DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN YU-GI-OH!
The Devlin is in the Details.
|PROLOGUE—
The first thing he noticed when he woke was that he couldn't see. Everything was completely, 100 percent black. The second thing that he noticed was that it was eerily quiet. No noisy neighbors or traffic driving past his house—nothing.
Nothing except the really loud and annoying sound of his alarm clock ringing next to his ear.
He smacked his hand out blindly. He felt his hand hit something and it must have been an alarm clock because the incessant ringing stopped.
Now with a moment to think, he realized that things were different. The first of which was that his sheets felt weird. They were all slippery and cold instead of his usual warm flannel ones.
"Shit!" he swore as he got out of bed and immediately stubbed his toe. Who the hell moved my nightstand? he wondered as he took another step forward.
His room had looked the same his entire life and he'd been able to find his way in the dark for years now.
"Damn!" he cursed as he stumbled into what he thought was a bookshelf. It was so dark in the room, he couldn't see a thing.
When he finally got to his bedroom doorway, he tried without success to find the doorknob. His hands felt nothing but air. He reached up tentatively to touch his eyes, terrified of what he was going to find. There was something over them.
Tentatively, he pulled whatever was covering his eyes off his head and peeked them open. "It's just a sleep mask!" he sighed in relief.
That explained it.
Well, sort of.
He took the sleep mask off. He had never worn one before, but it was better than the alternative—for a moment he had been worried that he had woken up blind!
"Hello?" he said warily, blinking in the sudden brightness.
No one answered.
Finally able to see, he noticed that he was in a room that he didn't recognize at all. The room was much fancier and all the furniture looked brand-new and very modern.
Is this a hotel room? he wondered, looking around. There was a massive bed pressed against the wall, and he could see a small living room area with a loveseat and a small desk.
He opened what he thought was his bedroom door. "Defeinelty a hotel," he muttered as he peered out the door into a hallway line with identical doors.
Leaving his room, he cautiously made his way down an unfamiliar hallway. As he passed a mirror hanging in the hall, he stopped in his tracks. He could feel the blood rushing from his face.
He wasn't alone.
"Shit! You scared me," he said, turning to the blonde kid who was standing behind him.
But...the kid was gone!
He turned back to the mirror. There was the kid again. Short, with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung over his face as bangs.
He lifted his hand to wave—and the kid lifted his hand too! He touched his face. The kid in the mirror mimicked the action.
"What is happening?" he whispered. But he already knew. There wasn't another person in the hall.
The kid in the mirror was—him!
He rushed back to "his" room and slammed the door behind him. He leaned back against the door and sighed. What the hell is happening? he looked around the room suspiciously. It felt familiar to him for some reason.
Now that he was looking closer, he saw a backpack lying on the loveseat and on the small desk next to it, he saw a phone. Leaned up against the phone was a plain white envelope.
Unable to help himself, he let curiosity get the better of him and walked over to pick the envelope up. It had already been torn open and inside were six Duel Monster cards.
Not just any five cards either—he recognized five of the cards as the ones Pegasus had sent to Yugi Muto during the Duelist Kingdom Arc. Which was strange, but not as strange as the sixth card.
The name at the top of the card read: Duelist ID card. His "face" was printed where the image of a Duel Monster would usually be and underneath the picture was a short description.
Name - Sam
Age - 15
Duelist Rank - Amateur
"Oh shit," he groaned. Everything was becoming more clear, things were coming back to him. He knew the face in the mirror had looked familiar—it was the teen Pegasus had brought out to embarrass Bandit Keith during the Intercontinental Duelist championship in New York.
He slammed a fist down into the desk as hard as he could. "Fuck!" he shouted in pain as his knuckles hit the wood. The pain helped him realize the situation. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
This was either the most detailed and real dream he'd ever had—but that couldn't be possible since most of the time when you knew a dream was a dream you wake up. So this was real, and all that crazy shit Yugi Muto and his friends dealt with was real too.
Sam—like it or not that was who he was now—set the cards down and grabbed the backpack on the loveseat. He opened it and rifled through the extra clothes, soap, and toothbrush inside.
And at the bottom...two star chips, a dueling gauntlet, and a deck of Duel Monster Cards.
He grabbed the deck and shuffled through it. "A Toy archetype?" he frowned as he saw the Toy Soldier and Toy Emperor cards. Not the most powerful cards in the world, but he could work with them for now.
"Make them work for what though?" he muttered to himself.
Sam had no desire to be a hero. His mindset when it came to heroes was they were great protagonists in stories, but in his personal life, he followed what he liked to call Luffy's Law.
The Millenium Items. Shadow Games. Fucking Zorc!
He shook his head. No, he wanted no part of any of that. He'd let Yugi and his friends handle all that magical nonsense.
Instead, thought about the Duelist Kingdom Tournament.
He had always loved the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card game, and now that he had the chance to make a career out of it, could he really let that chance go because he was scared?
"King of Games," Sam mused aloud. Having people call him that would be amazing and if he won the Duelist Kingdom tournament, he wouldn't just be the King of Games.
He would have the Glory of the King's Opposite Hand card. With that card, he could ask Pegasus for anything he wanted.
And what Sam wanted was everything.
Because if he did win, he wasn't going to stop at asking Pegasus to release the souls of Yugi's grandpa, Mokuba, and Kaiba. He was going to ask for that, the three million dollar prize he would give to Joey for his sister's surgery, and much much more.
That was the power that came with holding the Glory of the King's Opposite Hand. In the immortal words of Croquet: just as the card was a blank slate, there was no limit to the prize he could request from Pegasus when he won.
Sam could take over Industrial Illusions as his reward...hell, he could even ask for Duelist Kingdom island itself!
Croquet had also mentioned asking for the Millenium Eye, but Sam didn't want that. The Millenium Eye was literally the only thing he wasn't going to ask for.
Having just one of the Millenium items in his possession would put a target that he absolutely did not want on his back.
He didn't want to get dragged into Shadow Games or any of that shit. He wanted a life of luxury and access to the rarest Duel Monster cards in existence.
Except he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the tournament right now!
Not with a Toy archetype deck.
Sam jumped as his door suddenly rattled from someone knocking on it. Now what? he grumbled as he went to open it.
Standing outside the door was a mountain of a man dressed in an expensive-looking suit. "All duelists have boarded," the man said. "We will be departing for the Duelist Kingdom soon, please stay on the ship."
Dammit! Sam thought as the man turned and walked down the hall to knock on the next door. He didn't even have time to find a game shop and see if he could find any extra cards to bolster his deck.
He glanced down the hall when the door next to his opened. Rex Raptor stood in the doorway. "What do you want?" the dino-duelist demanded.
"All duelists have boarded," Pegaus' goon repeated word-for-word. "We will be departing for the Duelist Kingdom soon, please stay on the ship."
"Fine!" Rex slammed his door in the man's face.
Sam grinned and went back into his room. Seeing Rex down the hall with his own room had given him an idea. Mai was looking for a room so she didn't have to sleep in the common area and she would bet a kiss in exchange.
Back when he'd first started watching the anime as a young teenager, Mai had been the hottest thing he'd ever seen. And because he was nothing if not an opportunist, this wasn't an opportunity Sam was going to pass up.
He grabbed his Duel Monsters deck, the six cards Pegasus mailed him, his two star chips, and his dueling gauntlet. From this moment on, none of them would leave his person. He'd seen how loose Pegasus was with the rules and he wasn't going to risk being kicked off the island because someone stole his deck or star chips.
Huh, Sam paused as another thought struck him.
Stealing a deck...that wasn't a bad idea.
As many problems as the Duelist Kingdom Arc had in Yugioh, what pissed me off the most was that Yugi didn't take advantage of winning the tournament. A card that let him ask Maximillion Pegasus, the "Creator" of Duel Monsters for anything?
I know he's supposed to be innocent and kind, but come on Yugi!
Thanks for reading!