It was about time to look for colleges, and Yugi was stumped. She really wanted to do something new, but she also wanted to stay with her friends.

So when she got an invitation to an unusual school she had never heard of, she decided to ask her online friends.

ShadowsReign: Hey, anyone ever heard of a place called Night Raven College? I got a really weird invitation and it's not coming up in any search results

At first she got negative replies...until one of the late night crowd logged on and saw the discussion.

Gloomurai: What's this about Night Raven?

ShadowsReign: Hey Gloomy, I got a weird invitation to a school that no one's heard about.

Gloomurai: You got an invitation to NRC? Lucky!

MuscleRed has logged on.

MuscleRed: What's this about NRC?

Gloomurai: Shadow got an invite.

MuscleRed: How fortunate. I'm a student there, it's rather entertaining.

Gloomurai: Wait...you're a student there too? What house?

MuscleRed:Diasomnia

Gloomurai:Explains why we haven't run into each other IRL. Diasomnia's housewarden scares the crap out of me. I'm in Ignihyde

ShadowsReign: think you can link me? I'm doing applications but I'm still undecided.

Gloomurai has sent you a DM.

ShadowsReign:thanks!

Gloomurai: no prob

Yugi opened up the link, which took her to a different server entirely...and what she saw had her excited.

Night Raven wasn't just a college...it was a magical college. With spells, potions, and flying brooms. Just reading the site had her excited.

This was it...something that could bring her closer to Atem, just a little bit. She missed him every day, but she had come to terms with him being gone.

Considering all the other colleges wanted her for the fame she'd bring to them, Night Raven was sounding more and more appealing the more she read about it. Gloomurai and MuscleRed were more than happy to answer questions, MuscleRed more than Gloom.

In the end what decided her was the Board Game club Gloom mentioned. From the sound of things, they didn't focus on just the modern games...they played a lot of the older games that had fallen out of favor. None of the other colleges had that sort of club, and the headmage (Gloomurai helped her get into contact with him) was more than willing to let her take short trips home for duelist tournaments since that was how she would be paying for her tuition.

Since she would be attending college, she got permission to take her final high school exams early so she could graduate and not have to worry about having a high school diploma.

Honestly, it was a relief. As much as she'd miss her friends, the simple fact was that they had been moving apart since he left. Besides, she knew Kaiba had always been more interested in him over her.

A fresh start was exactly what she needed.

Shortly before first term...

"You sure about this Yugi? It's going to be crazy expensive, especially with that hair of yours," said Anzu.

"I'm really, really sick and tired of teachers telling me off for 'styling my hair'," said Yugi flatly. "At least if my hair has a uniform color they won't have reason to complain as much."

They'd either assume it was dyed or she had an unusual hair color. If she had to bring in a photo of herself in elementary school to prove her hair color and naturally spiky locks were what she was born one more time...

Anzu looked dubious, but this was one of the rare times Yugi wanted to do anything girly with her, so she'd take it.

As Anzu predicted, dying and styling her hair was ridiculously expensive. Her hair simply refused to cooperate and it didn't help she never used the high quality products on her hair to begin with.

Fortunately the stylist was a pro and not only managed to straighten her eyebrows properly, but also managed to get her hair to stay flat, rather than spike everywhere.

She found it amusing she had accidentally caused several stylists to bemoan losing a few week's wages over an ongoing bet over whether her hair was natural, as many people had been dubious with how rare it was to be born with three different hair colors...much less with how it spiked.

Anzu had to admit, her new hair color and style suited her features much better. For one thing, it helped to improve her feminine qualities instead of making everyone wonder if she was a trap of some kind. Not that it would have bothered her if Yugi was a boy who preferred feminine clothing.

Yugi felt only relief when she got nothing but positive remarks from not only her friends, but the adults in her life as well. To be fair, she had jokingly chosen a hair color that reminded her of Dark Magician. She was seriously considering keeping it this color, since the stylist had told her that it was always harder to add extensions and the initial color than it was to fix the roots to match the color later.

Yugi was happy with her new hair style, and Anzu was more than happy to help her shop for some new clothes since she had gotten an acceptance letter from her new college. She resolved to track down Gloomurai and MuscleRed once she got there, especially Gloom because she was really interested in the Board Game club.

Her grandfather was happy to send her off with some of the older games that were unlikely to sell that Gloom confirmed they didn't have yet.

Waking up in a coffin was highly disconcerting, but that swiftly changed to nervous excitement when she registered that they were being sorted into houses.

Waiting for her turn was excruciating, but she opted to people watch and look at her fellow students.

She was delighted, because the mirror looked at her soul and immediately sorted her into Ignihyde. That would make it easier to look for Gloomy.

Yugi rather enjoyed Ignihyde. It had a cool, introverted vibe and most of the other students knew a lot about technology. They had been very interested in her duel disk, but not in the game itself for the most part.

While her phone was a little outdated (by their standards) one of the others helped her properly connect to the network the school used so she could stay in touch with everyone else.

It was beyond refreshing to not have to deal with swarms of duel obsessed people who were convinced she was either 'lucky' or could be beaten easily because of her gender.

She could relax and not have to worry about a swarm of duel-obsessed nutjobs challenging her right after classes to get cards she no longer had.

The next morning...

"Oh...hi Ortho-san!" said Yugi.

"Good morning, Yugi-san!" said Ortho with equal cheer. He liked the freshman, mostly because she was super nice and loved games.

Yugi knew why Crowley had invited her to the school...he wanted to add to the reputation and she was flat chested enough to pass for a boy on first glance. The fact she had a relatively low-key personality didn't hurt either.

"Your brother still sleeping in?" said Yugi.

"Nii-san said he was trying to find a gaming friend who said they had gotten an invitation. So far he's had little luck, but he's hopeful," said Ortho. "I don't think they signed on last night."

Yugi had been so overwhelmed with making new friends and mingling she had forgotten to let her two online friends know which house she got into.

Considering she was really hungry, she opted to send them direct messages later once she had breakfast.

Later that night...

ShadowsReign has logged on.

ShadowsReign: Wow...the descriptions the site gave the school did not do it justice. This place is awesome!

MuscleRed has logged on.

MuscleRed:So what house did you get sorted into?

ShadowsReign: Ignihyde. You have no idea how happy I am to be in such a low-key house...and one where no one is obsessed with dueling.

MuscleRed: Too bad. I'm sure my charge would have loved meeting you. You did bring your pet with you right?

ShadowsReign: Yeah, I have my Roaring Drago... had to dig it out and check the battery, but it still works. I had mostly forgotten about it once the fad ended, but it was a lot of fun to keep it since I couldn't have a real pet.

MuscleRed: He likes to frequent the gardens and wanders around a lot late at night. He was most put out that he missed the ceremony...again.

ShadowsReign: does his phone not have a clock on it?

MuscleRed: He's not that good with technology.

ShadowsReign: How bad are we talking about?

MuscleRed: Our homeland isn't very...advanced... Technology wise. I'm one of the few in my dorm with a computer in my room.

ShadowsReign: Maybe I can help him figure out his phone...or at least install an app so you can track him down and help him attend meetings on time.

MuscleRed: there's an app for that?

ShadowsReign: it's similar to 'find my phone'. I know for a fact another friend of mine uses it all the time to keep track of his brother just in case. It only works if the phone is on though.

MuscleRed: I'll have to keep that in mind.

ShadowsReign: You said you were in the Light Music club, right? What's that like?

Yugi already knew she wanted to join the board game club, but she rarely had a chance to join others because she was so small. Most people didn't want to friend the game-obsessed girl, and those that did these days were only after something.

MuscleRed: officially it's where we play in a band. Unofficially it's where the members go to hang out and talk.

ShadowsReign: Sounds like fun!

Azul looked at the tiny student who came armed with a ton of older games that were rather hard to find.

"Where in the name of the Seven did you get those?" he asked fascinated.

"This is the Board Game club, right?"

"It is," said Azul.

"Oh good. Grandpa was very happy that these games will actually be played and not just stuffed on a shelf and forgotten about. I'm Yugi, by the way."

"I take it you want to join our club?" asked Azul. Yugi nodded. He smiled. "In that case, let me help you carry those. They come with instruction manuals, right?"

"My grandpa owns a game shop...he can't very well sell an older board game if it doesn't have the manual with it, and he can always send me a rule book if that's the case," said Yugi cheerfully.

In short order, they had one of the games set up for the members to play. Ortho was pretty happy, even if he was a little annoyed with his older brother.

"Where is Idia? I would have thought he'd be over the moon about new games," said Azul.

"He's mad because he still can't find his gaming friend," said Ortho, shaking his head. "He knows they're here, but he can't find them for some reason."

"That's silly," said Yugi. "What's his screenname?"

"Gloomurai," said Ortho.

Yugi stared at them both.

"Wait...Ignihyde's housewarden is Gloomy?" said Yugi in surprise.

Ortho stared at her.

"...Are you ShadowsReign?" asked Ortho. Yugi nodded. Yugi was already pulling out her phone to send a DM to her housewarden.

ShadowsReign has logged on.

ShadowsReign:Gloomy, get your butt to the Board Game club already... We have a game set up and the others are waiting.

Gloomurai: Wait, what? You mean play a game IRL?

ShadowsReign: If I had known you were my housewarden, I would have gone to you directly to see which game you wanted to play first LOL

Gloomurai: I'll be right there

Gloomurai, or rather Idia Shroud, looked at the tiny Yugi in disbelief.

"You're ShadowsReign? But you looked completely different from the photo!"

Yugi rolled her eyes.

"Of course I do. I had my hair professionally changed because I was sick of people asking stupid questions because of how ridiculously spiky it was and whether my hair color was natural," she shot back.

Idia relaxed at that...he had seen Yugi's photos from before, once she told him her name. He had been looking for the spikes this whole time, unaware she had it changed.

"So what game are we playing?" he asked, relaxing.

Azul was amused by the immediate chemistry between the two. If those two didn't end up as a power-couple before the end of the year, he'd eat his hat. Even Ortho, who was rather oblivious to that sort of thing was picking up on it.

Cater looked at the tiny freshman, who was happily chatting with Lilia.

"You two know each other?" he asked. On the plus side, the Light Music club had two new members.

"Lilia plays the same games I do online. When he heard about the invite he helped convince me to accept it," said Yugi cheerfully.

"Sounds like a lot of fun!" laughed Kalim.

It had taken three point five seconds for Kalim and Yugi to become new best friends.

Yugi was glad that she was making new friends so easily, considering how hard it had been in her old school. She still missed Jou and the others though.