"Hey, old man, have you been eating properly? You look like skin and bones. Those punks haven't been messing with you again, have they?"

The question caused the aging man in question to look up from his reading. The wooden park bench creaked slightly to accompany his movement, and the gentle summer breeze crinkled the newspaper in his hands.

"Ah, Tetsuro!" the old man smiled, causing the wrinkles on his face to stretch in joy, "I haven't seen you around in the last few days. It seems you've been doing fine since you're as grumpy as ever, youngster, but you could do with taking life a little more easy. Take it from an old fellow, you should smile more!"

Tetsuro could feel the scowl on his face deepen as Old Man Genji ignored his question.

"Tch," Tetsuro clicked his tongue, "Don't be obtuse, old timer. I smile when there are things to smile about, but how am I supposed to smile when you keep giving away all your cash to those damn vultures?"

Old Man Genji's upturned lip didn't drop a fraction as he responded.

"Oh, it's no big deal. At my age I don't have much I need to buy anymore. Even my appetite hasn't been very good lately, so it's better to do something valuable with what little money the city provides. And what better way to give value to money than give it to someone who needs it?"

His young conversation partner was having none of it, however. The gold chains that hung around his neck clanked together as Tetsuro shook his head in disagreement.

"You know damn well they're just coming up with sob stories to tug at your heart strings," he denied. "They might as well be throwing your money in the trash for all the value they get out of it."

The old man simply chuckled in response.

"They'll learn in time. I wasn't so responsible at their age either, you know? Why, back when I was a teen, all I did was…"

Tetsuro could only huff in annoyance as the old man steered the conversation in a different direction.

It was an argument that they had been having for the better part of two months.

Most conversations they had, including their very first one, started off on similar notes. Back then, Tetsuro had just 'transferred' into Maiami City.

His emotions were already on overdrive at the time, so when he stumbled upon a small group of teenage thugs cornering an old man in what seemed like a sketchy manner, he swung his fists first and asked questions never.

He came out of the exchange with a bloody mouth, bruised knuckles, and a lighter heart than he had in days.

The three stooges he beat up limped away as quickly as they could, practically carrying each other away from his eager hands.

His good deed lifted his spirits that day.

Unfortunately, his would-be heroism wasn't as appreciated as he thought.

Old Man Genji practically tore him a new one.

Damn old timer must have used the words 'juvenile detention,' 'never in my days,' and 'violence doesn't solve problems' a hundred times. The old man looked like a breeze could knock him over on a good day, but he had lungs like a blacksmith's bellows.

"Well, it was wonderful talking with you, Tetsuro, but I should be headed back home soon. I have a VCR recording of my granddaughter's latest duel tournament that my son finally sent me. I tell you, it was like pulling teeth to get him to send it in a reasonable way instead of on one of those fancy flash drive doodads."

Old Man Genji, seemingly having finished the story about his youth, got up as he shook his head in disbelief at his son's antics.

"Got'cha, take care of yourself old man. Tell me about how she did next time."

With a wave, Tetsuro watched as Old Man Genji slowly walked back in the direction of his home.

Home, was it?

Tetsuro closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. The warm sun felt good, but this small bit of happiness was something that had a bitter tint.

Two months…

Two months since he had become Tetsuro Yamaguchi.

It was like something out of a stupid fan fiction written by some wannabe author in the dregs of society.

He didn't get a choice. He didn't do anything to cause this. He didn't get any damn wishes on any dragonballs. Hell, he just went to bed one night and woke up the next day inhabiting a brand new body in some bizarro world where children's card games were so damn serious they'd put every sport he knew about combined to shame.

Old Man Genji had driven that little tidbit home.

"Instead of swinging your clumsy fists around like a neanderthal, how about you learn some proper sportsmanship and duel instead of fight?!"

Like he was back in the middle-damn-ages and should issue duels for slights.

But really.

At first he thought the attachment to dueling might just be a by-product of the advanced technology they had here. Machines could literally turn light into solid, moving objects. Even if it was temporary, it absolutely boggled his small caveman brain that such a thing was even possible. What better way to integrate that into society than through a sporting event that used them, right? With the focus on the tech, right?

Wrong.

Even before solid vision, Duel Monsters was crazy.

He wasn't even talking about any magic hocus pocus like Egyptian Gods or the shadow realm, just the game itself was colossal on a scale that nothing on Earth could compare to. Maybe if breathing was considered a sport it would illustrate how popular this card game was.

Nearly everyone played. There were animals trained to play. Several multi-billion dollar industries existed just around Duel Monsters. A card game was a legitimate means to settle disputes, even! To be good at Yu-Gi-Oh was to be good at life. Absolutely nuts.

Then thinking about the more supernatural aspects of the game…

He was grateful every day for the single 'cheat' that he received after being skipped across dimensions like a damn stone across a lake. He wouldn't call his situation ideal by any stretch, but he was able to get by. To adapt.

Mostly.

Tetsuro's hand drifted to the deck box at his belt.

"Really, I'm grateful for your help, but do you gotta be like this? No one can see you anyway, so you don't have to hide all the time."

"…"

Silence was his only answer, but he was used to it at this point.

He could feel a pair of luminescent green eyes watching him from within the shadows of the nearby trees.

Tetsuro had not managed to get so much as a handful of words out of his new friend in the two months that they've known one another, but that just seemed to be the way she was. She allowed silence to speak for her, and her poker face was so out of this world that he had never even seen her expression so much as twitch.

Still, while it may not seem like it upon first glance, their relationship was actually quite good so far.

While she almost never communicated with her voice or her face, she was good at getting her meaning across through gestures.

And when those failed, her masks would make her mood apparent.

"Well," Tetsuro sighed at her refusal to show herself, "As much as you don't like to be visible outside of the apartment, don't forget that we're moving somewhere new tomorrow. New for us, anyway, since the old Tetsuro already went to LDS. You'll have to bear with it for at least a few months."

A slow blink was the only answer he received. A sense of dissatisfaction rolled through him.

Tetsuro rolled his eyes in turn.

"You'll be fine. Hell, it'll be even worse for me! I gotta go to damn dueling daycare for eight hours a day, while you get to do what you want."

Another blink, slightly faster this time.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But lets be real, I can't just miss out on all the free scholarship money that LDS pumps into its little duel monkeys. They're basically paying me to exist, so we'll both have to embrace the suck. I ain't exactly full of marketable skills, ya know?"

A slight shift to the right this time, barely enough to be noticeable.

"You worry even more than I do, and that's saying something since you're the native here."

The eyes narrowed barely a hair's width.

"You know what I mean! This may not be the spirit world, but at least you're from the same galaxy. I'm from a whole 'nother universe!"

"Whatever," Tetsuro turned to keep walking, "Lets not waste our last day of freedom. Things are gonna kick off pretty soon, so we gotta be ready to do what we need to do."

Tetsuro felt his partner's eyes fade back into her spirit state. Mumbling under his breath, he left the park and headed toward the riverside that ran through a good portion of the city. The weather was supposed to be nice for the whole next week, but it sure felt like it would rain on his parade tomorrow.

"They shoulda isekai'd me into a damn Pokemon series. I'd be the dog whisperer of Kanto or wherever the hell instead of Generic Student B. Never knew I had such a talent in charades…"

It was going to be a rough road. However, he'd had two months to come to terms with it by now. If nothing else, he was a damn stubborn bastard who didn't have the word 'quit' in his dictionary.

Since going home wasn't an option, he'd carve out a new home for himself here.

Plot or whatever nonsense be damned.


Author's Note:

Yo.

There's nothing important here, so feel free to skip it if you don't care about a random author's rambles.

I've had this one cooking in my head for a while, but I never had the stomach to script out a bunch of duels that didn't suck so I never wrote it. But now I'm ready to spoon feed ya'll the best duel gruel I can make. Or I'll try, at least.

Like most people, I really enjoyed this first bit of Arc V when it aired. Then it turned to shit so fast I still have a kink in my neck from the whiplash all these years later. If you're looking for canon, I'm afraid I'll disappoint you. Nothing is sacred around here.

If you're interested in me just making shit up trying to take Arc V another direction, welcome brothers and sisters.

Other stuff?…

I hate custom cards, so you won't see any of that here. Even anime-only cards for NPCs are probably gonna get axed in favor of real cards.

I toyed with the idea of doing a GX fic instead of Arc V because of how convoluted the latter gets with all the dimension shenanigans. GX is just such a nice setting to write. It's comfy, it's linear, it doesn't have a bunch of complex cards, and being in a school makes all the character interactions pretty natural.

Arc V on the other hand….man. Writing multiple dimensions seems like a nightmare. Whatever, I still like the cast of characters in Arc V a lot, so I'm down to try. Plus, there are already a bunch of really good GX fics out there by way better authors than me. I'll just read 'em when I get sick of Arc V.

Leave me a nasty review if you hate it.

Kiss kiss