Previously on TLA: After Syrus escaped a Dark Duel, he and Yugi informed Dr Crowler and Alexis of the latest development.
Although Crowler initially wanted to suspend their studies until the following year, Yugi vetoed the idea as it would be punishing the victims.
Alexis suggested assigning security to protect the Slifer Dorm only for Syrus to reveal he'd already called in an old friend: Tyranno Hassleberry.
Being a dorm leader wasn't all politics and inspirational leadership, it also involved marking and writing evaluations. Luckily, Yugi could also set those deadlines and it just so happened that a lot of marking needed doing at the same time Hassleberry announced a hearty excursion around the island. If anyone was capable of handling the Slifers, it would be the Sarge. Wishing them all the best, Yugi had quietly retreated to his room, glanced remorselessly at the grades already entered on his computer, and slumped onto his bed, grateful for the first real break since he arrived... Until a heavy thumping on the door roused Yugi from his nap barely fifteen minutes in.
"Hey, is anyone in there?" Another series of raps forced him to slip from the bunk and pull the jacket back on. Opening the door revealed the type of sight usually accompanied by flashing lightning and pouring rain: a damp and bedraggled figure carrying a motionless body.
"Can I help you?" He wasn't sure what else to say.
"I'm the guy who found what you left in the forest." Hitching his cargo slightly higher, the stranger shifted around for Yugi to get a better look.
"I have no idea who that is." A standard response but an honest one for once. Besides being covered in muddy streaks, the only thing that stuck out from the slumbering brunette was his Ra Yellow jacket.
"I think you know him as 'OB-FTW'." The punctuation rolled out with the same military precision as his outfit. While Hassleberry had loaded himself for every possible eventuality, this stranger had obviously researched his environment and loaded down to the bare essentials. "Don't believe me?"
"Well, he is wearing a yellow jacket." Even so, Yugi opened the door fully. "Put him on the bottom bunk for now, we can figure it out when the others get back." Any good leader needed a second in command and Syrus had been voluntold for the position.
Grunting, the courier seated himself on the edge of the bed before simply rolling the unconscious form off his back. "That's better." Vertebrae clicked back into place as he stretched aggressively.
"Now," Yugi leaned against the wall by the door, conveniently close to a broken table leg he felt nicely tied the decor together. "Who are you and why are you here?" African heritage (based on the touches of tribal jewellery and the golden pendant around his neck) yet he spoke with an East Coast accent. Tank top and sleeveless vest in tactical noir and showing off perfectly sculpted musculature that underlined a rigorous exercise regime and strictly controlled diet - neither of which screamed an association with Jaden.
"Whoa, easy." Both palms raised defensively as he saw the posture, weapon, and connection between the pair. "Hassleberry called me in, name's Axel Brodie."
"You're Brodie?" Yugi blurted. It was a name he'd heard before but not in relation to a person. "Hassleberry said you were a bloodhound." Words would be had once the group got back from training.
"Guess you could call me that." He jerked a thumb to the bed occupant. "Tracking that guy took all day. Found him halfway across the island, at the old lab."
"There's a lab on the island?" What Jaden hadn't told him about the island could fill a dozen books. Unless this was more dog talk?
"Used to be, it got abandoned in Jaden's second year." Okay, secret lab. If he found a hidden temple, there'd be words with Kaiba. "I checked against the list of students, he's Takahiro Hirano. First-year in Ra Yellow."
"Then why's he running around pretending to be from Obelisk Blue?" Nothing he had learned to date was making sense. Everything conflicted with everything else and the only fact Yugi knew for certain was that he knew nothing.
"Look, why don't I just tell you from the beginning?" Axel suggested. "Or we'll be here all night."
While Hassleberry had opted for the perilous dive towards a building capable of generating high-velocity gusts of wind, Axel had chosen the safer drop zone right by their scene of investigation. Despite Syrus' history of overreaction, the fallout was exactly as he had described it - devastation, trees obliterated amidst gaping holes in the ground. He hadn't seen damage like this since…
Thinking with too wide a scope and it's impossible to see the wood for the trees so he examined the fallout through the eyes of a Duellist instead of a soldier. Spirits were a rare commodity nearly everywhere else in this world with this tiny island being a unique hotspot of activity. Blast patterns this cast were impossible under conventional explosives without extensive scorch marks and they all originated from three massive craters in the muddy ground. Taking that into account, he had to assume this was closer to Syrus' side of the field. Standard distances mapped him to about here, putting his opponent over here. Blowback of this magnitude would knock a person back into the tree line in this direction.
Except that it didn't take a tactical background to notice the void in the mud. Someone had been lying here long enough to leave a sizable imprint. And, judging by the pattern of tracks leading away, been escorted away by someone altogether larger.
Crouching by the clearest set he could find, Axel made an educated guess off the footprint: about six foot, heavy build, possible mental imbalance. Facts one and two were based on size and depth respectively. Number three was because the much larger set of prints was barefoot. Also…
He examined the tracks more closely. It looked like someone from the Academy had already been down to do a cursory survey. A third set of footprints branches off towards the main building, standard tread but without any difference in weight between trips. He'd reach out to Crowler and get the full report later. Bigfoot had left a trail last night but island winds had had hours to erode more than enough and he had to follow before the last bits were completely erased.
Even so, tracking the quarry was easier said than done. After the first hour of following disruptions through the harmony of the jungle, Axel had stumbled across the first major change: a set of substantially deeper imprints and the cessation of the dragging boot marks. Bigfoot must have finally shouldered the burden. Oddly, this had somehow resulted in the trail growing more difficult to track instead of easier. Larger and larger gaps were appearing between traces and he was frequently making assumptions based on direction to look for more clues instead of being able to follow them directly.
Axel considered the distance between the impact sites. Anywhere from one to over twenty metres. A single metre could be covered by a large stride and powerful legs. Twenty metres was impossible for normal humans. But he'd followed the trail far enough to make an educated guess as to the destination and set a course.
Viper's old base in the abandoned lab was a couple of klicks out from the current location and maybe the only structure out there that might have active utilities. Highly defensible as well. The only way to infiltrate would be to head uphill first before sneaking around the top of the exposed structure and looping the camera feeds to hack the keypad without anyone interfering.
At least, that was the plan. Axel had trained in every environment possible and every major tactical strategy since the Roman Empire had fallen. None of them had explicitly said what to do when a bear dropped out of the trees and grabbed him by the neck. "Him mine!" Bellowed the savage beast. "You no have!"
First; this was no bear unless the bears on this island had taken to wearing Duel Disks and talking.
Second; maybe this was a bear because it had hurtled him ten metres into a tree.
By the time his vision had stabilised, the mountain was already bearing down on him again. Axel was able to duck aside and regather his thoughts. "Duel!" He shouted. "I'll Duel you for him!" Couldn't mount an effective defence with this ringing in his ears, he'd either be shooting blind or punching air. Best chance of surviving was a straight match and hope this guy had as little skill as intellect.
"Lose, go!" An arm thicker than some of the branches waved aggressively as Axel examined the mountain man. A wild mane of hair, thick beard growth, and faded trousers held up with a dirty piece of rope. Without that expensive kit on his arm, Axel could have assumed he was raised by the monkeys he had seen on the way up. "Go forever! Damon keep!" Okay, that was weird.
(Turn 1)
Axel: LP: 4000 Hand: 6 Field: None Graveyard: None
Damon: LP: 4000 Hand: 5 Field: None Graveyard: None
"I'll set a monster and one more card for my turn." A bluff within a bluff; his face-down was Blaze Accelerator but Damon was more likely to assume it to be a trap. In reality, his Volcanic Counter monster was of more use in the graveyard where it could be sacrificed to have his opponent take twice the amount of battle damage from any one attack. All he had to do was have it sent there.
(Turn 2)
Axel: LP: 4000 Hand: 4 Field: 1 Monster, 1 Spell/Trap None Graveyard: None
Damon: LP: 4000 Hand: 6 Field: None Graveyard: None
"Me summon magic man." Being shorthand for Rapid-Fire Magician, a Level 4 with 1600 ATK and 1200 DEF, strong enough to defeat Volcanic Counter. But that wasn't the real strength of the card - it also inflicted 400 damage for each Normal Spell that was activated. "Thunder boom!" Axel was able to recognise Raimei from across the field. It was irritating that the 400 damage from the magician outstripped the 300 points of damage from the Spell. "Set three."
(Turn 3)
Axel: LP: 3300 Hand: 5 Field: 1 Monster, 1 Spell/Trap None Graveyard: None
Damon: LP: 4000 Hand: 1 Field: 1 Monster, 3 Spell/Trap Graveyard: 1 Spell
It looked like Damon had a focus on effect damage with support from Rapid-Fire Magician. Two likely reasons he hadn't used those cards - they were either traps or needed specific conditions. "I activate Volcanic Cyclone! By discarding Pyro-type monsters, I can destroy an equal number of your Spell or Trap cards!" Unfortunately, he only had two in his hand. Better get lucky. "Keep the main course because I'm taking the sides." Luck stayed with Axel because one of the cards vanishing into the great beyond was Coffin Seller, which would have him take damage for each monster sent to his graveyard, a key factor in his playstyle. "Since two Volcanic Scattershot were sent to my graveyard, you take 500 points of damage for each."
"Argh! Fire hot!" Roared the caveman as molten lava scattered around him.
"I'll set," Odd. He'd automatically filtered past this monster since it wasn't a pyro but now that he had more time to look at it, Axel couldn't remember packing it into his Deck. "One monster and a face-down." While this new monster was useful, Volcanic Force would be the real ace in the hole.
(Turn 4)
Axel: LP: 3300 Hand: 2 Field: 2 Monster, 2 Spell/Trap None Graveyard: 2 Monsters, 1 Spell
Damon: LP: 3000 Hand: 2 Field: 1 Monster, 1 Spell/Trap Graveyard: 3 Spell/Trap
"Like fire?" Growled the behemoth. "Ookazi!" He roared. Flames enveloped the forest and Axel shielded himself behind an upturned arm. Ookazi was another direct damage Spell that inflicted 800 points of damage.
"More fire!" Roared his opponent and the soldier peeked out to see Serial Spell get slapped down, a Quick-Play capable of mimicking another Spell at the cost of the cards in that hand. At least that would be the end of it, "Fire magic, fire!" Already being roasted alive in the inferno, Rapid-Fire Magician added another layer of misery as its effect was triggered by Ookazi's activation, sending another wave of fireballs his way. [Axel Life Points: 3300 → 2500 → 1700 → 1300]
With the scent of his singed hair filling the air around him, Axel took a burning breath as he thanked his lucky stars that the worst of it was ov "MORE FIRE!"
"Aw, hell." Three burning dice tumbled through the pyrotechnic cloud that surrounded him as the previous move came to fruition: Fire Darts could roll three dice and inflict 100 times the results as damage but could only be played when the owner had no cards in their hand!
Two, six, one, 900 damage. [Axel Life Points: 1300 → 400]
(Turn 5)
Axel: LP: 400 Hand: 3 Field: 2 Monster, 2 Spell/Trap None Graveyard: 2 Monsters, 1 Spell
Damon: LP: 3000 Hand: 0 Field: 1 Monster Graveyard: 6 Spell/Trap
Axel squeezed his eyes tightly to rejuvenate some level of moisture. "Ow." He muttered sourly past a wave of scorch marks and crispy hair. "You like playing with fire, huh? Well, it's about to get hot. I activate Blaze Accelerator." An automated missile tripod emerged over one shoulder. "Which I upgrade to the Tri-Blaze Accelerator." Spindly legs turned to chunky steel beams as two enhanced barrels joined the upgraded centre. "Roll call! Flip Summon, Division [L2/200 ATK/200 DEF]!" An odd machine monster floated to his side, courtesy of his defensive reinforcement from the previous round. "By sacrificing Division, I can gain two Machine Tokens for my side of the field." Splitting in half, the monster took a stance on either side of the artillery behind him.
"Huh? Two machine?" Damon was thrown by the mechanised mitosis. This guy was more than a little out of touch to not recognise the tactic.
"Don't worry about them for now, worry about the big one." Behind him, the massive cannon began to bubble and explode. "At the cost of Tri-Blaze Accelerator, I can summon the unquenchable Volcanic Doomfire!" A tough brawler of a beast emerged from the explosion behind him, all craggy rock with pulsing veins of magma just beneath the surface. Fires erupted in the undergrowth as the plume down its back flared into life and set the forest ablaze.
"Don't worry about the bonfires, I've got them covered." Rule one of playing with fire: don't. Rule two: don't play against someone with more experience at hotter temperatures. "By sacrificing one token and my face-down Volcanic Counter, I summon the Infernal Flame Emporer!" What had begun as tiny fires roared into a sentient inferno that took up his left flank. "Volcanic Doomfire, ignite his Rapid Fire Magician!" Magma flooded the field and surged up the magician as they screamed in agony. [Damon Life Points: 2500 → 1100]. "Infernal Flame Emperor, light him up!" Flames circled the field and darted into the air, converging back down on the gawking giant.
[Game Over]
[Winner: Axel Brodie]
It was an unsporting manoeuvre but Axel was already moving before the holograms had faded away. There was no way to take Damon in a straight fight and he was brave enough to admit it.
A blow to the solar plexus winded his foe enough to be pile-driven into a pile at the base of a tree. "Now," He jabbed the dangerous end of his rifle under Damon's chin and tightened the trigger to within a fraction of danger. "Tell me where the kid is." Those hardened eyes glared right back at him without the slightest inch of give.
"You," He strained closer to give an experimental sniff. "You smell Jaden?"
Axel leaned in closer. "How do you know Jaden?" A lot of good people knew the second King of Games. A lot of very bad ones did as well. Rising, Damon gave no notice to the figure on his chest short of a crushing bear hug. "Hey, put me down!" When had this behemoth last bathed? Axel was nearly passing out from the raw stench coming from under his armpit. "Down!"
"Jaden friend!" He dropped Axel with a happy beam behind his matter beard. "Friend help friend." Damon patted him on the shoulder hard enough to sink Axel an inch into the ground.
"Glad we could talk it out." He brushed off another pat before his shins could splinter. "Why didn't you say you knew Jaden?" Damon gave him a level stare.
"Why you not?"
Axel scowled. "I'm not going to get a lecture from someone trying to play with an empty hand."
"Next draw Cyber Archfiend." Grunted the behemoth. "More draw-er." He loomed. He was clearly very good at looming. But Axel was very unused to being loomed over so he didn't know to back down and wasn't interested in learning.
"There's no way you could know that without cheating." Damon smiled and pulled out the card. As was foretold, it portrayed a repugnant merge of digital damnation.
"See?" He said proudly. "Me know draw!" Tucking the deck back away, he threw Axel over his shoulder. "Come, home, boy."
"Hey!" He pounded a slab of muscle as he desperately hoped those commas weren't imagined. "Down, you lump!"
"Up!" Damon insisted, sprinting through the undergrowth. "Up and away!" Crouching in the run, he launched them both off the edge of a short cliff.
"Hang on," Yugi stared incredulously. "Are you saying this guy is Tarzan or Superman?"
"Trust me, you haven't even heard the crazy part." With the last entry being launched off a cliff, it was scary what Axel deemed 'crazy'.
Axel was watching his life flash before his eyes when Damon snagged one of the thick vines that hung from seemingly every tree and transformed their vertical motion to lateral. "Ahhh-haaahhh!" He bellowed as they swung to the next grip.
"Hrup!" Axel gagged as the sudden changes in velocity screwed with his inner ear and stomach. "I'm gonna throw up."
"No sick!" His captor/ride stated. Whether as an update or a command required more brainpower than Axel had available. The mercenary had been trained over the years to resist any number of mind-altering experiences, from torture to food poisoning. Nothing could have prepared him for being swung twenty feet above the ground by a man who smelled like a camping ground during hippie season and was about as clothed. All he was able to focus on was the ground growing horrifyingly close before dropping away in a view that scrambled his instinctive sense of reality. Then the process would repeat in another dizzying display.
"Here!" Hurtling across the ground like a meteor, Damon timed his landing to hit the ground running and moved more confidently than a shopper stepping off an escalator.
"Where?" Axel tried to ask. What came out was "Wrugh!" As one hand clamped over his mouth to hold in his breakfast. It no longer mattered who Damon was working for, Axel hated him.
"Come!" A hearty palm slapped him on the back.
"Hrmmm!" He screamed while pinching his nose. If he had known what was coming, he would have opted for blindly shooting instead. Instead, he managed to force his stomach under control and more their position. Viper's lab was sitting comfortably to one side with Damon already holding the door open. (Did he know the code? Did he even know it needed a code? Or did he somehow rip it open with sheer strength and remind Axel that attacking might not be in his best interests?)
Swallowing his pride (amidst other items), Axel reluctantly followed him into the chill confines. At least the trip had cost him seconds instead of hours and he was nearly back to normal. "Sorry about that mess in the forest." Pulling on a flannel shirt from a hook by the door, Damon adjusted the rope around his dirty shorts. With his hair roughly pulled back and a clearer speech pattern, he seemed more like a hipster gone camping than a wild man. "I thought you were after the kid. Looks like my handless strategy needs more work as well."
"Wait," Had he been smashed into a tree on the way here or "You could talk normally this entire time?" Short of a Jekyll/Hyde situation, there was no reasonable explanation to solve the personality transplant and living in the laboratory.
"More or less." Damon shrugged. "I believe that the art of drawing can be learned through immersion in the flow of nature. Thinking too hard gets in the way."
"I see you've met Jaden as well." He retorted.
"Laugh if you want, I nearly beat him when we were at school together." Setting a lead down the hallway, his bare feet made no noise on the floor. "Crowler gives me a small stipend for doing upkeep around the island and keeping an eye on the wildlife. All I have to do is return students who get lost in the forest and help out those having trouble drawing the right cards a couple of times a year and I'm technically on the payroll - even get the dental thrown in."
"If you're meant to help kids who get lost in the forest, why did you bring one here?" He'd only had a cursory visit through the lab once before but Damon clearly knew every nook and cranny as he led them through the halls.
"Because I wasn't the first one to find him." Suddenly grabbing a panel in the wall, he wrenched it aside to reveal a tidy alcove hidden off the beaten track. "Mind the dust, I don't want students finding this one."
Hopping over the undisturbed trail, Axel took in the narrow venue. Dehydrated rations were stacked on one end, bottles of water alongside them. An occupied bunk at the end of the room was protected by a knotted wooden club with enough blankets to call it a nest more than anything. "Tiny Wheel told me there was something wrong in the forest. I followed her to find a ton of trees knocked over and that kid nearby."
"Tiny Wheel?" Axel unburied the sleeping figure's jacket and began patting it down for the PDA all Duel Academy students carried.
"Wheeler's youngest - she's a monkey." He appeared to be telling the truth. Or at least, judging by the lack of indicators, believed he wasn't lying. "There was someone else already by him. I thought it was a teacher, they were big enough and dressed in an Academy tracksuit, white stripe and all. All he did was take a card and leave. I tried to wake him a couple of times but," He gestured to the comatose form. "Nothing about it seemed normal to me, so I brought the kid back here for safety and then waited around Duel Academy until I could speak to Alexis. Saw you sniffing around and followed you back here."
"Why Alexis?" Scrolling through the data on the device, Axel was unsurprised to see it was wiped clean. Whoever had found him first had tried to cover their tracks.
"Do you trust Crowler not to attack the Slifers?" Fair point, he had a chequered history with the dorm. "Alexis was always kind to them, I felt she was the best person to approach."
"Kid's name is Takahiro Hirano - a first-year in Ra Yellow." Wiping the stored data was easy enough (and only marginally more difficult to recover) but the device ID was always the same. A check against an academy database which he would pretend to have been given access to showed a matching student photo to the face in the bed. "These his cards?" Axel picked up the Duel Disk from beside the bed and began slipping through the cards.
Damon nodded. "Everything I could find. Looks like a few got knocked loose during the Duel." Common enough occurrence.
"Damn." Axel fanned through them one last time before shunting them back into a solid pile. Pain To Power was missing. Whoever had beaten Damon there must have taken the Shadow Card for themselves. "I'll take him back to the Slifer Dorm for now." Standing up, he remembered how impressively Damon loomed. "If that's alright with you?"
"Only if you tell me what was with that card you drew."
"What do you mean?" Axel's training kicked in - deflect and deny. Damon kept staring at him until it wore off and he could answer honestly. "No idea - it showed up by itself."
Those eyes stared through his until he could feel them starting to prickle at his brain. "Okay." Damon shrugged.
"That's it?" One thing was clear: Damon definitely knew Jaden, with that lackadaisical attitude and dismissive shrug. Axel found himself becoming reluctantly fond of this savage jungle Duellist. Speaking of, "What made you think it was odd?" He'd registered it in passing but wouldn't have even thought back about it after the Duel was finished.
"Hmm, it's difficult to put into words." Wrapping the blanket around Hirano, he strapped the Duel Disk to one side with a strip torn off his own shirt. "There's a waterfall nearby I use to study my drawing technique by watching the reflection. When you drew that card, it felt like you reached into the water and drew a card from the other side." He easily picked up the Yellow student in one hand and hoisted him onto Axel's back. "Does that make sense?"
"Oof." Axel wheezed under the new weight. "Not even a little." Damon had an uncanny ability to determine the next draw but not in a state that could be called coherent. It appeared that the understanding didn't translate well. "Anything else weird happening around here?" The Society of Light had begun with a few errant students, nothing was too inconsequential.
"This will sound silly," Damon scratched an arm in embarrassment. "But the trees are wrong."
"The trees?" He smiled politely. Damon could take him in a straight fight, he was defenceless while carrying the new victim.
"They're not right." He shifted anxiously. "They keep switching places and none of them seem to find it weird. Even Wheeler says so." Earlier, when he had mentioned Tiny Wheel, mentions of monkeys had been taken as metaphor. Discussions of moving trees hinted that the metaphors weren't.
"I'll pass that along to Alexis." And maybe a recommendation to have him checked up on a bit more.
"Don't worry." A palm the size of a spade sailed past. "Nobody knows these woods better than me anyway - I'll let her know if it keeps happening." He seemed to notice Axel struggling with the load. "Do you want a lift back to the dorm? I can get you most of the way there."
"No." Offending the druidic giant didn't enter his list of concerns. A single trip on the vines could convince anyone to maintain permanent contact with the ground for the rest of their natural life. "Too much weight could snap the vines." He explained hopefully.
"Fair enough." At least he wasn't visibly insulted. "I'll ask Wheeler to look after you on the way back."
"Appreciate it." He shuffled out into the hall and began a slow stagger back out of the lab. Even with the extra weight, he'd sooner walk to the Slifer Dorm and back rather than fly Damon Air ever again.
Yugi stared unblinkingly at the mercenary. A few weeks ago, he'd been planning for a full-time move to America. Besides a couple of incidents, his life had been overall free from anything even remotely supernatural. Now, he was shunted a decade into the future onto an island where Japanese Tarzan was on the payroll and students had such bitter rivalries that they were willing to call up dark forces instead of simply beating each other up. "Anything else to report?"
"Besides a group of monkeys following us back?" Of course, the local primate population was involved. "I looked for Division during a rest on the way back - nothing."
"I hear there's a lot of that going around." Which he had yet to personally experience. What bothered him more than the transitory cards was the confirmation that a member of the faculty was involved. Duel Academy tracksuits were hardly controlled material but he'd seen the kids set off on their run and all the student outfits were plain blue. "If you had to make a guess, who would you say is most likely to be behind this?"
"Before today, I'd have said the head of Obelisk Blue would love to get rid of the Slifer Reds." No hesitation in his response. The long walk back had given him plenty of time to think. "Except that everything seems to be pointing straight at the Obelisk Blues except for the one guy we know is involved. Hirano could be a red herring if it weren't that, if I were operating with limited resources, I wouldn't waste a Shadow Card on a patsy and if I had Shadow Cards to spare you'd be flooded in them by now."
"Hmm." Yugi mused over the assessment. Yliaster had nearly infinite reach in the future and a heavy campaign to eliminate Jaden would make more sense than a drawn-out siege. It appeared whoever was in this era was operating with restricted backing. "How long can you stay?"
Axel gave him a funny look before answering. "Two days." He apologised. "I have another job lined up. Hassleberry called in a favour for me to do damage control since Syrus is an old buddy."
A bitter pill to swallow. "I appreciate you checking it out." He stretched out a hand. "Thanks for coming all this way."
"Anything for a friend." Axel grabbed his hand in a tight grip. "Besides, I'm more bloodhound than squaddie these days. I'll do some digging where I can but these guys tend to bury themselves deep." As much as he hated to admit it, hunting Trueman had shown him the limits of human detective skills. He'd never thought he'd be in a similar position again but at least he had a couple of people in his contacts for such cases. "What you'll need is a guy who can talk to Spirits."
Damon make cameo. You make review?