Annex 040: Neither here nor There

"Kyle Warren has been detained, sir. He is held up at the security station cells." Iria's reports of the hour concerned the fate of the duelist who fell to Adamant. "Can we do that? Think of what that man must have gone through.." Zach had his own things to say about this event. "He stole a knife from the park-restaurant and hid it. That is enough reason to believe he is a threat to the people around him. We need to increase our security. I will not waste time debating the lasting effects of traumatic past experiences; they are no excuse." They could legally hold him for 48 hours without charges. It all depended on what the assaulted, Adamant, would say. So far he had not claimed any interest in the case. "Hmm. You know. Crazy or not, that Kyle was on to something." All this time the master had been focusing on one aspect of that confrontation. "What if they figured out how to create solid-vision." This was what mattered most to him. "Sir, even if they did, their dueldisks would have records of such events." Iria reassured. "Indeed. They could not have achieved such results without you." Zach added. It was the Master himself who had designed all the failsafes. If one was ever broken, another would take its place. "Ah you two know what to say. Still, I'd bet my villa that that guild is trying something."

"Speaking of Guilds. What's the latest on fusion?" Dom did not just call Zach in to hear his opinions on Kyle. "Stonewell says he didn't see or hear anything that would violate our rules. Looking at the results, it does not seem like the Fusion Guild threw any of their matches, or bribed any of their opponents." In the past there had been moments where that guild was suspected of fixing duels in questionable ways, because there was usually someone making money of it in the gambling circles. They just could never find a connection. "Dame Phoebe's victory was authentic too. I would know." Zach definitely had been giving it his best effort in round one. "And did you let him know that his associates are aware of his role now?" Iria inquired. "His friends you mean. No, I didn't. I may not agree with it, but I follow my orders." Zach had been told to not inform Eric of what Dom had said to his friends earlier today. Dom claimed Erics act would be more natural that way. "It's for his own good. Those guilds have eyes and ears everywhere. You don't want them to notice anything."

...

That same evening, as they sat on the bed in their hotelroom, Emily and Uno failed to escape the maze of thoughts in their heads. Cassius could not be visited during the evening hours and Uno had to wait for the next match before he could make any progress with Dom or his pendant. "Guys. Don't look so sad." The only one with any spirit left was Alice. "It's not tomorrow yet, there's so many hours left before that.. You shouldn't let them get away by being all mopey. We could do something else, like watch a movie!" She tried to cheer up the place a little and turned the TV on. "See. There is so much fun stuff on! Uno, do you want to see anything?" Alice gave Uno a full dose of her impossible-to-resist stare. "...I dunno.. I haven't seen a lot." He had no specific memory of a movie, nor did anything he watched on TV lately feel familiar in any way. "Ah yeah. In that case you gotta see this one!" Alice zapped the remote until she found the comedy she wanted to show them. "It's so good! Every one should see it at least once in their life!" With a glowing recommendation like that, Uno could hardly say no. "Eh. Fine." Emily gave in as well. They didn't have anything else to do. Why worry about the future when it wouldn't change anything?

...

The third day rolled in. The third round would begin at 10 AM. And Dom had added yet another twist to the bracket. He threw out the mystery and posted the matchups in advance this time. Whether that was due to Uno's deal with him, Kyle causing a scare the day before, or other more elusive reasons; the endresult was that the sixteen remaining duelists now knew what to prepare for. It did not change much for them, most guild duelists sided in cards for specific opponents anyway. Each deck was now known to the other, and the core could not be switched out. Three independent duelists, two synchro duelists, five fusion duelists and six XYZ duelists; those were the people competing for a spot in the quarterfinals. And Alice was up first, against someone from the Fusion guild. Uno would follow right after her, against Neter. Dom was at least not keeping him waiting for long.

The day also brought another new addition to the fold. "Mom!" The woman whom Alice greeted with overjoyed energy in every encounter. "You made it!" Heather showed up at the lobby of their hotel in the morning. "Of course. Yes I ran a little late because of traffic, but this place was not hard to find." She gave both her daughters a hug. "Nice to see you too, mom." Emily did not mind this time. "Now if only dad could complete the picture." She would not mind James doing the doting he always did when he tried to make her feel better. Just these few days and she already missed that kind of intimacy. "So do I, honey. Honestly I can't believe it is harder for him to get a day off than it is for me. The strings I had to pull.. well I won't let the details drag this day down." She was here for the family, and their friends. "Good morning Uno. It is still Uno, right?" Mrs brandt said carefully. "Still is." Uno grinned. "There's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure my real name can't be half as exciting." Uno was used to hearing it. He liked it. UNO would just have accept a namesake in his world.

"I see. So what were you going to do next? Were you headed to see Aaron?" Their mother asked. "We were going to the theater actually. The dueling is gonna start any minute now." Alice had to go on stage, so they could not really afford a detour. "Well then, we should better hurry. Lead the way."

"A HAPPY THIRD DAY TO YOU ALL, TRAVELERS AND FIGHTERS! AND WELCOME BACK TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DUEL THEATER. Dreamworld has got plenty of stunners in store for you this turn around! Only the cream of crop has made it to this point! Who knows what can happen when great forces like theirs meet on the stage. I certainly don't. But I am going to give them all the flair they deserve! So keep this factoid in mind, this theater was not just for those who came to listen to music. This was a place for all media, for all types of visuals. From here on in you will see dueling that you cannot get anywhere else!"

"Well well, Dom still has money to burn." Uno shook his head. At least he didn't seem to be the only one to marvel at this world's love for dueling anymore. "My, he certainly is into this." Mrs. Brandt heard Dom for the first time here. The stories about him were not exaggerated. "Now where are we supposed to sit?" She did not exactly have a ticket, nor was she a duelist. "I think Dom makes exceptions for relatives. He should. So stay with us mom." The lower ring was a lot emptier today. It had room for one more person. While they headed over there, Dom started calling for the first two duelists to step up. "That's me. I'm gonna go for it!" Alice waved her hand and went on her merry way. "Have fun, sweetheart!" Her mother cried out after her. "She looks radiant. I am glad that this turned out to be good for her." Heather had allowed this to happen in the first place. Her daughter did better than she or Emily expected. "Yeah." Emily sighed. There was still the fact that Alice did not seem to be enjoying her duels as much as she did before. Maybe today would be different with more family to watch her.

And the difference between round one and round two became as clear as day as soon as the duel actually began. Alice took the first turn. And as soon as she used her ritual spells to ritual summon Nekroz of Unicore, the theater used every visual enhancer embedded in the walls to broadcast a three-dimensional image of the monster in the open area above the ring. "Wowwww." The card looked every bit as real as the standard dueldisk projections, even with the dramatic increase in size. Now the audience did not need to look at the big screen the follow the actions, they could just watch the holograms directly. "Oh..Hi!" And the duelists themselves occasionally popped in as well. A ten feet Alice happily waved at the crowd. "Definitely a lot of money to burn." Heather had a short laugh. She did not imagine that this would be how she saw her daughter duel. "Yes, Dom was not kidding." Uno was not even surprised anymore at this point. He would enjoy dueling and watching duels like this.. if he could.

With every second, slowly but surely, the world grew silent around Uno. "What?" It felt like he was blacking out, but he wasn't. Every person around him turned into a blur, rapidly moving while standing still. Their words were inaudible, their colors were washed out. The only sounds he could distinguish were coming from close by. "It is happening?" He grabbed his own pendant, it did its lightgiving trick again. What was it saying? He held it against his ear to make out the sentences. There was a lot of mumbling, female and male voices arguing. However one voice came through clearly, it asked a familiar question and expanded upon it. "Hey. From one timetraveler to another, do you believe in fate?" Rapidly, the world normalized. The colors and noise flooded his senses. "Guh!"

"Uno? Earth to Uno?" Emily repeatedly called out to him. "Emily?" His reactions were slowed, but they were there. "What..what did I miss?" Everything was the same, except for the duel on stage. Just a second ago, Alice had summoned her monster. Now she was finishing off someone's lifepoints. The fight could not have gone that quickly, could it? "Did I go anywhere?" Uno was only in that confused state for less than a minute. The giant clock on the screens told him that 12 minutes had passed. Had he zoned out, did he forget what happened in the last 10 minutes? Or did he, actually, move through time? That voice put that thought in his head. "No?" Emily had not noticed anything going on with Uno, because she had been too focused on her sisters match. The same applied to her mother. "Are you well, Uno? Do you need medical attention?" She had not forgotten that he was an amnesiac. Complications in someone's mind would naturally arise from time to time. "It's fine. It is." Uno lied. He had no idea what just happened to him. Did Dom pick up on it? Did he really monitor everything about the pendant? Uno would have to tell him. First though, he would have to finish his duel. "I'm up."

Uno's entire situation had escaped Alice's notice because of her duel. Now that it was over, she didn't want to miss talking with Uno so she waited until she saw him leave his seat. "Hi-Hi, Miss." Uno's opponent crossed her path first however. "That was a really really cool duel. I liked it." Neter had walked in from the same path. "Oh uhm..thank you!" The kid sure seemed polite. "No problem. I like your guild's name too. Oddball.. better than mine; the Zodiac Duelists. You know, maybe I can join yours? Not now of course, but in the future." The kid requested, a bit indirectly. "Join? You want that? Oh I don't know how that works. I'll have to ask Uno and Dom." Alice wasn't sure she would keep doing this guild-stuff after this tournament. Yet she did not want to let him down either. "Sure, sure. I wish I could just make later happen now." Neter put on a wide grin. "But I think its gonna happen, it is fate perhaps."

"Huh?" Alice appeared surprised. But at the same time Uno had shown up and his reaction was ten times more intense. "What did you say?"

"Uno! I.. Are you okay?" Alice caught on to his disturbed state right away. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Uno thought to himself. "It's nothing." He lied again. "Hi-Hi mister Uno! I was just kidding you know? People can choose their own futures, right?" Neter meanwhile passed his statement of as something innocent. It could have been. Uno believed the opposite. He knew what coincidences were, and this was not one of them. "Alice. You did great on the duel. I'll take it from here." There were strange things at work here. No matter what happened next, he wanted her to stay away from Neter. "O..kay." Though she did not understand, she listened. "Good luck." She went back to her family. They would not give her much clarity either. "You could have said something, Uno. To put them at ease at least. Do you want people to worry?" Uno thought it was the way it was. Nothing could be changed now. He was here to duel, and he wouldn't walk away from it now. "Neter. Let's duel." He activated his dueldisk.

Neters LP: 8000 Uno's LP: 8000

"Eehhhh. That's a weirdlooking disk. I've never seen one of those before." Neter stared in awe. The kids own dueldisk was the most basic model one could imagine, hardly any duelists used it nowadays. At least it could still be used. "Yay! I get the first turn!" Neter drew five cards. "I should..wait no.." He placed one of them face-down in a spell/trap zone. "Wait, yes!" Then he normal summoned a monster, Satellarknight Alsahm(4/1400/1800). "Probably not your constellation, but who cares? It has a neat effect!" Alsahm put an arrow on its bow and fired it at Uno. A summoned Alsahm inflicted 1000 points of damage to the opponent. "Bye-bye Lifepoints!" The arrow went straight through Uno's head. "..." It might have been a visual effect, Uno was still weirded out by it. "Constellation?" The kid had an odd choice of words as well. Alsahm, like all Tellarknights, derived his name from actual star constellations. "Yeah, like the Zodiac! I like that kind of stuff. Especially Scorpio, that is my zodiac.. and it's my favorite! Hey-hey, Uno. What's yours?"

Uno's LP: 7000

"..I don't know." He answered truthfully. "Ehhhhh? How come?" Neter seemed puzzled by the revelation. Everyone with a birthdate had a constellation.. except those who had forgotten. "I do not remember when I was born." Uno told him. He was stunned he could even be so open about it. Then again, he wanted to see what this kid had to say about it. "Really? That's so sad. You don't have a birthday either then! It has got to be weeeeird to wake up and suddenly be as old as you are. It's like.. heehee.. you skipped ahead 16 years." Of all possible responses, ridicule was the last things Uno saw coming. "You..think this is funny?" This kid was laughing at him, right to his face. "Oh I'm sorry. It's just so ... easy all this time." The laughter did not stop. "You're not making any sense." Uno would have felt some anger if he knew what Neter was talking about. "Oh. yeah, I get that. Maybe this will help?" Neter pointed at the buckle of his belt. "What..." A blue jewel was embedded in there, with a shape and feeling eerily similar to Uno's...

"What?! You.. you have the same.." Uno touched his pendulum pendant. "Yup! You got it!" Neter clapped his hands together. Like he wanted to applaud him. "How? Why? What are they?" Uno was nowhere near patient enough to play along for answers, not this time. "You don't know that either? You forgot all the cool stuff! It's how we can be where we are, Uno. When we are. It's no wonder the others couldn't do anything with you around. Your pendulum had them confused." While Neters story raised more questions than answers, It did make one thing very clear. "The Others? You're one of them!" This kid was with June and August. "You did this to me, didn't you? You tried to do the same just now? You took my past away!" It was them, it was always them. "Uhh. I never met you before, Uno. I don't know how you got one of our pendulums either."

"Don't lie to me!" Uno shouted. He sensed a side of himself that he had never visited before. Anger took over. "I'm tired of being the only one to know nothing! I will make you tell me who I used to be, or I will end you! DRAW!"

Dom could halfway make out what was said down below. Uno's dueldisk was not picking up Neters words that well. "Times like these, I wish I could have just installed listening devices in every dueldisk. Damned privacy laws." That would have helped their investigation into Neters identity, an investigation he ran on his computers as soon as he saw what was happening. "Sir. The machines definitely are picking up the same activity again." Iria gave more information from her end as well. "Oh good. Then I'm not going mad. There is another one of those gems out there." The cameras spotted them, but Dom did not believe in it until now. "This could potentially be dangerous, sir. We should quarantine the two duelists." Neter was not coming after her master yet. Nevertheless Iria wanted to be on the safer-than-sorry side. "No. Let it play out. If we dont, we may never figure out what the heck is going on." He pulled up a screen to get a live feed of the energy output. They were finally getting powerful readings. "Huh.. That is a new one." The levels spiked higher than ever, as Uno drew his sixth card.

"Spell card, Pendulum Call!" The card that was drawn was also the card he played. "I discard one card to add two different 'Magician' Pendulum monsters from my deck to my hand!" Pendulum Call took Performapal Hip Hippo away and replaced it with Timegazer and Stargazer Magician. "Set the scales!" Uno made his next move without flair, boasts or doubts. The scale 1 and scale 8 Pendulum monsters were placed in their Pendulum zones and Uno proceeded with a Pendulum summon. "Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon!" The red dragon(7/2500/2000) came out roaring, it was as hungry for battle as his master. "Ohhh. You're playing the role of the monster now, eh?" Neter laughed once more. "Or maybe you're starting to remember that you were one.."

(To be Continued in Annex 041: The Exiled Cipher)

New Cards used by Uno
Pendulum Call