XXV
The euphoria of seeing LDS finally taking the offensive to the Ædonai was almost too much for Masumi to take in. She watched Himika dole out copies of the same Dimension Mover Spell Card, but would only register a snippet of explanation every once in a while. Such cards had once conveyed the Lancers to a different Dimension the first time they'd had to rescue Hīragi Yuzu, Himika was telling everyone—before the Interdimensional Corridors had existed, and so they might well help again as long as the pieces of the ARC-V reactor were still in the clutches of the Fusion Dimension—but since the LID was staying behind anyway, the Fusion Duelist paid more attention to Yaiba's palm against her own than to the words of her principal. Even if Masumi had had a Dimension Mover of her own, it was all she could do to focus on how such a technological miracle might have worked—to say nothing of how they were planning to use it in just a short time. Her ribs had become a miniature of Trampo-Land's gravity-defying Dueling arena, and her heart was flipping, twisting, and catapulting within like an even tinier Hotene.
"Our technicians have updated these cards' hardware to form a network of interlinked frequencies," Himika finished explaining to the core Lancers, distributing a stack of Dimension Movers to each of them along the way. "These should allow all of you to arrive at your destination with much more accuracy than the last time they needed to be used—and even if they do not, they will let you track each other more quickly and regroup in the event that you are separated. Regardless, I would urge you to stay together as best you can—to be safe."
Sora nodded stiffly. Masumi wondered if he'd also heard the words Himika did not speak—to minimize casualties.
The change that had come over the former child soldier ever since Reiji had named him to lead this rescue mission had, if anything, happened far more rapidly than when his masquerade as a student of You Show had been shattered. It felt all the more alarming for it, too—all of a sudden, the aloofness and arrogance Masumi had seen on display the first time she'd met him had vanished; now, he was almost always eyes-front and two steps from standing to. Even his perpetual appetite for candy seemed diminished—though Sora carried a fresh lollipop in his hand, he had yet to unwrap the sweet treat, instead brandishing it about like a riding crop at whichever Duelist or group of them he thought needed his attention.
Currently, he was organizing his hundred-some compatriots into teams. A decent amount of them had buddied up already thanks to the bonds between them created by the respective Duel Schools they attended, or the dimensions they'd inhabited. But so many students from Ryōzanpaku had gathered here that leaving them all together was just asking for trouble—and so Sora divided them into three squads, one each led by Takeda, Umesugi, and a massive hulk of a student Masumi did not know; alone of the three, he had not been named to that Maiami Championship's Battle Royale. They, in turn, were led by Isao—who was flexing his fingers as though he already wanted to hold a few cards in one hand … and quite possibly a soldier's throat in the other, Masumi thought uneasily.
Even Dennis had abandoned most of his happy-go-lucky persona in the face of the mission ahead of him. He had taken it upon himself to have most of the Duel School champions united behind him; he, Mikiyo and Yūzō were huddled up in a vigorous-looking discussion of tactics, while Teppei and Mieru hovered nearby. Both seemed more interested in their tools of the trade than anything he had to say. Though he was just as boisterous as before to anyone who looked his way, Teppei was constantly adjusting his fishing line with the telltale signs of stress and anxiety. Masumi knew those signs all too well from her own days of fretting before a major tournament—and the fact that this was anything but made that stress and anxiety all the more understandable.
Mieru, meanwhile, had barely looked up from the cut-crystal apple she'd been polishing since she'd gotten her own Dimension Mover card. The Fusion ace thought on the girl's reputation as a clairvoyant, and decided that whatever she was seeing inside its depths—if indeed she were seeing anything at all—wasn't worth asking about. It had to be about Yūya, though, of that she was sure; she was well aware Mieru had a reputation for her crush on him, too.
"Okay, everybody!" Sora hollered out just then. "Are we all grouped together?"
There was a general rumble of assent. "Great—let's stay that way!" the former soldier told them. "The last thing I want is for this trip to go wrong and have us show up at someplace or even sometime that we don't want."
"I think I can help with that." Tenjō Haruto shrugged a spindly arm out from under his backpack. "Orbital 7?"
"Yes, sir?"
There was just enough of a lull in the chamber that everyone went silent at the voice. It was tinny; with just enough tartness to its words that Masumi knew it had to be artificial. Whoever or whatever it might be, she could not tell, although it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once—including, most oddly, Haruto's backpack itself.
"Can you route all of these Dimension Mover cards through your software?" the boy now asked, apparently talking to thin air. Next moment, however, Masumi felt her jaw drop in shock when she saw Haruto grow two more arms—metal plated with ceramic, and tipped with a pair of black pincers apiece. Nor was she alone—Fuyu was so startled by what he saw that he trod on Hokuto's foot in stepping backwards, and Jack Atlas was the only one of the arrivals from the Synchro Dimension who didn't join the sudden clamor of surprise.
"The f—?!" Shingo drowned them all out, swallowing his curse so quickly he nearly swallowed his tongue with it.
It took several too-long moments for Masumi to realize those arms had sprouted not from Haruto himself, but from the backpack he wore—and a second head wasn't far behind. Just behind the boy's neck, a pair of mismatched red lenses had extended from a recess, topped with golden lobes on either side that looked bizarrely like overlarge ears. The lenses flashed as the "head" turned in a full circle, taking in the sight of every assembled Duelist.
"All done." A flap moved below the eyes, clicking and clacking in an unsettling mimicry of human speech—which only made the sight seem doubly unreal to Masumi. "Dimension Mover locations indexed, tracked, and verified."
"That ought to help keep us together a little," a satisfied Haruto said, still oblivious to the general sense of disbelief inside the chamber. "And even if it doesn't, we can regroup a lot more quickly than we'd have had to otherwise."
"A robot backpack buddy." Shingo had found his tongue again, and looked halfway between dazed and impressed. "Now I've seen everything."
"Our father had hoped to make him before Academia invaded Heartland," Kaito explained. "But he got sealed into a card, and so much of his laboratory got destroyed in the attack that we thought Orbital 7's blueprints been lost just as quickly as they'd been drawn. I've never been so glad to be wrong," he smiled, while Haruto beamed.
Angel-IQ's hologram, meanwhile, had swum over to Haruto in a heartbeat. The shimmering girl drifted all around him, taking in both boy and robotic backpack from every angle. Masumi saw her blue eyes were almost dancing in their sockets—and that the robot's red "eyes" were staring right back at her. She wondered if some lightning-fast conversation only computers could hear was taking place between them.
Hotene and Rika traded knowing glances next to the Fusion ace. "Someone's in love … " they snickered as one.
Both Orbital 7 and Angel-IQ had heard. If either of them were capable of feeling embarrassment, neither showed any sign of it—but the hologram had zipped away from Haruto much quicker than when she'd approached. Orbital 7, for his part, had retreated back into his master's backpack—almost like a tortoise seeking solace in its shell, and so quickly that Masumi couldn't help but wonder if the two Junior Duelists might have on to something.
"Forgive me," Angel-IQ said all too smoothly, her photons vibrating for a split second before resolving. "I merely wished to gauge Orbital 7's component technology. The nanotech that composes him is quite impressive. I was particularly interested in the files pertaining to his generation of temporal-paralysis fields."
"Oh, those?" Haruto rolled his eyes. "One of Father's ideas that never made it off the drawing board. He thought if he could find a way to isolate anyone who had traces of Fusion Summoning energy on their body, he could alter the flow of time around them just enough for us to track them down and … contain them," he said, with a knowing look at Dennis, who seemed to be fighting a sudden desire to put a considerable distance between himself and Orbital 7. "But he decided it was simpler to just stop the Duelist from moving instead of time itself."
He blinked. " … She looked at your files?" he was heard to whisper to Orbital 7.
"She was … particularly interested." If Masumi hadn't known better, she'd thought the robot sounded sheepish. "It would not have worked out regardless, Haruto-sama. When I requested a detailed examination of her hard-light generators, she told me that her hardware was proprietary information, and promptly restricted my user access."
Haruto sniffed. "Serves you right."
Masumi felt her eye twitch. "You dumped a robot," she said flatly.
"I restricted his user access," Angel-IQ corrected her in a tone that told her she was doing no such thing.
From flirting to fighting in five seconds, Masumi thought, smiling sympathetically at the crestfallen look on Rika's and Hotene's faces—and instinctively feeling for Yaiba's hand along the way. The Fusion Duelist had no doubt that some computer science journalist would no doubt catch wind of this later on, and frame it as their personal scoop of the century on the advancement of artificial intelligence. Masumi might even have agreed with them if she wasn't more worried about making sure that actual human lives were saved today.
Himika, mercifully, shared her thoughts. "I did mention," she said, not a little bit testily, "that you would have time to familiarize yourselves with one another later on. Until then, if no one else has anything relevant to say, there are preparations of our own to make." She gestured to the LID. "Good luck to you all."
And come back alive went unspoken—though not for lack of trying, Masumi suspected. Her eyes had seen the wobble in the LDS headmistress' throat, from swallowing words whose time or place to be spoken had not yet come. She gripped at Yaiba's hand until she heard the quick intake of breath behind her.
By then, Himika had swept out of the chamber. With little choice but to follow her, Masumi and the LID filed out as one, heading for the elevator.
Kachidoki Isao was the last Duelist they passed before she reached the door. He fixed them all with a resolute stare, and finally a nod that spoke where mere words could not—before turning his attention to his Duel Disk.
For all that Masumi disliked the boy, she could not help thinking on his earlier words—and she whispered a quick prayer under her breath that all would go well, and they would meet again.
Only when the LID had finally returned to the headmistress' office did Himika exhale. Masumi saw her feel for the nearest flat surface and grasp for it like a lifeline.
"It never gets easier," she whispered. "Sending off all those kids … never knowing if they'll come back … "
Masumi suspected she knew what her headmistress was talking about all too well. Amidst the chaos of the twenty-four-hour Battle Royale, Himika had deployed eight of the Leo Duel School's best students—including Sakuragi Yū, the Youth Division defending champion—to intercept the Obelisk Force platoon that had wreaked so much havoc that day. Only Yū had returned from that debacle in any shape to speak of it—and even today, he hardly ever wanted to. Then there had been the kids that made it through that gauntlet, and got sent off to a different dimension without so much as a goodbye to the friends and family they had outside their passion for Dueling. The LID's roles in the Shaddoll and Infernoid incidents went without saying.
Masumi felt seized by a sudden wish to hug her headmistress and never let go, and damn how it made her look. But just as her muscles stiffened, and her brain sent the commands to her legs to sprint to the principal's side, Himika stood up straight. Whatever internal battle she had been waging was ended; the old fire in her eyes was restored.
"Now that that's finally done." Her voice wasn't yet the imperiously steely tone Masumi had come to expect from her headmistress—but it was close enough to demand her full attention. "Your mission will be much more simple."
Yaiba looked worried. "You're not gonna make us track down Grimm, are you?"
"No. Better, I think, that we let her come to you," Himika replied. She tapped at a monitor, and Masumi saw Yōko, Yūshō, Kiku, and Kikyō flare on the screen, waiting expectantly. "I'll be sending you to Château Pique-Diamant within the hour. And I will not"—she raised her voice a few decibels, just enough to silence the excited murmurs from Hotene and Rika—"be sending you alone."
"What do you mean? We weren't alone the last time we were there," Hokuto pointed out.
"If Leo was correct about the scope of Dr. Grimm's powers expanding," Himika told him, "she may have the means to track you down in an instant. And if she should show up in Pendulum again, you will likely be the first people on her mind—meaning you will likely be the first she will try to search for, whether or not she has been ordered to find someone else. I have no intent of turning my city into her personal hunting grounds," she said angrily.
"She wasn't working alone last night," Fuyu murmured. "Someone like her never works alone."
"Fuyu's right," said Masumi. "Even if sending us away from Maiami City means Dr. Grimm won't attack it to get to us, someone else could. She could have more Dueling soldiers attack the city, more Chaos Giants—and maybe even worse. How do we know she won't sic more of those Duel Hunters on us?"
The Fusion Duelist stepped forward. "Kurosaki said just this morning that the Ædonai try to be everywhere at once. They strike as many targets as they can to try and divide us all. But together … "
She stopped to breathe for a moment; another rock was taking shape in her head again, carving itself so quickly that she needed the silence to make her mind keep pace with her mouth.
"Together," she said again, "we could give them more targets than they're able to fight."
Slowly, Himika turned her way. "What are you suggesting?"
"We make ourselves the biggest target," Masumi answered. "That'll draw off Grimm for sure—and maybe some of however many soldiers she brings with her, if she attacks Maiami City."
Himika looked skeptical. "That may not work as well as you wish, in the long run," she said. "I have no doubt that Dr. Grimm will wish to employ the same telepathic assault that she used on Markus and Leo—and very nearly used on you. She won't need soldiers once she knows where you are."
She blinked. "But … having said that … you may have the means to counteract her this time."
"The twins." Shen was staring straight at the monitor. Kiku and Kikyō were staring straight at Himika.
"I get it." Hokuto was grinning. "They're Psychic Duelists, too. We fight fire with fire."
"Precisely." Himika tapped at the screen. "Yūshō? Yōko? Please let the hospital know of our updated timetable. If Kikyō and Kiku can be discharged within the hour, I will be especially grateful. Some of us will be along to pick them up before then."
"All right." But Yūshō looked as if he wanted nothing more than to guard the twins with his own flesh and blood—with or without his Duel Disk. "I want to talk to the other Duel Schools in the city, before they leave," he went on. "These girls need all the protection they can get. And nothing against your own students, Himika—but six kids can only stave off six hundred soldiers for so long."
"The Château needs to be a place of safe haven, for as long as it can be one," the headmistress replied. "Bringing other Duel Schools into this will just turn the twins into sitting ducks."
"I don't want it to come to that, either," Yūshō pressed on. "Maybe we can't give them a proper defense against the Ædonai if they come after your LID. But maybe we can slow them down just enough that they'll be ready."
Himika pursed her lips—but Masumi had seen her eyes flick away from the screen for a split second. Whether she would admit it or not, the Fusion ace knew that meant she was considering the You Show headmaster's proposal.
Finally, she exhaled through her nostrils. "Junior Youth and above only," she told him, in a voice that threatened to squash any further debate. "That is my sole stipulation. I'll put the word out to my own student body—that should provide the schools with enough reinforcements if they are targeted for an attack." Her brow furrowed. "But I will not have lives meaninglessly threatened in the course of your defense, Sakaki Yūshō. Not when those lives are still innocent and have yet to be tempered by experience."
"I understand," Yūshō said, nodding solemnly before turning to Yōko. "Honey? Better start making calls. There are a lot of moms and dads who'll want to know what's going on with their kids. The sooner they know, the better."
"All right—please be safe." They embraced for a moment too long to measure. "I love you."
A moment after that, they'd dragged the twins into their group hug. "We'll be thinking of you, girls—and we'll do our best to see you again," Yōko assured Kiku, while Yūsho's hands signed the same to Kikyō.
And though it was hard to tell through the screen, Masumi could have sworn Kiku's sightless eyes had shone just as brightly as those of her twin sister. "We'll make sure of that," the Ritual user said, smiling at them.
The fingers of Kikyō's free hand darted hither and thither before the full hand waved at the LID. "She'll see you soon," Kiku translated for them. One second later, she'd reached for the monitor, and the video link went black.
By then, Himika was already pacing in front of them. "Hotene, Rika, Fuyu, Shen—you make your way to Maiami General. I assume you know the way there."
None of them answered her. None of them needed to—they'd spent enough stints in there that they'd memorized the quickest route. They trotted out of Himika's office as a group, heading for the elevator.
"What about us?" Hokuto asked, gesturing either side to Masumi and Yaiba.
"You'll join up with them soon enough," Himika told them. "The moment you do, you're to treat Kiku and Kikyō as part of the LID. Practice among yourselves—familiarize each other with how you fight and how you think. If time is on our side, and the Ædonai do not immediately attack, perhaps we can convert the Château into a training grounds for your usage—but that must wait for another time. Because you, Masumi, have given me an idea that I wish to explore."
The Fusion Duelist blinked. "Me?" she said dumbly. "What kind of idea?"
"You talked about wanting to make yourself a bigger target for Gwendolyn Grimm—to draw the brunt of a possible attack off Maiami City," her headmistress replied. "I may know a way to make an even bigger one. And I think that only the three of you can make a persuasive enough argument to make that happen."
Masumi frowned. "What sort of argument?"
So did Yaiba. " … Who're we persuading?"
Himika's answer, they both later agreed, was the most audacious thing they could possibly have expected her to say. Masumi's eyes flicked downwards to the sublevels of the Leo Corporation, and somewhere in the back of her brain, she wondered what sort of feelings a certain classmate of hers would have about this.
It was almost enough to make her laugh.
Earlier
"Ten minutes for final checks!"
The chamber amplified Sora's shout into a bellow that made Shingo's head hurt. Nor were the next few seconds of any help to him. I should have taken an aspirin this morning. Motors hummed to life as Jack Atlas and everyone else who'd followed him from the Synchro Dimension mounted their D-Wheels, slipping their Duel Disks inside the bikes' specialized recesses and activating their multicolored blades.
Kaito and Haruto had ignited their Duel Disks as well. Shingo vaguely noticed that Haruto's device shared the same diamond-shaped construction and crescent-shaped blade as that of his brother, though black and brilliant magenta in color instead of white and bright blue. The Kōzukis, Allen and Anna, were making plenty of noise with their own tech; Allen was making sure his Rollerboots—smaller, sleeker, and no doubt faster than the ones Shingo recalled he had given to Yūya a lifetime ago—were laced and snug on his feet before he activated the Solid Vision "tires" under their soles. Anna, as if refusing to be outdone, had swung a leg over her gigantic hover-cannon, which whined to life beneath her and carried her into the air, just enough to make her taller than everyone else in the room.
By then, the level of noise the denizens of both Dimensions were producing was too much for Shingo to take in. He decided to make his way towards a quieter part of the chamber, where the rest of the core Lancers and the survivors of You Show Fusion had congregated.
"So—what's you guys' story?" Kurosaki Shun was asking them, while he made some last-minute adjustments to his Duel Disk. He wasn't directing his question at anyone in particular—but of all the dimensions he'd paid a visit to in the past, Shingo knew that Fusion was the one whose Duelists he'd cared to know the least.
No one jumped, therefore—not even Shingo—when Tyranno Kenzan was the first to answer his question.
"I'm a gamma-level Duelist," he rumbled. It took him a few seconds to notice the collective stare of confusion from everyone else. "Misgarth shorthand for 'genetically engineered'. They have labels like that for every Duelist inside the Fusion Dimension—and even a few of the ones outside of it if they get their attention. It's how they keep an eye on the freaks," he added bitterly. "How they keep us in line."
Hōchun Mieru frowned. "The freaks?"
"Anyone with a little Greek letter in their file," said Tenjōin Asuka sadly. "Around the same time that Akaba Leo came to power in Academia, the Kingdom of Misgarth started introducing a lot of legislation that they claimed was meant to make Duel Monsters more fair for people competing in tournaments. They claimed people without special abilities needed an equal chance as those with them, or otherwise the game was going to go stale."
"It didn't take long for a lot of us to realize that they didn't care at all about fairness," Tyranno grumbled. "By then, they'd already started debating the N-M-A." He enunciated each letter bitterly, and spat on the floor upon the last.
" … What is this NMA?" Gongenzaka Noboru looked as though he didn't want to know the answer.
"The Napoleon-di Medici Act." Tyranno spat again. "The Fusion Dimension's point of no return."
"It started with a couple of stuffed-shirt professors from Academia with egos to match." Maeda Hayato looked up from leafing through his own Deck. "After Z-ARC fell, they somehow wormed their way out of sanctions by saying they'd been forced to go along with Leo's plans. They went into politics later on, and got so popular so quickly that one day, they decided to fix their names onto a piece of paper. That piece of paper turned so many Duelists—so many boys and girls like us—into nothing more than a bunch of letters, numbers and symbols—without any hope of an identity or a future beyond them."
He inflated in barely suppressed anger, drawing himself to his full height. "Ask them about it today and they'll just disavow the whole thing. They don't want to be associated with something so dirty. But everyone who knows the truth—and isn't afraid to say it—will keep saying it until Prince Ojin tars and feathers the both of them himself."
"That's assuming the Ædonai haven't sealed him into a card yet," huffed Sora, who'd sidled into the group just then.
"We'd know if they had," Saotome Rei piped up next to him. "Ojin might have been the crown prince of Misgarth, but he wasn't a threat to the Ædonai. Not a big enough threat that they wanted to silence him quietly, at least. They didn't want to make a martyr out of him."
"And maybe we can't prove anything," Asuka added, "but we're pretty sure the informants who gave us the codes to the transit pad we were able to hack either reported to him, or someone answering to him. Rei and I weren't able to see any other way they got their hands on information like that. So we have that much to hope for."
Shingo felt the need to step in on the conversation then. "So, back to this Act," he ventured. "If you're special in some way—some superpower or whatever—they just find you a spot on that list? And you stay on that list permanently? Simple as that?"
Asuka nodded. "Simple as that. Alpha-levels are anomalies—they're so new in the system, nobody really knows what they can do or how they do it. You don't see them very often, but that says less about how rare they are and more about how thorough this system the Act created really is."
"Mental and Psychic Duelists are epsilon-level or psi-level," Rei cut in. "I'm not sure what makes them different, but Shō says it's something to do with whatever their minds give them the ability to control. External forces like the elements are epsilons, and internal ones like emotions get the psi. Is that right?" she asked Shō, who nodded back. "Okay. Taus and rhos are Tech-Duelists and Cyber-Duelists—part man, part machine. Fully machine if they're a rho, like that Angel-IQ character we met upstairs. Those are just the ones we've been able to glean for ourselves."
"Psychics and cyborgs." Noboru grimaced. "What happened to the old days, when a man's inner strength and true grit made him the Duelist he was?"
"Hear, hear," said Asuka approvingly. "If it makes you feel better, Gongenzaka, I hear that LID group we met back there fought a tau shortly before Z-ARC returned with nothing but the cards in their Duel Disks, so maybe those days aren't gone just yet. Then there's those twins we got introduced to this morning. They're both psi-levels—just like that Gwendolyn Grimm woman the LID fought before that," she added with a shiver. "I'm sorry to say we're all more than familiar with her. She used to teach at Academia."
"I'd heard as much," Shingo vaguely recalled. "Was she as bad as that Sanders guy we fought way back when?"
Everyone winced. Shingo still had bad dreams about that Survival Duel he'd been forced into. Apparently, so did the You Show Fusion students.
"Sanders was … " Rei exhaled through her teeth in disapproval. "He was his own brand of bad. So was Dr. Grimm … but you wouldn't have known it from being in class with her. She'd smile and laugh and crack jokes just like any of us. But that just made her more insidious than he could ever be."
"Everyone she taught would always say they had funny dreams, the night after every class," Hayato told them. "We used to hear jokes at Academia that those dreams were how she made sure her students did their homework. If they failed, or made any excuses … " He swallowed. "Nobody laughed then—and we don't laugh about it now."
"So what's it mean to be a gamma?" Shingo piped up, looking right at Tyranno. The muscular boy had kept his silence ever since he'd told that much about himself, and he was keen to know why.
"It means that everything about my Dueling abilities was grown in a laboratory," Tyranno said bluntly. "They like to call us Petri-Duelists because of that. You can probably guess from the name that we're not exactly first-class citizens in Misgarth. Nine times out of ten, our very existence isn't even legal."
He started checking his own Duel Disk. "At some point, the Kingdom got their claws on a stockpile of natural amber—seized it on some pretense or another. A few pieces had mosquitoes inside them that had sucked the blood of dinosaurs, only to get trapped in the stuff. Misgarth extracted the blood, isolated the DNA, and before long they replicated enough of it to get a real crazy idea. Straight-out-of-a-movie crazy—and, unfortunately, very real."
Shingo had seen enough movies to put two and two together—but Mieru had beaten him to the punch. "You?"
Tyranno nodded. "Me." He was silent for a moment. "How much do you know about the Duel Hunters?"
"Until this morning, just a lot of hearsay," Sora replied. "They were like the boogeyman of Academia. 'Don't go AWOL or the Duel Hunters will get you'—that sort of thing." He shook his head, exhaling. "I never would have thought that only half a dozen of them could do this much damage."
"I was almost one of them."
Shingo's head reeled. All the air went out of the room—and all of a sudden, his eyes were fixed on Tyranno.
"I'm pretty sure I was, anyway," the boy quickly amended. "All I know is that my P.E. scores weren't just at the top of the class—they'd caught somebody's attention in Misgarth at one point or another. Next thing I knew, I was put on a boat and whisked off to some top-secret compound with a dozen other people I wasn't allowed to even speak to. Boys and girls my age—give or take a year or two … students from around the world. The people in charge called it Project Moloch. They'd spend every day telling us how we were meant to be the next generation of the Obelisk Force—shock troops that knew everything of victory, and nothing of fear."
"Wait—that's where you were all that time?!" Sora was openmouthed in shock. "All they told me was that you'd been shortlisted for a tournament Misgarth had sponsored!"
Tyranno snorted. "Why am I not shocked?"
Shingo swallowed. "And this … Project Moloch … they gave you that dinosaur DNA you talked about?"
A nod. "It wasn't the first thing they did to me—it wasn't even near the last thing they put inside me. But it's what I remember most about all that time being caged up like a lab rat." Then, more quietly, "It was when I remembered changing the most. Sometimes I could lie awake and almost feel it making me faster and stronger."
"What kind of DNA was it?" For the second time, Shingo had been beaten to the punch. "I mean—what dinosaur?"
Rei cast a long look up at Noboru, who'd asked the question. "With a name like Tyranno? Take a wild guess."
Shingo was suddenly much more aware of just how powerfully built this Duelist was. He saw the boy flex his arms, clench his hands into fists—caught a hint of the filed teeth—and swallowed deeply.
"It might as well have been gecko DNA for all the good it did me," Tyranno growled. "Moloch worked too well. I got too aggressive in the field tests—I lashed out, I had violent mood swings. It came to a head when I went berserk in a middle of a Duel—maimed both my opponent and my proctor the moment I smelled victory."
Maimed?! Shingo took a step backwards, abandoning all sense of attention. Nor was he the only Duelist to do so. Mieru had bolted behind Noboru, who himself looked rattled at standing so closely to someone who'd confessed to being so violent. Even the battle-hardened Shun was very still.
"When Academia found out," Tyranno plowed on, "the program was scrapped, and I was expelled for assaulting a teacher. But nothing they did could remove the brand of a gamma on me. Because of that miserable Act, I couldn't find an honest job. I couldn't find any work … any future … any hope at all. I was as good as an untouchable."
"But then you found Yūshō." Shun's words were so quiet that if Shingo hadn't been looking right at him when he'd spoken, he'd have thought it was a whole different person.
"Did the Resistance have any second thoughts about taking you in?" Tyranno asked him. Shun said nothing. "No? Neither did he. Not even when he saw me angry. For someone like me, who'd been resigned to leading the life of an outcast … that little island of his was a paradise. I enrolled at his school, and over time—as I got to know all the castoffs and misfits and so-called traitors that he'd gathered under his wings—I felt the beast grip me less and less. I felt … human. It burned me to leave the school behind when the Ædonai razed it to the ground—and I hope you'll be able to forgive me for that, Asuka," he said, turning to the young woman. "It was never my decision to flee—I would have given my life if it meant its survival. And I hope that's enough for Sora."
Sora swallowed. "Yeah," he said, far too thickly. The lollipop in his hand was trembling along with him. "Yeah—it's more than enough."
"It's more than enough for me, too." Asuka beamed at him. "You were the first person we didn't have to find in the aftermath—you went straight to us the moment you knew one of us still drew breath. That's the sort of loyalty you don't find in just anyone, Tyranno—and loyalty is one thing even those monsters at Moloch could never give you."
Nothing more needed to be said after that. Asuka hugged him tightly, and so did Rei. Shingo chanced one glance at Tyranno's arms as he embraced them tighter still, and decided—though reluctantly—that he'd be better off with his spine as straight as it was now.
"So—what's the pipsqueak doing here?" he decided to ask after a few long moments, nodding towards the blue-haired boy he'd heard introduced as Shō.
He knew he'd said the wrong thing the instant Hayato had slowly turned his way. "Call him 'pipsqueak' again, and I will crush you like grilled cheese between my teeth," the big Duelist growled. "He is part of the Marufuji family."
Shingo ignored his knees knocking together. "Am I supposed to know who they are?"
"If you know what's good for you," Hayato said darkly.
"Aw, let it go." Shō rolled his eyes. "You know I don't like using my family name anymore, anyway, Hayato. Just call me Shō."
"You've cut ties with them."
Everyone spun on Mieru—who'd spoken so quickly and decisively that Shingo knew it was not a question. The tiny girl had been shuffling a deck of cards—too long and thin to be Duel Monsters cards, he couldn't help but see—and had flipped over the top card of the Deck just now.
"Two of Cups reversed," Mieru said, showing the card to Shō. Shingo caught a glimpse of a man and a woman each holding a golden chalice, either side of what looked like the winged, squiggly symbol that always showed up around hospitals—and all upside down. "Your parents didn't like it when you left Academia, did you?"
Shō said nothing—but something in the way he recoiled told Shingo that Mieru was right. Well, that's not spooky.
" … No. No, they didn't," he eventually said, fiddling with his pince-nez again. "But my brother liked it a lot less."
He took a deep breath. "I was there at the fall of Heartland," he said, looking directly at Shun. "It was the second wave of the assault. Cleanup, they called it," he added venomously. "I saw what the first wave had done—such a colorful, vibrant city … all thoroughly destroyed."
His voice faltered. "I … it got to me. It was too much to take in too quickly. So I … pretended my Duel Disk was malfunctioning. I used emergency recall the first chance I had. No one ever realized I'd fled—nobody except for my big brother. We fell out hard after he found out. He called me a coward; I called him a fool with a death wish. That was three years ago. I haven't seen or talked to him since."
"Where is he now?" Noboru asked.
"We … don't know." Hayato stole a long look at Shō. "His brother had had heart problems since he'd first picked up a Duel Disk. They didn't stop him from being one of Academia's best Duelists ever—but I think, in the end, they stopped him from being one of the best pro Duelists ever. The last we heard of him, he'd been admitted to a private hospital after a bad heart attack. Shō thinks it might have happened when we joined You Show Fusion."
"Do you think he found out?" wondered Shun.
"I'm almost certain he did," Shō said glumly. "And I think that heart attack is the proof of it. And if it killed him … then I as good as pulled the trigger."
This time, it was Mieru who beat them all to him. He was small enough that she was almost eye-level with him as she held him tightly in his embrace. Rei and Asuka piled in on the both of them in short order.
"Well." Shingo was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Even his flippant attitude seemed to be doing little to warm this melancholy mood. "So—we've gone from nightmarish straight to depressing. Does anyone have any reasons for being here that don't make me want to lose my will to live?"
"Would love count?" Rei had had to peel her way out of the group hug to answer him.
Asuka was right behind her. "Oh—Rei-chan, I don't think we have time to tell your story now—"
Rei held up a hand, silencing her classmate. "It's okay, Asuka-san—I can bullet-point it for them."
Shingo listened raptly. "I met somebody … my first year at Academia," Rei told them. "A boy. Jūdai Yūki was … oh, he was everything a girl like me could have wanted. An amazing Duelist, an incredibly supportive friend … just enough brain cells to make a spark in his skull," she added, with a sad little laugh. "One day, Yūki got sent on a mission—hush-hush, top secret. He had enough time before he left to give me his Deck and tell me to keep it safe."
Shun tilted his head. "Academia sent him on a top-secret mission and didn't let him bring his Deck?" he wondered. Shingo had never seen him so bemused.
"I still don't know all of what he was doing out there," Rei sighed, fiddling with her fingers. "What little I do know, I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about. I bet it's even more classified than that Moloch deal that you got mixed up in, Tyranno." The dino-Duelist, if it was possible, looked even more nonplussed than Shun on hearing this.
"Anyway … this boy I liked," the girl continued. "It hadn't taken long for him to become the one reason I enjoyed being a part of Academia. So when he suddenly disappeared on that mission of his, I started looking forward to my classes less and less, and to him coming back more and more. It came to a head when I … learned a few days later that they'd declared him MIA."
Shingo felt something swoop in his heart at the last word. He saw the wince that creased Rei's face, and wasn't sure he wanted to know how exactly she'd "learned" such a thing. "No one ever bothered to tell me, or any of his friends that he'd disappeared." Rei's voice shook with a strange combination of grief, fury, and if I didn't know better, I'd think they didn't even tell the staff."
"And you are certain he didn't go to Heartland?" Noboru was deep in thought.
Rei nodded. "Heartland didn't happen until shortly after he left. Shō was the only one of us who was part of that. I asked him later if he'd seen him around. He never did."
She hung her head. "Asuka had already left the school by then. I packed a few things, packed his Deck, and—well, it was harder to find you than it should have been. I've learned to use Yūki's Deck in the time since. I have to, really. It's … all I have left of him."
Asuka seized her hand and held it tightly. "Thanks," Rei whispered her way.
Now each of the core Lancers was staring at Hayato, listening expectantly for whatever reason he had to be here.
But the big Duelist raised his hands defensively. "Don't look at me like that, guys—I'm just a card artist," he said apologetically. "I don't have all that interesting a story to tell. A big company plucked me out of Academia when they saw I had creative potential. Except when Shō told me everything about what he saw in Heartland, I decided I didn't like the idea of my artwork being used for weapons of war. So I gave my notice and went freelance. Didn't even make it six months," he chuckled, shaking his head sadly. "Shō and I still kept in touch enough that we went and tied our fortunes together. Then I joined up with him at You Show, after he went AWOL—and I've been his sort-of bodyguard ever since."
Shō rolled his eyes, but he laughed it off. "He says it like I need one—the big guy and the little guy, he always calls us. But I'm glad we're able to be around each other at all. Friends can be a lot harder to find when the main reason you're friends at all isn't much more than a smoking crater right now."
Shingo ignored the dull thud to his insides at that. "Hey, I wouldn't say that too quickly," he replied, looking around them. "It looks to me like you found a lot of friends just by coming here."
"And we'll have even more to find soon enough," Sora replied, smiling daringly before raising his voice once more. "All right, everyone—group up and shape up! Get your Dimension Movers ready for transport—and stay together!"
The swish-sizzle of a veritable rainbow of Solid Vision blades unsheathing from a hundred-plus Duel Disks filled the chamber for the next few seconds. Shingo activated his own forest green device with no small hesitation—he could feel his legs turning to rubbery marshmallow, even as the lime-green chevron sizzled along his forearm.
This is really happening. It was all he could do to keep himself from getting drunk on adrenaline. He didn't know if he wanted to laugh or scream at the insanity of what he was about to do.
"Orbital 7?" He could just barely hear Haruto over the din of his pounding head and heart. "Get a comm. system up and running. Every Duel Disk with a Dimension Mover card." A beat. "And ready your aero-assist mode."
"Roger." And as Shingo looked on, heart still lurching against his ribs, the boy's "robot backpack buddy" suddenly split in half down the middle, rapidly transforming into a twin-engine jetpack. Chevron-shaped legs flexed outwards from underneath, rearranging themselves either side of Haruto's torso in a strange imitation of butterfly wings. Six jets of blue flame roared to life, propelling Haruto aloft within seconds until he was almost as high up as Anna on her hover-cannon. Shingo could have sworn the girl nudged the mass of pink tubing a few inches higher at this.
"Violet Wing!" He jumped—Sora was still having to shout over the noise, but Orbital 7's technological jiggery-pokery was allowing him to speak through everyone's Duel Disks now, Shingo's included. "CLEAR!"
Asuka and Rei raised their thumbs in reply. Then—without a word—both girls, along with Tyranno, Hayato, and Shō, had tapped at the screen of their Duel Disks. Within a few moments, the familiar, speckled-blue glow of an inter-dimensional transmission had enveloped them—and a few moments after that, the glow had shrunk into a few faint photons, leaving nothing behind. Umesugi Ken followed their lead soon after; he and no less than twenty of the hundred-some boys from Ryōzanpaku were nothing less than a few wisps of light in the space of a second.
"White Wing!" Sora pointed at Jack Atlas on the off chance he hadn't heard him. Nor had he needed to. Before the "CLEAR!" had even left Sora's lips, he and every Duelist with a D-Wheel had gunned their engines. The squeal of tires on steel flooring was still faintly audible even after Jack, Shinji, Damon, Tony, and Amanda—with Takeda "Shin" Makoto and another score of his classmates not far behind them—had vanished from view, bikes and all.
"Black Wing!" Shingo was surprised Anna and Allen hadn't taken off then and there—but even as they waited, he could see they were both chomping at the bit to cross over to the Fusion Dimension. "CLEAR!" And with a whirl of blue light, they were off, along with Gauche, Kaito and Haruto—and another twenty-odd Ryōzanpaku fighters.
"Green Wing!" Now it was Dennis' turn to shout to the sky. He performed a neat about-face on his heel, rounding upon Mieru, Yūzō, Mikiyo, Teppei, and everyone who'd gathered behind them.
Mieru was breathing heavily. The rest of them, aside from Dennis, had sweat beading on their brows—and Dennis himself looked as though he'd lost most of the frizz in his red hair. Whether that was from so many people in one place, or the stress that might have been cooking everyone's brains, Shingo had no time to find out. Inside of three seconds—"CLEAR!"—upwards of thirty Duelists, including two dozen Ryōzanpaku boys who'd grouped with him, had activated thirty Dimension Movers, and had become thirty clouds of rapidly fading photons.
That just left him, Shun, Noboru, and Sora—the core four of the Lancers, and one for every Summoning method that had a Dimension associated with it, Shingo couldn't help but notice—standing alone in the suddenly quiet chamber. He saw Kachidoki Isao and a scattered few of his classmates lingering with them, too. Part of him wished Ootome and Yamabe could join him today—even Kakimoto, though he was still recovering from his injuries—
He remembered just in time to pull up the Dimensional Move window on his Duel Disk's screen. Fusion hovered in the bubble dead center, with Signal Lock » On flashing beneath it in bold blue letters.
By then, Sora had turned their way. "Okay, Lancer Wing," he said hoarsely. "Remember why we're doing this."
"For Yūya," Noboru growled, puffing his chest out as best he could.
"For Yuzu." Shun rolled his shoulders until the joints popped, then cracked his neck.
"For our home." Isao brought his Duel Disk to his chest. His classmates mirrored him in unison. "For our school."
"And for a big old smile on our fearless leader's face," Shingo finished, feeling the lopsided grin twist his lips.
Sora caught himself just in time, but Shingo could tell what he'd said had amused him. For a moment, there was only the hum of the machinery around them.
Then … "Clear."
As one, every Duelist triggered the switch on their Duel Disks. Shingo had scarcely pressed Fusion before he felt a familiarly warm glow surround his body. His vision became a shower of bright blue, swallowing him in less than a second—he heard the rush of displaced air, space, and time fill his ears—
His last thought before he crossed over was of the look on his father's face when he found out what he was up to …
" … Let me get this straight."
The camera had had to be tilted almost a full forty-five degrees downwards. Even then, Sawatari Shinichirō only just managed to occupy the center of the monitor with his head—still damp from the hasty shower he'd taken.
It was not an imposing look for him. Or for his hairline, Masumi thought, fervently hoping Yaiba wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of his hair thinning that badly when he got older. But the unnatural evenness and calmness that belonged to the voice of the mayor of Maiami City somehow managed to make up for his comical appearance.
"You believe the Ædonai are about to attack my city again." Our city, the Fusion ace swore she could hear Himika thinking. "You believe that this attack could happen soon—very soon, even."
"It fits with—" But Mayor Sawatari did the unthinkable: he raised a hand, and silenced the headmistress of LDS.
"You believe that they may try to target the city's political infrastructure."
"Yes."
"Said infrastructure including myself."
"Yes." Masumi wondered if Himika could sense the impending eruption as well.
"And you are proposing, to my face … to make them target me more."
"Y—excuse me?" The headmistress managed a veneer of polite confusion, but Masumi could tell she was offended.
The mayor pinched his temples, inhaled through his nose … and sighed. "No—really. You have lost your mind."
Himika drew herself to her full height—which, combined with today's high heels, made her nearly as twice as tall as the man she was talking to. "Mr. Mayor, if you would permit me to explain—"
"YOU HAVE LOST YOUR MIND!"
There it is. Masumi resisted the urge to roll her eyes as "Mount Sawatari" finally blew his top. "HOW DARE YOU USE ME—THE MAN WHO SIGNS YOUR PAYCHECKS AND ALLOWS YOUR SCHOOL TO RESIDE IN MY CITY—AS A PAWN IN YOUR GLORIFIED WAR GAME! I HUMORED YOU WHEN YOU TOLD ME YOU HAD A MOLE IN YOUR SCHOOL! I MADE SURE THAT REPAIRING THE DAMAGE HER LUNATIC OF A PARTNER DID COULD BE DONE WITH DISPATCH OUT OF THE KINDNESS OF MY HEART! BUT I AM NOT SO BENEATH YOU—SO UNIMPORTANT TO YOU—THAT I CAN BE TREATED AS … AS BAIT!"
He finished by stamping his little feet upon the floor, with his face a bright, boiling scarlet. By the end of Mayor Sawatari's tirade, an unnatural silence had descended upon Himika's office.
Himika broke it with a flare of her nostrils and a calm, level stare. "When you've quite finished?"
"Do not tempt me," was his seething reply. He tapped at a button on his desk phone, breathing heavily. "Junko—my heart medicine. Double time."
"On my way, Mr. Mayor."
Himika did not speak for a long minute. Even when the hologram of Angel-IQ materialized soundlessly next to her, and bent over to whisper in her ear, the headmistress made no reply but a single, terse jerk of her head that couldn't even be called a nod. Angel-IQ—perhaps taking the hint—drifted behind her desk, and waited with the rest of them.
Hotene, Rika, Shen, and Fuyu had left LDS for the hospital ten minutes ago; Masumi had seen the winged forms of their monsters disappear into the streets right before Himika had arranged a secure video line to the mayor's office. With any luck, the four of them would be six by the time the core LID had finished listening to their mayor bloviate and fulminate to his counterpart's face. Then the six would turn into nine, and the nine would be off to begin the twins' training—training for which Masumi had no idea of where to even start, to say nothing of how long it might last before an entire regiment of Ædonai suddenly dropped from the sky right on top of them.
Only when Mr. Sawatari's secretary had appeared in the doorway, pushed a glass of water and a handful of pills his way—and promptly sped off the moment both pills and water had been downed in a gulp—did Himika speak again.
"I don't know how much of yesterday's events your son might have told you about over dinner," she said sternly. "I don't even know how much of last night's events found their way into your morning newsfeed. But the entire nation is in an uproar after last night's attacks on the Akaba family." She stabbed a thumb in the direction of her bandages. "If the head of Japan's premier Dueling institution can be cornered in a restaurant and nearly sealed into a card—on the Emperor's doorstep, mind you—then what does that say for anyone's safety? It isn't just our teachers and our children who are in danger from the Ædonai now, Mr. Mayor … it's men and women of every background! Blue-collar, white-collar! Grocers, bankers, real estate agents—even our own politicians!"
Masumi swore she saw Mr. Sawatari's pupils shrink to pinpricks on the word politicians. "The Ædonai will target every center of power they can to leave us leaderless and disorganized," Himika went on. "It is exactly the same thing Academia did with the Xyz Dimension when they were in power—when Heartland fell, there was nothing left but chaos and some meager resistance. They tried in Synchro, too, but failed thanks to the Lancers—and yet, that didn't stop them from attacking a second time. And by all accounts, that succeeded!"
"This—this is fear-mongering!" spluttered the mayor. "This is scare tactics—base intimidation!"
The headmistress crossed her arms. "It's the truth. If it wasn't scary and intimidating, what else would it be?"
Mr. Sawatari pointed a stubby thumb at his desk. He looked close to erupting again. "I did not earn the right to sit in this chair for the next four years by scaring the hell out of my constituents! And while we're on that subject," he added, "I would very much like to last those four years, thank you very much!"
"Then let me put it this way." Masumi wasn't looking at Himika, but the Fusion ace could feel her principal narrow her eyes at the man. "If you do what I'm suggesting—if you take all the steps needed—then you'll either be sitting in that chair for a rather longer time than four years, or have the chance to find a much bigger office in the course of your career. But if you don't—if you'd rather take your fate into your own hands—then you might as well forget about holding elections at all, never mind reelections. Because there will be more soldiers than voters in this city by the time your term is up—and that's assuming they give you the dignity of serving out that term at all."
Just like Fusion, Masumi thought. It was clear the same words were on Himika's lips—and in the mayor's thoughts. He wasn't just staring the potential end of his career in his face—he was staring at the potential end of democracy in his own city. Maybe even his entire country.
The red began to recede from his doughy face at last, giving it the rough look of a ruby that hadn't been cut all the way out of a very muddy rock. "And you're telling me the only way out," he sighed, "is to fight these bastards."
"Come now, Shinichirō." Himika tilted her head. "You give yourself too little justice. Surely you can look me in the eye and tell me that I didn't teach your son everything he knows."
The portly man stood very still. So was Masumi. A very strange mental image had been conjured in her head, and suddenly she had to work very hard to keep her face calm and impassive.
He tapped at his desk phone again. "Mr. Mayor?"
"Junko." Mr. Sawatari spoke loudly and carefully. "Call the city council. I want every senior advisor in front of my desk within the hour. If they give any excuses, or offer any protests … tell them I'm invoking Protocol UV."
There was silence on the other end of the line—and then, a very faint and disbelieving: " … Sir?"
"You heard me, Junko." Something in the way the mayor said that sent a shiver up Masumi's spine. She privately wondered if the man had ever sounded that serious in his life. "And call my speechwriter too, while you're at it," he added, almost as an afterthought. "I have a sudden, urgent need to make a public address today—and I need it to be convincing this time. And by convincing, I mean perfect."
"On it, sir. How much of the press to cover it?"
Mr. Sawatari stole a quick look at Himika. She nodded back. "All of them," said the mayor. "Every local agency and affiliate within an hour's distance of City Hall. They say that news travels fast; I aim to find out how fast."
"Understood." And his secretary ended the call with a click. The sigh that Sawatari Shinichirō heaved after that made him slump so badly that he looked almost as wide as he was tall.
"Fifty percent," was all he said after that.
Himika blinked again. "I beg your pardon?"
"However many Duelists you can find," the mayor said. "I don't care how many of them might go to your school, or if they're Lancers—or have the wits and cards to be Lancers. I want fifty percent of them between these Ædonai and myself. That's my price for going along with this insanity you have the audacity to call a plan."
"Unacceptable." Masumi had been about to say the exact same thing, but so forceful was Himika's reply that the word died on her lips. "We are already at risk of spreading ourselves too thin. Angel-IQ has informed me that the core Lancers have already been deployed to the Fusion Dimension for their rescue mission … yes, even your son, Shinichirō," she added, and if she felt any satisfaction at watching the man's eyes bug in shock, she showed no sign, "and you already know that the LID have an equally important assignment ahead of them. A dozen Duelists do not comprise the majority of our strength, but their absence will not be inconsiderable. There is more than one Duel School to be protected in this city, and I want my students assigned to as many of them as possible."
She crossed her arms. "Twenty-five percent, therefore—one Duelist of every four who go to LDS. Those who do not may defend their own schools as only they can, if they have the will and means to do so."
" … I'm sorry, I was under the impression you wanted to make me the bigger target," Mr. Sawatari huffed, drawing himself to his full, five-foot height without any trace of irony. "The more Duelists I have to defend me and my seat of power, the bigger that target will be—and the more chance your mad plan has of actually working."
"Thirty-three, then."
Both adults whirled on Masumi so quickly that the Fusion ace nearly swallowed her tongue. It took a few moments for her to recover. " … I mean, that's in between one of every two and one of every four, right? I don't know how much better we can split the difference without splitting hairs."
"Technically, thirty-seven percent is closer to the midway point between twenty-five and fifty—"
"Without splitting hairs," Masumi said more forcefully, drowning out Angel-IQ and shooting the supercomputer the dirtiest do-not-ruin-this-for-me look she could muster. This was no time to quibble over mathematics. "A third of our Duelists for you, another third for the Duel Schools—"
"—and the rest to protect against civilian collateral," finished Himika. She shot Masumi a sharp look in return—but even as she flinched, Masumi could have sworn her lips had formed the slightest of smiles. "I happen to think she's right, Mr. Mayor. Young and inexperienced in the art of negotiation, to be sure—but correct all the same."
Mr. Sawatari considered this. "Then I'll want Sawatari's friends," he finally said. "Ootome, Yamabe, Kakimoto—those tagalongs of his. Give me those three—on top of your thirty-three—and you have me."
And Masumi could tell from the way Himika smirked that this had been her intent all along. "Deal."
Without further ado, she ended the call—though not before the shrinking screen of the mayor hollered, "And I'll be the one who picks my thirty-three—!" before disappearing from the office window completely, and leaving nothing behind save for a sudden, oppressive silence.
The LDS headmistress pivoted on her heel towards the hologram of Angel-IQ. "Put the word out," was all she said. Angel-IQ nodded, and vanished from view to do her bidding.
"The rest of you, meet up with your friends at Maiami General," Himika told the LID. "The sooner we get you off to the Château, the sooner you can start training the twins. And Masumi?"
The Fusion ace—who'd come this close to turning and making for the door—stiffened where she stood. "Yes?"
"I won't chastise you for speaking out of turn. You've been through enough battles that I may need your opinions in them sooner than might be expected. But I hope you intend to learn about how to hold the sword I put in your hands before you start swinging it around."
Masumi understood, and nodded to show it. "It's important to know how to fight," Himika continued, "but knowing how to not fight, I think, is just as crucial. And I hope that's another lesson that you can learn from me, too."
This time, there was no mistaking the tiny smile that nudged at the headmistress' mouth—and not even the kiss from Yaiba she received five minutes later could dispel the sight of it from her brain. By the time she'd arrived at Maiami General fifteen minutes later, both smile and kiss had buoyed her heart so high she felt like she'd conquered Everest.
She silently petitioned the powers that be that the Lancers and their allies were doing just as well.
Outskirts of Giza, Egypt
Fusion Dimension
"Ḥayya ʿalā ṣ-ṣalāh … ḥayya ʿalā ṣ-ṣalāh … "
The Ædonai soldier listened to the melodic tenor of the muezzin—prerecorded, and amplified by loudspeaker—echo sonorously across the desert from the mosque that he knew lay three kilometers to the east. The ṣalāt aẓ-ẓuhr, he'd known even before he felt his stomach rumble—the call to prayer that took place around midday.
He reached for a ration pack, tore it open, and began to nibble at its half-stale contents.
The outpost he occupied was a kilometer due east of the fortress that had been erected in the midst of the desert that lay southwest of downtown Cairo, and another kilometer west of the tiered behemoth of stone called the Pyramid of Djoser. He'd seen the sun rise up behind the pyramid before he'd taken the watch, and appear from the apex as if it had risen from within—a sign the Bestatter's followers continued to insist was a good omen upon their return from morning prayers, though one that the soldier himself had not seen fit to note in the official logs for his superiors.
"Ḥayya ʿalā l-falāḥ … ḥayya ʿalā l-falāḥ … "
Though the soldier was not Muslim—nor was he even Middle Eastern; he was in fact half-German, half-Italian, for all that it mattered in the ranks—he had only been here a week, and yet he had already begun to build his daily routine around the muezzin. The crash course he'd gotten the day before he'd learned he was to be shipped off to this blasted desert had only prepared him for what to know, and how to know when it was happening.
But he'd come to find that for all that it was outmoded—and all its shrinking place in a universe that was shrinking faster still—the role of the Arabic muezzin in delivering the ahdan to the Islamic faithful five times every day had shaped the world almost as much as the Arabic numeral. Astronomy, geography, and mathematics were as vital to its role in the faith as faith itself. In this much—this union of technology and science with tradition and culture—the soldier had found a surprising amount of parallels with the movement he'd joined.
For the Ædonai, too, sought to unify the scattered children of the world through the old and the new alike. They too had their share of enemies, and sought to defeat them, that the world they hoped to build would endure forever. He had said this to the Bestatter once, on the one occasion their paths had chanced to cross, and had been pleasantly surprised to hear her tell him that his words carried more truth to them than she had expected from an outsider.
"They may make a believer of you yet," she had said approvingly. Not we, she had stressed when he'd asked; the Bestatter belonged to a movement that predated the entire Muslim faith, though did not wish to supplant it, and in truth, only relation by blood could have hoped to give him pride of place among the sinister black-cloaked men that attended her.
"An observer. Nothing more," he had politely declined. "But an attentive one, I would hope." For that was all he was, here in this unfamiliar desert, and all he was likely to be for however long the Ædonai saw fit to post him here. Not that he minded; they had told him themselves that he should expect his days to be simple, and so they were. He observed, recorded, and—if need be, they had told him—he reported.
But mostly, he listened to the muezzin.
"ʾAllāhu ʾakbar … ʾAllāhu ʾakbar … lā ʾilāha ʾillā -llāh … aṣ-ṣalātu fī buyūtikum … "
Several long moments passed before the soldier realized his sandwich had fallen to the floor. Suddenly he was alert.
Aṣ-ṣalātu fī buyūtikum, he'd learned during his crash course, was a phrase in the adhan that was only seldom used; it was only to be delivered in times of such bad weather or bad disease that there was no other option for the faithful but to pray in their homes, where it would be safer. But the sky was clear as could be, and hardly anybody had been sick when he'd gone to take his post after breakfast.
Which meant there could be only one other reason it could possibly be said.
He reached for his radio. "Command, this is Recon Bravo," he said. "The town crier has ordered quarantine, please confirm." That had been the call sign he himself had proposed for the muezzin, for much of the Ædonai hailed from the Western world, who had known no other equivalent in those days of old.
"Recon Bravo—quarantine is confirmed," the speaker crackled a few moments later. "Intel says Operation Solitaire was carried out last night. The Ministry of Awqaf put the word out this morning—effective immediately, all prayers are to be conducted indoors until the threat of retaliation has passed."
So the government knew, too, thought the soldier. And Operation Solitaire … He'd heard rumors that a crack team had been sent to cripple the Pendulum Dimension's key leaders—but this had been the first time he had been offered proof that it existed, to say nothing of that it had worked. The thought of that made him shiver—though he couldn't be sure if it was from anticipation or dread.
"Do you think they'll retaliate?" he asked, taking another bite of his sandwich, and reaching for his canteen to wash it down. The water felt blessedly refreshing in the dryness of the heat.
"They took down the Kämpfer." That had been a shock in and of itself; the soldier had been playing a pickup Duel with the man who'd been sent to relieve him when word of Markus Streiter's fall had reached him, and jumped to his feet so quickly that the table they'd been playing on crashed to the floor, ruining the game. "And you know what that tough mother always used to say. Expect the unexpected."
The soldier snorted. "I wonder if he expected—" He broke off; something on his console had suddenly caught his attention. "Hold on. A sensor buoy in the Nile just went dark. Ugh—I've told the fishing boats a thousand times to watch where they—"
But his frustration swiftly turned to confusion as a whole series of lights, strung across the wavy line of the Nile River, suddenly chose that moment to flicker off.
"That's impossible … " he muttered to himself. "They can't all be offline … "
He switched his radio to a different, more secure frequency. "Recon Bravo calling Agent 418. I need observer check on sensor grid seventeen ASAP, over."
No response. "Agent 418—please respond, over!" But even as he yelled frantically into the radio, the soldier had a sneaking suspicion that the sudden communication problems might not be on his end.
He grimaced, checked his Duel Disk to make sure it was secure and primed for battle—and ran to warn the fortress.
Less than five miles away, Shiun'in Sora watched his Duel Disk with a look of grim satisfaction as he watched the System Down and Corruption Cell "A" cards pulse next to each other on the screen.
So far, so good, he thought.
"Viruses are currently at eighty-two percent propagation," Orbital 7 spoke from the speaker built inside the device. "Estimate that enemy comm. lines will be fully disrupted in thirty-three seconds."
As a former soldier of Academia, Sora had known that their first target needed to be the enemy's communications. When fighting Misgarth, or any force allied with them, this was far more crucial than might otherwise be assumed; it wasn't just soldiers that could be alerted if something went wrong. There was always the chance that the outposts he had ordered his wings to assault had access to the satellite array that had made Misgarth the dominant world power in the Fusion Dimension. A barrage of orbital laser fire would have ruined their day for sure.
Which means we take those out first, he'd told Haruto, Shō, and Damon shortly after their trip across the dimensions had concluded, and deposited them all less than a mile—give or take—from the eastern shoreline of the Nile River. Shō and Damon had offered for a stealth approach on the eastern and western outposts, the results of which Sora had already seen to be a success. Haruto, through Orbital 7, had done for the other two; Sora wondered if the Resistance had reverse-engineered the hacking abilities of Academia's Duel Disks, and implanted them inside that odd robot.
A closer problem at hand had been the sensor nets along the Nile; until those were dealt with, crossing the river—by Duel Monsters or by plain old swimming—was not an option. It was Teppei—in an unusual moment of foresight—who'd wondered if the fish themselves might try to bite back if they tried to cross the river. Though the remark had been in jest, it had taken root in Sora's brain, and so he had instructed the fisherman Duelist to make sure that didn't happen. A moment later, the fins of Teppei's Sea Dragon God – Leviathan carved through the water, and a maw of needle-sharp teeth had swallowed the troublesome net of buoys whole.
In less time than Sora had dared to think, the first part of their mission had gone off without a hitch. So now here he was, atop the fronds of a gingerbread tree some fifty feet high, scanning the far shoreline with a pair of binoculars, and wishing that for all his sudden good luck, he'd at least been given a little more time to scout out the area.
The Nile was nearly a quarter mile wide here; finding a better spot to cross—one without so much water or wildlife to hinder them—would take too much time. So it only took thirty seconds to convince him that there was no other alternative … most of which was spent lingering on the bask of crocodiles on the riverside nearer to them, less than fifty feet from where he and the core Lancers were waiting for his signal to advance.
Big ones, all of them, he couldn't help but think. Someone had told him once in school that the Nile crocodile was the second-largest reptile in the world—surpassed only by the saltwater crocodile of Southeast Asia—and that both species had reputations of reaching nearly twenty feet in length. None of the bask looked nearly as long, for which Sora was thankful; the largest, its green scales so brown with mud it must have been rolling in the stuff, was maybe fourteen, fifteen feet from snout to tail. Still, even the runt of the lot was nothing to sniff at; paler and broader than the others, and easily over ten feet long.
Sora stared at the smaller crocodile, frowning. Something wasn't right here—the rest of the crocodiles were dark of scale—and those scales looked much larger, come to think. The skin of this pale one had a more pebbled look about it. So it had to be a different species from the rest—and from the difference in size, this one might actually be—
He dismounted the tree as quickly as he could; dread suddenly flowing through every vein in his body. "Kurosaki!"
The Xyz Duelist quickly stole over to him. "Yeah?"
"See that crocodile right there—stay low! Stay low!" Sora didn't trust himself to speak any louder than the harsh whisper he was using right now. "Middle of the pack? Small and pale?"
"Yeah." Shun, near flat on his belly, held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "Looks like it got in a fight. I can see a scar across the eye from here … "
"Kill her."
Sora's mind was so far away that he didn't even realize what he'd said. Nor did he see Shun round on him in shock, so quickly his neck cricked. All that mattered to him was that his worst fears had been confirmed. The sweet taste of victory had become ash in his mouth in less than a minute.
"Do it—now!" he hissed. "The sooner she's out of the way, the sooner we can slip in and—"
"Wait, wait, wait." Shun held up his hands defensively—then frowned. "She? How do you know that's a she?"
"Trust me." Sora was starting to wish the Dimension Movers had put them on the other side of the river. "I just—"
"Now I know I didn't just 'ear you lot 'opin' to set upon me poor ole Karen, did I now?"
…
Everyone froze where they stood. Sora didn't dare to move a muscle—not even to close his mouth, or flick his eyes upwards to the gingerbread tree he'd just descended, where he was certain the voice had come from. But he could almost imagine the loudspeaker that had produced it. Was it concealed in the fruit of the trees? Built into the bark?
Wherever it was, he was willing to bet his last lollipop that there was a camera clustered in there with it, too.
"So … um." Shingo looked like he was about to turn tail then and there. "No—no one else heard that, right? None of us just heard a tree talk?"
And then—because statistically, Sora supposed one of them had to—he added unnecessarily, " … Like an Australian?"
A/N: Alright. Fess up—raise your hands if you knew I was going to give the other side some legacy characters of their own.
Sorry for the long wait on this chapter. My job continues to take me out of town more often than not—and it claimed more than just my free time this time. The car I'd been driving for the last fifteen, sixteen years or so finally decided to give out on me while I was in a whole different state—so that meant having to shop around for another one, test-driving potential replacements, all that stuff, all within the span of a week. That left me too exhausted to work on this for a while.
But I'm glad I got this done early. Halloween weekend is usually when I take a little vacation to unwind after things get particularly busy or hectic. With this out of the way as well, I'll be well prepared to tackle the next cluster of chapters—and I'll need every ounce of rest I can get. There's a lot of Duels coming up this next arc … like, a lot a lot. I think you'll like where some of them end up going.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter—drop a line or a like if you like, and thanks for reading! – K