Idia was not looking forward to this, but his brother had insisted since he got an invite. He had looked at the 'duel disk' that Ortho had gotten in the mail along with the invite to the recently announced Battle City tournament.

He still pouted about missing the deadline for Duelist Kingdom, but their parents had agreed to make it up by letting him go to the next one...provided Idia went with him as a chaperon. Ever since the incident, he had become incredibly closed off, and they hoped this would get him out of his shell for a bit.

The duel disk was cute, but nowhere near his league in terms of tech. It took him only twenty minutes to hack the thing, and the programming was barely even noteworthy in his opinion.

"I still can't believe you're bringing it with us," said Ortho exasperated.

Idia was just glad the case had wheels, because he didn't want to lug the case all over town with his pathetic stamina.

Ortho knew his brother was working on some secret project, but not even his parents had been able to figure out what it was. Recently Idia had stopped working on it entirely, saying it was missing some key component.

Did not explain why he brought it with him though.

Ortho was looking around, since they had arrived a few days early to the opening.

That's when he saw...him.

"Oh my Hades...is that Yugi Muto?" he said excitedly. He'd been hoping to run into the current "King of Games" since he saw that duel.

Idia looked, and sure enough it was the diminutive duelist that had soundly beaten the very creator of the game. Of course Ortho was fascinated by the guy...he couldn't be much older than Ortho himself.

Yugi did a visible doubletake, likely at their hair before he smiled at Ortho. He was a rather friendly guy, though he seemed inwardly amused by something.

"Wait, your grandpa runs a game shop?" said Idia, perking up.

"He taught me everything he knows about dueling, and he has a lot of obscure and rare games from across the world."

Ortho didn't even bother to turn to his brother, as he knew Idia would be interested the second he heard about rare games. It was oddly relaxing, listening to his brother chat with someone he only just met about games, dueling and anything under the moon.

If Idia had been paying attention, he would have seen Yugi texting someone while talking to Ortho.

In the game shop...

Idia was openly in love with the small shop, and was already gushing about the rare games he had only ever heard of in rumors online.

"If you guys wait here, I'll get grandpa," said Yugi. "Feel free to browse, and most of the games here are for sale."

Ortho perked up at that, and the two were openly browsing for things to take home with them. Closer inspection revealed that all the games had clear instructions about the rules and how to play. Some of which were written in very neat, legible handwriting for the older games before printed versions were available.

Yugi came back with an older man...and a box in his hand.

"What's that?" asked Ortho.

Yugi looked Idia dead in the eye as he said "I believe this belongs to you."

Idia looked very confused, as Yugi opened the box and pulled out what looked like a memory card. His eyes widened in shock, as his emotions were all over the place.

"This... How is this possible?"

That's when Grim appeared on the counter, and jumped on Yugi's shoulder.

"This idiot nearly choked on his memory card. Fortunately I was able to dislodge it and kept it safe," said Yugi simply. He handed over the card as if it were made of glass.

"Idy?" said Ortho, very confused.

Idia said nothing as Yugi lead him into the main house and gave him some space to open the case he had brought. Inside was what appeared to be a small child, one that looked remarkably like his brother only with cybernetic parts.

Ortho was vaguely aware that Idia had been attempting to give them a younger brother to play with, so Ortho wouldn't be lonely, but he had never gotten it up and running.

With the greatest of care, Idia slowly installed the memory card.

He could see the loading screen, and then looked to Yugi in confusion.

He was not expecting the firm grip on his ear.

"Just to be clear, if you go into Overblot a second time I am not going to use those stupid spears to attack you. I'm just going to send your ass to the Shadow Realm and be done with it," said Yugi flatly.

Idia froze in shock.

"Wait...how do you know about..."

"I suppose I didn't properly introduce myself," said Yugi.

Idia and Ortho watched in shock as they felt the dark magic around Yugi rise.

"Mirror, mirror against the wall, who's the Fairest King of all?"

Idia was absolutely gobsmacked seeing the somewhat short Yugi Muto become the very familiar face of Vil Schoenhiet.

"No way...Vil-shi?!"

Ortho, rather than being upset, had an exasperated look on his face. Mostly because he realized there was no way of handling this than with the honest truth.

"Idy... I knew the whole time."

"Wait...what?"

"I was bonded with ORTHO when Vil-san did...something...that caused the magic to spiral out of control. I just kept quiet because I didn't want to upset you further."

Idia was completely taken aback by this information. It was almost a relief when ORTHO finally booted up, and the body he had been carrying around in the case opened 'his' eyes.

He took one look at Idia, and his face brightened.

"Idia-nii!!!!!"

Idia was taken aback, but accepted the hug without a second thought.

"The real question is how are we going to explain this to mom and dad?" said Ortho.

"Why should you have to explain anything?" said Vil cheekily. Seeing the look on their faces, he smirked. "Why not have ORTHO blindside them and claim you finished your special project to one up that dragon-obsessed idiot known as Kaiba?"

"What do you mean?" said Idia.

"The guy thinks his duel disks are the epitome of what technology can do with holograms, and he actually got trapped in an SAO parody about a week after Duelist Kingdom. I had to temporarily install ORTHO to override the cheap patch his board put in," explained Vil. "Oh and he thinks Star Rogue is a third rate game."

Whatever Idia was about to say died a quick death at that last bit.

"Wait. What?" said Idia.

Vil took out his phone, pulled up an audio file, and hit play. Idia's expression went from uncertain to determined.

"Call my favorite game of all time a third rate program? I'll show him who the superior one is!"

Vil looked pleased.

"Maybe showing him he's a third rate programmer will keep him from chasing me down all over the place demanding duels."

Idia and Ortho accepted the offer of the spare room, since Jounouchi was currently renting an apartment with Solomon's help. He was already in the process of emancipating himself, mostly to get far, far away from his drunken dad. Honestly, he had a harder time convincing the old man to sign any papers for field trips.

ORTHO was just happy to be able to move properly, and to meet his 'twin' without anything interrupting them.

~*~*~*~*~

Idia had to stare when Yugi, or at least he assumed it was Yugi, came down for the morning to get some food.

His bangs were spiked upwards, and there was a dark aura around him that almost felt like an Overblot, but was far more sinister and dangerous.

Yugi turned to face him once he had some tea, and smirked. It was like he was facing Leona in a calm mood.

"So. You're the one who bonded his brother's soul to a device," said Yugi.

"Who are you?" blurted out Idia.

"My aibou calls me 'Yami Yugi'," he supplied helpfully. "You might want to ask him for more details."

"Aibou?" said Idia.

There was a flare of dark magic that made Idia flinched, before he realized that 'Yugi' had dropped about six inches in height, his bangs no longer spiked upwards and his aura much lighter than before.

"What the fuck," he said.

"Willing possession with a five thousand year old king from Ancient Egypt," shrugged Yugi. He then proceeded to make another glass of tea.

Idia stared at him.

"Your life sounds like something out of a shounen anime," he said flatly.

Yugi hung his head tiredly.

"Why do you think I did such a dramatic rebranding? It was the only way to break that stupid protagonist's curse and get away from a very annoying stalker," said Yugi tiredly. "That life sounds fun right up until you literally have to fight off far too many crazies after either some ancient artifact or some power you barely know how to use that is more trouble than it's worth."

"How many people remember?" asked Idia.

"Well among my group, only a handful that I know of. Jounouchi, Bakura, ORTHO, Grim and Rook," said Yugi.

Which was why he wasn't surprised in the least that Idia and Ortho remembered as well, as they had been in the center of it.

"Who else do you think remembers?" asked Idia.

"Azul, Riddle, Jamil, Epel, and Leona, most likely. I've been trying to find Yuu so I can return Grim, but it's been slow going. I wouldn't be surprised to learn if Kaiba or Mokuba remembered as well, but Kaiba has always been in denial about magic."

"You're kidding," said Idia.

"Nope. The guy would be a shoe-in for your dorm with how smart he is, but he staunchly refused to acknowledge magic is real no matter how much evidence was given to him," said Yugi, shaking his head in annoyance.

Hearing someone come down, Yugi smiled at the cybernetic ORTHO.

"Good morning Idia-nii, Yugi-nii!" said ORTHO cheerfully.

Idia choked, just a bit on his drink. Yugi merely ruffled the other boy's hair just a bit.

"Morning ORTHO," said Yugi fondly.

Idia looked to his 'younger' brother.

"Since when do you call Vil-shi 'big brother'?" he asked, almost hurt.

"Idia, I've spent a little over half a decade talking to him almost every night, and making sure he never collected any dust. It took me ages to find anything remotely capable of handling his programming," said Yugi patiently.

"Yugi-nii was really nice, and usually let me 'watch' when he played games so I wouldn't be left out," said ORTHO. "Even though I couldn't respond, he never treated my memory card like an object."

"It doesn't hurt I could vaguely sense your soul, which Bakura confirmed existed in the card," said Yugi absently. "Considering I've been carrying around a dead guy for a few years in a pendant, talking to a memory card wasn't that strange."

The fact that ORTHO just needed the right 'body' to possess and was more likely to stick around helped as well. Yugi still felt incredibly hurt that Atem had chosen to leave rather than stay.

"So what exactly should we expect in Battle City?" asked Idia, changing the subject. He had only just be reunited with ORTHO after all, and needed time to adjust.

"First off, the rules of Battle City are slightly different from Duelist Kingdom. There's now a sacrifice system in place to summon the higher tier monsters, and certain cards were placed on the restricted list. There's also the God Cards," said Yugi.

"God cards?" said Ortho.

"Imagine if someone was brazen enough to put Hades powers and likeness into a card, and was able to summon him on the field with a fraction of his OP powers," said Yugi. "Or worse, Maleficent."

"That's...who would be stupid enough to do that?" said Idia.

Summoning the King of the Underworld complete with his overpowered stats as a monster sounded horrifying to deal with if you were on the wrong end.

"Pegasus, though fortunately for our sanity, he only sealed three Egyptian gods into card form. I never really figured out which deity Obelisk was supposed to represent, but I know for a fact he sealed a fragment of Ra and Osiris into two of them," said Yugi. "However they're overpowered as hell and a nightmare to deal with. I had to trick the idiot holding Osiris into emptying his deck and losing on a technicality just to beat it."

Idia looked like he had a headache just trying to contemplate that. He looked to Ortho and said... "And you want to join this competition?"

"Please do," said Yugi. "I'd pay to see Kaiba's reaction to ORTHO, or watch you utterly destroy his little toys considering how proud he is about his duel disk system. Seriously, if you could hack the system so his damn Blue Eyes White Dragon came out looking ridiculous it would absolutely make my day."

"You really don't like this guy, do you?" said Ortho.

"He's one of the main reasons I spent so much to rebrand my image and went so far as to change my name and become Vil just to get away from him," said Yugi annoyed. "The asshole kept coming back with cheap new toys to challenge me and try to reclaim his ego from being second best at a card game."