XXVIII

Leo Duel School

Akaba Himika stared out of her window. Angel-IQ had been projecting the video feed onto its surface, giving her a front-row seat to the scene playing out some fifty meters directly above her. But it scarcely registered in her brain. The moment she had seen the first of three figures reveal herself to be an enemy that she had allowed to poison her company—right under her very nose—all of her plans and preparations for the defense of Maiami City had nearly taken a nosedive then and there, straight through the glass that took up one whole wall of her office.

Gwendolyn Grimm had been low enough in the totem pole of the Leo Corporation's chain of command that Himika had scarcely been aware of her existence, let alone her employment, until her most prized Fusion Duelist had started poking her nose in places no other student would dare. Implacable and formidable the headmistress might be—but ever since Kōtsu Masumi had started speaking of psychic powers and Fusion Monsters that trampled her school's best Decks under their heels, Himika's head had not stopped spinning at the notion that she—and she alone—had allowed Dr. Grimm to come so close to infesting her precious school with the bare minimum of help. Now, hardly one year later, here she was again—and this time, Himika knew that infiltration and infestation were off the table.

Beneath the black cloak that had concealed her, Himika saw hints of Dr. Grimm's oversized violet overcoat—still as shabby, patched, and threadbare as ever. But if the Psychic Duelist's return to Maiami City had been meant to show her true colors to the world, she had succeeded and then some: the custom-tailored jacket and fatigues she wore underneath looked so much like the uniform of the Obelisk Force that the headmistress knew it had to be intentional.

And yet … it wasn't the same uniform as the Ædonai that had invaded her city yesterday, either. Though the basics of the design remained, she saw no hint of decoration—no epaulettes, no masks, no frills, not even camouflage—and the palette of blue-gold and white had been traded for lilac and black. If there was intent in that, Himika wasn't sure. But she heard its message loud and clear: I am a Fusion Duelist. I dare you to make me show you why.

Her spring-green hair fluttered to one side as the wind picked up—and there it was at last. Himika had been bracing herself for the inevitable ever since Leo had described it to Masumi. That didn't stop her heart from skipping a beat as she saw the wound her top student had left behind for the first time.

The patch over Dr. Grimm's right eye concealed most of the scar: thread-thin from nose to temple, it was next to invisible even in the crisp image quality of the camera feed Angel-IQ had accessed. Only a thin trickle of liquid gave it away—"liquid", she could only think to herself, because blood wasn't supposed to look that black. And it certainly wasn't supposed to smolder.

Only the sight of Nakajima, displayed on an adjacent video link, gave the headmistress some modicum of calm amid the disquieting sight. The aide had had his phone practically glued to his ear for the past five minutes, so busily had he been relaying Himika's orders to the many Duelists of Maiami City who had been mobilized in preparation for this very moment. And yet, Himika was beginning to wonder how prepared she was for this at all.

"I'd thought they'd have sent more," she murmured, almost to herself. It was loud enough that Nakajima paused in his discourse over his mobile, and the hologram of Angel-IQ—blue eyes shining brightly as they projected the scene on her office window—turned a millimeter in her direction.

"Himika-sama?" The supercomputer's query was full of a hesitation that made her sound more human than ever.

But Himika did not hear her. Already she knew she was incorrect: the Ædonai hadn't sent more the first time either. They'd only sent Markus Streiter—in disguise, at that. Only when his cover had been on the edge of being blown had the full force of the invasion come crashing down on Maiami City.

Yesterday had started with just one Duelist seeking two. Today, it was three Duelists, in search of a different two. The implications of that sent a shiver down her spine she'd felt once before, and hoped to never feel again.

Nakajima pocketed his phone after what felt like an eternity, and produced a tablet. "I've updated the Civil Defense teams, Himika-san. They're closing in on Dr. Grimm's position right now."

He tapped at the screen, and instantly the smart glass came alive with activity. Himika noticed several black dots—just large enough that she knew them to be Duel Monsters—traversing the skyline from one building to the next. "Half of the entire force will blockade the LDS campus," the aide explained as she looked on. "Five-block radius—three ranks deep. That'll box them in for long enough that the Lancer reserves on the streets can get everyone who isn't a Duelist to shelter. The rest have been dispersed throughout the city."

But Himika was already shaking her head. "Something's wrong," she said, far too quietly.

Nakajima snorted. "Good. I'm glad it isn't just me."

"I'm being serious." And her aide did not argue as she motioned to the feed. "Remember how we've been engaging the Ædonai up until now?" It was all about deceit and subterfuge, she told him—keeping their targets in the dark for as long as they could … until they unmasked for the kill. They'd done it to a whole city with Markus, they'd done it to Himika herself with that demented, damnable sniper—even going so far as to put a bead on her infant daughter—and they'd done it to her son with those vicious excuses for maids. Nakajima had looked so exceptionally sheepish as she pointed out this last that she saw no point in bringing up what Dr. Grimm herself had done to Leo.

"But my point," she went on, "is that none of that is going on here. I was ready to battle three hundred Duelists—I wouldn't have been shocked to see three thousand. Then they bring out three of them—and one of them is about as deceitful as it gets, for God's sake! And yet she's just—just standing there!" She was spluttering now. "They all are! Out in the open, for everyone to see! They have to be planning something, or waiting for something—I just know it! I don't know what that something is—and I hate not knowing!"

She let herself seethe for a moment, wondering idly if this was what it felt like to be one of Pavlov's dogs a century and change ago. The bell had been rung; the red meat had been laid out on the table, almost begging to be eaten—but by whom?

Himika knew that what Nakajima was saying made sense: this trio of Duelists had to be stopped, or at the very least contained. They weren't making a move to defend themselves—every second they stayed put was one more second they could get their own forces organized into a well-oiled defense.

So why did she feel like she was the only person who didn't want that?

Unbidden, words floated up from a memory that seemed so much longer ago than she knew it to be: … you have entered a world of pieces and players; you're either one or the other—and right now, none of you even know the shape or size of the board on which you stand …

It took far longer than Himika would have preferred to admit to realize that had been her own words. It took even longer to realize whom it was she'd said them to—and a fraction of an instant for her to resolve to never speak to Masumi about it again. She'll never let me hear the end of it if I do.

But now was not the time to contemplate the irony. She had a city to protect. And the most worrying thing about the notion was the potential size of the invasion she knew was inevitable. Markus had come very close to breaking them with his dizzying strategy of divide-and-conquer. Either his loss had needed this many bodies to fill the void left behind …

Himika swallowed. Or what's coming will be bigger than before, she thought—much bigger. And with so many of her best Lancers gone, all the way in another dimension … We were lucky back then. We may not be so lucky now.

Her eyes roved over the three invaders, one by one, drinking as much of the faces and forms as their appearance and Angel-IQ's camera feed would allow. The second of them had to be male; even though he squatted where he was—as if he'd decided to imitate an overlarge vulture—his black cloak still betrayed a hint of shoulders too broad to belong to any woman. Dr. Grimm's green hair and single green eye came and went from her field of vision without an ounce of pleasure; the LDS headmistress had seen enough of that face for one day already.

And the third …

Himika bit her lip. It was a strange trio who looked down upon her city, and none of them more so than this figure. The tallest of them by far—seven feet tall, if Dr. Grimm was six; and every bit as thin, from what she could tell—it possessed either a very thick neck or next to no shoulders, and broad, sloth-like arms that curved and sloped to the side. The ebon cloak that hid both face and gender wrapped strangely around its head and legs as the wind billowed it about; Himika saw hints of an elaborate headpiece—its outline against the hood barely visible above its misshapen limbs—and a spiky-looking half-sphere around the waist, like the cage of an old-time hoop skirt.

A bombshell, Himika thought, as she felt her teeth nip at the tip of her tongue. That was what this cloaked figure reminded her of: the cone of a nuclear warhead. The comparison felt inexplicably eerie in her mind.

"Angel-IQ." The soft voice did nothing to dampen her newfound unease. "I need a full scan of Sector AA-00 and every life sign in it. We have to know exactly what we're dealing with."

The supercomputer did not even acknowledge her, nor did she need to. The blue eyes had yet to waver from the trio of arrivals as light danced within their hard-light irises.

"Nakajima." Her eyes were all that moved as she addressed her faithful aide. "I want the Civil Defense Forces to regroup at once. Two ranks deep, not three—one line of defense at four blocks, another at eight. Put half of each one on the streets and keep the rest on the skyline. Tell the Lancer reserves to redouble their efforts at getting the civilians to shelter—I'm getting a very bad feeling about all this. And where the hell is Mayor Sawatari?"

Nakajima checked his phone again. "Finishing up his speech, last I heard. I'll send him a final update."

Himika rolled her eyes, muttering something about politicians in times of crisis.

"Himika-sama." Angel-IQ's blue eyes were flashing red. "Incoming priority message from the Château."

Masumi. The headmistress was pulling up the video feed almost before she knew it. Quicker than it took to tell, the image of Dr. Grimm and her unknown partners-in-crime had been replaced with the faces of her Fusion and Synchro circuit representatives. Both of them looked as though they'd just been told a close friend had died.

"Angel-IQ's brought you up to speed." She did not need to make it sound like a question.

Yaiba nodded. "Yeah. Some of us are a little bit shaken here." It was hard to tell if he or Masumi was gripping the other's hand more tightly.

"We knew this day was coming." The Fusion Duelist's voice was damp with resignation. "We just didn't think it'd come so soon." She swallowed. "We're ready to leave at a moment's notice if you need us."

"Stay where you are." Even Himika was surprised at how quickly the words fell from her mouth. "They haven't made a move yet. The more they delay, or can be delayed, the more prepared … "

She trailed off. "Where's Hokuto?" The rest of the LID were in the background, she saw—but it had taken her until just now to notice her Xyz circuit representative was not among them.

"He dashed off inside the Château a moment ago," Masumi replied. "That's … kind of why we called. He says he might know who one of the other people in the cloaks is. He's checking the study, just to be sure."

Checking Leo's study? Himika frowned. "Did he tell you who he thought it might be?"

"He did." Yaiba drew a long breath through his teeth. "And he said you weren't going to like it, if he was right."

The headmistress stared flatly at her Synchro circuit rep. "I have … one of the most laughably overpowered Fusion Duelists known to the Leo Corporation practically right on my doorstep," she all but snarled at him. "With friends, no less. I fail to see how I can hate this situation any more than I possibly can."

She knew from the way her insides knotted up that she'd jinxed herself even before Masumi had opened her mouth.

Yaiba was right. She didn't like it.

» REBOOTING PRIMARY SENSORIUM MATRIX

» AUXILIARY SYSTEMS STANDING BY

{I DID TELL YOU TO BRACE FOR A BUMPY RIDE, AGENT 223. THE FIRST DIMENSIONAL TRANSIT IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST.}

…

so much

light so

much color

…

so much

sound

…

{ARE YOU WELL?}

so much noise so

much people so much

…

too much

…

{RESPOND.}

…

wait

…

what is

…

[DOCTOR. I FEEL SOMETHING.]

» SOLID VISION SIGNAL DETECTED

» STRENGTH INSUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN DUEL

{SO DO I. THEY'RE SCANNING US. THAT SUPERCOMPUTER OF THEIRS, I DON'T DOUBT.}

{LET THEM, DOCTOR. THEY WANT US TO MAKE THE FIRST MOVE. FOCUS.}

…

where

…

» SIGNAL TRACE COMPLETE

» SOURCE CONFIRMED TERTIARY MISSION OBJECTIVE [Q-1610217]

» DUELIST GG_Ψ-139 TO ADVISE IF PURSUIT/ENGAGEMENT REQUIRED

…

there

{SOMETHING'S WRONG. THEY'RE NOT HERE.}

{THE TWINS?}

{AND THE L-I-D. THEY MUST HAVE REMOVED THEM FROM MAIAMI CITY BEFORE WE ARRIVED.}

…

how

…

does she

…

{DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT. I DID A TELEPATHIC SWEEP OVER THE ENTIRE CITY. NOT THAT I'D NEED ONE TO FIND THOSE DAMNABLE KIDS.}

{IT SOUNDS TO ME AS THOUGH YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE ALREADY.}

{THERE'S NO OTHER PLACE THEY COULD BE, IF THEY'RE NOT IN THE CITY.}

{THEN WHY DO YOU SOUND SO ANXIOUS?}

…

{HOLD ON. I'VE GOT SOMETHING ELSE. 223, TAP INTO BROADCAST FREQUENCY SEVENTEEN.}

[YES, MA'AM.]

» FREQUENCY ISOLATED

» FREQUENCY ACCESSED

{—PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN PREEMPTED FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.}

{GOOD AFTERNOON.}

» SIGNAL TRACE COMPLETE

» VOICEPRINT CONFIRMED PRIMARY MISSION OBJECTIVE [SAWATARI SHINICHIRŌ]

» STANDBY ASSAULT CONFIGURATION TARGET TO BE TERMINATED WITH EXTREME—

{SHH. WAIT.}

» OVERRIDE ACCEPTED [GG_Ψ-139]

{—HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED THAT THE FUSION DIMENSION HAS SENT SCOUTS INTO MAIAMI CITY IN PREPARATION FOR A LIKELY INVASION. OUR NEWLY COMMISSIONED CIVIL DEFENSE FORCES ARE MOVING TO INTERCEPT THEM EVEN AS I SPEAK. NEVERTHELESS, IT WOULD BE A GRAVE DERELICTION OF DUTY IF I DID NOT URGE OUR CIVILIAN POPULATION TO EXERCISE THE GREATEST OF CAUTION AND MOVE TO SEEK SHELTER AT ONCE. FOR THERE IS NOTHING MORE VALUABLE, NOTHING MORE WORTHY OF PURSUIT, AND NOTHING MORE DEMANDING OF PROTECTION THAN THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL WHO STANDS NEXT TO YOU NOW—}

{OH, GOOD LORD. THEY FILMED HIM FROM A LOW ANGLE. I'D MUCH RATHER STARE DOWN HIS BALD SPOT THAN UP HIS NOSE.}

{QUIET.}

{—TO THOSE WHO FIGHT IN OUR DEFENSE, I WOULD SAY THIS. ASK NO FAVOR OF YOUR ENEMY. SEEK FROM THEM NO MERCY. BEG OF THEM NO COMPASSION. I WILL DO NO SUCH THING FOR THEM, NOR WILL THEY FOR THE LIKES OF YOU AND ME. LET US TELL THEM WITH ONE WILL, ONE VOICE THAT WE REMEMBER. WE REMEMBER THE STORMS THEY HAVE SENT, AND WILL SEND AGAIN, TO RAVAGE OUR SHORES AND BREAK OUR SPIRIT, ONLY TO BE RAVAGED AND BROKEN IN TURN. WE REMEMBER THE HORRORS AND PERVERSIONS OF NATURE THEY HAVE UNLEASHED UPON THE INNOCENT, ONLY TO FIND AT THEIR EXPENSE THAT IT IS IN THE NATURE OF MANKIND, AND INDEED OF NATURE ITSELF, TO ERASE THAT PERVERSION FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH—}

{UGH. HE HAS TO BE PLAGIARIZING THIS.}

…

am i

horror

…

am i

…

no

…

{THAT'S THE SPIRIT, 223. YOU ARE NO MORE A PERVERSION THAN I AM. YOU ARE PERFECT. NO. PERFECTED. YOUR VERY NATURE AS A DUEL HUNTER IS PROOF OF THIS. AND YOU WILL HAVE THE CHANCE TO SHOW YOUR PERFECTION TO ANYONE WHO WOULD DISAGREE. BUT NOT NOW.}

…

not now

…

not

…

perfect

…

am i not

what i was

…

was i ever

who i am

…

who am i

…

» QUERY: DUELIST RK_ΞΓ-223

…

» ERROR: INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE

{—AND FINALLY, TO THOSE WHO WOULD SEEK TO BREAK THIS CITY WITH MONSTERS, BE THEY OF LIGHT, OR OF METAL AND FLESH, WE SPEAK NOW DIRECTLY TO YOU. WE WILL NOT FORGET YOU SHOW.}

{A DUEL DISK. HE'S ACTUALLY PUT ON A DUEL DISK. I'D LAUGH IF I DIDN'T PITY THE MAN SO.}

{—WE WILL NEVER IGNORE THE BESTIAL FORCE WITH WHICH YOU HAVE SHATTERED A SCHOOL AND SCATTERED HER CHILDREN TO THE WINDS. YOU HAVE SOUGHT TO TURN THAT FORCE UPON THIS CITY ONCE BEFORE. YOU FAILED THAT DAY. AND YOU WILL FAIL NOW.}

{OOH. I'LL ADMIT THAT'S A BIT CLEVER. PULLING BACK THE CAMERA TO SHOW ALL THOSE DUELISTS PROTECTING HIM. OR DID HE MEAN IT THE OTHER WAY ROUND, I WONDER?}

…

{HMM.}

…

{RATHER A LOT OF DUELISTS EITHER WAY, ISN'T IT?}

…

{HMM.}

…

{PREPARE YOURSELVES, THEN, FOR THIS BATTLE OF MAIAMI CITY AND EVERY SOUL THEREIN. FOR WE WILL NOT FALTER IN OUR VIGILANCE AND DUTY, TO PROTECT THE MEN AND WOMEN BESIDE US NOW, EVEN AFTER THE GENERATION WHO FIGHTS IN OUR NAME IS RETURNED TO US! WE WILL NOT TAKE ONE STEP BACKWARDS IN THE JOURNEY UP A ROAD THAT SEEKS TO EXACT ITS TOLL AT EVERY TURN! FOR WE KNOW THE DESTINATION THAT AWAITS US AT ITS END WILL BE OURS TO REACH. LET US TAKE THE FIRST STEP TO IT TODAY. LET THAT PRICE BE PAID WITH THE FRUITS OF OUR LABORS, THAT THE NEXT GENERATION, AND ALL GENERATIONS WHO WILL FOLLOW THEM, MAY KNOW A PEACE THAT NO FIRE OF WAR, LEAST OF ALL THE ONE THAT HAS STARTED THIS DAY, SHALL EVER BURN AWAY FROM GOD'S GREEN EARTH!}

{AND THE CROWD GOES WILD. WILD WITH THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE—BECAUSE HE'S FINALLY STOPPED BLOODY TALKING.}

[WHY WAS HE TALKING?]

{A VERY GOOD QUESTION, 223. NO DOUBT HE WANTED TO RALLY THE TROOPS, SO TO SPEAK. BUT I'LL BE DAMNED IF I'VE EVER HEARD SOMEONE SPEAK SO MUCH YET SAY SO LITTLE.}

{I AGREE, DOCTOR. THIS CHANGES NOTHING FOR THE PLAN. THE ONLY THING MR. SAWATARI ACCOMPLISHED WITH THAT SPEECH OF HIS WAS TO OVERPLAY HIS HAND. THE REST WAS JUST HOT AIR. HE NEVER SHOULD HAVE REVEALED ALL THOSE DUELISTS NEXT TO HIM. SHOWING THE EXTENT OF YOUR ARMY ONLY WORKS IF YOU KNOW THE NUMBERS ARE IN YOUR FAVOR.}

{DO WE?}

{COME NOW. A DUELIST OF YOUR CALIBER SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO ASK. BUT I TAKE YOUR MEANING. I INTEND TO BE VERY THOROUGH TODAY.}

{I CAN ONLY HOPE WE'LL BE HALF AS THOROUGH AS OUR GARRISON AT GIZA.}

{THEY CAN HANDLE THE LANCERS AND THEIR ALLIES. THE BESTATTER AND HER PEOPLE HAVE DONE WORSE TO BETTER FOR A VERY LONG TIME. HAVE FAITH, DOCTOR, AND BE PATIENT.}

…

{AS YOU WISH, DIRECTOR.}

Giza

Sora had smelled the work of Markus Streiter in the ensuing moments after the dunes north and south of his position had heaved upwards with a thunderous rumble. Before the sand had even settled, he suspected the intended purpose of the dozens of six-sided pillars—nearly the height and width of any one of the Chaos Giants who still lumbered across the desert—hadn't just been to box them in. And sure enough, bare moments later, the Tenjō brothers—their voices frantic over his Duel Disk—had frantically told him they were deploying reinforcements almost twice the numbers of the garrison they'd been fighting up until now.

A quick look through his binoculars sent his heart sinking further still; he'd gotten a good look at just what kind of reinforcements were being sent their way. More flying machines, but much newer-looking than the Antique Gear Wyverns that still swarmed overheard—and with different paint jobs as well: Sora saw streaks of red, yellow, and blue streaking out of the hangar doors that formed one side of the pillar. The red ones took to the air, spreading wings that bizarrely mimicked a dragon's, while the yellow ones sent clouds of sand high into the air as they rumbled over the desert like so many tanks. Most concerning of all were the legless blue figures, who hovered over their counterparts, docked their stubby torsos into the circular recesses within, and trained twin shoulder-mounted cannons as long as a car upon any Duelist that presented a target.

Sora suppressed another curse. Yes; he knew these monsters all too well. They were almost as pervasive inside the Fusion Dimension as the Antique Gears themselves—in fact, he'd heard a number of You Show refugees had kept on using them even after they'd defected. They didn't have the raw firepower of a Chaos Giant—but they were much more versatile in how they used that firepower in the right conditions. And that scared the hell out of him.

Because he only had to glance at the platforms of Cross Over to know those conditions couldn't be more perfect.

His Duel Disk crackled. "New contacts confirmed: Union monsters, class X-Y-Z," vocalized Orbital 7. Was it his imagination, or had he just heard a quaver of fear from the Tenjō brothers' robot companion? "I am detecting thirty YZ-Caterpillar Dragons, sixty XZ-Caterpillar Cannons … "

He paused. Yes—definitely of fear, Sora thought. "One hundred XY-Dragon Cannons."

Every number felt like a dull thud to the Lancer commander's insides. Almost two hundred Duelists, he realized—on top of those who controlled the Chaos Giants that still remained to block their way.

They were outnumbered by a good six-to-one—unless he thought of something fast.

But before he could even try, a new noise cut through the din of battle … one that chilled him to the core of his soul.

"LEGION."

"NOOO!"

Mieru scarcely registered the word, blaring from the loudspeakers of the crystal monoliths that perpetually hovered overhead. She'd never dreamed someone as pretty as Asuka could cram such fury and hatred into a single syllable.

"CONSUME."

"Markus, you BASTARD!" howled the defector, falling to her knees and squashing the palms of her hands over her ears. "Get out of my head, you evil—"

"What's going on?!" Mieru was becoming more terrified with every passing minute. Not even the still-approaching Ædonai seemed half as scary as this. "Who is that?! What is all this?!"

"TWELVE."

"Trigger … phrase … " Asuka's voice hissed through teeth so clenched they might have been half powder already. "Just like … Dennis … he's trying to … turn me … against you … "

The Ritual user thought back—and blanched. She'd heard what had been done to Dennis—the same that might have happened to her darling Yūya; subdued and controlled by a voice half forgotten with years and memories repressed. The same that might be happening to Asuka right now, to every single boy and girl who hailed from Fusion—

—including Sora and Dennis, she realized with a horrified gasp.

"ADAPT."

"Mieru-chan! Help me! PLEASE!"

But Mieru had frozen. Her eyes were locked to the growing numbers of Ædonai to her north, bearing down upon them with all manner of mechanical horrors. The sounds of Tony's and Damon's ongoing battle with the Chaos Giants behind them told her they would never be able to reach Asuka in time, even if they won.

A growing sense of powerlessness enveloped her. She didn't know what to do.

She swallowed, and felt her fist clench against her will. Except for one thing …

"VIOLET."

Maeda Hayato had wasted no time.

He had left Academia for greener pastures before he'd gone too deep into their indoctrination. And he wished he'd been able to spend more of the time since being close to someone who had. But life after Academia had been time enough—enough that he and Shō had developed a simple system for what to do if one of them was compromised.

WHAM.

Stars danced in front of his eyes. Already the headache he'd caused by butting his head into Shō's was raging like a bull in a room full of red. But Hayato could still think clearly—and he hoped to God his best friend could soon, too.

At least, once he got conscious again.

He took one more look at the approaching tide of Ædonai, and hoped that would happen even sooner.

"TWENTY."

Tanegashima Yūzō's heart had nearly stopped when he'd seen Dennis McField seize up and clutch his head with a bellow of pain. He spent ten dangerously long seconds dispatching the last of the Ædonai soldiers he'd blocked off with his Amazement Precious Park, before hurrying to his teammate.

"I'm all right!" But the way Dennis was gritting his teeth told him the real story. "Just hit me—as hard as you can! That's what did the trick before!"

"EVOLVE."

Yūzō felt his brain flail for a moment. His Duel School wasn't known for hitting hard—monsters or people. "What if it's not hard enough?"

Dennis managed to get to his feet. It looked like hard work. "How do you … block out a noise?"

The Surprise ace blinked—and suddenly understood. "With even more noise!" He pulled out a card from his Deck. "Quick-Play Spell: Amazement Special Show!"

The effect was immediate: Yūzō's Field Spell had scarcely faded from sight before a second explosion of light and color had erupted right in front of them. He caught a glimpse of a vividly colored parade float, with a green dragon and a number of fluffy creatures on its prow.

He only had the one glimpse before the solid wall of music knocked him and Dennis flat.

"BIDING."

The battle had gone so topsy-turvy in the past sixty seconds that Saotome Rei felt as though her entire skull was still spinning. One moment, she'd been frantically trying to reboot her Duel Disk, hoping to get it back in working order before the newest wave of Ædonai broke upon her. The next, she'd heard words booming in her ears and well into her brain—a man whose face she'd never seen, and a voice whose words she'd tried for almost a year to forget.

What had happened between then and now, Rei wasn't sure. She had vague recollections of calling out to Shinji and Tyranno for help—and now here she was, splayed out on the desert and bleeding badly from her right arm. Even as she looked at her blood dripping onto the sand, she saw that an angry weal had swelled the flesh around it, throbbing almost as painfully as her head.

"SIX."

One look at Shinji Weber told her addled wits everything she needed to know—yet still more than they were able to properly process. Even the insectoid Duel Monster buzzing next to him—its stinger suspiciously crimson and wet—looked apologetic. The drone of its wings was lost in the noise and chaos that had taken over the desert.

"I didn't have much time to think!" the Synchro native was practically yelling over the din, ripping off one of his sleeves to bind Rei's arm in a tourniquet. "I didn't know if hitting you would've snapped you out of it anyway!"

But Rei managed a small smile. She had heard the single word, after all, and her memories were her own again.

The smile, however, did not stay; the Fusion Duelist had just seen what those words were doing to everyone else.

She looked at one of those people in particular, and felt her heart plummet to join the pharaohs far beneath her feet.

"CRUCIBLE."

Kachidoki Isao's face was in danger of becoming a permanent snarl.

The moment he had heard those damnable words, he had roared a command. In an instant, every single boy who'd gone to school with him—trained with him, fought with him, ostracized him, and now looked up to him once more as the brightest spark in what they hoped would be their final blaze of glory—had stopped what they were doing.

Even before he had joined the Lancers Combined, Isao had told his classmates that they were in danger of hearing Markus Streiter's voice again … that in less time it took to breathe, their minds would no longer be their own. He had told them that if even he—once the highest among them, yet now the lowest—could be ensnared by the trigger phrase that had poisoned his mind so thoroughly, the same would no doubt be in store for them. They would have to be ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, if that should happen.

That time, he knew, had now come.

"SURVIVE."

The moment the words had left his mouth, every boy in a Ryōzanpaku uniform had turned towards their comrades and fallen upon one another. Within seconds, each of the roughest, toughest students of the roughest, toughest Duel School in all of Japan were soon nothing more than a spectacular cloud of dust as their fists and their feet connected with whatever flesh they could reach.

Each of them … except for one.

Isao was biting his lip so hard that he could feel the blood trickling over his chin. That was good—he needed the pain to focus his all upon one last maneuver, and he knew he only had seconds to pull it off.

He saw his objective directly ahead … and put every ounce of stamina left to him into his legs.

"ONE."

CRACK.

When he looked back on it later, Shiun'in Sora only remembered the roar.

He wasn't sure whose it had been—but even in the incipient throes of shellshock, he knew that whose was the right word to use. It didn't sound like a Duel Monster's roar. Certainly not one of his Des-Toys, that was for sure; though it sounded almost like a lion, he knew his Wheel Saw Lion was far too high-pitched to have been what he just heard.

Sora felt hard earth against his aching back. For a dangerous second, his arms tried to find purchase until he could lay a palm against it. He pushed, felt sand. So he was still in the desert, still in the Fusion Dimension—and he must have fallen, too, though he could not guess as to what had felled him. Nor was he sure he wanted to; his entire skull felt two sizes too big for his head, and throbbed so much that it might be wanting to try for three.

Gingerly, he probed his forehead—and regretted doing it just as quickly; his roar of pain nearly laid him low all over again. But it was enough to bring him out of his stupor in a matter of seconds, and back to his senses not long after.

The first thing he saw was Kachidoki Isao—close enough to touch and feebly stirring on the sand, groaning all the while. Blood streamed from between his fingers as they clutched his forehead, and Sora wondered if that had been what he'd felt a moment ago, to bring him out of Markus' brainwashing ploy. It occurred to him just then that with how thoroughly Markus had shafted Ryōzanpaku, Isao had felt his mind beginning to slip out of his control, just like him—and therefore done all that he could to keep both his and Sora's wits intact.

Hell of a headbutt, he thought. He felt a sudden surge of gratitude for the boy—but that surge was sadly short-lived. His eyes had traveled past Isao … and beheld a scene of pure chaos. Instantly it became clear that Isao had been the lucky one of his classmates. Half of the rest were fighting each other—and much of the remainder weren't in much better shape than Isao himself. They were spark out on the sand—and of them, only Makoto, Ken, and the big guy who Sora had appointed to lead the Lancers' Black Wing showed any sign of consciousness.

There was no point asking after their status, Sora knew at once. He grimaced—this was a serious blow, and he was well aware that it was about to get a lot worse. All those Dragon Cannons, Tank Cannons, and who knew what else were close enough that he could hear something else over the whine of their hard-light engines:

"Unum in multis!"

"Multi in unum!"

Sora felt a chill. The six words, now so endlessly intertwined with the movement that barred their way—sounded like much less of a motto this time, and more of a frenzied chant—as if merely saying them had lent wings to the Ædonai's flight towards their prey. They'd deployed enough aces in the hole already that he was prepared to think that might be the case.

So he didn't waste any more time. "Violet Wing, report in!" he yelled into his Duel Disk, ignoring his aching head.

"Ashuka here!" The Ritual user sounded like she had an ice cube or two in her mouth. "I'b all righ' … Mieru had do hid me hard do shnab be oud of id … "

"I'm sorry!" Sora heard Mieru wailing distantly. "I didn't mean it—honest!"

"Don't feel too bad—the harder you hit, the more likely it'll bring us back to our senses," said Marufuji Shō. He sounded only slightly less concussed than Sora. "Hayato and I are still in this, Sora."

"And we'll be deeper in it real soon," his companion replied through gritted teeth. "Shō and I are right in between you and this bunch. We'll give them a chase for as long as we can—but it may not be long enough."

"We'll send who we can to reinforce you," the Lancer commander assured him. "Dennis—you good?"

"Ohh, my head … " His second-in-command sounded very woozy indeed. Sora didn't think he could blame him—whatever Yūzō had done to wrest Dennis free of Markus' control sounded as though it had involved an entire rock concert compressed into a matter of seconds.

"He's fine," Yūzō himself chimed in. "I'll keep an eye on him till his migraine's gone."

"You might not have the time," said Sora impatiently. He didn't wait for either boy to take the hint, switching to a different frequency in an instant. "Rei—what about you?"

"Little busy over here!" He exhaled—even if Rei wasn't about to give him good news, it was enough to know that she was still raring to fight. "Shinji's covering me for now, and I can just about stand up … but Sora," she went on, her voice sounding increasingly worried, "I didn't get to Tyranno in time. And you know what that means … "

Sora did, and suddenly the relief had dried up inside him. He'd craned his neck back towards where Rei had fallen; there was no sign of an Elemental HERO. He did, however, see the hulking form of a familiar-looking dinosaur—a tyrannosaurus, he'd realized in some back corner of his brain.

And then, just over the din of the desert, he heard the growl.

Even before the procedure, he had always talked about the "beast within".

It always started when he exerted himself, even in the middle of a Duel. His heart would pump the blood faster, and then faster still. His muscles would tense, the veins on his brow would rise—and his brain would focus on a single, overriding purpose. Until that purpose was complete, he could think of nothing else—and while some might, and indeed had, called such a trait a hallmark of loyalty to the cause, he did not believe the reputation had been deserved.

He had the beast to thank for it, after all.

And to blame, he knew … always to blame.

Tyranno would curse the clandestine figures who had made him what he was—and praise Sakaki Yūshō, the friends he'd made at his school, and everyone else who'd convinced him he could be more—to the day he went to his grave. The control he had exerted over his inner impulses with their help was a testament to his strength of will—but it was also a painful reminder that the beast would stay with him forever. To forget that control, for even a moment …

… he could still hear the screaming.

He still saw their faces, when they'd been stretchered out of the arena. The proctor was first to go; he hadn't looked quite so threatening with all the blood draining from his face and out of the gash in his side. She had left second; the Duelist's platinum-blonde hair framed a face wretched with agony and betrayal. His cries hadn't fully silenced her own—the mingled cry of predator meeting prey had been burned into his memory forever.

It still rang in his ears even as they'd thrown him out—unchecked, they had sneered at him as they rubber-stamped his discharge papers; unfit to share the future they'd meant to create … and unworthy of the leash they had dangled in front of his face and dared to call his power. The un-s and un-ables had followed him like bad omens ever since.

Uncontrollable.

Unemployable.

Unlovable.

Now, in the heat of this pitched battle of men and monsters, Tyranno Kenzan was beginning to feel the beast stirring once again. He'd done everything he could to suppress it; tending to Rei's wounds had staved it off for a short time. Summoning one of his biggest monsters to protect the both of them while he worked took some of the bite out of the chaos. But neither was enough for him to fully shove it down into his subconscious.

Then the explosions had rocked his world. Sora and Shun—and the calamity they'd wrought upon the Ædonai with their assault—had pushed him to the edge. Now the Ædonai themselves—seemingly emboldened by the voice of an old man who continued to wreak havoc from beyond the grave—were responding in kind, with a withering barrage of light and sound. It was too much for his senses to bear.

Within the smoke and sand and red that clouded his vision worse by the moment … he thought he saw her face.

Rei could only stare in horrified awe. The beep of her Duel Disk hardly registered next to the sight of a Tyranno Kenzan she had only heard of, but never seen for herself.

Veins popped along his brow—so many and to such an extent that his bandanna was displaced, and fluttered to rest upon the sand beneath his feet. Tyranno's face was screwed up in a growing expression of rage—the whites of his eyes had turned red as blood vessels by the dozen bloated and burst within. The pupils had thinned into slits, like a cat's, and the mouth beneath was contorted in a grimace of pain that only further fueled the budding wrath inside—the triangular teeth gnashed, dripping foam upon the dunes to vanish in the heat—

"Go."

The single word froze Rei's entire spinal cord. She had never believed a human voice could sound so like a beast.

"Move. Now." Tyranno's hands were curling into fists. His golden-brown Duel Disk was already active, its orange blade thrumming with a noise that only made his voice shiver her to the bones even more. "While you … still can."

It took the passing of a dangerous second for Rei to realize that Markus had not taken over Tyranno as she'd feared. His 'beast within', however, might have done all that work for him; he could no longer recognize friend from foe.

She grimaced. "You heard him, Shinji!" she hollered, summoning a quick burst of speed in her legs. "You take the Dragon Cannons in the air—I'll go for the Caterpillar Dragons and Caterpillar Cannons on the ground!"

Two more blurs streaked by them—each larger than her, with a Duel Monster by their side that was larger still. "We can get to you, Sora!" Gauche bellowed from next to a gigantic warrior that looked every bit as heroic as the caped crime-fighters in Rei's own Deck. Jack Atlas was next to him, showered by hard-light metal as the dark red dragon above his Wheel of Fortune did a snap roll to obliterate an entire wing of Antique Gear Wyverns overhead.

Shinji was already gunning his D-Wheel, inspired by the sight of Jack's dragon. "Rei—I'll clear a path to Tony and Damon once I'm done here! You want to make your way to Shō and Hayato?"

"Say no more!" And without further ado, they peeled off in different directions towards the approaching Ædonai—Rei to the southeast, Shinji to the southwest. That left Tyranno alone with half a dozen soldiers and just as many Chaos Giants—each and every one advancing slowly upon him, guns blazing, but keeping their distance.

It wouldn't matter, Rei knew. To just be within eyeshot of Tyranno Kenzan was a death wish, the way he was now.

The beast was so fixated on the gathering prey that he barely noticed the boy and the girl moving off without him.

Good, some part of him remained human enough to think—just enough that he could still use the machine on one arm, just enough to read the 400 LP it displayed and every card it contained—and to count the ones he already held.

Five became six—and the red haze in the beast's eyes became redder still. "I discard Destroyersaurus"—the card he'd drawn to start his turn was gone just as quickly—"and use its ability to add the Field Spell: Jurassic World to my hand!" He did not waste words in playing that Field Spell an instant later. The hot, oppressively humid jungle that materialized around him and his prey within moments spoke for itself.

"Now I use my Swift Gilasaurus' effect and Special Summon it from my hand," he growled, slapping another card onto his Duel Disk. He only felt the sting in his palm for a moment before it was smothered by red—and by then, his monster was already on the field, blurred by a mixture of his failing vision and its own blinding speed. Even with its long tail, it was still around the beast's own height and weight, but that just made it all the faster—and its claws that much sharper (Level 3: ATK 1400 » 1700/DEF 400 » 700).

"My Jurassic World gives every Dinosaur-Type on the field 300 ATK and DEF," he grunted. "Then my Gilasaurus lets you Special Summon a monster from your Graveyard if I Special Summon it by its ability." He bit his tongue, tasted blood. He knew they had plenty of monsters to choose from … plenty of prey …

The beast had to bite down harder as each of his prey revived a monster apiece: a decrepit metal soldier some seven feet tall (6 × Level 4: ATK 1300/DEF 1300), each one dropping to a knee and training its gun on him. Weak … not weak enough, he thought, sparing a moment to glance at his Swift Gilasaurus. Strong … not strong enough.

He knew how to fix that. "I play the Spell Card: Big Evolution Pill!" The sting from playing that card took a little longer to fade. "By Releasing a monster, I can keep this card on the field for three of your turns—and while it stays on the field, I can Normal Summon any Level 5 or higher Dinosaur-Type monsters without needing to Release any other monster! So I Release my Gilasaurus—and then Summon my Ultimate Tyranno!"

Some instinct of Gilasaurus sent it sprinting away with a squeak of terror—but it only managed a few steps before a gigantic foot flattened it into the desert: three-toed, and heavy enough to have crushed a car just as easily as it had that unfortunate lizard. The beast didn't even flinch as the black armor of his favorite monster came into view in the corner of his eye—or at least, as much of it as the red let him see (Level 8: ATK 3000 » 3300/DEF 2200 » 2500).

More. The word sounded louder in the beast's head than he had expected. Had he done more than think, but speak as well? It did not matter to him—he had just spotted a fourth card in his hand. "Now the Spell Card: The Shallow Grave! Each of us targets a monster in our Graveyard, and Special Summons it in face-down Defense Position!"

Skulls of barbed wire appeared next to his prey, shadowed by the mechanical titans they commanded. His own felt distinctly smaller by comparison—but it did not matter. "And now, the Spell Card: Card Flipper!" By now, he had to clench his teeth. "By discarding a card, I can change the battle positions of every single monster you control!"

Instinct told him to brace himself—and not a moment too soon: scarcely had he gotten rid of the last card in his hand than Ultimate Tyranno had stomped hard on the desert floor, rocking the earth and sending every soldier he faced off balance, both of iron and of flesh. Though their biggest monsters—still stronger by half than his apex predator—remained unmoving, the beast did not care. Now was not the time to challenge for dominance—there was just enough of the human left to him to know that this was not one predator against another.

Just against prey.

He gave the metal men flanking the soldiers and their iron giants (12 × Level 4: ATK 1300/DEF 1300) only a small, fleeting moment's notice. "Ultimate Tyranno's ability lets it attack every monster my opponent controls, once each! And I made sure you Summoned just enough of them that I can wait to crush your Chaos Giants later!"

The beast felt his lips stretch in a smirk—the sudden fear of the soldiers was strong enough for him to smell it. "Go, Tyranno!" he roared, at long last. "Smash every Soldier you see! ABSOLUTE BITE!"

The hulking dinosaur roared—and so did he. The monster charged—and so did he.

And the red that tinted his eyes now filled it in full, as the beast gave in to the thrill of the carnage at last.

"First battalion, close up formation—defend the outer wall!"

Jim's eye was all over the place, roving from one monitor to the next almost without his doing it. "Second and third, keep pushing forward—block all routes of escape!"

The dinosaur and the freak who'd conjured it were too close to the Ædonai's base for comfort, he knew—and too far for his reinforcements to do much about it. How much of this was Sora's doing, Jim wasn't sure; animals were a lot more likely to go berserk when they were forcibly taken out of their native environment. Even Karen had to adjust to her time away from the shores of Australia after his reassignment to Giza, he recalled—though he'd been told by the handlers that for a saltwater crocodile—a species known for treating human beings as occasional snacks—she'd been less ornery than expected about having to move so far from home.

Idly, Jim wondered if she'd made it back to base by now. There were other ways to cross the Nile, and he'd told the planners to make some modifications to the plumbing that would allow Karen swift access to—

Now what's this? He frowned, tilting his head slightly towards one of the outermost feeds on his display. "Enhance security feed eight-four-six-eight."

The picture on the monitor froze—then zoomed inwards. A few more keystrokes cleaned up the image further still in a matter of seconds. Jim eyed the picture, and felt his lips split in a thin smirk.

"Ah, Sora … you think you're so-o-o smart." Perhaps goading Dino-boy had been intentional after all, Jim decided. Well—there was a simple answer to that. One quick medley over three different keyboards patched him into a large fraction of the Ædonai fortress' entire complement.

"418 calling Delta-three and Delta-four! Break off and stand by to strafe grid twelve-seven-two!" He thought for a moment—and rose from his seat. "Sweep west, then north on my signal. I'll deal w' this lot myself."

He waited for them to acknowledge, then slipped on a sandblasted Duel Disk, his favorite leather hat—and, thinking more of it, a large backpack over his black vest. Never know if Karen might still be hungry, he thought to himself …

Saotome Rei wasn't so far away that she couldn't hear the roar of her friend. She looked back, and felt something in her heart seize up as she watched men and monsters alike being scattered and trampled by a gigantic reptilian horror, until nothing remained but one more giant dust cloud.

She swallowed, and hoped that this was enough to bring Tyranno back to himself. It might just have to be; the You Show Duelist was scarcely twenty feet away from the first wave of Ædonai. She'd already drawn her opening hand from her pink Duel Disk even before upwards of a dozen soldiers had locked on to her and forced her into a Duel.

One such card caught Rei's eye almost instantly—and two more soon after. But even as her mind began to work at top speed, the soldiers had beaten her to the first move—and in about the most infuriating way possible: an ominous shimmer radiated out from each of their Duel Disks and over the dunes around them, disappearing into the distance.

They've got terrain programs, too, she thought, feeling her smile slide off her face. She eyed the platforms of Cross Over, looking for any telltale glints of Action Cards. Okay … this is going to be painful.

"Twin Continuous Spell, activate: Frontline Base and X•Y•Z Combine!" the quickest of them yelled. "And then, I'll Summon X-Head Cannon in Attack Position!"

Rei bit her lip. Like Sora, she also recognized the bluish metal of the monster that materialized before her, hovering three feet over the sand and training both of its cannons right on her (Level 4: ATK 1800/DEF 1500). She recalled a time when such monsters had been on her side, used by classmates at You Show Fusion against the Chaos Giants of Academia to great effect. Perhaps if they'd been able to recruit some more of them … if she'd been able …

"Terrain program: Union Hangar's effect!"

Her heart skipped a beat—she'd been correct to suspect this soldier, and no doubt all the rest of them, possessed that damnably annoying secret weapon. "If a LIGHT-Attribute, Machine-Type monster I control was Normal or Special Summoned to my field, I can target it—and equip it with a different LIGHT-Attribute, Machine-Type monster from my Deck! I'll equip my X-Head Cannon with my B-Buster Drake!"

Buster Drake? Rei tilted her head. That wasn't a card she was familiar with—nobody she knew who had used this Deck before had shown her a monster like that. The Ædonai must have developed it specifically for their own use, she thought with a grimace as she watched a cross between a jet plane and a dragon—clad head to toe in green-and-gold armor—dock on the Cannon's back, before training the two massive guns mounted atop its wings right on her.

"Frontline Base's effect!" the soldier went on, tracing the edges of a monster in his hand—Rei knew enough about the Deck she was facing to know what was coming next. "Once per turn, I can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower Union monster from my hand! I Special Summon Z-Metal Caterpillar in Attack Position!"

The sand at his feet groaned and heaved, displaced by a squat mass of burnished golden metal the size and shape of a small tank. A single unblinking eye stared back at her from between the wide, claw-tipped treads of the machine, as if whatever intelligence behind it was trying to size Rei up (Level 4: ATK 1500/DEF 1300).

Seconds later, it seemed the machine had made its decision—but Rei knew better, even as she watched both of the soldier's monsters begin to intercept each other. "Now," their controller said triumphantly, sneering at Rei beneath his half-mask, "I'll banish my Cannon and my Caterpillar from my field so that I can bring out this!"

FLASH. Rei only just remembered to squeeze her eyes shut from previous experience—not all of which had been spent fighting both with and against this Deck. Both monsters had been dismantled by some internal force—Buster Drake, Rei noticed, was nowhere to be seen. But the components of the remaining machines whirled every which way—and even as Rei looked on, they were clumping together into something much bigger:

"Contact Fusion!" screamed the soldier. "Combine! XZ-Caterpillar Cannon!"

When he'd scrambled atop his monster, she couldn't be sure. But there he was, standing right in front of the blue torso of X-Head Cannon that looked as though it had been welded onto the treads of Metal Caterpillar. A simple Fusion Monster it might have been—it only resembled the mere combination of its parts, rather than a wholly new creation—but the end result was still effective (Level 6: ATK 2400/DEF 2100).

"Buster Drake's effect!" The soldier threw out his hand from atop his mechanical mount. "If it's sent from the field to the Graveyard, I can add a Union monster from my Deck to my hand!" He did so. "Now I'll activate both of my X•Y•Z Combine's effects! First, if a LIGHT-Attribute, Machine-Type monster that I controlled was banished, I can Special Summon this Y-Dragon Head from my Deck! And then, by returning a Fusion Monster I control back to my Extra Deck, I can use its second effect to Special Summon the very same X-Head Cannon and Z-Metal Caterpillar I banished to Summon it!"

Rei had to strain her ears to hear him above the roar of the dragon-like fighter jet that had flown in from almost out of nowhere (Level 4: ATK 1500/DEF 1600). But it was nothing to the crack of thunder that split the desert in two, and Caterpillar Cannon with it. She could only watch as the same duo of metal monsters she'd seen only a minute ago take up positions either side of Y-Dragon Head (Level 4: ATK 1800/DEF 1500, Level 4: ATK 1500/DEF 1300).

The soldier's mouth split in an evil grin beneath his mirror-finished helm. "And now," he crowed, "I'll banish all three of my monsters—X-Head Cannon, Y-Dragon Head, and Z-Metal Caterpillar—to Summon this!"

Oh boy. Rei took an unconscious step backward. She'd known it was coming—yet this time, fighting for her life in this hellish desert, something about the way that the trio of machines were docking, one on top of the other, felt very different from before. Perhaps it was because back then, they had felt like monsters—extensions of the Duelists that controlled them. Here, today, she had an uneasy feeling that they were about to become something more—

"Triple Contact Fusion! Combine! XYZ-Dragon Cannon!"

The bellow that followed threatened to drown out the din of the dozen battles swirling around Rei. Y-Dragon Head was surrounded by no less than four black gun barrels—the two above its head, joined to X-Head Cannon, and two more on either side jutting from recesses inside Z-Metal Caterpillar's treads—and its steel jaws sparked with arcs of lightning so hot that the sand beneath was fusing into shards of dirty black glass (Level 8: ATK 2800/DEF 2600).

The soldier was still smirking, clearly proud of Summoning what had to be the crown jewel of his Deck on his first turn. His compatriots were smiling wickedly too—an eerily similar look, Rei thought, to the soldiers who wielded the Chaos Giants that had all but wiped out her school.

"Two cards face-down," finished the soldier, sliding the last of his hand into his Duel Disk. "Turn end!"

But she only had to look at the rest of them to know this was only the beginning.

"I Summon the Tuner monster Bee Force – Needle the Stinger in Attack Position!"

For Shinji Weber, however, that beginning had already played out. Tony and Damon might as well be a hundred miles away with how many XYZ-Dragon Cannons (Level 8: ATK 2800/DEF 2600) had reared their heads between them and him just now. But he still stared them down with the same contempt he'd once held for the élite that had controlled so much of his culture and society a lifetime ago.

These Ædonai felt so much like them—and in many ways, he thought scathingly, they were worse. For all that the Tops and Commons had loathed each other before Sakaki Yūya had made his mark upon his home, they at least shared the unity of Synchro Monsters—and more importantly, the Tuning of special monsters to make them. One single thought from one special mind was all it took to raise a host. One small, deceptively insignificant piece of truth could be a slap in the face of power.

The crimson-armored, mechanical insect Shinji had Summoned just now—the thrum of its wings lost in the scream of his D-Wheel's engine (Level 2: ATK 400/DEF 800)—distilled this philosophy further still: one sting could lead to a thousand. And what, he thought, could Fusion claim to that?

"When my Needle is Normal or Special Summoned," he explained, "I can add another Bee Force monster from my Deck to my hand! I add this Bee Force – Pin the Bullseye"—he ejected a card from his Deck and swiped it up in a trice—"and then, since I control an Insect-Type monster, I can use its effect to Special Summon it from my hand!" And a second later, a much smaller bug—barely the size of his Duel Disk—buzzed onto the field next to his Needle (Level 1: ATK 200/DEF 300).

"Next, I activate the effect of my Bee Force – Twinbow the Continuous Attacker in my hand, and Special Summon it to my field as well!" And a third insect alighted between its companions—bigger, stronger, and spikier than both of them combined (Level 3: ATK 1000/DEF 500). For just as two and one made three, Shinji knew, a growing number of minds with one single purpose could sway bigger and stronger minds—either converting them to the cause …

… or turning them away out of fear. "Pin's second effect lets me inflict 200 damage to my opponent for each copy of itself on the field!" Shinji crowed, and his monster rushed for the lead Ædonai soldier in a buzzing blur. The man yelped as Pin's stinger found its mark in flesh, and he stumbled backward as his life gauge slipped to 3800—

—but he did not run. Shinji resisted the urge to shake his head. "Now for Needle's second effect! By Releasing an Insect-Type monster I control, I can target a monster my opponent controls, and negate its effects for the rest of the turn! I Release my Pin, and target your Dragon Cannon!"

He stabbed out with a finger at the closest soldier. By then, Needle had used four of its six legs to trap Pin's body in a vise, and clamped down with razor-sharp jaws upon its head. The tiny bug was disintegrated almost instantly, its remains slurped up by the larger insect and into its stinger-tipped abdomen. Needle aimed it at the monster—fired—

"Continuous Trap, activate: X•Y•Z Hyper Cannon!"

Shinji was rewarded when he saw the lead Dragon Cannon seize up and slump where it stood, but his relief was short-lived. It wasn't just its controller who had activated that Trap, after all—but every single soldier he faced.

"Once per turn, during our opponent's turn," the foremost smirked at him, "if we control an XYZ-Dragon Cannon, we can use this card to discard as many cards in our hand as we want—to destroy that many cards on your field!"

What?! Shinji balked—but froze just as quickly. And he began to laugh.

Those idiots. "Thanks for telling me your uniforms are about as functional as they're decorative," he said derisively. "C'mon—can you even see anything out of those helmets, or did you seriously play a card that needs you to discard from a hand that doesn't have any cards to discard?!"

The lead soldier was still smirking. "Did you seriously just forget we're in an Action Duel?"

Shinji felt the laughter crawl back in his throat and die. Uh-oh.

In an instant, the soldiers broke formation, each splitting off in a different direction—sprinting over, ducking under, and weaving through the glowing platforms of Cross Over, looking for one of those gleams of light that would give them the ammo they needed to tip the Duel in their favor—

The Synchro Duelist's only blessing was that they'd only be able to destroy one card at a time—and that they didn't have the cards they needed to do it yet. But getting to that window of opportunity would be like threading a needle now. I have to do this quick, he thought, or I'm finished for sure.

Fortunately, "quick" was a word the Synchro Dimension knew very, very well—and so, as he gunned his engine and took off along the desert to begin his own search for Action Cards, Shinji went to work.

"Now! I'll Tune my Level 2 Needle with my Level 3 Twinbow!" he cried, aiming his D-Wheel straight at a wedge of sandblasted stone. Instantly he was rewarded when he saw his smaller monster disintegrate into a pair of glowing green rings, enveloping Twinbow in the light that radiated from within:

"Synchro Summon!" chanted Shinji. "Level 5! The Synchro Tuner: Bee Force – Azusa the Ghost Bow!"

In the corner of his eye, he saw the conical form of his monster right as his D-Wheel went airborne—using the rock wedge in the sand as an improvised ramp. Then, a curved staff unfolded along its length, resolving into an ornately carved bow. The quiver of arrows was next to appear—and at long last, his monster whirled upright: a tall, insectoid female, resplendent in robes of red and tan that blended with the desert beneath her (Level 5: ATK 2200/DEF 1500).

Shinji had no time to take in more than that—his D-Wheel had just hit the sand, jolting him badly. Worse, he'd just seen the first of the soldiers reach an Action Card. In a flash, he moved to discard it—but the Synchro Duelist was quicker by far. He'd been less concerned with Azusa's arrival than he had with the gleam directly in front of him—

"Hyper Cannon!" the soldier crowed in triumph, sliding his prize into his Graveyard. "Ready … aim … fire!"

For one small second, the arid dunes were silent but for the shck-chck sound of dozens of heavy weapons cocking.

One second after that, every single Dragon Cannon in front of Shinji erupted in a storm of lightning and cannon fire.

The pitch of the battle had reached a level that even Sora had never dreamed could be possible.

The noise of Chaos Giants unleashing pre-programmed hellfire on the Lancers Combined had been bad enough. But with these new Dragon Cannons added to the mix, and all the laser fire they produced that stitched the sky and sundered it anew, the Fusion Duelist was starting to feel his brain turning into a slurry of jumbled thoughts—not at all the state of mind that he knew he needed to possess to keep this attack from becoming even more of a mess.

Shun had whisked him away on Revolution Falcon shortly after Isao had brought him out of Markus' stupor, and they were now hovering level with the two dragons commanded by the Tenjō brothers. The wind on his face had helped to clear some of the mush out of Sora's brain—but as he looked down, and saw a world gone wrong, he'd been overcome by a sudden wave of nausea that Shun's protests had been too slow to stop.

"Sorry," the Fusion Duelist could only say as he wiped his cheek clean. Most of his breakfast had managed to miss Revolution Falcon itself, but he could tell from the glare of its pilot that pointing this out would do him little good.

Thankfully, Shun's monster descended at a more leisurely angle this time, allowing Sora to take a better stock of their current situation. He saw that Gauche had wasted no time in roaring out a challenge to anyone who controlled one of the Chaos Giants reinforcing the wall that Sora and Shun had damaged. Five of them had seemed to decide that since Gauche was an Xyz Duelist—and perhaps, in their mind, someone they could beat again—he made for a more appealing target. Another squad had made for Jack Atlas, whose D-Wheel was proving too fast and evasive for the iron behemoths' artillery. The rest had split off north and south; Sora could only assume that Rei and Shinji had become just as pesky as Jack—and certainly more so than the Dragon Cannon soldiers had anticipated.

He didn't know what was making his head spin more—this war of Duel Monsters, or the fact that he and his fellow Duelists were somehow still in it. That one of his fellow Duelists was Jack Atlas, however, was somewhat of a safer bet in comparison—though Sora couldn't but help but think that the Synchro Duelist's Wheel of Fortune ought to be named his Wheel of Fire right about now.

"First, I Summon the Tuner monster Red Resonator in Attack Position!" he heard Jack rumble over the din just then. Sora turned just in time to see a mischievous-looking creature, wreathed in flames from head to toe, materialize to Jack's right, brandishing a tuning fork as though it wanted to stab something with it (Level 2: ATK 600/DEF 200). "Then, because my Resonator was Normal Summoned, I use its effect to Special Summon a Level 4 or lower monster from my hand! I Special Summon Red Sprinter!"

To his left, a horse-headed demon covered in brown skin and even more flames than Resonator surged onto the field (Level 4: ATK 1700/DEF 1200). "And furthermore, because I Normal Summoned a Resonator monster," Jack went on, "I can Special Summon this Red Wolf from my hand, with its ATK cut in half!"

He gunned his engine, and yet another source of the flames Wheel of Fortune was trailing was instantly explained: a hulking, lupine figure with crimson fur leapt right over Duelist and D-Wheel alike and bounded directly in front of him. The monster burned so brightly, it might have been made of fire from the waist down (Level 6: ATK 1400 » 700/DEF 2200).

"And now"—Jack turned on a dime, and made a beeline for the soldiers with the Chaos Giants—"witness the power of a Duel King! I Tune my Level 2 Resonator with my Level 4 Sprinter!"

Both his monsters put on a burst of speed to match his Wolf. The smaller of the two giggled, lifting its tuning fork aloft. Within moments, a pair of fiery rings had encircled it, their color changing from burning red to glowing green … like a set of traffic lights, Sora couldn't help but think as he watched both monsters disintegrate before his eyes:

"The scarlet souls now sing as one, for a long-lost king has come home to reclaim his throne!"

"Synchro Summon!" Jack chanted. "Soar and burn bright! Level 6: Red Rising Dragon!"

The explosion that followed almost sent Sora's heart into his mouth: he thought Wheel of Fortune had been hit by a Chaos Giant's cannon blast. But a second later, he breathed a sigh of relief: the massive gout of flames had merely been the wings and body of an equally enormous dragon that seemed to be made of them (Level 6: ATK 2100/DEF 1600). Sora caught hints of crimson armor beneath the inferno, and a white glow from within the beast's jaws that roared like a great furnace.

"Rising Dragon's effect!" bellowed Jack. "When it is Synchro Summoned, I can target a Resonator monster in my Graveyard and Special Summon it! I revive my Red Resonator—and then, because it was Special Summoned, I use my Resonator's effect to target a face-up monster on the field—any field—and gain Life Points equal to its ATK! I target my Rising Dragon!"

Rising Dragon beat its wings once, drenching the battlefield in flames. Sora, shielding his eyes from the glare, did not see the precise moment that Red Resonator had reappeared above it—but there it was (Level 2: ATK 600/DEF 200), waving its tuning fork in a wide circle, appearing to control the same conflagration Rising Dragon had birthed. It swamped the closest of the massive Chaos Giants to Jack—and then, with a movement like the conductor of an orchestra at the climax of his magnum opus, directed the blaze right onto Wheel of Fortune.

This time, Sora's heart did not skip any beats when the blast hit home. It happened a second later, however, when Jack and his D-Wheel rocketed out of the flames, with an LP gauge of no less than 2500 trying in vain to keep pace with him and his monsters. None of them even looked so much as singed for their trouble.

"The fires of creation and destruction burn above and beneath," growled the Synchro Duelist, "but the fires within, within my very soul, blaze brighter still! Watch now, as I Tune my Level 2 Resonator with my Level 6 Red Rising Dragon … and behold a King Resurgent!"

Sora grinned, nausea completely forgotten as demon and dragon performed an aerial above Jack's D-Wheel, before the blaze of green light bloomed anew between them:

"The heaven and earth shall tremble before the king's might," Jack bellowed. "Let the power of the one and only supreme ruler be carved into your soul!"

"Synchro Summon! The savage soul, Red Daemon's Dragon Scarlight!"

To the Fusion Duelist, it felt as though the very sky had burst into flames. He could feel the wall of heat even from here; how the desert hadn't yet been fused into glass from its intensity boggled his mind.

Then came the roar—and the searing skies condensed into what Sora could only describe as a sizzling meteor the size of a house. Flaming wings unfurled, exposing crimson armor and scarlet flesh that pumped steaming-hot blood through its veins. An arm wrapped in bone clenched a massive fist, a horned head minus half a horn reared high and roared—and the shockwave that followed framed Jack's famous, battle-scarred dragon in all its destructive might (Level 8: ATK 3000/DEF 2500).

"Since a Synchro Monster is on the field, I can use the effect of this Synclone Resonator to Special Summon it from my hand!" As Jack slid one more monster onto his field—a gremlin that could have been a close relative of his Red Resonator, down to the tuning fork it carried in one hand (Level 1: ATK 100/DEF 100)—he had dropped almost to one knee with how sharply he'd banked his D-Wheel just now. But far from crashing, he was back at full speed a few seconds later—and barreling straight for the soldiers at breakneck speed.

"And finally, I play the Equip Spell: Giganticize, and equip it to my Scarlight!" Wheel of Fortune actually wobbled for a moment with the amount of force Jack had used to slam this card onto its Duel Disk. "If I have less Life Points than my opponent, any monster I equip this to has its ATK doubled!

"Which means"—Jack had to raise his voice here, for not only had Scarlight grown to the size of a cathedral to befit the 6000 ATK it now possessed, but the roar of the flames that boiled within it had reached a crescendo—"that I can activate my Scarlight's effect: once per turn, I can destroy every single monster on the field with equal or less ATK, and inflict 500 damage for each monster destroyed to my opponent! That includes my Red Wolf and my Synclone Resonator … along with every Chaos Giant who dared to impede me!"

WHAM.

The soldiers were quick to scatter at this turn of events. But Scarlight was quicker still—almost impossibly so for its impossible size; Sora saw its two massive hands slam together, crushing wolf and imp alike between its palms. Flames licked briefly at the dragon's claws—and then the gauntlet of bones over its right arm roared like a furnace, cracking from the intense heat—

"Absolute Powerflame!" thundered Jack Atlas. "INCINERATE!"

Sora was grateful that he was small for his age—it meant he could put that much more of Shun's Revolution Falcon between him and the nigh-apocalypse that brought a second sun to Giza an instant later. Even then, as he lay prone on the Duel Monster's back, he felt it wobble dangerously, caught up in the shockwave of light and sound that must have deafened the soldiers who'd been luckless enough to be on the business end of a blast like that.

He chanced a look—and felt something in his body go slack. Nothing remained of the Duel site save for a smoking crater of smooth, blackened sand, fused into glass from the heat. He saw Wheel of Fortune peel away from the edge, its rider showing no trace of relish in victory—and then, his eyes traveling along the rim of the crater, he saw the six soldiers Jack had faced slumped against the fortress wall. Cracks spread out from where they'd hit the sandstone—and Sora couldn't help but notice that none of them were stirring.

He privately thought Yūya would have his work cut out for him in defending his title as Duel King. God, I hope he still can, he added, looking once more to the fortress in which he rested.

"One more hit should do it!" Gauche hollered from below—a blur of grey, orange, and red against the sand. "Leave that to me, Sora—just get these infernal Dragon Cannons off my ass!"

"Way ahead of you, big guy!" whooped a streak of black and pink above Sora just then. "It's about time they let me start my turn! Draw!"

The Lancer commander's eyes were starting to get dizzy from the chaos again as he saw Rei running veritable laps over the platforms of Cross Over. "I activate the Spell Card: Fusion," she crowed, "and fuse the Elemental HERO Edgeman and the Elemental HERO Sparkman in my hand!"

Sora recognized Edgeman from earlier today, but his companion took a little more time for him to recollect: a man half as tall again as his Summoner—twice as tall counting the wings sprouting from the blue-and-gold armor that covered every inch of his body. That armor disintegrated—as did he an instant later, along with his companion:

"Fusion Summon!" screamed Rei. "Appear! Elemental HERO Plasma Viceman!"

Her monster was only a blur, so blue-and-gold that Sora wondered if it was simply a larger version of Sparkman. It took a moment for him to realize he was wrong: though something remained of it in Plasma Viceman, the gleaming golden armor it wore looked much more like Edgeman. Most of it covered the forearms, in heavy-looking gauntlets that terminated in nasty-looking claws at the elbows, long enough and sharp enough to speak a man, and brimming with lightning from the ruby-red jewels set within (Level 8: ATK 2600/DEF 2300).

"First: the Action Card: Mirror Barrier," Rei went on, as she jumped down and sprinted over the dunes to pick up the card that lay innocuously in front of her, "to keep my monster from being destroyed by your Dragon Cannons—and your Hyper Cannons with them!" And then"—she ducked left, where she'd spotted a second glint of light on the sand—"I use this Action Card: Miracle to activate my Plasma Viceman's effect—by discarding a card, I can target an Attack Position monster my opponent controls, and destroy it!

"And as long as I have cards in my hand to discard—like Action Cards," smirked the girl, as she watched the smug looks on the soldiers attempting to corner her fade one by one, "I can activate this Fusion Monster's effect as many times as I want! So let's go, Plasma Viceman—destroy every Dragon Cannon you see! Lightning Pulse!"

What followed could almost be called ballet, Sora noted; Plasma Viceman was certainly a better dancer than he was, to say nothing of Rei herself. Monster and Summoner moved with the grace of a seamstress threading the needle as they dodged one laser blast after another from the Dragon Cannons that barred their way. Then Viceman leapt high into the air, arms rippling with energy—and gravity carried the hulking warrior straight down, crushing the first of its adversaries with all the ease of a child stomping on bubble wrap. But scarcely had the wreckage of the monster faded than Rei was in the thick of it again, sliding to pick up an Action Card, sliding it into her Duel Disk—sliding out of the way of Viceman's onslaught once more—

And so it went. It took a few moments for Sora to find he could breathe again. He savored it for as long as he could do so; something told him he might not have the chance for much longer.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

She'd said it about a dozen times already, by her count. But Hōchun Mieru's hands—gripping Asuka's and holding on for dear life—still throbbed painfully, and she knew that the older girl's cheek couldn't be doing much better.

"I took worse hits from my brother, when we were younger," her superior in height, beauty, and Ritual Summoning prowess replied from beneath her. She was carrying Mieru piggyback, somehow traversing the desert with hardly any sign of fatigue from being laden down with her teammate—even a lightweight like herself.

"You have a brother?" Mieru couldn't see much of Asuka's face from atop her back. But she felt her spine sagging beneath her chest, and knew at once that she'd said the wrong thing.

" … I had a brother."

Mieru almost fell off from her perch. Almost. As it was, the words still made her reel where she stood in shock.

"That Two of Cups you pulled back at LDS wasn't just for Shō," Asuka said sadly. "His brother, at least, gave him the dignity of an argument. I didn't get that with mine. My brother called me once, in the weeks after I'd defected from Academia and joined You Show—only once. Told him I was dead to him, and he to me. It barely took thirty seconds. That was always how he was—'he who hits first hits hardest,' he'd always say."

"Asuka … "

It took far too long for Mieru to realize she had no other response to that—and certainly not to the tone in which Asuka had said all this in the first place. Yes, it was sad—but her words did not halt, and her voice did not dissolve into blubbering tears. And more than that, Asuka hadn't even mentioned her brother's name.

Mieru felt herself shivering despite the dry, hot air of the desert. Had the two of them fallen out that badly, that she had not only failed to give a name to the closest person in her entire life … but failed to shed a tear after that person had cut ties with her?

But any chance at further reflection was dispelled soon after: Asuka had stopped, and put a hand under her eyes to shield her from the glare of the dunes. Mieru mimicked her elder, and saw the pillars amidst the heat haze that had disgorged the hundred-odd soldiers currently turning the desert into a war zone.

A second later, Asuka lifted her Duel Disk to her lips. "Sora—we've reached the hangars boxing off our northern flank. I think Mieru-chan and I can take them out from here—keep the odds from getting too far against us."

It was a plan they'd discussed shortly after Asuka had recovered enough from the attempted takeover of her mind to carry on a cogent conversation. With the bulk of the Ædonai engaged elsewhere, Asuka had considered the option of collapsing the hangars from which they'd come to prevent even more reinforcements. Using them as an access point to the interior of the base itself might take too long, and so it was that the two girls had made their way up and across the dunes, away from the action. Thus far, they hadn't been spotted.

Sora, however, seemed to exist to dash their plans yet again. "No time for that now—I just got word from Orbital 7; the Dragon Cannons are shifting positions! One bunch just broke off from the wave to the south—they're heading west, right for Hayato and Shō. Shinji's been dealing with the advance scouts from the wave to the north, but I hope he's not around if they decide to make an attack run—and the same goes for you!"

Asuka pursed her lips in a way Mieru knew was biting back a nasty curse. "Then we'll make our way to Tony and Damon. Shinji's on his way over there himself—last I saw, he was leading a good chunk of those Dragon Cannons on a merry chase as well. We'll cut across their Duel site and try to draw some of their—"

She broke off. "Sora?"

There was no answer.

Mieru swallowed as Asuka turned slowly—too slowly—back to the south. "That's … not good."

"Brace yourself." Hayato had put as much of his bulk as possible in front of Shō. "Here they come!"

The sound of the duo's Duel Disks igniting was quickly lost in the cacophonous thrum of Dragon Cannons against the desert floor, and the battle cries of their Summoners. They were close enough that Hayato could hear the never-ending chant of "Unum in multis—multi in unum!"without having to strain his ears.

"I'm locked in," he heard Shō say from behind him, his voice tremulous. "Wait a sec … that's weird … "

Hayato chanced a glance behind and downward. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong isn't the word for it." Sho's brow was furrowed in confusion. "We're both locked into a Duel … but none of them are. Maybe it's taking a while—maybe there's so many of them that—"

He stuttered to a halt. Hayato only had to turn around to know why.

The Dragon Cannons were now so close that he could see the reds of their eyes, feel the earth trembling beneath the hard-light treads that carried them over the dunes. But they weren't stopping—in fact, it felt like they were speeding up, even, as if they somehow—

Hayato, hopelessly confused though he was, had just enough sense in him to know that Shō was still behind him, and so fell to one side as the first Dragon Cannon rumbled by. The earth was shaking worse than ever, a continuous pounding of treads against sand—a second Dragon Cannon passed by, then a third, a fourth, a fifth—

The Fusion Duelist blinked. What in the world?!

He tried counting them all, but soon gave up—all he knew was that the veritable swarm of Dragon Cannons that had just been bearing down upon them … suddenly weren't.

As the rumbles faded, and the monstrous tanks disappeared over the next dune, he glanced at Shō, but it only served to redouble his bafflement. His companion didn't look as if he understood this turn of events any more than he did.

In an instant, Shō's Duel Disk was at his lips. "Sora? Something real strange just happened. That pack of Dragon Cannons you told us about, that broke off just now? They've moved on west—they ignored us completely."

"Moved w—?" Sora did not speak for a very long moment. And then: "Aw, sh—!"

A very well-timed burst of static obliterated what sounded like a very nasty string of curses. But Hayato still had a very distinct impression that their sudden burst of good luck had turned out to be everything but.

"Sawatari—Gongenzaka! You've been spotted—get out of there now!"

Sawatari Shingo couldn't resist a nervous laugh as he spotted the horde of Dragon Cannons heading their way at full speed. "Oh, sure—now you tell us, Sora," he said sarcastically. "Right as we were about to knock on the door, too."

Both he and Gongenzaka Noboru were standing below a sheer wall of cut stone some fifty feet high—the highest point of the outer border of the fortress they'd encountered to this point. They'd seen this from a distance, and assumed—correctly, as it turned out—that it might serve as an alternate access point to the main wall that the Lancers were presently assaulting. With mixed results, by the muffled noises he could hear from the distant battle.

"This is not the time to crack jokes, Sawatari!" Sora was almost screeching through his Duel Disk. "There's too many of them for you to face!"

Shingo didn't even have to look at the Ædonai to know that he was right. But a very strange thought had taken hold of him just now. Maybe—just maybe—they were looking at this the wrong way.

Wordlessly, he took out his Duel Disk. "Lock in," he said, feeling his heart beat a furious tattoo.

Gongenzaka Noboru stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. "There is a time and a place to prove your worth as a man," he grunted. "This is not that time."

But the more Shingo thought about it, the more he was certain his friend was mistaken. "Actually," he smirked, "I'd say the timing couldn't be better. I'm not going to prove to them I'm a man."

And he turned towards Noboru. "I'm going to prove it to you."

The Steadfast Duelist did what he did best—he stayed rooted to the ground, barely moving out of shock save for his eyes, flicking to Shingo, the Ædonai, and back again.

It took three more looks at the latter before Shingo saw the sudden spark of inspiration in his eyes. "Sawatari-san … you're a genius!"

"What can I say?" Shingo broke out into a grin as Noboru turned his way. "I'm underappreciated in my own time!" He performed a flourishing bow. "First move's on me—make it a good one!"

And without further ado, the both of them drew five cards. "Let's go—DUEL!"

For someone who enjoyed standing where he was, Noboru didn't waste time moving. "I Summon Superheavy Samurai Jisha-Q in Attack Position," he declared, commencing a slow, measured pace "and then use its effect to Special Summon a Level 4 or lower Superheavy Samurai monster from my hand, then switch my Jisha-Q to Defense Position. I Special Summon a second Jisha-Q, also in Defense Position!"

Shingo grinned as he watched two identical monsters take shape before him: hulking robots covered in blue armor and red lightning—most of the latter being produced by the thick half-circle of iron each of them carried over their shoulders like a yoke (2 × Level 4: ATK 900/DEF 1900). At any other time, these two monsters would have been the bane of his existence for what they could do in tandem. He was counting on the Ædonai to find that out the hard way.

"Perfect," he called out to Noboru—so far, his gamble was working. "Anything more you got in mind?"

For an answer, the Steadfast Duelist plucked two more monsters from his hand. "Since I have no Spells or Traps in my Graveyard," he boomed, "I activate the effects of my Superheavy Samurai Big Wara-G—and my Tuner monster Horaga-E—and Special Summon them both from my hand!" And another pair of machines shimmered in between his two Jisha-Q: one, a golden construct that looked like a pair of sandals pressed together (Level 5: ATK 800/DEF 1800); the other, a squat little robot a little more than half of Shingo's height, hefting a conch-shaped piece of metal tubing that looked near its own size and weight (Level 2: ATK 300/DEF 600).

"Looking good!" Shingo eyed the last card in Noboru's hand. "Hope you can do something with that!"

He could, as it turned out. "I use the effect of my Superheavy Samurai Soul Shine Claw to equip it from my hand or field to a monster I control! I equip it to my Big Wara-G—and then I will use its second effect to Special Summon it to my field as well!" And a second later, one more flower of photons bloomed in front of him, revealing a rocket-powered fist with fins along its length, tipped by five nasty-looking curved claws (Level 2: ATK 500/DEF 500).

"Finally," rumbled Noboru, "I Tune my Level 2 Horaga-E with my Level 5 Big Wara-G and my Level 2 Soul Shine Claw! And his three monsters, so named, hovered aloft; Horaga-E had just enough time to blow a long, deep note on the conch that served as its trumpet before each of them disintegrated into a ring of light. Each one surrounded another monster—consumed it as well—

"Synchro Summon!" the Steadfast Duelist thundered. "Level 9! Superheavy Demon Beast Kyū-B!"

CRASH. Shingo winced as something long and white struck the very section of wall they'd been scouting out and hoping to scale. The blade of the halberd, some twenty feet in length, whirled round in a circle—and then, without warning, the monster that held it was looming over the field. Half humanoid, half horse, and plated head to four feet in pristine white plate armor, the Synchro Monster planted itself directly over Noboru, bringing its spear to bear right at Shingo's heart (Level 9: ATK 1900/DEF 2500).

Not that Shingo was overly concerned. "Turn end!" he barely heard Noboru say—barely, owing to the sudden roar of mighty engines deep within the bulk of Kyū-B. Gouts of flame burst from its shoulders—quickly followed by an even bigger blast of fire from the pipes that served as its tail—and before Shingo could muster the wit to make some crude remark about this display of power, he felt the words die in his mouth as he watched the shockwave from the searing explosion hit the wall behind Gongenzaka with enough force to crack it down the middle.

"Glad I waited so long to keep my mouth shut," he muttered to himself, inwardly shaking at the strength of the Synchro Monster that stared him down. He moved to start his turn, draw a card—

—and smirked. "I use my Scale 1 Abyss Actor – Devil Heel and my Scale 8 Abyss Actor – Funky Comedian to set the Pendulum Scale!" The earth was beginning to rumble under his feet—better save the theatrics for an audience who can appreciate them, he decided. And so, as he lifted his hands skyward, he steeled his courage—and acted:

"Pendulum Summon!" cried Shingo. "Come forth! Level 7: Abyss Actor – Mellow Madonna, Level 4: Abyss Actor – Twinkle Littlestar, and Level 7: Abyss Actor – Big Star!"

The scarlet-dressed form of Twinkle Littlestar was the first to emerge from the glowing portal he'd conjured above his head, perhaps due to her smaller size (Level 4: ATK 1000/DEF 1000). But it only took a second longer for her companions to join her—one female, another male, both dressed in black and old enough to look like her mother and father, however demonic the three of them looked (Level 7: ATK 1800/DEF 2500, Level 7: ATK 2500/DEF 1800).

"Beast Kyū-B's effect!" Noboru had to shout in order to be heard over the din his Synchro Monster was creating. "For as long as I have no Spells or Traps in my Graveyard, it gains 900 DEF for each Special Summoned monster my opponent controls!" The flames that belched from Kyū-B grew hotter still as its point gauge grew to 5200 DEF; how they weren't melting the stone wall behind it was a minor miracle—

"Duel intrusion detected—two thousand-Life Point penalty assessed."

The only reason Shingo didn't jump out of his skin then and there was because he'd been expecting it for some time now. He'd further anticipated the barrage of lightning that tended to come with that all-too-familiar warning from his Duel Disk, cast down from the heavens upon every single member of the Ædonai that had had the audacity to interrupt their Duel.

Really, he was more annoyed than anything else—and he made sure Noboru knew it, too. "Ugh. If they'd could've waited just a second longer … " he complained, turning round to face the offending soldiers—a good half-dozen of them to start, and more arriving by the second. "Lousy sense of timing—and a lousy sense of humor to go with it."

He had the distinct impression he'd spoken too soon even before he'd heard the roar.

BAM.

The damaged section of wall behind them didn't simply collapse—it was blown up as if by dynamite, sending huge chunks of rock in every direction. Shingo, throwing caution to the wind, was forced to duck next to his Big Star to avoid the worst of the debris—while Noboru hardly even moved, and simply let his Kyū-B tank one errant boulder after another.

It took about a minute for the echoes of the blast to subside into an awful silence—and slightly longer than that for Shingo to find his voice. "The heck was that?!" he demanded of nobody in particular.

Nobody answered him. Even the Ædonai—who'd halted at last, with just enough space between them, Noboru, and Shingo to squeeze in a tennis court—were uncharacteristically silent.

That let Shingo hear the sound of approaching footsteps—two sets, he thought he could hear: one was a faint shuffle against the sand; the other, a heavy, plodding cadence that sounded like it came from something a lot bigger than the Kyū-B that dominated the field. They were coming from off to his right, where the hole in the wall had been blasted.

He turned—and promptly swallowed.

His first, foolish thought was of an American cowboy. The man was tall and lean—college-age, he guessed; very late teens at the youngest, though most likely older—whose weathered face was framed by an ink-black curtain of spiky hair, and topped with a wide-brimmed hat pulled up at a corner. That allowed Shingo to see the single dark green eye set into the rugged face—and the bandages pulled tight over where his right eye ought to be.

His gait was sure; he took his time stepping out from the shadows. The tan shirt he wore underneath his black vest was loose and long-sleeved—no doubt tailor-made for survival in dry, arid environments such as this. His black pants were blasted with sand, held up by no less than three belts that supported a canteen, a holster for what he dearly hoped was his Deck, the scaly dark tail that drooped over the sand—

Shingo blinked—then blinked again to make sure he hadn't been seeing things.

He was not—as the new arrival finally stepped out into the sun, he was clearly carrying a crocodile on his back. The same scar-faced one, he now saw, as the one Sora had told Kurosaki to kill—

"Aye-aye—what's this, then?"

The words came in a backwoods drawl that Shingo knew could only belong to the same Jim "Crocodile" Cook he'd heard less than an hour ago. He was looking over his shoulder, cocking his visible eyebrow in apparent confusion at the sight of them both.

"Y' know … when I told Sora I'd be willin' to show youse lot to the door … this ain't what I 'ad in mind." Jim jabbed off to his left with a thumb. "'S that way—could'a just knocked. Bit rude of you, sneakin' 'round like this—ain't it, Karen?"

The crocodile made an odd noise like a barking dog—which only made Shingo feel doubly uneasy. Jim certainly sounded conversational enough—and his smile certainly looked cordial—but the one eye that wasn't covered in bandages hadn't moved even an inch from them.

He recalled what Sora had claimed was under those bandages, and wondered if it might have been this guy who'd spotted him and Noboru in the first place.

Jim tapped at the bone-white arrowhead that served as his Duel Disk. "Override accepted—Duel cancelled," said a synthetic male voice a moment later.

And before either of the Lancers could even think to protest, the forms of Shingo's Abyss Actors had winked out of existence—followed in a split second by Noboru's own Superheavy Samurai. Within seconds, nothing remained of either but a few scattered motes of hard light, drifting away in the wind.

"Right, then! Let's take this from the top." Jim hefted his Duel Disk aloft, and shrugged off the backpack that held his pet crocodile. Moments later, the former had sprouted a wide, sun-orange chevron—not a sword, as Shingo had been expecting, but more akin to the boomerang shapes he'd seen during his brief time in the Synchro Dimension—while the latter had waddled off towards the safety of the Ædonai that had now sealed off every possible route of escape.

"Youse two can pick from me"—Jim thumbed to himself, advancing slowly upon the duo—"or me mates over there." He gestured to the soldiers, who laughed coarsely in anticipation. "I'll have the one, they'll have the other … and Karen can have what's left of you, after we tear the both of y' drongos limb from limb."

He grinned, laughing jovially. "Call it a proper welcome to the Fusion Dimension—Aussie style!"

Shingo—trembling head to foot—took one look at the growling crocodile as it began to prowl in a wide circle around him and an equally worried-looking Noboru, and repressed a shudder. He could have sworn that Karen was eyeing him back … and smiling.

A/N: I'd wanted to include a lot more action scenes in this—but the sad truth is this chapter would've been on the verge of twenty thousand words if I'd tried. So I'll compromise by calling this a "part one" of sorts until I get the rest of the Duels hammered out—and figure out how to juggle those as well.

Half of what you see here got written during what I can only describe as a two-day-long manic episode earlier this week that has left me very sleep-deprived. I wish I knew what it was about working out of town that made it so much easier for me to knock out all these words, but I'm living for it. I hope I'll have more chances like this in the future so as I can get the rest of this delivered in a timely fashion. You won't want to miss what I have planned for it.

Time to rest my fingers and my brain. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy! – K