XXVI

"Our top priority will be containment," Himika told the three assemblies of Duelists she'd called up to her office ten minutes ago—each one comprised of most of the upperclassmen of LDS, and a few who'd distinguished themselves in the past as well. "LDS and the Duel Schools throughout the city will be their primary targets—so it is imperative that if and when the Ædonai do come, we either keep them out, or keep them in."

Sakuragi Yū—his lavender hair front and center amidst the hundred-some boys and girls off to her right—raised a hand. "And when will they be coming, Headmistress?" the former Junior Youth champion asked. "If the Lancers and their allies can do enough damage to them on their turf, like you told us earlier, it could be that the Ædonai won't have the strength to attack us back."

"I am no longer willing to take that risk." Himika gestured to her bandages to drive the point home. "Now—Mayor Sawatari is sending orders to our emergency response crews. I've been told they've been doing some innovating of their own in preparation for another attack. All of you"—she motioned to the cluster of Duelists to the left of her—"will be reporting to them once we're done here. They'll disperse you throughout the city to protect any vital points the Ædonai may target—and give them more breathing room if they have to prepare for more civilian casualties."

The headmistress could almost hear the collective swallow as the last three words sunk in. She turned to the group on her right. "You'll be in charge of keeping the Duel Schools safe," she told them. "This one if need be—but not every school in Maiami City is capable of scaring up the equivalent of an army. Coordinate with their principals and find out if they need more Duelists to guard them. Then set up patrol routes to cover as much of them as you can."

"What happens if they decide LDS is the bigger target after all?" a girl's voice spoke from somewhere in back.

"We'll have a skeleton crew standing by if that should happen." And Angel-IQ, Himika thought, but she knew that the supercomputer was just as likely to be needed elsewhere as she might be here. "LeoCorp will be focusing all of its efforts on reconnaissance—they'll inform you if the Ædonai are focusing on one target, or moving on to another, and so on. Any staff and security with a Deck and Duel Disk will protect them and this school." She decided not to mention that a good, old-fashioned taser might do just as well. No doubt Nakajima had told building security about his exploits the other night, and was recommending the exact same approach to them even now.

Ootomo, Yamabe, and Kakimoto were front and center of everyone present. The middle of them raised his hand. "What about these Duel Hunters we've been hearing about?"

Himika bit her tongue. She knew it was only a matter of time before the rumors about exactly what had happened to her and Reiji would spread through LDS—but it sounded as if they'd done so much quicker than she'd expected.

If I tell them too much, I may as well have this whole city put on a platter. "We know that they're élite fighters," she finally said, "and we know they make use of technologies that turn Duels into something much more than that. More than that I know too little to say—but I know they can be beat," she added—in that much, she was confident. "They will rely on tricks more than they will their own cards. Take this to heart, and they'll be just another Duelist."

Mutters of assent murmured throughout the office. Even Yamabe seemed pleased with the answer to his question. But the same could not be said for Ootomo or Kakimoto. "What if it's not a Duel Hunter who's leading them?" the former wanted to know, worry lining his usually smug face. "What if it's someone worse than that?"

If you're that scared of Gwendolyn Grimm, at least have the courage to say her name. Himika suppressed the urge to curl her lip. The more you do, the less you'll have reason to be scared of her at all. But she doubted the Psychic Duelist would have much reason to lead any attack at all, never mind one on LDS itself. People like her were better at planning than leading—and twisting the dreams of her enemies into nightmares would count for very little while they had to be wide awake.

Still, she knew Dr. Grimm had planned at least one attack against them. Himika did not doubt the next one would stink just as much of the tea that woman had always liked to drink. "Kōtsu Masumi believes the LID should draw off as much of the assault as they can. I happen to think she has a point. They have been instrumental in defending us before—and with lesser numbers than they possess today. That will mean a bigger danger to the Ædonai."

Here, at least, Himika knew she was telling the truth. But the words still came with a conviction she did not feel.

Kakimoto didn't look too reassured himself. The bandage that still swathed his head from yesterday's attack might have had something to do with that, the headmistress thought. "So where does that leave the rest of us?" he asked, looking round at everyone behind him and his friends.

"His Honor the Mayor believes he may be a target of the next attack." Himika did not think it worth mentioning that he'd only come to that conclusion after she'd planted it in his balding head. "To that end, he wants as many Duelists as we can spare to guard him. He was especially adamant that since the three of you have distinguished yourselves in battle already, you should lead that force."

Ootomo, Yamabe, and Kakimoto all traded glances. Perhaps they had been anticipating this might happen sooner or later, since they knew the mayor's son so well. But a position of leadership was something they had clearly not been expecting. Kakimoto in particular had spent most of his time "distinguishing" himself with a mild concussion, she happened to know. Perhaps that was why he looked less enthusiastic than either of his friends, or the Duelists behind him, about guarding such a—Himika mentally snorted at the word—politically important person.

Thankfully, Yamabe seemed to register his hesitation. "Hey, don't worry," he said, clapping Kakimoto gently on the shoulder. "Chaos Giants are a lot easier to deal with than they look. Ootomo took down three of them by himself—that's one more than Sawatari can claim, remember? You'll be fine!"

Himika wished she could share his bravado. Not everyone in the Ædonai used Chaos Giants, she knew full well. But most of them did, and perhaps there they had the advantage.

She checked her phone. It was just after ten. "Start dividing your forces into squads of three," she instructed them. If we're lucky, we won't have to spread ourselves out any thinner than that. "Sakuragi, work with your Duelists to figure out which of them can best reinforce each Duel School. I suggest starting with Endymion and working your way from there." The Madame de Sorciere had made it plain before leaving Chūō City that EDS would be applying their theories of Dueling in practice "much more aggressively" from here on out. The angry gleam in her gray eyes had been so reminiscent of carbon steel that Himika, in a first, did not argue.

"We'll reconvene in the school lobby in two hours' time," she finished. "Good luck to you all."

As they filed away, chatting amongst one another, she heard the hum of hard-light photons shimmering into three dimensions beside her. Only when the door had closed on the last of her students did she finally address Angel-IQ.

"Well?"

"Masumi and her friends left with the Hamabe twins five minutes ago," the supercomputer promptly answered her. "I will arrange transport to the Château once they arrive at the western edge of the city limits."

"Very good. I'll be deploying our own forces around the city in a little while." Rumors weren't the only thing that traveled fast in the walls of LDS—so Himika saw no point in saying when the majority of her student body would be deployed. "Two hours should be time enough to talk about our … other development, wouldn't you say?"

It had taken everything in her to remain calm and composed when Angel-IQ had materialized next to her—while the mayor of Maiami City had been alternating between screaming his head off, gulping down pills for his heart, and making demands as if he governed more than just a city, but the very air and laws of physics within its boundaries—and whispered of finding something "unusually concerning". Your husband has been busier than we thought, had been Angel-IQ's exact words.

"When one of the Fusion Dimension students, Saotome Rei, interfaced with your personal terminal earlier today," the supercomputer said, "I was able to see the complete list of files she had transferred into your terminal. Cargo manifests and troop deployments, as she had claimed—but there was one file of note that was neither of these."

Angel-IQ revolved in a graceful half-circle, waving her holographic arm over the smart glass that made up Himika's office windows. Immediately, images coalesced over the panes, forming the documents Himika had seen in passing once before, though moving too fast to see much more than the fact each of them had been heavily redacted. Then, a moment later, the hologram raised a hand, and instantly the images froze, displaying a single page that looked more classified than all the rest of them. Nearly half of it was lined with heavy black bars—but the half that remained readable was enough for Himika to know that Angel-IQ had spoken true.

"Extra-Dimensional Scouting Expedition … Operation Sargasso," she murmured, her eyes skimming over bars and names that meant little to her—every name but one. "Direct all inquiries to … Akaba Leo?"

There were more names than that—and at least one of them suggested to her that this had been a military venture. But the phrase "extra-dimensional" had set off more alarm bells in her head than had a right to exist. As she read through it a second and third time, she realized it was more than that; several of the names that were mentioned on this piece of paper were students. Some of them had been standing in this very office just an hour ago.

Could this have been part of Leo's plan to unite the dimensions? Himika wondered. Had this scouting expedition been merely a first step towards the Obelisk Force reducing Heartland to rubble—and very nearly her own city as well? She was not certain—and that, more than anything else, scared her more than she was willing to admit.

What the hell were you up to over there? "Contact my son," she finally said. "I seem to recall that Reiji made a few scouting trips to Academia when he was younger. It may be he might recognize some of these names himself." Or fill in some of these damnable blanks, if he was lucky.

"At once, Himika-sama. Shall I interface with his files? He may have a more complete list on his computer."

"Only if he needs you more than I do." Even if all went her way—if the Lancers could recover Yūya and Yuzu, if her plan with Mayor Sawatari went off without a hitch, or even if the Ædonai chose not to attack while the Lancers were a whole dimension away—Dr. Grimm was still likely to make LDS a target. Himika could think of no better weapon to use against a dream-warping Duelist than a Duelist whose very nature kept her from dreaming at all.

Her thoughts went to the Lancers now, unbidden, and she hoped against hope that Sakuragi had been right earlier—or, if nothing else, that Sora, Dennis, and all the Lancers and Duelists with them would be in and out of the Fusion Dimension, with the saviors of her city in tow, before the Ædonai thought to set foot in Maiami City again.

Outskirts of Giza, Fusion Dimension

Alarms began to blare from the crystal spires floating overhead, where once they had broadcasted the religious chanting Shiun'in Sora had heard just minutes ago. But he was in no mood to hear that now.

He felt as though he'd just been electrocuted. His limbs had gone numb to a one, hanging like deadweight from a torso that shook so violently that it was a wonder he hadn't fallen onto the sandy shores of the Nile River.

"G'd arvo, Sora me ole cobber!" chortled the voice of the unseen young man that had turned his life into a living hell in less than three seconds. "Didn't think you and the mates would be rockin' up the new digs so soon!"

In the corner of his eye, Kurosaki Shun tensed. "Mates?"

Sora fixed him with a grim nod that told the Xyz Duelist everything. They know we're here. He gestured outwards with his hand, and in seconds every Lancer behind him began to fan out. Then, doing his best to be flippant about it all—and hoping he could stall for time—he somehow tamed the butterflies in his stomach enough to speak.

I should've brought more candy. " … H-hey, Jim." Suddenly he realized how small he felt next to almost everyone else here. "What brings you out of the Outback? You get tired of wrestling all the wildlife down there?"

"Hah!" The gingerbread tree next to him—Sora, damnably, still could not see the camera or the microphone it was concealing—erupted with a bark of laughter. "You want to show a bit more respect, Sora! They plucked li'l ole me out the Top End to help build the same lovely beauty youse were hopin' to crash! Even gave me some fancy new titles to go with it—Agent 418, Giza Ops Chief of Security! Not too shabby for this rough ole Croc, eh?"

"You always did like working out in the sun," Sora said dryly. "You'd think it would've baked your brain by now." He dearly hoped the other three wings were doing the smart thing and following the Lancers' lead.

"Bloody oath, mate." Another laugh. "Want in for a nice spot of shade? We haven't had a proper chat in ages! Should've told us you were comin'—or that you'd brought so many mates with you! C'mon, then, make it easy on yourselves—we'll even show you to the door! Best rattle your dags, though—sun gets hot this time of year!"

Sora, stressed as he was, was smart enough to hear what he wasn't being told. We can't stay here for much longer. "Thanks for the invite, Jim," he managed to say, scanning the other end of the Nile and beyond with his binoculars. "But if it's all the same to you … I think we can find our own way in."

"We were hoping you'd say that." No laugh came with the words this time—but Sora could imagine the grin that was splitting the speaker's lips, and the cold chill that came with the mental image skewered his heart. "Cheerio!"

There was a soft click, and silence settled over the Nile once more.

Gongenzaka Noboru broke that silence, but so hesitantly that the big Duelist might have been told to walk on sugar glass. " … Sora?" He was biting his tongue behind his lips. "Who was that?"

Sora sighed. Well, our secret's out, he thought—what's one more? "His name's Jim Cook," he said to the Lancers, his mouth dry in a way that had nothing to do with the desert air. "He enrolled at Academia the year before I did—he was part of our Oceania division before he was transferred over to the main campus."

Shun swore. "And who's this Karen he mentioned?"

"She's his pet—the same crocodile I wanted you to kill just now." Sora had to grit his teeth to keep from shouting. The Xyz user had forgotten his anger, meanwhile; he was too absorbed in the sight of the pale reptile.

" … How did he know we were coming?" Hōchun Mieru muttered from behind him. "Were we spotted?"

"We weren't exactly sneaking around," Sora replied. "I'm not sure it would have mattered if we were. Jim's got an artificial eye—and I wouldn't have put it past him to give Karen another one, to let him see everything she did."

Sawatari Shingo was looking at Karen, too. "So that scar over her eye … "

"Probably." And before Sora knew it, all the words came out of his mouth in a rush. "And I bet you Jim has every last camera feed inside, outside, and all around his shiny new fortress for miles around routed through that eye too, and that he wired that tree next to us with a microphone to hear every last word we said, and he's probably sending out every last soldier in that fortress to hunt us down—"

"Every last soldier?"

But the Fusion Duelist was so far gone in his raving that he was deaf to Mieru's question. "—and we don't even know if Yūya or Yuzu could be in this building, or different buildings, or even different continents—"

"SORA!"

That stopped him where he stood. He rounded on Mieru, whose shrill voice had cracked so badly that most of the Lancers were still rubbing their ears in discomfort. "Every last soldier?" the Ritual user said again.

She wasn't looking his way, but rather somewhere over his shoulder. Sora opened his mouth to speak—

boom

—closed it.

If the wind and the waters of the Nile hadn't been so quiet, he might never have heard it. But some of the feeling had come back into his legs—just enough that he'd felt the vibration beneath the soles of his shoes.

Slowly, he turned round, back to the river, reaching for his binoculars—

boom

—lowered them.

"Every last soldier," the Fusion Duelist said bitterly, as he stared at the clouds of dust that had just plumed up some two or three kilometers away, on the other side of the river—and in their midst, an entire legion of Antique Gear Chaos Giants whose numbers seemed to double in number with each passing second … ten … twenty …

boom

… forty …

"Holy f… " Shingo's curse died on his lips as he sagged where he stood. The noise made him look even more like an old deflating tire. "There's … there's got to be a hundred of those things!"

A hundred Chaos Giants. And Sora didn't need binoculars to know where every single one of them might be going. But he raised them up to his face anyway—and felt all the blood drain from his face when he saw the behemoths' blue armor glinting in the sun, a mobile wall of iron half as tall as the Pyramids themselves, but so much wider—

boom

—and in their midst, the black mites of hundreds of Antique Gear Wyverns racing straight for them: a lavender-and-gray, camouflage-patterned soldier astride each one. Violet sword blades sizzled from the steel-gray arrowheads of the Duel Disks fastened to their left wrists, the cards generating their mounts blinked from the screens fixed on their right, and silver helms hid eyes and all sense of identity from the sight of the enemy they'd been sent to destroy.

boom

In an instant, Shuin'in Sora felt a change wrought deep within him. Muscles tensed and tightened, and neurons fired through his brain. Not since his days in Academia had he felt this rush of adrenaline—and for a horrible moment, he wondered if this might have been what Dennis had experienced when Markus Streiter had enslaved him back in the States. But the thought was here and gone before he realized his head was still clear, that he could still think—and, if it was possible, that he was thinking more clearly than ever before—

Some quick mental math told him that the swarm of Wyverns would meet them in minutes at best—so Sora knew he had to act just as quickly. He tapped at his Duel Disk, therefore—and in an instant, Orbital 7's comm. systems had linked him with every Duel Disk he'd brought to the Fusion Dimension.

"All right, everyone—listen up." All that talk of reporting in and standing by could wait—this wasn't Star Wars any more than he himself was a starfighter pilot. We can't waste a single second here. "Isao—you want the vanguard? You've got the vanguard. The Wyverns will hit us first—so focus on them."

"Understood."

"Anna and Allen—you're on suppression. I know one of you has a big gun. Start using it." He barely registered the cousins' snickers of anticipation; the orders were coming freely now, as easily as they had in the old days. "Rei and Amanda—take the perimeter, and stop them from outflanking us. Tyranno, Kurosaki—you're on point; Gauche and I will be right behind you."

"Got it." "Sure thing." "'Bout time!"

"Asuka, you take Mieru and go right—Shō and Hayato, you go left." Sora was gesturing every which way he could. "The more we're able to divide their forces, the better. Six at a time if you can—the smaller they are, the better for us. Jack, Tony—you're our air support. Kaito, Haruto—you're our recon. They'll need more than Wyverns to take down the likes of you. Dennis—you and Yūzō go crazy. Still want to give these bastards a surprise? Make it one they won't forget."

A chorus of assent greeted him as he turned round to the Lancers he'd known the longest. "Gongenzaka—fall back and take Sawatari with you—then circle around and look for anything that might be a way into this fortress. If they see you, don't let that stop you. You may be the best hope we have of reaching Yūya and Yuzu now."

Shingo swallowed. Noboru nodded solemnly. Even he seemed to realize this was not the time to wax poetic about manhood and nobility. "We'll make our own way in if we have to," he said, clenching his fist.

"Make it nice and big for all of us," Sora told him, smiling with rather more bravado than he'd meant to—and rather less than he wished he could share with everyone else. "The rest of us—we clear a path to Yūya and Yuzu. Starting here—starting now! Everybody stay in contact, and stay together! Don't battle more of them than you know how to face, and don't go off alone! Keep your Duel Disks switched on, and they'll be forced to at least give you a fighting chance. Everybody ready?"

A roar of noise erupted from the whole riverbank—and a moment later, the roars of monsters and engines alike had answered them. The Tenjō brothers rose into the air, buoyed by the backs of the shimmering dragons on which they now stood. Two more dragons—one with flaming scales, a second barely skin and bones—materialized at one end of a bridge some distance away, where Sora knew Jack and Tony were revving their D-Wheels. An unholy cross between a dragon, dinosaur, and bird that Sora recognized as an Overtex Goatlus now bent its neck for Tyranno to mount, and with a single flap of wings he too was aloft. Shō, as if not wishing to be outdone, had brought forth an even stranger hybrid: a steam locomotive with the blades of a helicopter and a grinning face that might have looked cartoonish if Sora didn't think it felt so human. Shō had squeezed himself just behind the cowcatcher of the Steam Gyroid, just visible beneath its rotor—looking for all the world like the joey of a kangaroo. Hayato, far too large to fit inside that tiny space, straddled the monster's metal "neck" instead as it bore them both into the air.

A dust cloud had whipped at his back just then, and Sora instinctively knew it was the blowback from Shun's Raid Raptors – Rise Falcon before he'd even seen the shadow of its wings or heard its keening cry. He took that as his cue, and a few seconds later, the sickly-green bulk of Des-Toy Scissor Tiger had dropped from the sky like a stone right in front of him, crouching low enough that he could climb atop its back.

More and more monsters shimmered, bellowed, and readied themselves for battle, but by then Sora's adrenaline had gotten the better of him. He kicked at his Scissor Tiger, and braced himself to hold on for dear life.

"Action Field: Cross Over activated," his Duel Disk announced—and so did everyone else's. Bursts of Solid Vision erupted in their midst by the dozen like so many missiles, arcing high into the clear sky in a matter of seconds—and exploding into thousands upon thousands of Action Cards amidst the platforms that now hovered aloft over them all.

The first shots of battle, Sora had just enough time to silently reflect. Then, finally—"LET'S GO!"

Crocodiles scattered as a tidal wave of noise, Duelists and Solid Vision surged over the Nile River. The sound of D-Wheels snarled along the nearby bridge—and even as Sora's heart leapt into his raw throat, as his steed hurtled over the waters in a single bound, he saw thirty—sixty—a hundred shadows of Ryōzanpaku's infamous Star warriors leap over him, weapons in hand and ready to meet the Wyverns bearing down upon them.

"FOR YŪYA!"

"FOR YUZU!"

"RYŌ!" "ZAN!" "RYŌ!" "ZAN!" "RYŌ!" "ZAN! PA! KU!"

With the thunderous cries of the Lancers Combined, the two sides met at last. A hundred Wyverns clashed with a hundred Stars. A hundred more swooped down in their wake, as a hundred Chaos Giants opened fire from afar.

And Sora knew, deep in his heart, that the Second Interdimensional War had begun.

Château Pique-Diamant

If it weren't for the yellow barricade tape that had been erected over parts of the front drive of Reiji's retreat, Kōtsu Masumi might never have known a fight had taken place here. As it was, the only signs of one she could readily see had been the furrows in the gravel that Nakajima and the maid he'd been fighting had left during their tussle. The armored SUV had already been towed and impounded, torn-off door and all, so it seemed the investigators had had their say here already, and moved on into the house itself.

"Probably best we don't go in after them," Yaiba remarked to her, holding her hand as they walked along the path.

Masumi hummed to herself. "I was planning on staying outside anyway. As much as I'd like to find that bed from before"—the Synchro ace blushed—"I'd rather not hear we're under invaded while the both of us are … "

She trailed off, feeling her own face go red in seconds. Yaiba was trying not to laugh. "No, no—you were saying?"

And he tipped a wink at her that made the Fusion Duelist nearly collapse on the gravel in laughter.

The brief walk had done wonders for their pallor; Angel-IQ had not provided the smoothest of rides to the Château. The urgency that had come with fending off a possible attack had meant no leisurely trips or stops—and certainly no comforts of an armored limousine. Masumi had been able to compromise by giving the LID half an hour to do some clothes shopping—but from there, it was a straight shot on Angel-IQ's half-invisible Qliphort Alias that had left eight very disheveled, very off-color Duelists to stumble onto the front drive. Fuyu had needed to be hoisted off by Shen and Hokuto, and no sooner had he taken off his protective helmet that he'd collapsed and been sick where he stood. Masumi and Yaiba had done the same for Kiku and Kikyō; thankfully, the breakfast they'd had before the hospital had discharged them had stayed put.

Their impromptu shopping trip had been productive. Masumi, recalling the woebegone brown clothes the twins had arrived in, had insisted that the first thing the LID needed to do to make them both feel part of the team was to get them some outfits to better serve them in Dueling. This turned out to be a good decision, as it gave each of them the chance to contribute towards the end result. Angel-IQ had been adamant about their thirty minutes, though, so there had been a crunch—and at any rate, more clothes could wait until a day when the city wasn't under threat of attack.

In the end, Masumi had found some decently fitting underclothes, along with a pair of shirts for them both. What Kikyō had chosen was so loosely cut it fit her like a shawl—so dark blue it nearly looked black, lined with tan along the sleeves that conjured images of a faint strip of distant beach against the open ocean. Kiku, with ample assistance from her sister, had selected something that fit her more tightly around the waist, though the Fusion ace hadn't been too happy with the color. The pale brown that lined these sleeves as well was fine—but the rest of it was a grayish-blue that conjured up so many images of Markus Streiter's eyes that her first glance had turned into a shudder.

Hotene and Rika had done their own small part by offering to pay for any earrings, bracelets, or jewelry the two girls wanted. (Hotene had made it clear that the money she'd given them had been set aside for her usual trip to Trampo-Land—"but since that's not happening for a while, it might as well get spent on something they'll actually like," her Dueling partner had said cheekily.) None of it was the sort of finery that Masumi or her father would have given a second look at, but it was just the sort of thing a preteen girl would consider precious to them—and for the Fusion ace, that was all that mattered. Kiku had opted for a locket with windows large enough to hold a small photograph; her sister, a gold choker and a pair of bangles. One of them Kikyō gave to her blind twin, and they now slipped them over the hands they held near-constantly to employ their extrasensory powers.

Hokuto and Fuyu pooled their money for some footwear. Kikyō had been happy with a simple pair of sandals ("She loves feeling the breeze on her toes," Kiku had confided to Masumi when they'd left), which had left Kiku with just enough for a couple pairs of socks and a pair of gray tennis shoes for herself. So it fell to Shen and Yaiba—mostly Yaiba, for the Chinese Duelist had confessed that his monastic days had given him little chance to indulge his taste in fashion, and even less of a wish to refine it—to complete their ensembles. Yaiba had needed Masumi's eyes to pick out a skirt that matched Kikyō's navy top, while Shen contented himself with finding a pair of grayish-blue pants that matched Kiku's top surprisingly well.

"Now you look like you ought to belong with us," Hokuto had said approvingly, once the twins had clipped on their Duel Disks and stood in front of a window to admire themselves—and his words had echoed in Masumi's ears for the entire trip to the Château. As she now explained to Kiku and Kikyō, it wasn't enough to just look the part.

"You're not going to make us go through some kind of initiation, are you?" Kiku asked warily.

Yaiba snorted. "Oh, God, no. I've known, like, half of these guys for less than a year. We haven't been around that long that we have to make you feel like one of us. Not even to Duel like us."

"We want you to do you," said Hokuto. "But it can't be on your terms all the time. We've known that from the first moments we stepped in LDS. See, it's not just enough that you know your way around Duel Monsters—yours or anyone else's. We know you know the game. But do you know your way around the game board?"

It was Kikyō's turn to look puzzled. She signed to her sister. "Are you talking about that Field Spell Markus used?" wondered the blind Duelist.

"You're getting closer," Fuyu whispered. "We're talking about Action Fields. The bread and butter of how we play the game in this dimension."

"And to the best of our knowledge," Shen added, "you have never participated in such a Duel. We mean to change that here. Today. Zhànchǎng shàng zhànshì zuìdà de méngyǒu yīnggāi shì zhànchǎng běnshēn."

The twins, perplexed, looked in tandem to the hologram of Angel-IQ, still silently shimmering in their midst. For the first time since their arrival, the supercomputer spoke.

"'A warrior's greatest ally on the battlefield should be the battlefield itself'," she translated. Without missing a beat, she alighted in front of Masumi. "Masumi-san, please allow me time to redirect one of our broadcasting satellites. I believe I know what you intend to do next."

Masumi didn't doubt it. "Just the environments, please. Himika seems to think we might not have time for a whole lot of Duels. For once, I think I ought to take her at her word."

"Understood. Satellite transmission in progress," Angel-IQ announced. "Configuring for non-hostile environment." A pause. Then: "Action Field: Cross Over activated."

Kikyō's reaction was everything Masumi could have hoped for. Before the first platform had finished materializing scarcely five meters over her head, her blue eyes were dancing in their sockets, swiveling left and right so quickly they appeared blurry as ten, twenty, forty more tiles of Solid Vision, one meter square, shimmered all around them, encircling the mansion and covering the entire clearing.

The Ritual Duelist was gripping her twin's hand so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. But Kiku, even being psychically attuned to her sister, was too engrossed in the transforming scenery to either notice or care.

"What on earth … " she could only say.

Masumi couldn't resist a smirk. That never gets old. "This is one of the more basic Action Fields we have access to when we play Duel Monsters," she explained. "Some of them can get weird. Maybe if we're lucky, I can show you how some of those work. But right now, I want you to get used to the gist of how we do things in Pendulum.

"So this is what I want you to do." She put herself front and center before the twins so they could both pay attention to her, and gestured around herself in a wide circle. "You've got one whole minute to do one whole lap around the property. You can use whatever cards in your Decks you think will help you. You've seen how easily our monsters can turn into modes of transportation if we need them. We want to see how adaptable you can make yours."

"What's the catch?" Kiku asked suspiciously.

Masumi smirked. "Ever play 'the floor is lava'?"

She could tell from the way the twins whirled on each other in shock that today was going to be a memorable day—hopefully, she thought, for all the right reasons.

Giza

Today was going to be a memorable day, thought Sora—for all the wrong reasons.

The pitched battle that had started unfolding seconds ago was unlike any he'd fought up to this point, even when he had fought for Academia. He had been used, in those days, to having Antique Gear Chaos Giants on his side—the trump cards, in every sense of the word, of their campaigns in the other Dimensions. So strong were they that the mere sight of just a handful of them was enough to inspire the sight of panic in their enemy. That more than a dozen of them had been deployed in Maiami City when all of this mess had started had been a stark reminder of how much raw strength they had had at their disposal, before Z-ARC had been reborn.

Now the tables had turned. He'd fought Chaos Giants before—both in practice and in battle. So he knew where the weak points in their defenses were. That didn't change the fact that he'd never seen this many of them in one place, even during parade formations—and he knew it meant the Ædonai could use them for more bread-and-butter tactics than just shock and awe.

Even as his Des-Toy Scissor Tiger leaped from one Antique Gear Wyvern to the next, knocking the airborne monster out of the sky and unseating its luckless rider, Sora's gaze had scarcely wavered from the iron hulks in the distance. Sawatari had not been wrong—that was indeed a full hundred Chaos Giants between them and the sprawling stone complex he assumed was the fortress they meant to assault. More detail than that he could not see for all the dust kicked up from every step towards the Lancers that they took, and from every huge blast of laser fire that rained down upon them from the massive cannons built into their hands—

Wait. Sora spared a few seconds to look through his binoculars. No, he'd been mistaken—only half of the Chaos Giants were advancing, fanning out to smother the Lancers, like a cobra spreading its hood. The rest of them were being held in reserve, to guard the fortress. They might be expecting a sneak attack, he thought, worried.

He grimaced. Brute force it is, then. "Keep them from spreading out!" he yelled into his Duel Disk. If they could engage them directly, he decided, it might force them to commit to their second wave of defense too early.

KABOOM. Seconds later, two entire squadrons of Wyverns had been blasted out of the air. From their midst came the two slender figures of Amanda and Saotome Rei—one roaring over the sand on her D-Wheel, the other sprinting along the meter-square platforms of Cross Over like the devil himself was after her. Both had already switched on their Duel Disks; Amanda's sleek, jet-black motorbike projected a curved, burgundy blade, while a scintillating scimitar shone along Rei's left forearm, its edge as bright pink as her You Show Duel Disk.

The effect was immediate: a full dozen Chaos Giants vanished then and there as their controllers broke formation. Sora didn't need to look at his Duel Disk to know both girls had forced them into a Duel; as quickly as the metallic behemoths had gone, two packs of six Antique Gear Hound Dogs seemed to leap out of the very desert (12 × Level 3: ATK 1000/DEF 1000), strafing the girls with laser fire and instantly sending their Life Points to 400 each. Before Sora could call out to either of them, the soldiers had all but emptied their hands, using their Hound Dogs to Fusion Summon the very same Chaos Giants he'd seen barely a minute ago (12 × Level 10: ATK 4500/DEF 3000).

Amanda had been forced to divert her D-Wheel behind a large sand dune—but Rei, far more mobile, had tucked and rolled behind a rock formation, saving herself from further injury and possible defeat. It was she who appeared first, her eyes blazing with anger.

"My turn!" she yelled, drawing her card. "I Summon Elemental HERO Prisma in Attack Position!"

If Sora hadn't already known that Rei was using her paramour's Deck, the words alone would have floored him in shock. He and Judai Yūki had never been close—Sora had known him to be a more laid-back type instead of a boy who gave his all for the cause they believed in—but even among the Obelisk Force, there were murmurs of grudging respect for how adaptable his Deck could be. So he couldn't help but feel his heart skip a beat as a winged, bipedal figure, roughly hewn from gleaming crystal, alighted before Rei with a grunt (Level 4: ATK 1700/DEF 1100).

"Next! I activate the Spell Card Fusion," Rei declared, "and fuse the Elemental HEROes Wildman and Edgeman in my hand!" She swiped three different cards over her scimitar, and two more warriors appeared either side of her and Prisma: a savage, muscle-bound brute with long black hair that spilled over the broadsword slung over his back, and a knight taller than any of them, clad in burnished gold armor from head to toe, brandishing the blades that extended from his wrists. They both leapt aloft, borne by a sudden whirlwind of energy that obscured them in seconds—

"Fusion Summon! Appear! Elemental HERO Wild Jaggyman!"

Rei was wasting no time. She hadn't even finished her brief chant before she'd sprinted away from her hiding spot, by which time her Fusion Monster had hit the desert like a meteor. Much of the golden armor that had covered Edgeman was gone—save for his helm, his bladed left arm, and his right leg. Wild Jaggyman himself had all the muscles of Wildman and more, and the weapon he now hefted no longer looked like so much a blade as it did a misshapen chunk of stone and iron near his own size and shape (Level 8: ATK 2600/DEF 2300).

"Now for another Spell Card—Inherited Power!" screamed Rei, as Jaggyman heaved that very sword one-handed off his back. "By sending a monster I control to the Graveyard, I can target another monster on my field, and make it gain the original ATK of the monster I sent! I send my Prisma—and my Wild Jaggyman now inherits its power!"

SMASH. With one effortless movement from Jaggyman, Prisma had been reduced to slivers of crystal by the flat of the enormous blade. But some of those slivers had embedded themselves in the metal, tinting it a bluish-pink and catapulting the Fusion Monster's ATK to 4300. Only then did Rei stop running.

She spun around to face the soldiers she'd been fighting. "Wild Jaggyman's effect lets it attack every monster my opponent controls once each," she spared enough time to smirk—and then she brandished a gleaming card in her hand. "And this Action Card: Bi-Attack can boost its ATK even further during the Battle Phase—by double!"

Rei didn't even wait for the soldiers to tense up in horror. By then, her monster had let fly with a bellowing battle cry, stirring up so much more wind and sand that Sora almost missed its ATK gauge rising to 8600. "So—Battle Phase!" she screeched. "Wild Jaggyman—dismantle every Chaos Giant in your path! Infinity Edge Slicer!"

Sora reacted just in time—the energy that simmered from Jaggyman's weapon now flared like a second sun as the monster swung it in a massive arc. He ducked right as that arc passed inches over his head, scything through the legs of all six Chaos Giants Rei had been facing. Explosions tore through them all, and they collapsed onto the desert in pieces, consumed by fire and sand within moments.

Of the defeated men who'd Summoned them, there was no sign—not even of depleted LP gauges. But Sora doubted that this was the time for them to seal themselves into cards. This was no diversion—it wasn't even a suicide attack. This was out-and-out battle, and both sides would need numbers in their favor for as long as they could be held.

In the meantime, just as he'd predicted, more Chaos Giants had advanced from the reserve to reinforce the gaps left behind. He cursed, and jabbed at his Duel Disk. "Where the hell is our suppressing fire?!" he bawled, wondering if Anna and Allen could even hear him over the din of the battle …

Amanda was too focused on the card she'd drawn to care about the fight around him. It didn't matter to her that her Life Points were only a sliver, or that the Ædonai soldiers responsible had pinned her back against the very dune she had used for cover. All she cared about now was the chance she'd been dreaming of since long before the Lancers had ever appeared in the City—the chance to impress her adoptive brother.

"I only need one card to blow you all away," she smirked at them—and she plucked it from her hand without further ado. "Black Feather – Simoon the Poison Wind! By banishing another Black Feather monster from my hand when I don't control any monsters, I can place 1 Continuous Spell: Black Whirlwind from my Deck into my Spell & Trap Zone face-up—and then, I can either send Simoon from my hand to the Graveyard, or Normal Summon it without Releasing a monster! So I'll banish Black Feather – Blast the Black Spear, activate my Whirlwind—and Summon Simoon in Attack Position!"

The whirlwind came first—a hurricane of feathers so black and so dense that within seconds they obscured the sun. Within its midst rose Simoon: tall, steeped, and bristling with poisonous-red spikes and plumage over half its body (Level 6: ATK 1600/DEF 2000).

"There's a risk for that kind of power," Amanda told them. "The Whirlwind I activated goes to the Graveyard at the end of the turn, and I take a thousand damage!"

"Good luck," one of the soldiers said snidely. "All we'll need to do is wait you out and let you blow yourself up!"

Amanda ignored him. "Here's the thing. Every time I Normal Summon a Black Feather monster, my Whirlwind's effect lets me add another Black Feather monster from my Deck to my hand, whose ATK is less than the monster I Summoned! And here's another thing!" she added, ejecting a card from her Deck. "Since my Simoon was Normal Summoned by a card effect, it won't count towards my Normal Summon for the turn. Which means I can Summon the same monster I added with my Whirlwind: the Tuner monster Black Feather – Auster the South Wind!"

The monster that emerged from the maelstrom's dark winds was as small and round as Simoon was imposing and thin (Level 4: ATK 1300/DEF 0). Auster's orange plumage gave it the appearance of a fireball with a mind of its own, zipping around Simoon as though it had just conjured the bird and had no intent to do so.

"That's one more monster added to my hand by my Whirlwind," Amanda went on, doing just that—and revealed the card with a flick of her wrist. "My Tuner monster Black Feather – Breeze the Zephyr can Special Summon itself if a card effect adds it from my Deck to my hand! And that's not all—when my Auster's Normal Summoned, its effect lets me target one of my banished Level 4 or lower Black Feather monsters, and Special Summon it in Defense Position! So I'll Special Summon the same Black Feather – Blast the Black Spear I banished to Summon Simoon!"

Two more monsters were spat out from the Whirlwind—another pair of one big, one small. Blast was smaller than Simoon—though not by much—and not nearly so vividly colored. Hefted in both hands was a drill-like spear half as tall again as Amanda, and almost as broad (Level 4: ATK 1700/DEF 800). Breeze looked like a second ball of flame in comparison, smaller than even Auster, although it resembled less a bird and more of a fiery-looking sprite (Level 3: ATK 1100/DEF 300).

"That's two Tuners on my field, and two monsters to Tune them with," Amanda smirked. Oh, Crow … if only you could see me now. "So I'll Tune my Level 3 Breeze with my Level 4 Blast—and then my Level 4 Auster with my Level 6 Simoon!

The Whirlwind was blowing so fiercely that it was near to nighttime within the black gusts that screamed in her ears. But she could still see her four monsters, borne aloft—and then both of her Tuners disintegrated into glowing rings, encircling her remaining creatures and imbuing them with a power she had never truly tasted until today:

"Pitch-dark gales," Amanda chanted. "Spread your wings to stir the divine winds, and soar to the heavens!"

"Synchro Summon! Gust fiercely! Level 7: Black Feather – Armored Wing … and Level 10: Black Feather – Full Armored Wing!"

THUD. THUD.

Both Synchro Monsters dropped to the earth like winged stones, either side of Amanda. Near four meters tall, their bodies glinted in sheets of ebon armor, and their beaklike helms showed no hint of a face save for a single red lens that filled the void within. Armored Wing was the sleeker-looking of the pair (Level 7: ATK 2500/DEF 1500)—but Full Armored Wing was broader, bulkier, and much more armed to the teeth (Level 10: ATK 3000/DEF 3000). In a trice, it had unsheathed the heavy broadsword it carried over its back, allowing its mane of pale hair to flow freely, while its other hand readied a multi-barreled monstrosity of a gun, aiming it right at the first Chaos Giant it saw.

Amanda had to concentrate here. I need to do this in just the right order. "First—I activate my Auster's second effect! By banishing it from my Graveyard, I can place a Wedge Counter on every face-up monster my opponent controls that doesn't yet have one!" A brief rush of orange flame over her monsters was the only sign of what she had done; moments later, Full Armored Wing raised its gun and sprayed each Chaos Giant with a hail of bullets. Most of them bounced off the monster's near-impregnable armor—but Amanda saw a small number of them slip through the gaps in the armor and between the exposed teeth of the gears, and smirked.

Perfect. "Full Armored Wing's effect!" she cried. "Once per turn, I can target 1 monster my opponent controls if it has a Wedge Counter and gain control of it!" Her monster raised its sword to the heavens, as if hoping to command the very winds that circled it—and leveled it at the nearest mechanical monstrosity. At once, the Chaos Giant went stiff, and it was apparent to all what had caused that to happen: a shard of shiny black stone had seemed to grow out of its cyclopean eye. The monster briefly twitched, then sparked … and then, with a whirl of Full Armored Wing's broadsword, the iron giant shuffled over to stand between it and Armored Wing.

The mixture of anger and horror that twisted the soldier's mouth at what she had done was the most fulfilling sight Amanda had seen in her Dueling career—and somehow she knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. Because: "I'll now activate my Armored Wing's effect! I can remove every Wedge Counter from my opponent's monsters—and make all of those monsters lose all their ATK and DEF until the end of this turn!"

KRAKOOM. With a shriek of tortured metal, the breastplates of the remaining Chaos Giants burst asunder, and as one the soldiers that controlled them spun around just in time to see more ebon spikes of rock protruding from their chests. Gears jammed, electronic innards sparked, lights went dark—and the once-mighty monsters slumped over in near-perfect unison with their point gauges: 0/0.

Except for one.

"Yep—that's right!" Amanda crowed, nodding upwards to the colossus that still stood between her Black Feathers (Level 10: ATK 4500/DEF 3000). "Since I controlled it before I used my monster's effects, this Chaos Giant stays just as strong as when I stole it! So … Battle Phase! Antique Gear Chaos Giant—send them all to the scrapyard!"

Full Armored Wing flicked its blade once—and like a puppet on strings, the Chaos Giant raised its arm cannons and let fly with a roar of cannon fire. Its powerless brethren were incinerated in moments, toppling back onto the desert and raising great storms of dust that consumed their controllers almost as quickly. One still remained—he who had controlled the Chaos Giant Amanda had commandeered—but he had taken one look at his empty field and ran.

Too late. Amanda pointed at his retreating figure. "Armored Wing! Full Armored Wing!" she declared. "Finish him off with a double direct attack! Twin Black Hurricane!" The two monsters lunged forward in tandem, far faster than any storm on Earth. In the space of three seconds, they'd run down the fleeing soldier before he'd made it ten paces away. The last Amanda saw of him before his life gauge hit zero was just one more cloud of sand.

She exhaled, wiping the grimy mix of dust and sweat off her face. All she could manage was a lightheaded smile—the adrenaline had flooded her body so thoroughly that she didn't trust herself to laugh. She thought Crow might just sprout wings and fly if he heard just how well one of his Decks had done the first time it was used—

"AMANDA!" The young Synchro user nearly toppled over—Sora must have been mashing his face against his Duel Disk to make him sound as loud as he did. "Don't stay in one place for too long—or who knows how long you'll be stuck that way!" And scarcely had his yell begun to echo in Amanda's brain than another salvo of fire strafed the ground from a passing squadron of Wyverns—with an Idaten the Conqueror Victory Star in hot pursuit.

They had seen her. As one, the Wyverns banked high—Idaten, far larger and so far more clumsy, kept on going before whichever Duelist had Summoned it could adjust in time—and lurched into a steep dive straight for her—

BOOM.

The blast nearly knocked Amanda to the ground—and very nearly her D-Wheel with her. But she had seen the explosive flower in the Wyverns' midst just in time before the shockwave had flattened her.

What the—?! But Amanda felt her heart relax a moment later: though the Wyverns had survived whatever that explosion had been, they had been diverted away from her.

"Sorry, girl!" another voice rang out from her Duel Disk. It took her shell-shocked brain some time to realize it was Kōzuki Anna. "Hope I didn't singe you too bad! But I'll swat those pests, don't you worry—just get back on your feet! Allen and I can cover you!"

Amanda was far too relieved to thank her. Exhaling quickly, she mounted her D-Wheel, feeling the modified tire treads digging into the sand with ease. One moment later, and she was off, heart still beating furiously in the din.

Two kilometers away—on the other side of the bridge from where Sora and the Lancers Combined had launched the attack—the Kōzukis, Allen and Anna, smiled grimly as they saw half a dozen more Chaos Giants round upon them, wading past the unfolding conflict and towards their beachhead.

"Well … you got their attention." Allen's throat felt very dry. "I hope that wasn't all of your plan right there."

"You better believe it's not!" Anna hollered, thirty feet above him and straddling her hovercraft-cannon—powered up to maximum—as if it might fly out from under her. The pink blade of her Duel Disk sizzled along her forearm as though it was just as angry as the girl who wielded it. "Remember what we agreed! It took five of these bastards to seal me—so I'll want five more at least before we're done! Take whichever one you like—the rest are mine!"

BOOM.

As if to drive her point home, the muzzle of her airborne cannon flared with energy. The projectile that rocketed forth an instant later was lost to sight within seconds—but both Xyz Duelists were rewarded when a large explosion erupted from the battlefield, shrouding the steel titans with clouds of sand as they continued to approach the pair.

They were close enough by then that Allen saw the one in the lead shimmer out of existence—they'd just entered Dueling range. Hurriedly, he tapped at his Duel Disk—he knew the other five would follow suit very soon. "I've tagged the leader, coz! Any second now!" he cried.

He listened for a few more dangerous seconds. Then: "Got 'em!" whooped Anna. "Let's DUEL!"

Allen didn't need telling twice. The top five cards of his Deck were in his hand so quickly he didn't even remember drawing them—and his Rollerboots were switched on just as quickly, their glowing wheels zooming him along the shoreline. "I'll go first," he declared—"and I'll start by Summoning my Ruffian Limited Express Battrain in Attack Position!" He made a hard right for the Nile just as the sand erupted right in front of him with a WHUMP, expelling a bright red-and-silver locomotive beneath his feet (Level 4: ATK 1800/DEF 1000).

In a matter of seconds, the river was above him, then behind him—and he was moving flush with the sandbar on a northerly tack. "Now I'll activate Ruffian's effect," Allen went on, "and inflict 500 damage to my opponent!" The steel grille of the engine split in two, like a pair of fanged lips, and spat a ball of fire straight for the soldier he was fighting. The blast struck home, and Allen pumped his fist when he saw the enemy's life gauge drop to 3500.

But the enemy himself remained upright. He grimaced at that—but it was enough to see him weakened for the time being. Until then … "Turn end!" He had more cards in his hand to use, a whole other round of turns before he was able to attack—and no reason to waste either of them so soon into the Duel.

Anna, on the other hand … Allen knew how she Dueled all too well. While many Duelists—inside his dimension as well as outside—liked to show off by using every single card in their hand to put together as strong of a field as they could, his cousin prided herself on constantly being able to go one step further. Even Kaito had openly admitted that his own Deck, strong as it was, did not have the raw power she possessed in hers.

And she seemed driven on proving that power hadn't dimmed in the slightest since she'd been sealed into a card so long ago. "Since I don't control any cards," she grinned, "I can take this Roaring Limited Express Rocket Arrow in my hand, and Special Summon it with its own effect! C'mon out!" And with a howl of many jet engines, a streak of silver and blue roared into realspace directly behind her, dwarfing her completely and casting a shadow over all six soldiers coming towards them (Level 10: ATK 5000/DEF 0).

Several of those soldiers skidded to a halt, craning their necks nearly ninety degrees in trying to take in this newest monster. "Five thou … a 5000 ATK monster on her first turn?" one was heard to splutter. "For her first card?!"

Allen couldn't help but smirk as Anna went into all the drawbacks and disadvantages of being able to Summon a monster that strong that quickly—no activating any cards or effects, or even Setting cards, and even how it would blow up during the Standby Phase if she didn't send her entire hand to the Graveyard. None of that mattered—that sight just never gets old, he thought to himself. And besides, it wasn't like Anna planned on keeping it on her field.

Sure enough: "Now I'll take this Night Express Knight," Anna went on, "and Normal Summon it without releasing a monster, thanks to its own effect!" A second streak of iron, gold, and white enameled steel surged onto the field, smaller than Rocket Arrow only by virtue of comparison; the armored figure fused to the locomotive that helmed the whole monster was still as broad at the shoulder as Allen was tall (Level 10: ATK 3000 » 0/DEF 3000).

"Yeah, so what if that same effect drops its ATK to a big fat zero?" Anna scoffed. "I've still got two Level 10s on my field—and unlike the rest of you gear-heads with your hunks of junk, I don't need these monsters to stay there! So watch as I take my Night Express Knight and my Rocket Arrow … and construct the Overlay Network!"

Without warning, both trains turned and twisted along their lengths, intertwining with one another as whatever rails they rode upon curved up into the sky. Yellow energy streaked along their lengths, coalescing into golden fire and turning them into miniature comets as they raced towards the sun—

"From beyond the railway, arriving here and now, alongside the tremors of the earth!"

"Xyz Summon!" chanted Anna. "Appear! Rank 10! Superdreadnought Gun Turret Train Gustav Max!"

KRAKOOM.

Allen felt a chill as he watched Anna's mechanical monstrosity unfold to her left, so gargantuan that it needed not one locomotive, but two—with space for a third in between them both—just to support its bulk. A veritable tower of olive green armor plates ringed its core, arranged and folded around the single artillery gun that topped it—so unbelievably huge that Anna could have squeezed inside the barrel, on her hover-cannon or off it (Rank 10: ATK 3000/DEF 3000; ORU 2).

Each of the soldiers were eyeing that cannon with the sort of hesitation that told Allen they'd heard plenty about this Xyz Monster. Anna had gone down swinging, after all—and it seemed as if the tale had been told on both sides of the war. Allen had wished that hearing them told over and over again had made her loss easier to bear in those days.

"I'm not done yet," Anna sneered, looking down upon them all. "With my Rocket Arrow gone"—she motioned to one of the golden orbs that revolved around her Gustav Max—"I can activate cards and effects again—like my Field Spell: Revolving Switchyard!"

Allen dismounted from his monster just in time: the ground beneath his Ruffian had begun to rock dangerously, like he'd just been caught in an earthquake. The tires of his Rollerboots had scarcely hit the sand before every grain of it seemed to shiver out of existence, wholly displaced by a vast complex of concrete, rails, ballast, and a ring of double doors that encircled both him, his cousin, and the Ædonai soldiers they were facing. One of the doors was open just wide enough to show his Ruffian parked inside—but Gustav Max was far too large even for these, and so it loomed overhead like the guard tower of some vast gate.

Allen spun round once on his Rollerboots to halt himself near the turntable that formed the exact center of Anna's Field Spell. Anna herself was still doing laps at the edge of the Switchyard—marking, he realized; she was looking for Action Cards before she made her next move. Either that, or she was so full of adrenaline from Summoning her ace-in-the-hole that she needed to burn it all off. Allen had seen the latter happen plenty of times before.

"Then I'll bring out my Bullet Limited Express Bullet Liner," his cousin went on, still a blur at the edge of her own Field, "which I can Special Summon from my hand if every monster on my field is EARTH-Attribute and Machine-Type!" She slammed the card upon her blade, and jet engines roared to life above her once more as a streamlined stripe of dark blue rocketed up to the left of Gustav Max (Level 10: ATK 3000/DEF 0).

"Then—since I Special Summoned an EARTH-Attribute, Machine-Type monster to my field," continued Anna, "I can take this Heavy Freight Train Derricrane from my hand, and Special Summon it to my field with its ATK and DEF cut in half!" Again she slapped a card onto her blade, and again a stream of metal and wheels rumbled onto the field, this time to her right. Derricrane was slower to appear than Bullet Liner, being the weaker of the two (Level 10: ATK 2800 » 1400/DEF 2000 » 1000), but it was dwarfed just as thoroughly in every respect by Gustav Max.

"And that's two Level 10 monsters!" Anna clapped her hands together gleefully. "Let's make it two Rank 10s! Bullet Liner! Derricrane! Construct the Overlay Network once again—GO!" For the second time, her chosen monsters looped over one another, consumed by rays of yellow light as they rode into the sky as one:

"Xyz Summon! Appear!" Anna howled. "Rank 10! Superdreadnought Gun Turret Train Gustav Max!"

To her left, another shockwave of sand exploded outward in every direction. Even from where he stood, Allen had to hunker down to keep his footing as he watched a second Gustav Max, identical in every way to Anna's first Xyz Monster, rise from the ground behind and to Anna's right (Rank 10: ATK 3000/DEF 3000; ORU 2).

He didn't have to get a good look at his cousin to know she was getting that look of daring in her eye again. "Now for my Gustav Maxes' effects!" she was hollering. "Once per turn, I can detach 1 Overlay Unit from each of them, and inflict 2000 damage to my opponent!"

As golden orbs arced high—feeding themselves into the towers that protected the monsters' cannons—Anna crouched down low on her hover-cannon. Allen felt something seize in his chest. Oh, man … she's going to do it …

"Gustav Maxes!" she bellowed. "Lock on target and fire when ready!"

THOOM. THOOM. Even from as far away as they were, the thunderous noise of the monsters' big cannons letting fly made shockwaves on their own, nearly unseating Allen where he stood. He recovered just in time to see the pair of shells arc high, above all the clouds of Wyverns—before finally falling back to earth with meteoric intent—

Allen winced at the cataclysmic explosion that had hit the Duelists they were fighting. They had spread out enough that the detonation hadn't consumed them all—but all of them were thrown clear off their feet, wailing hysterically to a one. A particularly unfortunate soldier near the back had taken the worst of it, and it was plain to see that he'd been the one Anna had meant to target. Before he'd even begun his fall back to earth, his life gauge had plummeted to 0, and the monumental cloud of sand engulfed nothing but the card into which he'd been freshly sealed.

"KA-BOOM, baby!" Anna soared above the crater she'd left behind, her toothy grin outshining the sun. "And I've got more where that came from, too! I activate my Revolving Switchyard's effect—by sending a card from my hand to the Graveyard, I can add a Level 10 EARTH-Attribute, Machine-Type monster from my Deck to my hand!"

"But you don't have any cards in your hand!" The soldier who'd spoken up just now still sounded somewhat shell-shocked from what Anna had done to their squad—and maybe badly enough that he'd forgotten he was in an Action Duel, Allen thought.

Anna's reckless grin only grew wider. "Wanna bet?" She dived—and seconds later, right as Allen's heart skipped into his mouth, she pulled up mere inches from the ground … with a single glowing card in her hand. "I'll send this Action Card: Assault to my Graveyard to search just the monster I need!"

She did so. Three seconds later, she'd peeled off for another lap around the Switchyard—and found another card. "Then I'll Set this to my field," she finished, "and end my turn with that!"

The lead Ædonai soldier froze, confused. "Setting Action Cards?" he wondered out loud. "I've never seen anyone do that before!"

Neither had Allen—but he had a pretty good idea why Anna would do such a thing at all. But for now, all he could do about it was hold his breath for the monsters he knew were coming.

A little more than a kilometer north and west of the two cousins, Asuka and Mieru listened to the muted sounds of the unfolding battle as they continued their trek through the desert. The heat and stress had gotten to Mieru already; she was currently gliding alongside the sprinting Asuka in the arms of her Prediction Princess Arrowsylph, the toes of her shoes skimming over the sand. Penchants for fortunetelling and clairvoyance were much more prized in the Unno Divination School than strength and stamina—so it had fallen to Asuka, therefore, to ward off any attackers.

At length, Asuka stopped, wiping the sweat out of her hair and her face. Mieru didn't even bother trying—she knew her own red curls were going to a mess no matter what she did and how often she tried to fix them. But the pensive look on her partner's face drove the thought of that from her mind.

"What's wrong?" she couldn't help asking.

Asuka shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure." She spoke so quietly that it was hard to tell if her words were more to herself than out loud. She tapped at her Duel Disk. "Shō—anything down south?"

"We got a lot of things down south," replied the You Show Duelist from her device; Mieru briefly recalled a mop of electric-blue hair on a boy not much taller than she was. "I think a couple squads might have seen me and Hayato trying to outflank them. I give it less than a minute before they start to jam us—force us into a Duel."

"That's what's started bothering me," Asuka said. "Why weren't they jamming us from the moment we showed up? You heard Jim talking to Sora—we all did. They were expecting an attack."

"Maybe not from so many of us," mused Shō. "Who knows?"

Asuka grimaced, looking left and right with dislike all over her face. "I'm starting to think the Ædonai might." She motioned at Mieru, and tapped at her left elbow—get your Duel Disk ready, the Ritual user thought she might mean. "I'll update Sora and Dennis—we'd better regroup. Good luck out there."

"You too."

The line clicked closed—and instantly Asuka was turning back the way they'd come. "Let's go, Mieru. I think we made a mistake coming here."

Mieru trotted alongside her, her Arrowsylph drifting just behind. "You think that someone's heading for us, too?"

"No." Asuka was already sending a message to Sora. "I'm more worried that someone's waiting for us."

All in all, it had been better than Allen had expected.

It wasn't just that Anna had blown one of their enemies to kingdom come before he'd even had the chance to play a card, leaving five Duelists where there'd once been six—it was that every single one of them still seemed hardwired to the same one-two punch of Shoot Everything That Moves With A Hound Dog and Stomp Everyone That Duels With A Chaos Giant as what they'd used at Academia. They'd done their best to give tit-for-tat—his LP stood at a reasonable 2800, Anna's at 2200—but even as he stared down the five metal menaces looming above the Revolving Switchyard (Level 10: ATK 4500/DEF 3000), Allen was beginning to feel bored of it all. The whole mentality of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" could only be taken so far before it made you the butt of every joke under the sun. So he drew his card with slightly more of an annoyed expression creasing his face than might be expected.

Until he saw what that card was.

"I Summon Strong-Arm Limited Express Trolley Rocco in Attack Position!" Allen announced triumphantly as he slapped that same card upon his blade. Within seconds, a pair of double doors in the Switchyard had creaked open, and the crimson locomotive that had lain just beyond them steamed up on the other side of his Ruffian (Level 4: ATK 1800/DEF 1000).

"Now I'll Overlay my Level 4 Ruffian and Rocco—and construct the Overlay Network!" Allen had barely finished speaking when a surge of golden energy snaked along the mechanical engines either side of him, sucking them back into the doors of the yard. Something behind them growled to life, a pair of glowing green eyes flaring in the dark:

"Impregnable iron fortress, make the earth tremble violently and charge down the railway crawling with the enemy soldiers!"

"Xyz Summon!" cried Allen. "Appear, Rank 4! Heavy-Armored Train Iron Wolf!"

The doors yawned open, and a locomotive wheeled onto the field, indigo rather than crimson, and larger by half than either of the two engines that had given it form and purpose. A golden wolf's head, frozen in a snarl, brimmed with blinding light as though possessed by some malign spirit (Rank 4: ATK 2200 » 3000/DEF 2200; ORU 2).

"Wondering about why it's looking a little stronger?" Allen snickered. "My Trolley Rocco's effect grants 800 ATK to any Xyz Monster it's used to Summon. And I'll make it even stronger with this Spell Card: Force," he added, as he plucked another card from his hand. "I can target 2 face-up monsters on the field, halve the ATK of one of them, and give that lost ATK to the other! And there's a lot more monsters to target than your lousy Chaos Giants, too!"

He swept out with his hand, watching the soldiers follow his hands for confirmation of the truth they already knew. "So I'll target my Iron Wolf—and one of your Gustav Maxes, Anna!"

Green fire erupted from every nut and bolt that bound his Iron Wolf together—and seconds later, one of his cousin's towering Xyz Monsters was engulfed as well. The effect was immediate: the cannon of the larger monster dropped level with the ground, its point gauge dwindling to 1500—while Iron Wolf's soared to 4500.

"That means it's time for Iron Wolf's effect!" Allen declared. "By detaching an Overlay Unit, I can let it attack my opponent directly this turn!" The fire in his engine's eyes dwindled by half—but the fanged maw that topped it was dripping with energy in a way that made him snicker again. "Now—which one of you was the guy I tagged?"

He knew it didn't matter—but the first one of them to make a break for it gave him all the answer he needed. "Now! Battle Phase! Iron Wolf—direct attack!" With a noise like some fell trumpet, the monster spat a searing fireball at the luckless Ædonai soldier, burning a hole through his Chaos Giant and blasting its controller straight through a set of doors. Nothing remained of him but the hole his body had left behind—and the shriek of his depleted life gauge.

But Allen could not end his turn yet. An instant later, he realized why. "I thought you might add that card, Anna!"

"What can I say?" his cousin smirked. "We know each other too well." Then, to the remaining soldiers: "In a Battle Royale, we're all each other's opponents. And when any opponent declares a direct attack while I have a card in my Spell and Trap Zone, I can take this Snow Plow Locomotive Hustle Rustle that I added with my Switchyard's effect during my last turn, Special Summon it to my field—and then, I can destroy every card in my Spell and Trap Zone, and inflict 200 damage to my opponent for each card I destroyed!"

She performed an aerial to slow to a halt over a particularly large set of double doors that were creaking open even now—revealing yet another scarlet steam engine, blocked almost completely by the golden cowcatcher and the jet engines set within it that preceded it onto the field (Level 10: ATK 2500/DEF 3000). Even as Allen looked on, the turbines of those engines flared to life, creating a miniature windstorm that engulfed one of the Ædonai directly in front of it and dropping his LP to 3800.

And Anna, it turned out, still wasn't done. "But wait—there's more!" Another card had jutted out an inch from her Deck, and was swiped up without a moment's pause. "My Revolving Switchyard has a second effect that I can use whenever a Level 10 EARTH-Attribute, Machine-Type monster is Normal or Special Summoned to my field! It stops my opponents from taking battle damage for the rest of the turn—but it also lets me Special Summon a Level 4 EARTH-Attribute, Machine-Type monster from my Deck, and turn it into a Level 10! So I'll Special Summon my Courageous Locomotive – Brave Poppo!"

By then, she'd alighted above and to the left of her Hustle Rustle—and off to her right, yet another pair of doors had cracked open. A vivid green engine steamed onto the field from behind them, pulling up level with its companion in a matter of seconds (Level 4 » 10: ATK 2400/DEF 2100).

It was impossible for Allen to say what the Action Card his cousin had Set and destroyed had been. But it didn't really matter; he'd done all he needed to do for his turn—and for this Duel. "Turn end!" he declared. "At the end of my turn, my Force's effect concludes, and returns any monsters it affected to normal!" And the green flames that had billowed over his Iron Wolf and Anna's Gustav Max petered out, restoring their ATK gauges to 3000 apiece.

He snickered. "Take it away, coz!" I did promise to save the rest for her, he thought as he watched Anna draw her card—and promptly break out into a grin that reminded him so much of his own when he'd started his own turn.

"First," she crowed, "I'll activate my Gustav Maxes' effects again—and detach an Overlay Unit from each of them to inflict 2000 more damage a pop! So who's up next!" she yelled at the remaining four soldiers.

None of them made a move to answer her. None of them had the chance. "Ready … aim … fire!"

And with a pair of distant booms, two shells arced high into the air. The first one to hit sheared straight through the Chaos Giant of the lead soldier; both halves were lost to sight in the explosion of sand that followed. The second one scattered the monster's remnants into hard-light shrapnel, peppering the Switchyard in more debris, and reduced its controller into one more card before the shockwave carried it out of sight.

"Now I'll take my Level 4 Brave Poppo and my Hustle Rustle, and construct the Overlay Network yet again!" cried Anna, as she swept a hand over both trains either side of her. In moments they were little more than streaks of gold, sucked out of the Switchyard and into the skies above:

"XYZ SUMMON!" she screeched. "Appear! Rank 10! Superdreadnought Gun Turret Train Gustav Max!"

Allen couldn't help it—he laughed, long and loud, to see a third tower of iron armor erupt from the sand behind the Switchyard, smack in the middle of its two brothers (Rank 10: ATK 3000/DEF 3000; ORU 2). He loved it when his cousin cut loose like this—he'd been wanting to see her do it for such a long time, and he didn't doubt for a second that she had been waiting for this moment since coming out of her card.

And sure enough, Anna was in her element, doing a lap around her three ace monsters before whirling around in the midst of them all. "Now … let's take this up to eleven!" she growled, baring her teeth in the sort of deranged sneer Allen had come to expect from Kurosaki or Kaito. "I'll take my third Gustav Max … and reconstruct the Overlay Network, by using it and all of its Overlay Units as one big Unit!"

Reconstruct?! Allen's mouth fell open. "But … wait, since when could you do that?!" he hollered up at his cousin, barely able to string the words together.

"Since the moment I wanted payback for what these bastards did to me!" Anna answered him. She had no time to say more than that; an explosion of golden energy, so large and bright it might have been the flashpoint of a second sun, had erupted behind her. A hot wind ripped through the Switchyard, and the earth was shaking so badly that Allen was forced to take cover behind his Iron Wolf just to keep from being sandblasted:

"From beyond the railway that spans heart and mind, arriving here and now to shake earth, body, and soul!"

"XYZ CHANGE!" Anna's voice was at the breaking point. "Appear! Rank 11! Superdreadnought Gun Turret Train Juggernaut Liebe!"

The shadow was the first Allen saw of the monster: a long cylinder that grew and grew until it was nearly touching the soldiers—each of whom, he now saw, were pointing somewhere behind and above him, mouths agape in terror. He turned round … and felt something inside him go slack with awe at Anna's brand-new monster.

Where Gustav Max had needed two trains just to support its heavy weight; Juggernaut Liebe needed at least twice that. The smallest of them, balancing each side of the monster like the outriggers of a boat, were half the size again of his own Iron Wolf—and the two in the front were near twice the size of those. Mighty turbines rumbled between the inner two locomotives, almost unseen beneath the thick armor plating that protected the entire assembly.

And the guns … Allen had never seen so many guns in one place. Even a naval battleship couldn't possibly carry this many heavy cannons without sinking, he thought to himself. Most of them bristled at the edge of the multi-decked platform resting atop the engines that carried it around. Half a dozen more, each near three times as long as those emplacements, were mounted either side of the tower that crowned the monstrous machine. And at the top of that tower—inch for inch the equal of a Chaos Giant in height—stood the biggest gun of them all: a vast cylinder of metal that had cast the shadow Allen had seen before the monster itself, slightly shorter than the ones that crowned Gustav Max, but noticeably wider.

Whoa, he could only think to himself.

The longer Allen looked at Juggernaut Liebe, the more there was to see; he was so absorbed in every detail of the mammoth gun-tower that he only saw its point gauge at the last second before it faded away completely (Rank 11: ATK 4000/DEF 4000; ORU 3). Anna and her hover-cannon were barely a speck of pink against its bulk—but even as he picked her out from the surroundings, she was growing bigger and bigger, drawing closer and closer to her prey for her next move.

"Now! I activate the Equip Spell: Engine Connection!" Anna yelled, sliding the card she'd drawn to start her turn into her Duel Disk. "This card needs me to banish two Machine monsters from my Graveyard just to play it—so I'll banish the Rocket Arrow and the Derricrane I detached to use my other Gustav Maxes' effects just now, and equip it to my Juggernaut Liebe! And then, any monster equipped with Engine Connection gets its original ATK doubled—as well as gaining piercing damage if it attacks a Defense Position monster!"

Allen was barely aware of Juggernaut Liebe's point gauge rising to an incredible 8000—he was still laser-fixed on the monster, trying to burn its image into his brain. The massive mobile fortress rumbled as dozens of guns shifted in their emplacements, calibrating and turning towards the remaining soldiers.

Anna grinned. "And finally, I'll activate Juggernaut Liebe's effect—by detaching an Overlay Unit, I can't make an attack with any other monster besides her! But I don't need any other monster besides her!" she growled, as golden lightning snapped and surged over each and every gun barrel—big, bigger, and biggest of all. "'Cause not only does my Liebe get 2000 ATK and DEF for the rest of the turn after using this effect … but her second effect lets me make an additional attack during each Battle Phase for every Overlay Unit still attached to it!"

Ten … ten thousand ATK?! Allen's entire body had gone numb the instant he'd finished doing the math. For three different attacks?! He knew the soldiers were thinking the exact same thing, too. All three of them were in full retreat—either because they were that scared out of their minds, or that intent on finding an Action Card that could possibly save their skins.

But Anna was already swooping for a gleam of light—and seconds later: "Ha! Action Card: Crush Action!" she smirked, holding the card aloft in triumph. "Doesn't matter what you find out there—it won't help you now!

"BATTLE PHASE!" Any louder and she might tear her throat in two, Allen thought. "Juggernaut Liebe! Attack every Chaos Giant on the field! Fire at will—and turn them all to scrap! Cataclysmic Monster Hammer!"

Allen had only an instant to see the barrels swiveling on each Antique Gear before he ducked for cover.

What happened next was noise—pure, undiluted, deafening sound, booming and crashing and smashing in his ears for near on a minute as every single cannon on Juggernaut Liebe opened fire. The smallest ones fired first, reducing the pristine blue armor of the Chaos Giants to useless, dented wreckage. The aft cannons were next up, blasting two of the huge robots into twisted hulks before their holographic likenesses dissipated from view. And then came the tower gun—sighting down the middle Chaos Giant and letting fly with a BLAM that nearly ripped the world in two. From the size of the mushroom cloud of sand and soil, Allen had a feeling it hadn't been for lack of trying.

And yet—somehow, even over the din—he could still hear Anna cheering up a storm, reveling in the destruction as though she'd won the war already, with nothing but her hover-cannon and this one behemoth of an Xyz Monster.

"An' a BOOM, an' a BOOM, an' a KA-BOOM, baby!" she cheered, pumping her fist in the air.

Only then did the Switchyard disappear from sight, and the battlefield fell silent almost at once, so quickly that Allen felt the silence crush his ears. Their enemies—human and Duel Monster alike—had been obliterated so thoroughly that neither cousin could see nothing of them, no sign that they'd either fled or sealed themselves into a card.

Anna pulled up beside him with a whine from her hover-cannon, and she dismounted a moment later. "Phew!" She bent over, hands on knees, to catch her breath. "Best … day … ever!"

"Yeah … " Allen couldn't manage more than that. His legs gave out from under him, and he slumped to the desert. "I think you might've busted my eardrums with that last attack … "

"It took me that long? I must've been more rusty than I thought," Anna retorted, winking at him. "I bet all of Egypt heard the noise we were making out here."

Her Duel Disk crackled. "I'm starting to think they did," Sora's voice told them. "Listen—you two are doing great, but you can't stay there! The Ædonai—"

Allen and Anna didn't catch the rest—the screech of incoming artillery drowned it all out. They ran for it—

KRAKOOM.

—and not a second two soon; the spot of earth where they'd been resting was suddenly an expanding flower of sand, sod, and explosive shrapnel. Even before the shockwave had catapulted the two cousins off their feet, sending them splay-legged into a nearby dune, more detonations were rumbling across the desert in every direction.

Allen's ears rang—all other sound was beyond the scope of his ears to hear. Shellshock tore through his muscles … and for a moment he was back in Heartland City, trying his darnedest to flee from a pack of Chaos Giants as they tore his precious city to rubble … he could see Sayaka, still waiting for him back in Heartland, pulling kids out of wrecked cars tossed about like so many toys …

And then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and Allen's present returned to him, overwhelming his senses. He was sick on the sand, squeezing his eyes shut against the sensory overload.

"—deploying artillery formations!" he could hear Sora's voice screaming, tinny through Anna's Duel Disk. "I say again—the Ædonai are deploying Antique Gear Devils and firing at will! Rei—form up on my position and get set for a strafing run! Dennis, Yūzō—give us both some cover!"

The pitch of the battle was augmenting by the second—and somehow Allen suspected this was only the beginning.

A/N: Happy New Year, readers! Have a longer-than-usual chapter to kick off your 2023.

I wish I could say I was a hundred percent pleased with it, though. I had to sprint to get this done before the end of 2022—Terraria's Thorium mod decided to drop a gigantic update on New Year's Eve, which did not help my concentration in the slightest—and I feel like a lot of scenes, and even the progression of the entire chapter from one scene to the next, suffered for this frenetic pace. If there's anything that warrants a change, please let me know in the comments, and I'll see what I can do to revise it to my liking.

I may also have taken some liberties with Anna's and Allen's Duel. I've never heard of Action Cards being Set to the field before save for the anime effect of Five-Rainbow Magician, and I can't remember if that was because of a card effect or because the Duelists chose to do so. But I'll be darned if a 10,000 ATK Juggernaut Liebe is the most satisfying way to end a Duel. (An' (n) a Kaboom, indeed.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Have an awesome year, everyone! – K

P.S.: Check out my side story, duel de c(œ)urs, for more info about "Operation Sargasso".