Disclaimer: I still don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.
Riley's pov
Ben is sixteen.
Zero years till Duel academy
It was my day in the driver's seat of Ben's body and the day of Duel Academy's entrance exams. Ben's parents were out of town on business so we were currently staying with Solomon in his guest room. Despite knowing that in my previous life I tended to test well I was still a little nervous to try and get into a school I'd dreamed of going to for so long. This nervousness caused me to wake up nearly as soon as the sun rose, despite me typically sleeping in much later. Ben was still resting as I got up and proceeded to shower and get ready for the day. Going to Ben's bag where our clothes were packed I was reminded how lucky I got getting thrown into his head. Allowing me to use his body was already extremely generous but he insisted I picked out some clothes and accessories I liked for my days in control of the body. The results were a pretty diverse amount of clothes for both of us to pick from. I put on a pastel blue v neck with an unbuttoned black button up over it, a pair of black jeans and a pair of black and blue running shoes. I also put on a belt specifically designed to hold deck boxes and attached the boxes containing our decks to it. Ben's preferred deck was the brown box, whereas the black deck box contained the deck I'd designed to use the card we'd won at the youth regional tournament years ago. I'd taken it out knowing it would be too powerful to use in the entrance exam.
After getting dressed I headed downstairs to the kitchen to grab myself a bowl of cereal. As I was looking through the pantry for the cereal the bell on the door opened. I turned around and there in the entrance was none other than Yugi Muto.
" Ah you must be Ben." Yugi greeted me warmly, he seemed to radiate both a silent strength and friendliness. " My Grandpa did mention you were staying here for a few days. Him and Joey have told me a lot about you."
" Yeah I'm Ben." I say feeling slightly bad about lying to probably the only person who would understand my situation. " I was going to say the same thing to you. It feels like Joey or your grandpa always has a different story about you to tell."
" You're going to the duel academy entrance exams later today right?" Yugi questioned
" Yup." I replied popping the p.
" Well you'll need more than a bowl of cereal, this is an important occasion." Yugi said while grabbing a pen and scribbling something down on a piece of paper. "Come on I know a great place near the the stadium where they hold the exams." He said as he made his way to the door after setting the note on the counter.
Part of me was curious if this was why Yugi encountered Jaden near the Kaiba Dome in the fist and only episode of Gx I'd watched. The other larger part was fan boying over getting to actually meet Yugi.
As we walked towards wherever we were going we made small talk about what we'd been up to recently. He was surprisingly easy to talk to as he told me about his travels and I told him of my part time job as Joey's intern for the duel seminars. After a very long walk we reached a diner I was very familiar with. A favorite of Joey's which was no surprise considering who the owner was.
Walking into the diner we were both greeted by none other than Tristan Taylor, owner of one of the best diners in Domino that he ran with his Wife Serenity Taylor formerly Wheeler. Apparently he had discovered a talent for cooking and decided to open his own restaurant with encouragement from his at the time girlfriend now wife after the events of the original series.
" Yugi it feels like it's been forever man." Tristan said as he and Yugi hugged. " Ben today's the big day right?" He asked me after greeting Yugi.
" Yeah today's the day." I replied.
" Well then you've come to the right place to fuel up." Tristan said " Do you guys want your usuals?"
" Yeah that'd be great Tristan." Yugi and me replied.
" Alright you guys pick whatever seats you like and I'll have your food right up." Tristan said as he went back into the kitchen to start making the food.
" You seem nervous." Yugi remarked as we sat down in one of the bigger corner booths.
" Yeah even though I don't think I'll fail," I began, " I can't help but be worried that I will. I mean this past week I've been doing little outside of studying and working on my deck."
" If you want I could take a look at your deck and offer you some last minute advice." Yugi offered.
" If you don't mind, then go for it." I said while pulling out my deck and handing it to him.
Yugi took our deck and looked through it with a thoughtful expression on his face for several minutes.
" You know, Joey once told me you duel a lot like me." Yugi said, " Looking at your deck I can see some similarities stylistically. Like me you lack a dedicated archetype but instead have a rather diverse set of cards designed to out manoeuvre your opponent. You also don't tend to generate a lot of Attack power with many of your preferred monsters. Though Joey told me you used a different deck when you dueled him.
" Yes that correct." I said before giving the explanation I'd prepared in case someone ever questioned us about the two decks given that it was apparently very unusual. " My other deck has a couple of rare monster types and I don't want anyone thinking they're the only reason I'm any good at dueling."
" Oh I see." Yugi said an understanding look on his face. " Well in that case you might want to consider adding in some monster that can hit higher attack values."
" Any recommendations?" I ask realizing he has a point without that card in the deck I didn't have a lot of monsters capable of overpowering my opponent in terms of attack points.
" Actually yes," Yugi replied while pulling out four cards from one of the deck boxes on his belt and offering them to me. " I think these will do nicely."
I looked at the cards and was shocked to see that they were: Silent Magician Lv.0, Silent Magician, Silent Swordsman Lv.0, and Silent Swordsman.
" I can't possibly take these." I said, " I know what these are worth. The Lv. monsters as a whole are worth a lot. These specific ones are worth even more and that's not considering that those alternate silent monster which are also probably rare."
" And why do you think they would be rare and expensive?" Yugi asked with a curious look on his face.
" Because it's a well known fact that the King of Games uses these specific monsters." I answer without thinking. " Cards you are associated with are all more expensive on average."
" You're correct of course but have you considered how expensive they were before I began publicly using them?" Yugi questioned me.
" No why?" I ask back, feeling like I'm missing something.
"Before it became publicly known I used them Silent Magician Lv.0 and Silent Swordsman Lv.0 were near worthless cards." Yugi answered before continuing. " So before I began to publicly use them I bought several of the existing copies. There are about ten copies of each Silent monster and I own around half of all the copies of each respective monster. The alternate forms were a gift but i received two different sets of them and only need one."
" Oh." Was my very eloquent response as my brain shut down trying to process what was happening. Tristan picked right now to arrive with the food.
" Wow Yugi what did you do?" Tristan said as he passed Yugi his eggs and pancakes. " Ben is almost impossible to leave dumbfounded."
"I just offered him some cards to help improve his deck." Yugi said as if he hadn't just offered me cards technically worth a fortune.
" Oh really what did you offer him that got him looking like that, Dark Magician?" Tristan said jokingly while he placed my chicken fried Steak and eggs down in front of me.
" Not exactly." I say finally processing the situation. I passed the cards to Tristan so he could look at them .
The second he realized which cards they were his eyes widened. " Yugi are you sure about this?" He asked.
Yugi started laughing. " Honestly you guys are ridiculous. First Ben with his oh they are too valuable and then you with that whole are you sure all serious like." Yugi addressed both Tristan and myself. " Besides Tristan these aren't the copies your thinking of."
After Yugi said that I looked closer at the artwork and realized instead of the red and black robed Silent Magician it was a blue and white robed one.
" Listen Ben I've got copies of those cards, don't worry about it. They'll work great with your deck and I'll be happy knowing they are being used by someone like you." Yugi said his voice growing more serious.
Tristan smiled as he passed the cards back to me. "Alright Yugi if you think Ben will make good use of them I won't question your judgement."
I accepted the cards back with a giant smile. "Thank you Yugi. I promise to put them to good use. That said what should I replace with these."
Yugi helped me edit the deck to include the Silent cards, while we ate our food.
After we finished and said goodbye to Tristan we walked the rest of the way to the Kaiba Dome.
"Good luck." Yugi told me as we arrived. "I'll be back later with Grandpa so we can all celebrate when you pass."
Yugi then left as I headed up to check in for my exam.
Author's Note:
So it's the day of the entrance exams and we finally get to see Yugi, also Tristan. Yugi was a little hard to write because it's a Yugi without Atem but also he's older now. Yugi has heard a lot about Ben/Riley from both his grandpa and Joey so I think he's got a positive impression from the second hand information he's received but also he's a fundamentally kind character so I imagine he'd be really nice even to what is essentially a stranger to him. Giving Riley cards also seems like something he'd do especially cause he relates a little too much to Ben's comment about others attributing his skills to something else, though in Yugi's case it was the Pharaoh instead of rare cards. As for Tristan he's got a fairly good life running his diner, I just felt bad that his prospects as far as I remember was being a factory worker so he got to get the girl and have a business he enjoys.
Let me know how I did with Yugi and Tristan in the comments. Also if anyone has deck suggestions for characters I'm open to them. Jasmine for example still needs a deck and I still haven't settled on decks for Chazz, Adrian Gecko(before exodia), Jim and others.
Reader Responses:
To reapercrone- Yeah I kinda forgot Bastion has more than his Water Dragon anime deck and his zombie manga deck. Wow tell me what you really think about Syrus. To be fair Syrus is a lot better in the manga. As for Jaden well he can't have the Elemental Heros from the manga because Koyo has them and his deck will largely be unchanged until season 2 where it becomes a question of should he get Masked Heros or Neo Spacians or Evil Heros. Alexis is gonna be stuck with her anime deck because I'm giving her manga deck to someone else. Modern support is probably going to be slowly integrated into several characters decks but I have to check all of it to see what I think will work without being overpowered.
To Guest- So it is a legendary planet card but because of events in the anime they aren't connected to Tragoedia. While I'm taking aspects from the manga we are still following the events of the anime so Mr Phoenix isn't connected to Tragoedia but rather The Light of Destruction. So the legendary planet series aren't connected to either one, rather they were amongst the cards made right before coming under the influence of the Light of Destruction and creating Destiny Hero Plasma. But because of their power without the connection to one of those forces the legendary planets take a toll on the user in the form of duel energy. That's why Riley feels tired when he initially grabs the card because it's sucking up his duel energy to see if he's a worthy user and the pleasent sense of a cold breeze is it accepting him. Everyone who has a planet series card will have had to endure a similar test and upon summoning the card will have their duel energy drained a set amount depending on who is playing what card it could be anywhere from 1/8 to 1/2 of their Duel energy. Compatibilities will play a huge part in how the planet series are wielded by their wielders. The more compatible the card is with its user the less of a toll it requires whereas if it's incompatible with it's user it won't allow itself to be summoned or take a massive toll.