Hey guys. I was originally intending to post this (and other) chapters next week but I'm sure you've seen the news by now.
Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga and resulting franchise, was recently found by the Japanese Coast Guard. It appears that he suffered an accident whilst snorkelling and did not survive. It was this man who formed the basis of much of our childhoods and created a legacy that will allow others to learn of him in the years and decades still to come. I can only hope that he knew how much of an impact he had on so many lives and in so many different ways and that, wherever he is, he can rest soundly.
Kazuki Takahashi
October 1961 - July 2022
"The gift of kindness you've given and the courage I've given you will remain with us, and that will forever bind us together."
One bleary eye stared down the faintly glowing dial of the bedside clock. It was a little after five in the morning but there was no chance of getting back to sleep. "Nnnnn." Zombies could interpret the slow groan as an instinctive need for sustenance. While the humble brain-cruncher would instinctively seek out the juiciest cranium around, a baser human need only hunt a kettle and the first source of caffeine. It could be said that much of human civilisation had developed to the point that any bleary-eyed, barely existing shambles of a person could don a dressing gown and stumble down the path of least resistance to find that precious reward waiting patiently at the end.
Of course, many of those weary travellers seeking their daily dose of enlightenment start with pounding headaches and befuddled minds. So it was that this intrepid adventurer was nearly at the kitchen before taking note of the unusual noise coming from their destination. A curious grinding, thumping noise.
"Joey, so help me if you're trying to make another trap for Tristan." She blinked in confusion at the sight. Coffee was an essential objective but trying to figure out why the newcomer was using a mortar and pestle to make it was a close second. (Third was where he had even managed to find the tools.) "Oh. Hi."
"Hi." The intruder carefully set down his borrowed equipment with a guilty expression. "Sorry about the noise. I was making some coffee. Care to join me?" A sculpted lump gestured to the row of identical mugs hung on one wall.
"Sure." Téa propped herself at the breakfast bar as the stranger spooned the coffee grounds into a gleaming cafetière. "We do have a coffee grinder somewhere. It's usually beside the beans but Duke keeps putting it back in the wrong place." Like any absent-minded man, that then limited it down to the entire country.
"I did find it." Tapping the bowl gently, he poured the fine grains into the pot and reached for the steaming kettle. "But my brother insists that hand-ground is better than machine. He'd never let me hear the end of it if I used a machine but damn him if he's not right." Jack's last birthday gift to Yusei had been an expensive bag of coffee beans to match the preceding present of an expensive hand grinder.
"Why are you up this early?" Taking the idle reminiscence in stride, Téa noted the slight lines around tired eyes and came to a conclusion. "Struggle to sleep in new places?" A dancer she'd been friends with had been plagued by the same problem. Anywhere unfamiliar meant at least one sleepless night unless pharmaceuticals provided assistance.
"Struggle to sleep anywhere." Giving the plunger one final push, he carefully poured a measure of the precious elixir into each mug. "Which is why it's a relief to find that coffee is the same no matter where you are." Taking a sip of the brew, Téa had to admit that Yusei's brother knew his coffee.
"Are you allowed to tell us that?" Food businesses were worth trillions each year and were the key industry to human civilisation.
"Coffee's been the same for centuries. It'll still be around in a few decades, that's hardly groundbreaking news." He cast a strange look at the fruit bowl. "Weird to see only red apples though. Mostly green where I come from."
"Why?" Instinctive fear gripped her heart. "What happened to the red apples? Did some disease wipe them all out?"
"This is exactly what I'm afraid of." Lowering his cup, Yusei kept his tone low and steady. "Any foreknowledge could have dangerous repercussions. If I tell you a disease wipes out apples, the entire history of medicine could alter because you tried to prevent it. I can't tell you anything you don't assume already."
"Not even lottery numbers?" A low quirk crossed that stern face.
"Tell me last week's and I'll tell you next year's." Téa's mouth opened and closed a few times as she instinctively tried to salvage the opportunity.
"I get it." She admitted after a minute. "No information about the future." Nobody paid attention to previous lottery numbers anyway. They always pinned their hopes on the next set. There was no good reason Yusei would have a set from decades before he was born.
"Not even to say I think it was a social trend towards green apples." Tapping their mugs, the pair stepped away from the dangerous conversation. Few people paid attention to past lottery numbers unless those numbers suddenly had yet to be played.
After a few moments of quiet contemplation, Téa cast about for a safer conversation. "You said you had a brother. Mr Coffee-Grinder." A slight smile quirked his lips. Jack would have loved that. "Would telling me about him break time apart as well?"
"I've actually got two brothers." Setting down his cup, Yusei's expression darkened. "And I can tell you stories which would make you wish time was broken."
Waking up first was the duty of any soldier. On those days that Téa wasn't having trouble sleeping, Tristan was usually up and about before most of the others were even stirring. Slipping out of bed, he threw on his shirt from the day before out of habit. He would wear the dirty shirt long enough to get some food and coffee inside him and then he for a shower when he was awake enough to appreciate it. On most days, the shirt was an insurance policy in case anyone else stumbled into the shared areas unexpectedly. However, those days were few and far between which is why he was surprised to hear voices coming from the kitchen area.
Rounding the corner, he was surprised to see Téa in the throes of laughter as the newcomer gasped out a story. "... and I'm there, covered in feathers and Crow holds up this pot of glue in one hand and a brush in the other" Assuming a pose like a crouching monkey, the laughing man forced a puzzled expression. "And says 'It wasn't me'."
Wheezing out tears of laughter, Téa was gripping the counter for balance as she waved in surrender. When she regained the ability to speak, there was only one question which needed asking: "And how did your mother take it?"
Taking his mug in one hand, Yusei glanced forlornly into the empty depths. "Martha forgave us, eventually. Jack still likes to mention that he got off without any punishment." While Martha still lamented the loss of her favourite duvet and the coincidental need to replace her irrepressibly dented ladle.
"Is this a private party or can anyone join?" It felt good to see the intruder jump slightly. Tristan didn't trust anyone who got up at such an ungodly hour.
"Yusei was just telling me some stories about his brothers." Wiping her eyes clear, Téa was still losing a few giggles. "From the sounds of it, you'd get along great with them both." It was a shame that they couldn't meet without risking the universe collapsing in on itself.
"I didn't think that everyone would be getting up this early." With the sounds of several voices spreading through the penthouse, the other residents were starting to rise from their restless sleep and doors were opening in the distance. "But I've got plenty more stories. Like, this one time"
"Maybe later." Tristan cut off the conversational branch before it could fully form. "There's some stuff from yesterday that I've been thinking about."
"You and me both." Swaddled in a puffy dressing gown, Rebecca made a beeline for the first of many coffee mugs that Yusei had been preparing. "Say one word about my height or age and I'll have Duke break your kneecaps before you can finish the joke."
"Don't hold it against her." Duke had been graciously invited to stay in the other guest room across the hallway from Rebecca's and wasn't more than a step behind. "She gets it a lot." Soon enough, Mai, Joey, and Serenity had also arrived and positioned themselves around the area in various forms of sleepwear. Even in his plain shirt, Yusei suddenly felt overdressed.
"Like I was saying," Bowing to peer pressure (and after watching Yusei sip his coffee first), Tristan had accepted a cup of the ground beans. "You said that someone was going to come back from the future and you arrived before they had even left. I'm not as smart as Rebecca so you're going to have to dumb it down for me." A gracious cup was raised down the breakfast counter. Being smaller meant that the caffeine was working a lot faster and her brain was already fully loaded.
"Dr Hawkin can probably explain it to you better than I can, she knows your science better than I do." Ninety years of advancement meant he might use terms they were unfamiliar with. "Wait, I know." Tearing the back of a box of cereal, he patted himself down for something to write with. "Does anyone have a pen?"
"Hang on," Searching the junk drawer which every kitchen (regardless of size or function) possessed, Mai flicked out a half-empty ballpoint. "What's the story?" Yusei smiled as he sketched a square on the cardboard.
"Someone I collaborated with for a while, I think they were a reporter, had this theory." He'd never found out exactly who had been on the other end of the emails, as they were initially posing as a researcher working at an associate institution until one phone call uncovered the ruse. It was a shame, Yusei had been enjoying the rapport. The mysterious stalker had provided interesting ideas about the nature of time. "Everyone thinks of time as a straight line, moving from past to future. Think of it more like a cube – with depth and height." Sketching in a couple of diagonal lines gave the illusion that the square receded into the page.
"I have a question!" Raising his hand like a schoolboy, Joey had the maniacal gleam of every sci-fi fanatic. Yugi had warned him about that. "What's the depth do?"
"It's a metaphor, idiot." Ribbing his best friend, Tristan was barely any better off. The three dimensions he operated in usually appeared on maps, not calendars.
"Then 'metaphorically', what does it do?" Sneering back, the pair were already dissolving into an argument all their own.
"Whenever history is changed, the timeline gets overwritten." Looping the bottom line back on itself, he reset it in parallel to the original. "As events progress along their course, history is rewoven. A new timeline is established and nobody's even aware it happened." Grim silence infused the room.
"What happens to the people?" Téa voiced what they were all thinking. They had fought to save history once before but this was no Shadow Game. This was a cold, calculated machination that had every chance of succeeding and erasing their very existence. "What happens to Yugi?"
"The good news is that I was sent here before anything could happen." That calm tone of the stranger was even able to soothe the anxieties of Mai and Duke, despite their instincts that he was a con-man. "No matter what Yliaster has planned, everyone here will remain exactly as they are."
"What about the others? That Jaden kid, and your friends?" A smile broke Yusei's calming expression. Even though their friend was in danger, Yugi's family still cared about the others – even those who were indirectly responsible for bringing this plight.
"Yugi's going to protect Jaden's friends. The future isn't going anywhere." There was that undertone again. The one that said everything was fine was a bit too intently.
"What aren't you telling us?" Mai honed in on the disturbance like a shark after a drop of blood. "The answers you're giving are too nice to be real." Another smile replaced the one Yusei already had. Admiration at being caught by one of the greatest Duellists of the age, shame at the deception, and a bit sickly at the edges.
"It's nothing that anyone has to be worried about." Tapping the cardboard diagram against his spare hand, Yusei debated sharing the secret with Akiza once he got back. It was possible that the rest of his family had figured it out but he doubted it. "Yliaster already changed my history. Two, three times. Then Musume changed my future." Midlife crises were incomparable to multi-life crises. "As I said, history resets every time. I'm not sure if this version of me is anything like the original."
He had been telling the truth about the other's safety. History was untouched until long after Jaden departed Duel Academy and the distant future remained stable as long as Yliaster's temporal incursions were underway. It was only his own past that was irrevocably distorted. There were entire weeks where he pondered if history had changed overnight or if it had remained static since Musume arrived.
"What does it mean if you call someone a Doctor if they haven't heard back about their final results?" All eyes turned to the smugly waving hand of the child prodigy. Then, with the same unified movement, they slowly turned to where Yusei was trying to mentally mitigate the fallout of his inadvertent words.
"Well, Rebecca," He managed to switch away from her future title at the last minute. "That means that I was very lucky that I only let slip an inevitable fact." Nobody could spend any length of time around the girl without pegging her as a future doctor in more than one field.
"So's what's the big plan to take on these Yliaster goons. We hunt 'em down and pound them till they squeal?" Smacking fist into palm, Joey was ready to finally settle events with his fists. Duel Monsters was fun but it wasn't needed when the other party couldn't invoke Shadow Games at the draw of a card.
"No. Yliaster likes to use Shadow Cards, and deal real damage. Going up against that without a Duel to limit their actions would be reckless." Joey's expression soured again as Mai patted his arm in comfort. "All we have to do is track down any mention of a Duellist causing real damage. Since they'll probably be looking for the chance to Duel with Yugi, they're almost certainly going to realise I'm here instead. At that point, I'll take care of it."
Stunned silence met his words. "You're entire plan is to act as live bait?" Mai summed up what they were all thinking. "Sounds reckless. I like it."An opinion clearly not shared by the entire group. Mai was the wildcard, everyone else was grounded enough to fear the obvious dangers. "Yugi and Jaden doing the same thing in the future?"
"Not quite." Téa breathed a sigh of relief at the words. "Yugi is... at a private facility where Jaden's friends are going to support him. There are only a few people who could be working for Yliaster and he'll be safe enough to figure out who it is. And Jaden's in my time, with Musume and a police force who know about Yliaster. We've got all the advantages we could want."
"What's your plan to find the person after Yugi?" Rebecca had instantly spotted the hole in the grand scheme. Yugi's friends were hardly experienced in hunting time-travelling Duelling assassins. At least the others had support networks in the future. "Just wait around for someone to jump out and try to kill you?"
If he thought he could have gotten away with it, Yusei would have offered a posting at the SRC to Rebecca right then and there. "Your society is ninety years different from mine. Whoever Yliaster sent will have trouble blending in, securing food, shelter or resources. It would also help if you could tell me where you are." Frowning at the confusion in their faces, he rephrased the question. "In your lives. What have you done, what you have planned. It might help me figure out how Yliaster is going to attack."
A tense glance bounced between everyone else in the room as they held a silent conversation. "How much do you know about us?" Mai probed. "Secret-wise?" That conversational look finally impacted Yusei as he struggled to approach the problem from the other end.
"Yugi solved the Millennium Puzzle. The Shadow Games that followed. Battle City, the Orichalcos, the... that the Pharaoh left." That had been a bitter pill to swallow. He'd only met Pharaoh Atem during their shared fight against Paradox with no idea that he'd even existed before that. He'd been hoping to see the other Yugi again but it was enough to know that he was at peace. "The Duel at Sea tournament, Professor Julius using Orichalcos stones to reignite the Shadow Games. That Pegasus wants to create the first Industrial Illusions sponsored Duel Team. The incident in San Francisco during the,"
"Whoa there!" Duke cut the conversation short and drew polarised glares. Yusei had been on the verge of spilling future secrets and at least two former delinquents hungered for that knowledge. "Haven't quite got to that bit. Professor Julius is gone but we're not in San Francisco yet. No spoilers."
"No spoilers." Yusei agreed as he rose to his feet. "There's a couple of things I forgot to get out of my Runner. Would one of you mind helping me fetch them?" Even though he had generously been given free rein within the penthouse, getting in and out would take time to organise. Much like Jaden was discovering in the far future, security had difficulties accommodating people who shouldn't exist.
"No problem." Unwinding himself from the couch, Tristan stretched the morning stiffness from his muscles. He could afford a quick run to the garage before heading for the shower. "Runner's that bike of yours, right?" The innocuous question was also another sharp reminder to Yusei that – no matter how hard he tried or how careful he was – simply being in the past was inevitably going to contaminate the timeline.
Conversation resumed nearly before the doors had closed, taking a different course from before. "Does anyone else get the sense that he's not telling us something?" Mai had learned how to bluff from a young age and was nearly supernatural in her ability to sniff out deception. "Just because Yugi vouched for him doesn't mean I trust him. If these Yliaster people are that strong, why not just blow up the building or something." Death flags began rustling gently in the winds of fate.
"Probably so's they don't screw up the timeline. They could end up writing themselves entirely out of existence if they're not careful."
"This isn't some movie, Joey." Rebecca managed one of those smug smiles that enraged anyone older than her. "Like he said yesterday, he violated his relativity in the causal nexus by preceding the arrival of the other party. As such, he no longer has the ability to discern which course of action would have been taken had he not arrived. Besides," She sniffed dismissively. "They are already firmly established in the timeline. The Grandfather Paradox would prevent their self-destruction." Reaching out, Mai slapped the triumphant palm of the young prodigy.
Down in the garage, Yusei was shoving a couple of spare laptop batteries into a bag with a few other loose items. He had no idea how long he'd be living in the ancient era and even less if their archaic power supplies would be able to charge his devices. He had enough juice for three weeks with what he'd brought but, after that, he might have to improvise. "So, what else did you have planned for today?" Like all the others, Tristan was accommodating yet hardly enthusiastic.
"We were moving out to California in a couple of weeks." Was the blunt response. "That's been taking up most of my time."
"California. Right." He remembered the footnote in an old history book.
"What?" Tristan didn't like how that tone trailed off. "Is something going to happen in California? Or on the way there?" Planes were faster than ships but lacked the safety feature of being able to stay in place when broken. Nor could anyone come to their aid if there was a problem in the first place. There were millions of variables which could fail at any point during the flight.
"Nothing," Yusei said heavily. "I'm just... I know about Dr Hawkin. It must be hard for you." It was cruel how Arthur Hawkin's slow succumbing to Alzheimer's had eroded one of the greatest archaeological minds of his generation yet merited nothing more than a small paragraph in a book he should have been considerably more prominent in. Like Yanagi back in his time, not even the greatest of scholars knew a way to resist the ravages of time. Every time he visited his oldest friend, there was always a little less to see.
"Oh." Tristan suddenly understood the weight. "Yeah. Guessing it would be breaking the rules if you gave us some miracle drug to cure him. Forget it," He raised a hand before Yusei could respond. "That wasn't fair." Anyone with a good heart would be tempted to bend the rules to save another good person but introducing advanced medication was beyond what they could afford to risk.
"I'm sorry I can't do more." Tristan's instincts were right, there was medication in Yusei's time which could have helped. But it would require leaving enough behind for a lengthy regimen and there were too many ways it could go wrong. One pill being examined by a meddling chemist could tear apart the course of events faster than Joey could tear apart a pizza. But still... "You said you were moving to California in a couple of weeks?"
"Sure am. Bags packed, rooms waiting, fliiiights booked." Tristan caught the look on Yusei's face. "Unless, we didn't?"
"I'm not sure." Nearly every detail of Yugi's origins was excessively detailed. "A lot of people skipped that part. It's more interesting to read about the first Duellist team backed by Industrial Illusions." Ignoring the exact month in favour of reading about a team containing the original King of Games and the Japanese Duelling Champion was an inevitable incident.
"Yeah, I figure." That particular empty tone was one he was familiar with. Not with his brothers, oddly enough, but with any staff new to the SRC. Science was hardly the most famous of industries and there was little enough recognition to go around. Anyone not already near the top had little chance to be recognised for their work. At least, until they came to work with Yusei.
"Trust me, nobody's interested in moving dates when they get to read about what you got up to with the JDSF." That caught his guard's attention. "Between you and me, what happened during Operation Heaven Strike? Nobody will give me access because it's not 'covered by my clearance' which is bullshit. After all, I can out-secret most of the military."
For a long minute, Tristan evaluated the man before him. First as a soldier and then through his experiences as Yugi's friend. "Between you and me?" Lowering his voice in case someone happened by, he keep his tone steady and even. "I think that you're dangerous. I think you're probably a good guy but you'll try to save everyone no matter how far you have to go and that means you push boundaries that shouldn't be pushed. First lesson they taught us in the JSDF was to save the soldier next to you. Second lesson was that you won't always succeed at the first. From the look in your eyes," And it was the same look he had seen Yugi, both of him, give a thousand times. "You're someone who never learned lesson two."
"So, that's a 'no' to Operation Heaven Strike?" Yusei replied coolly.
"Sorry." Tristan stepped back again. "It's classified." And so it would remain as long as it was Yusei doing the asking.
"Damn." Shrugging carelessly, he brushed past the stoic figure. "I see why Serenity married you." Stunned silence accompanied him back to the elevator. While it was easy to plan the future and know what was to come, having someone else speak it as fact was always an unexpected shock.
Similarly, Yusei had underestimated his companion. It was true that he risked more than he should to help his friends but it was easier to live with losing a lot than accepting the alternative of surrendering in advance. Tristan had seen that with a single look and pointed out the dangers. Dangers which, Yusei mused as the lift doors closed before them, having friends to help with always seemed possible to overcome.
Ah, the ol' bait them into a trap routine. Example: I bet you can't post a review.