Judgement of the World

Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

Beta By: Me

A/N: I forgot to ask... did I ever mention that I used the Tarot to help decide the title of this series' name? What do you guys think?

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The bed was soft, the sheets newly washed and layered on the bed, the room was peaceful with the only sound the phone as it rang the call to the usual number through. Yet after today Aki couldn't say with confidence that the phone line was secure. The incredible talent in KaibaCorp was well known, but after the brusque communication from the CEO, Aki was still rather shaken up.

"Aki."

Yusei's voice was the first thing she heard after the soft click as he picked up the call. His voice was normally a calming force for her, but given what the CEO had stated... Heck just the rest of the day in general.

"Yusei, we need to talk," Aki began as she licked her lips in apprehension. She sat up in her bed and looked over at the phone, "have you been trying to hack the KaibaCorps computers?"

She waited long enough to give him pauses to think on her words, one thing she 'had' learned from their conversations was that he never 'gave' permission for her to talk. There was this silent expectation that she just 'do it', and her pauses where more out of manners. Instead she waited for his confirmation and was initially answered with the soft sound of fabric rustling just enough to make her think he lightly moved. Maybe shrugged, but he seemed to realize that a silent answer wasn't good enough and instead added a brief, "yes."

"Well... it got detected and Lord Kaiba fairly instructed me to inform you to, in short, cut it out." Her voice carried her nervous humor as she stretched her legs out and studied her recent pedicure as a type of distraction.

"Did he threaten you." Yusei's voice was stern, focused in the way that she got used to very quickly when he got protective.

And quickly pushed aside the thrill at his tone, that subtle 'if he messed with you I'm coming for him' tone that he had. Even though she was fully capable of taking care of herself, just to idea of someone protecting her was, well. Romantic. In a way she had not been able to really enjoy because of her powers her whole life. So now, the ability to hear someone who, normally, came off as coolly impassive sound displeased because 'she' was in danger.

"It wasn't me that he was angry at, remember when I mentioned those figurines of Carly's?" She began as the opening to what was bound to be a very interesting tale. Yuseis' softly murmured acknowledgment alerted her to continue. "Well, get this, the first one she bought with her own money and got a card thanking her for her purchase. It was a message from 'the' Duel King, Mouto Yugi 'himself' and it came with instructions to take pictures of the piece and send it to a particular email address."

"But she couldn't afford to buy any more so it was just a pipe dream to her. Until she started doing these landscape photos for some side money and one day this 'guy' in Egypt offered to buy her pieces for really high prices. She figured because he was in Egypt he wasn't used to seeing greenery and used the money to buy those figurines. She takes pictures and he buys them so she began getting those figurines and emailing the pictures. But apparently the money he 'paid' her and was used to buy the figurines are being cycled back into his account. So he's not losing any money and she's gotten the whole collection."

"That is impossible, or suspicious," Yusei pointed out as he leaned forward, his hands folding before his face as he focused on the phone.

"It gets worse, or better, depending on your point of view," Aki pointed out. She took a breath, let it out and walked over to the phone. "Apparently the 'email' account is known by a very small group of people close to the CEO and he blew off the first picture as an accident. Like Carly mis-typed the email account, but his son keeps up with the account and tossed the later letters until this last time when Lord Kaiba saw it." She pulled the seat out and sat down, letting the sound of the chair brush against the floor fill the empty air for a moment.

"That 'company' that Carly was getting her figurines from? Has been out of business for ages, he checked, and the numbers are wrong, as though someone made one more set and sent it to her directly."

"Someone is faking Mouto's identity?" Yusei suggested, worrying that maybe Carly had gotten herself in some type of trouble.

"Maybe, Lord Kaiba believed so, and boy, Yusei he was so 'angry'. In the span of two days he had shut down her email accounts and began wiping her out of 'history'. He had hacked her schools deleting her scores and attendance records. The hospital she was born at suddenly stopped having her birth certificate, Misty had gotten worried and tried to email Carly. The account said it didn't exist and her phone number became disconnected... She didn't know he was doing it, but when we figured out how 'much' he had done?"Aki shook her head. "My witch found an email sent by the Vice President, explaining that they had gotten notified by that same Egyptian and that he managed to get his father to calm down. Come to find out Lord Kaiba had hacked her computer, and he took pictures of me 'and' my Witch while he was working on restoring everything. If that Egyptian wasn't already his friend..."

"In the end he told me that he figured since I was there, that I must be friends with you and decided to take that moment to tell me to give you that message." Aki finished and just being able to talk to Yusei had a wonderful relaxing sensation for her as the stress just poured through her body out her feet and leaving her feeling less nervous. Yusei knew, and well, she was entrusting a lot to him wasn't she?

"I don't know much about KaibaCorp, but I do know they keep the records of the duels that used the duel disc systems," Yusei began to explain what he had been up to. "So I was trying to find the duels that Rua would have been in where he would have used those cards." He sat back in his seat as he recalled his searches through the database. He honestly had no idea that KaibaCorp had that level of skilled computer experts on staff. Only to chide himself for his own vanity since he wasn't trained in computer hacking or had any formal education. Sure he could duel, but he simply didn't have the resources to deal with anyone who 'had' the resources and skill to counter a hacker.

"How far do you think you got? Maybe if I can explain it to them they might give us the information?" She asked, seeing Yusei's point in the duel systems to research. If the twins didn't know and the decks weren't talking about it, than the database 'would' be a good place to start.

"Not far enough, the walls are strong and by the time I was making any headway the defenses started shutting me out. But if you can get the information over the table then I have no reason to hack anyone." Yusei explained before it occurred to him that what he just said wasn't detailed enough and that he should frame it in a better, more benign manner. "All I really need is a list of all the cards he used in duels using the Disc, and what was the outcome of those duels. It might get us nothing more than just a list, but that's better than nothing. For that matter as young as the twins are I honestly doubt it will take that long to amass a list."

"Ok, I'll plant that seed and see what grows," Aki replied, once again, just talking to Yusei seemed to fix every question and concern she had up. Allowing her to change subjects to something of lighter fare. "The bridge looks to be going well, from this end."

"The twins want me to move in with them," Yusei voiced quietly, his voice colored lightly with amusement rather than its usual pure neutral tone.

"Yes, they told me about that, they seem to have been making plans for what life is to become once the bridge is fixed," Aki acknowledged with a smile on her lips. "Though I am curious, what are 'your' plans for when the bridge is fixed?"

Yusei blinked on his side of the phone, turning his gaze to the rest of the room he was currently resting in. The plain brown walls, the dirty floor, all in all a dilapidated shack just structured enough to not let the winds blow as they wanted. "I figure I'll get a job as a repairman, its pretty much what I already do. There seems to be no requirements for it," he answered after a bit of silence. "Crow suggested we could just be room mates and split the rent."

Aki blinked at that, trying to think of how much a repairman made off hand and if it was enough to pay 'half' a rent. Her hand slowly began reaching for her computer system and her mind starting to mentally check for how much rent went for in Neo Domino. Though, as she thought about it, he 'did' and could make a bit of profit from being a duelist so if he supplemented work with duels it might be doable. Then an earlier thought came to mind stilling her hand, "are you going to see about attending school? Asuka mentioned that it might be possible to get you enrolled, that the principle might be interested with having the Turbo Duel King as a student."

"I would like to, but wouldn't it look bad to have a marked criminal that has never been in school to get a free pass into high school?" Yusei asked as he settled near the phone and leaned against the wall. The opportunity to go to school was appealing, but realistically there was just so much holding him back. He wasn't versed in anything that was considered 'typical' and part of him figured any education would have to be done through online schools.

"We talked about that, and Ryo said that even if it wasn't feasible there 'are' placement tests that you would have to take regardless so you could take that. At least you would know where your strengths and weaknesses lie," her voice offered and Yusei didn't tense like he had the first time he heard the name.

Crow's voice crept in the back of his mind, chirping bemusedly about Yusei's growing territorial behavior towards Aki. Not that Yusei 'was' being territorial, he just felt it was in his right to know the people who Aki was spending her time with. So Asuka and Ryo 'had' to be hacked and searched on one particular lazy day when he had nothing to do.

"I'm glad you've found a group in school to spend time with," he finally said into the silence as his view shifted from one corner of the room across to the other and trying to imagine what a stable bedroom would look like in Neo Domino.

"Yeah, its great, we have lunch together, chat, talk about school and life and currently tease Asuka about Judai." Aki gave a soft laugh in amusement though the new male name got Yusei's attention.

"'Judai'?"

"Yeah, he's not new, but he's good friends with Ryo's little brother. Thing is he's kind of a dysfunctional Psychic duelist, really odd to be honest." Aki confessed with a faint, tired smile, "he can see Duel Spirits as easily as Ruka and I. And while they willingly manifest for 'him', he can't make them visible to anyone else so it, understandably, makes it hard when he wants to interact with them without looking insane. He doesn't seem strong enough to bring them fully into the physical world for others, but that could be because he's so easily distracted."

"You sound tired talking about him, is he draining you?" Yusei asked as he quickly picked up on her weary tone.

"Kind of, he's a reasonably nice guy I suppose, a bit too forward and eager when he sees something he wants I guess. And what he currently seems fixated on is trying to get me to just have the Duel Spirits be visible at all times." Yusei heard Aki's voice fade into her blowing air in futility. "I guess the redeeming humor of it is that he's the only guy that doesn't give Asuka the time of day. So now, for some reason that we girls can't fathom, she's crushing HARD on him. Though I suppose Kazushi was right that this might become problematic in the future."

Yusei sat there mentally going over the size of the gap of the bridge and wondering what upgrades he would need to perform on his D-Wheel to get it to jump the gap. Just a small conversation involving Yusei's fist and this guys' jaw.

"Yeah, its fun to watch, but honestly I don't think Judai notices anyone who isn't a duel card!" Aki continued with a rueful shake of the head. "And it just makes me feel bad for how she's starting to pine for someone who doesn't notice her. Honestly I thought she was Ryo's girlfriend and that they made a power couple. But apparently they're just friends and welp... But I said I would start checking through Spirits to find Junko and Momoe potential guys." Aki gave a tired laugh as she rested her head against a hand. "My powers used to scare people away, now I'm being asked to help people find their future partners using it... My life has changed so much, and all thanks to you Yusei."

Yusei took all that in, the romance problems weren't his issue unless Judai got too assertive with Aki. Then again Aki's deck probably would send him soaring through the air if he tried. So instead Yusei tried to figure out how being a Psychic Duelist somehow made someone valuable in finding a suitable partner. Was she supposed to interview people's decks and find out their criteria or interests?

He finally shook his mind and decided that the derailing needed to stop, "Aki, lets go back to Carly for a bit."

"Oh! Sure, I'm sorry. Well apparently Misty had been trying to reach Carly since yesterday, but when she couldn't she tried Jack." She left her sentence hanging and Yusei heard her off tone inflection of his name.

Bringing to mind his whole 'king' persona that he went by and causing Yusei to quickly try to route out what the guy would have done. Once he got alerted that something was wrong he would have undoubtedly tried to reach her himself. Once that failed he would rush to her place Yusei suspected but waited for Aki to elaborate. After all, what Jack would do was being theorized using old data, Yusei never dealt with Jack when it came to his girlfriend save the incident involving Aki and that had been over the phone.

"Well, apparently, and this is from Carly as well, Jack doesn't call Carly. 'She' is always expected to contact 'him' first and any visit has to be either her inviting him or him making... Well essentially a 'state visit' of sorts. But Jack refused to believe Misty at first so Misty ended up calling me later that day. We talked for a bit about what had happened and she went on to explain how she 'sensed something was amiss' and tried emailing and calling Carly. Hence how she realized her hunch was right and tried to reach Jack. After all they're dating..."

Aki's tone stated distant as she recalled the later part of the day, while Yusei turned to face the phone again and give it a better portion of his attention.

"Seriously her ability can be disconcerting, but at least she managed to contact Jack again with confirmation. Because about an hour later Jack showed up at Carly's panting, since the elevators weren't fast enough for his taste and he ran up the flights of stairs to get there."

Didn't Carly live on the fifth floor?

Yusei pondered that question for about a minute before he shook his head in answer. Jack could pose as a King all he wanted, but when he broke character... Really he was a bit more of a clown than most would realize, though certainly not on the level that Crow could be. Though Crow was more because of his own nature to appear sociable and friendly. With the Marks it was more imperative to give an impression of a friendly safe person. Marks were great on Satellite since it enforced an image of toughness and raw power. But they were always leading factors to cost someone a chance at a job on the mainland. Which was neither here nor there.

"And I take it you left them so he could provide the 'protective boyfriend' image for Carly?" He suggested as a possible outcome and explanation for Aki being home again.

"Yes, you could tell that Jack was rather torn up about not realizing the situation sooner and being there. Actually he's been acting kind of funny around me as of late. Like he's been super nice, he started to chew me out for not calling him directly then just sorta stopped." Aki's head tilted a bit to the side at 'that' particular thought. "After a bit he just kinda grumbled an apology and I think he needs a regular target to yell at and didn't know what to do when there was no one to lash out at. I didn't mind really, I understand his situation because how 'would' we know something was up?"

"Yeah well, Jack hasn't had to deal with a lot of women before just that handler of his, so its probably new to him." Yusei offered as a possibility, rather than out himself as having threatened Jack if he started anything again against Aki. "But they're safe and that just leaves us with the twins, they called earlier by the way."

"Oh! That's good, I always found it odd they wouldn't just call on their own before," Aki confessed as their topics began to shift onto other things.