.

In this case, it was an elderly businessman gushing over pictures of his infant grandson. Not once did the old fart even ask Seto if was interested in the little bastard's first word, nor was he interested in seeing nude baby pictures. It was enough to make anyone want to learn torture techniques, just to inflict them on the old coot. However, Seto was already well versed in the arts of inflicting pain, and his mind was contemplating horrors that could not be mentioned to virgin ears.

"Ah, Seto! That's where you went!" A young girl with long flowing black hair latched onto Kaiba's arm. "Excuse us, Ishida, but I need to steal him away for a bit."

If Seto didn't want the excuse to get free of the old yapper, he would've had some choice words for the girl. Instead, he allowed the girl to lead him away from the party altogether. Once they were alone, he ripped his arm out of her grip and growled out, "What do you want?"

The girl smirked a little dementedly. "I'm Shibahime Kuroyama. Please to meet you." She daintily pinched the skirt of her ball gown and curtseyed toward the boy.

Seto raised an eyebrow. The only Kuroyama he knew was a worse workaholic than he was. She couldn't be that man's daughter as there no way a woman could possibly tie down that hard nose long enough to beget this trollop.

The girl looked back towards the party. "Well, Vincent, I went to the party, socialized a bit and introduced myself to a rich single man."

The polished, middle-aged butler stepped forward, holding a large, designer handbag. "Indeed you have, but I do not think this is what your mother had intended."

Shibahime glared. "Mother intends for me to plop out grandsons for her." She reached behind her back and unzipped her ball gown, letting it cascade to the floor.

Seto didn't twitch an eyebrow as the girl revealed that she had been wearing a tank top and ridiculously short mini-skirt underneath the formal dress. It was an outfit that Mai would consider daring. Especially after she bent over to scoop up the ball gown, flashing her black lace panties at him in the process.

"Lady Shibahime, can't you honor your mother more than this?" Vincent pleaded.

"Maybe if she'd see me as more than someone to marry off," Shibahime shot back. She shoved her dress into Vincent's hands and took the handbag. She immediately pulled a duel disk from it and slipped it on her arm.

Seto raised his eyebrow at that. "You don't intend to duel ME, do you?"

"I'm not a masochist," Shibahime retorted. "I don't have a prayer of lasting three turns against you. I'm off to search for duelists I can hope to win against."

Without another word the young woman left, her butler chasing after her still protesting her actions.

Seto shrugged and left as well. He had enough of the party and would like nothing more than go home. There he could wait for the rats to jump ship of a company that he had heard earlier was about to suffer a loss of revenue. He would happily buy up their stocks and add the company to the Kaiba Corp. family as one of his own businesses.

"That settles things," said Pegasus as he dusted off his hands.

"Quite a bit of spellwork," remarked Sugoroku as he looked over the traced chalk lines. Previously, they had glowed a solid yellow light. Now they were ready to be wiped off since the magic had sunk itself into the building. "Similar to my own warding. Aztec and Norse?"

"Yes, with some Chinese and Greek runes thrown in for flavor," said Pegasus.

From the corner of the room, Malik snorted. "Give me good old Egyptian rituals any day."

"Egyptian rituals tended to use a liberal amount of blood," deadpanned Ryou from the other side of the room where he partook in a glass of Butterbeer, imported from England. "And blood is hard to get out of fine carpets."

"So?"

Sugoroku sat down, grunting. "I'm getting on in my years. Pegasus, how about a duel to pass the time? Yugi, Rebecca and Kaiba are due back soon."

Pegasus smiled. "I suppose I can dust off the deck."

Shuffling each others decks, they set them down on the coffee table. "Duel," they chorused as they drew their first hands. "Since you challenged, I'll go first," said Pegasus. "I play Toon World at the cost of 1000 life points. Then I special summon Toon Gemini Elf and Toon Goblin Attack Force to the field. Finally, I play Emergency Rations to send my Toon World to the graveyard, gaining 1000 life points."

"Clever," remarked Sugoroku. "It keeps your Toons from dying if I hit it with a magic card and you regain your life payment."

"That's my turn end," said Pegasus.

"I draw. First I'll special summon the Tricky from my hand to the field by discarding Executioner Makyura." Sugoroku placed his card down onto the field in attack position.

Pegasus blinked. "The Tricky is much too weak to deal any major damage."

"Not exactly. I discarded Executioner Makyura which allows me to play these from my hand." Sugoroku laid down three Remains of Yata-garasu. "I can now draw three cards. And then I play these." Laying down a Reckless Greed and two Jars of Greed, he drew four cards. "And this. Sixth Sense. I call five or six."

Sugoroku drew six cards from the die roll and played Card Destruction. Pegasus scowled and discarded his own hand. And the cycle continued. After twenty seven cards drawn in the first turn, the creator of the game looked defeated. "Are you DONE yet?" he whined.

"Just one more. Reversed Worlds. That will switch our deck and graveyards around. And then Revival of the Dead, discarding a card to bring back this."

Sugoroku held up the head of Exodia with a smile. "I win."

The door opened to the study and Yugi called out, "We're back! Did we miss anything?"

"Yugi-boy, make your grandpa play nice!" cried Pegasus.

Rebecca looked over and made a tisking sound. "For shame, grandpa. Playing the One Turn Exodia? Have you no duelist pride?"

Sugoroku shrugged. "The game has changed quite a bit. I think it's time to place another banned list onto the net."

Pegasus moaned. "I think it's time to retire the Toons."

"Now you know how I feel playing Kaiba right now," remarked Yugi. Pegasus looked at Yugi curiously and Kaiba snorted from behind him.

"Yugi's just upset that I'm not using my Blue Eyes White Dragons anymore." put in the CEO.

"Blue Eyes White Dragon I can handle. The overuse of Chaos monsters have broken the game a bit more. I'm going to have to figure out what to ban next." Yugi sighed.

"You see why I gave the company to you?" said Pegasus. "Too much stress."

"You two are just bitter because I beat you on a regular basis now," snorted Kaiba as he set his jacket to the side.

Yugi sat down at his computer and flicked it on. While waiting for it to boot up, he pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. "Okay, what to ban next."

"Executioner Makyura," put in Pegasus, still upset at his solid one turn thrashing.

"Forceful Sentry," added Ryou. He had sat down and begun playing Rebecca.

Rebecca made a face as her attack crashed up against Ryou's Soul-Hunting Spirit. "Soul-Hunting Spirit."

A low snicker came from Malik who watched the pair play. "I'll throw in my two cents to get Mischievous Demon Twins banned along with Female Warrior From Another Dimension, cut Chaos Sorcerer down to two and then ban the Chaos Solider- Messenger of the Beginning."

Yugi scribbled down the suggestions. Taking a good look, he nodded to himself. "Looks fairly good."

"Cut Steadfast Guard to banned as well," added in Kaiba. "I'd also cut the new Deck Devastation Virus down to one."

"In that same thread of thought, cut the amount of Exodia pieces down to one a piece," put in Pegasus, getting a glare from Sugoroku.

Yugi laughed as he finished up scribbling down the list. "All right. Anything else someone wants to throw in?"

At the general round of headshaking, Yugi flicked on his word processor and began to type at a rapid pace. Soon, the new list was up on the I2 website. "There. All done. Now, to business. Grandpa, Pegasus?"

"Wards are up," said Sugoroku. "Not even a fly can get into the building without our knowledge."

"I've also taken the liberty to shield the headquarters from foreign magic signatures that do not match our own," added Pegasus. "No sense letting some wizarding fool waltz in here, demanding the headquarters to be turned over to the American Wizarding Government. It's shielded to near-unplottable. Of course, if it WAS unplottable, no one would find it. And that's bad for business."

"Indeed," said Kaiba. "Duel Academy is on schedule. The newest group of students have arrived to the school. There are a few noteworthy people in the academy, and some of them have ancient magic."

Ryou startled at that. "What? But no one should have any more."

Kaiba shook his head as he opened his briefcase and placed a thick folder on the desk top. Handing out pictures, he continued. "The headmaster has briefed me on the situation. The first one, Judai Yuki. Age seventeen. His signature card is Winged Kuribo." Kaiba gave Yugi a look. "The same card you gave him two years ago. He can see Ka."

"The second, is Marufuji Ryo and Marufuji Sho. Brothers of different skill levels. They call Ryo the Kaiser of the Duel Academy. Ryo is one of the people who were able to collect the Cyber Dragon set and the collected fusion cards to make a powerful deck. Sho is a duelist of intermediate skill, but has potential. His deck works with Judai's and it is a vehicle deck."

"Hey Ryou, Sho looks like a mini you and Ryo looks like the Baka Tomb Robber," put in Malik helpfully.

"I'm sure he'd be cursing you out complete with thousands of fleas if he could have heard that remark," replied Ryou dryly.

"What's he going to do? Crawl out of the underworld to strangle me?" smirked Malik.

Ryou stuck his tongue out at him.

Kaiba sighed. "Tenjoin Asuka, also of the older years. She has demonstrated a remarkable resistance to the ancient magic, but shows potential to utilize it if she learns. Her deck strength is on par with Yuki and has been defeated by him. Her deck focuses around the Cyber Sporty Girls."

"Another is Maeda Hayato. Lazy, slacker but has the potential. His father is Maeda Kumazou. Hayato uses a Koala deck with the giant sized Master of Oz fusion card."

"Wait a moment," put in Malik. "Isn't Kumazou the one who defeated Raphael in KC Grand Prix 2 last year?"

Kaiba nodded. "Yes. A skilled duelist who's deck focuses around the Drunken Boxing cards and the ability of a particular magic card that allows the clearing of the field and direct attacks."

"Chabbudai Kaeshi, Return A Low Dining Table." said Pegasus, emphasizing the japanese name of the card. "Permanent Magic. Destroy all your cards on your side of the field except for this card. Then destroy an equal amount of cards on your opponents side of the field equal to the ones destroyed on your side. You cannot normal summon, reverse summon or special summon a monster after the effect is used."

Yugi palmed his face. "So I was DRUNK when we made the Drunken Boxing cards."

"You and Jounouchi for that matter," pointed out Rebecca.

"It's better than the tennis cards that we came up with a while ago," said Malik as Ryou stuck his tongue out at him in defiance of maturity. "We went to see the World Women's Tennis Championship and wound up making cards. I think there's a few Tennis Deck players out there."

"And strangely it succeeded," deadpanned Sugoroku. "Next?"

Pegasus picked up the next picture and information packet. "Just as a note, I created the Drunken monsters back in the day but Yugi made them powerful. And this is something. Manjyome Jun, age nineteen. He has been AWOL from Duel Academy for the last year and a half but he just returned recently. His deck went from a Hell deck to a V to Z deck and then now he plays the Armed Dragon Level deck."

"Why so many decks?" asked Rebecca. "It seems impractical."

"Manjyome was used as a pawn to try and eliminate Judai from the Duel Academy by Chronos De Mediz. He's a jerk of a man but unfortunately still a very skilled professor." Kaiba grumbled to himself and made some comments of a physically impossible feat for Chronos to perform. "He's also gotten a swelled head for owning one of the legendary rare cards Pegasus released years ago."

"Antique Gear Golem," said Pegasus. "What a masterpiece that card was. Although I only released ten of them. I spent weeks devising the look of it via painting."

"It is a wonderful card," said Yugi. "But shouldn't we do something about Chronos?"

"Chronos is harmless, if you discount the use of Titan and the Paradox Brothers to try and eliminate them."

"Titan's the doofus who uses that fake millennium puzzle, right?" said Malik. "I thought we got him off the circuit."

"He went underground apparently, and wound up at the Duel Academy. Stupid fool made a mistake and somehow invoked the Shadow Games." Yugi shook his head. "He was swallowed by the darkness so I doubt he'll be a problem."

"Okay, so what's the logic in hiring the Paradox Brothers?" asked Ryou.

Kaiba smirked. "Isn't it obvious? They were one of the few people to almost defeat Yugi here during Duelist Kingdom. Chronos obviously got a couple of mixed messages because he quoted that they were one of the few who DEFEATED the Game King."

Sugoroku laughed as with Malik and Ryou. Rebecca giggled and Pegasus looked pleased with himself. "Please," Pegasus snorted. "Yugi-boy is near unstoppable. At the very least he doesn't have Atemu helping him now."

"And the last person in this file?" asked Rebecca.

"Misawa Daichi. Age eighteen. He was the top seeded rookie of the year and demonstrated superb dueling skill with a test deck. He plays the Six Attributes, using the Molecule monsters."

"Six separate decks, focused around the six elements. He must have quite the skill to play all of them," said Yugi. "I'm impressed."

"At this point in time, these kids have the best chance of displaying ancient magic. As you know, Duel Academy is safe from the International Confederation of Wizards. Otherwise, we'd have trouble locking down the island. Currently we are finishing up the Industrial Illusions and Kaiba Corp. Outlet in Hogsmeade. There has been an eruption in the area of Duel Monsters and the demand is high since many wizards are uneasy in muggle areas for a game."

"Kicking and screaming, huh?" quipped Malik and Kaiba grinned evilly.

"Very. And a few bruisings here and there as well. On the plus side, if that dark lord of theirs attack Hogsmeade, it will act as an impenetrable fortress. Cold Iron is such a WONDERFUL thing." Kaiba laughed, sounding like a supervillian. "I'd like to see an Avada Kedavra get through three inches of Cold Iron. Unblockable my ass."

"At the very least we know it can be stopped by Cold Iron," pointed out Malik. "With Ryou and I doing the leg work, we've run into some Death Eaters and we've shielded ourselves with our Duel Disks."

"All right. Our first shipment will be ready to go in a week," said Yugi. "I'll also place a shipment order to the outlet in Diagon Alley."

"Perfect. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a nice bed waiting for me," said Kaiba as he picked up his jacket and swept out of the study towards the guest quarters in the high levels of I2.

"Funny. A year ago Kaiba would have stayed up till dawn working out the last portions of some sort of deal," remarked Ryou. "Anything happened while we were gone?"

"Not much, just that Seto got accosted by a lot of rich people he didn't want to meet," said Rebecca.

Yugi coughed into his fist. "Right. There's quarters of course. Make yourself at home and don't terrorize security."

"Who, us?" Malik and Ryou chorused as Yugi and Rebecca left.

Pegasus chuckled. "I will retire to my old quarters and write up some new Toon cards as well. I will not accept defeat so easily, Sugoroku!" he exclaimed dramatically, pointing at Sugoroku.

"Bring it," quipped Sugoroku as the pair headed for their own rooms.