Most people knew that there was a limited pipeline to Earth Aleph. Most people knew that data could be exchanged through it. What most people didn't consider was what kind of data was flowing between Earth Aleph and Earth Bet. Most people assumed that it was financial data, Tinkertech designs and the like.

Well, they weren't wrong, but in one dump, details of Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards were sent over for some reason. In a lot of parallel worlds, it was looked at by the same person, and dismissed as inconsequential, fading into obscurity.

In this world, however, a different man saw the data and asked for details. They say a pebble dropped in a pond can send ripples out. The name of the cards in this world, reverting back to the TV series' original Duel Monsters, was the stone in this case. As to the ripples…

Brockton Bay General Hospital

"…and [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian] attacks your life points directly!" I declared smugly, "My win."

The nurse stared in astonishment as I beat her. "You really are good."

I shrugged modestly. "I just know my deck pretty well."

Duel Monsters had been around for a while and most kids had a deck. When your world is surrounded by three deadly killing monsters, plus numerous human-shaped monsters like the Three Blasphemies and the Slaughterhouse Nine, something like a game that lets you act as a 'wizard' and summon monsters of your own was fairly uplifting for people. Even adults got into it.

As the nurse cleared up her deck and headed off now that her break was over, I did the same to my cards, sighed and lay back in my bed. I had been in the hospital for a week now, after The Locker incident. I had no memories of what had become of me after the fourth hour of being locked in the accursed thing, but I had been found, bleeding, battered and unconscious, outside the hospital and my locker had had its door ripped off its hinges.

Naturally, there had been a lot of pointed questions about the contents of my locker, but after I pointed out that I had been locked in the damn thing and hadn't had anything to do with it being full of that biological waste, the police had turned their beady eyes onto the school. As it was obvious that the whole mess had been left over the winter holidays, the janitors who had been supposed to clean it before the start of school were questioned.

To my complete lack of surprise, the Bitch Trio were being ignored in the investigation. Somehow, it failed to surprise me or Dad. With Alan Barnes, a high-priced Divorce lawyer, standing behind the three of them threatening high-priced lawsuits on anyone for any attempt to accuse his daughter of wrongdoing.

He wasn't a good parent. Anyone could see that Emma had drastically changed from how she had been before I went to summer camp. If he had noticed that and then decided to bury his head in the sand…well, he wasn't a good parent, enough said.

Dad….Dad was still in the middle of one of his rages. He was furious about what had happened to me and was in the middle of calming himself down, which was why he wasn't here with me. It was a good thing, because now I could practice my Parahuman power.

Yes, I had gotten one during The Locker. Thus far, it didn't seem to be anything that you might call useful. I just seemed to be able to absorb my cards into my body.

Shuffling my deck, I placed my deck over my left wrist and, in a flash of light, the cards were gone, replaced with the design that all Duel Monster cards had on their flipside seemingly tattooed onto my skin. I had first done this by accident the day after I had woken up from my mini-coma, about two days ago. I had forced the cards out almost as soon as the tattoo formed out of fright, and I hadn't had a chance until today to check out my cards.

The odd thing was that had been reasonably certain that I had had my cards in my pocket when I was shoved into the locker, yet, according to the nurses, they had been clutched in my hands when they rushed me into the hospital. That clearly said to me that my power, which was focussed on the cards, was more than I thought it was.

Frowning, I poked the tattoo with one hand and blinked as five card symbols appeared in my line of sight. I used a fairly standard warrior deck and I recognised all of these as my cards; [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian], [Legendary Sword], [Reinforcements], [Skull Mariner] and [Ekibyo Drakmord].

Emma had gone the route of cutesy cards that needed skill and tactics to pull out a win…until whatever the hell had flipped her thinking happened, at which point she had switched to pure brute force cards with high attack power and all the strategy of a rabid berserker.

Very similar to Sophia, now I came to think of it.

Well, assuming that it was my turn…I tapped the tattoo again, and another card appeared, [Swift Gaia the Fierce Knight].

I really wished that I could risk trying to summoning one of the monsters, but if I succeeded and if they were life sized, [Skull Mariner] would be around about the same size as a real wooden galleon, [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian] would be about six feet high and [Gaia] would be at least that, but also mounted on top of a horse. And while I might be able to dismiss a monster that I summoned, there was every chance that I wouldn't be able to do it immediately or that there was a minimum amount of time they could be kept out for. Powers, according to what I had read on PHO, could be weird like that.

A smile played across my lips as I pushed and twisted slightly with my mind, ejecting my deck and making the cards in front of me disappear. It looks as if I would have a lot to test out once I got out of hospital.

Two Weeks Later

Arcadia High School

All I could say was 'Long live the damn police, sucks to be you, Blackwell!' by the end of the investigation.

The police investigation, while unable to determine who had been responsible for my attack (which had been upped from assault with malicious intent to attempted manslaughter after the Police lab told them exactly how virulent the bio-waste in The Locker had been) had concluded that fault for the lack of discipline among the student body fell partly on the parents but mostly on the staff of Winslow.

The upshot of that was that I was granted quite a bit of compensation money and a rapid transfer to Arcadia, which was the best school in all of Brockton Bay. The staff of Winslow, on the other hand, had been sent to renew their teacher's licences. Ex-Principal Carrie Blackwell had been given the boot and was unofficially blacklisted as an educator, from what Dad was able to make out. She had put her house up for sale and left the Bay in quite a hurry, apparently.

I had started at Arcadia the previous day, which had been nerve-wracking to say the least. Even going near the lockers had made me want to hurl and I could almost smell the stench of The Locker any time I was near them. Urgh.

Currently, it was lunch and I was engaged in a bitter struggle against Victoria Dallon in a Duel Monster's match.

"Damn, I can't believe someone can use a vanilla Aleph deck like this!" the superheroine pouted as I dealt with another of her attacks with [Mirror Force].

Since being exported to Earth Bet, there had initially been only the cards from Aleph to work with, but new Bet-only cards had been made and there was heated competition between those who stuck primarily with Aleph cards, those who primarily used the Bet cards and those who used both. I used Aleph cards.

Three guesses what Glory Girl used.

"Good cards are all very well, but you need to learn when to play them rather than just getting them on the field as soon as you can." I told her, "Now then…my turn, I believe…I sacrifice [Moon Envoy] and [Hard Armour] in order to summon [Swift Gaia, the Fierce Knight]! Battle phase, he attacks your life points directly. You now have minus 400 life points. I win."

Vicky's pout returned in full force as she gathered up her cards. "How the hell did you beat me? Most of your cards aren't exactly strong. Hell, a lot of them had less than 1500 Attack points!"

"Strategy and tactics." I shrugged as the girls who had been watching commiserated with the blond superteen regarding her loss, "The best way to deal with overly strong cards like most of your monsters are is to trap them and use their strength against them. It also doesn't hurt that you use precious few magic or trap cards."

"I'm not too good with them." Vicky said ruefully, "That's more Ames' forte."

Amy Dallon, Panacea, jerked and looked up as her name was spoken. "Eh?"

"Your deck uses a lot of magic and trap cards." Vicky repeated, "You have, what, fifteen of each type?"

"It's recommended that a sixty-card deck be half monsters, half magic and trap." Amy retorted, "You have ten magic and trap cards altogether in a fifty-card deck."

Listening to the sisters' squabble good-naturedly, I smiled. This was heaven compared to Winslow. I had managed to pass tests in each subject to prove my knowledge, so I was right about where the rest of my year was at. Thank god I got an extra week off to study. My Winslow grades would have sucked.

The extra time off had also given me time to experiment with my power to determine exactly how some of it worked. I could only 'absorb' a legal deck size of at least forty cards and, for some reason, less than sixty cards. I also had to abide by the three multiples of a card per deck rule, but otherwise the limited, semi-limited and forbidden card rules were irrelevant.

I had spent a day with the card tattoo active and the five cards of my hand floating across my vision. The only thing I kept doing all day was attempt to draw a card. It had taken a while but I realised that the game mechanics were, to a greater or lesser degree, still in effect. I couldn't just draw whenever I wanted; I had to wait until it was my 'turn' again. That period ended up being about two hours from when I first drew.

I had yet to try to summon something, but if it worked, I would be a Master Cape. Given that one thing that I had tried was equipping myself with [Legendary Sword] and it worked, I am able to call myself a Trump/Shaker. When I equipped it, I knew how to use a sword and I definitely got faster and stronger. Probably more resilient as well. Not by much though; [Legendary Sword] was the very first Equip Card for warrior-type monsters that ever existed and only raised the Attack and Defence of warriors by 300 apiece.

Evidently humans counted as warriors.

I wanted to see if I could absorb decks other than my current one, so I was going to build a spellcaster deck after school and give it a try. It would be interesting to see, to say the least.

After School

Hebert Residence

"Whoa…" I whispered. Held in my hand was an open book with a black cover, a quill pen laid across it. This was the [Book of Secret Arts], the spellcaster equivalent of [Legendary Sword]. As with the sword, the book filled me with power (all 300 points in Attack/Defence that is possessed) but unlike the sword, it also gave me knowledge of an attack.

Unlike with monsters, it turned out that I could detach Equip Magic Cards from myself and return them to my hand, so I did that to the book before telling Dad that I was going for a walk and heading out to the one place in Brockton Bay that everyone ignored.

The Boat Graveyard.

Sure, New Wave overflew the place every now and then (mostly Glory Girl), but no one else even looked at the place. It was an eyesore, a disgrace that was a visible sign of the Bay's decay and decline.

It was also perfect for me to try and use my powers fully.

Eager though I was, I was also not incautious. Just because I assumed that no one would be looking at the Graveyard didn't necessarily mean that was the case. I took the time to weave my hair into a braid before going out, as well as stopping off and buying a few bandannas and a couple of domino masks. If Miss Militia could use a bandanna, so could I. The domino masks were because I'm paranoid.

When I entered the Boat Graveyard, I quickly ducked into a ship and put on what could be considered to be a disguise or costume. The plain white bandana was fairly nondescript and contrasted nicely with the red domino mask I chose. Good. So, now I was ready to try things out.

Re-equipping myself with the [Book of Secret Arts], I followed the knowledge in my head and raised a hand, palm flat, at a nearby ship hulk.

"[Radiant Beam]!"

A beam of solid light left my hand and struck the steel hull, leaving a sizable dent and a scorch mark in it. Whew. Looks like this was an attack reserved for Brutes only.

Swapping out my deck to warriors, I saw that the first card I had drawn was [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian] again. He was something of a favourite of mine, as his special ability represented my determination not to bow to overwhelming force. He wasn't able to be destroyed in battle by monsters with more than 1900 attack points and I was resilient enough to resist being crushed by the entire school becoming my enemy.

I reached out and tapped the picture of the card. In a flash of light, a tall warrior dressed in tan trousers, brown boots, a leather shirt with green armour over it, a green helmet, a dark purple cloak and wielding a longsword appeared. His features were elven, including the ears, and he had a pair of triangular tattoos , one beneath each of his eyes.

"Mistress." He said in a light tenor and knelt before me like a knight to his liege lord. I was struck dumb for a moment before I recovered myself.

"Stand, please."

Gracefully, [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian] stood and sheathed his blade.

"What is your bidding?" he asked respectfully.

"I…I want to be a hero." I told him, "My power lets me summon you…"

"Indeed, mistress." The elfin warrior nodded.

"This city, Brockton Bay, was a prosperous city once." I continued, "The villains have taken it over bit by bit over the years. I plan on stopping them. Are you with me?"

"My blade is yours, mistress." [Obnoxious Celtic Guardian] swore with a bow, "Our enemies shall fall before us!"

Oops. Better explain the 'no-killing' thing at some point before I head out for my first patrol. Still, this was excellent. I had no idea that my monsters would have personalities!

I smiled. "Well then…looks like it's time to experiment."

I got the idea from reading Stewart92's 'Screw the Rules, I have Escalation!' fic on Spacebattles. His idea was good, but I've changed it ever so slightly so it isn't permanent. I'm not going to do a full PRT assessment like I usually do, but let's just say that she's Master: 10 (Duel Monster's Projections) with a sub-rating of Trump/Shaker: 8, as well as a Striker: 1 Rating for being able to absorb the cards. Review! Reviews make the world go round!