Greetings dear readers. I am the Evil Eye Beholder, your storyteller and host for the tale you are about to read. And today I come to you with both unexpected and sad news.

I know it is a bit strange that I upload today a Yu-Gi-Oh! story when I actually had planned to spend the month of October to write stories centered around orks and their interdimensional cousins like orruks, goblins and fungi (AKA Orktober). And trust me when I say that I had actually planned to do so long in advance. However, the circumstances have changed and not for the better. Due to rather big IRL issues, I am unsure whether I will be able to actually write stories in the foreseeable future at all as I have to focus my energy and attention on other matters entirely.
This is especially annoying due to the fact that I had actually quite a few stories planned for this month. Stories which I now will not be able to work on for at least a few months.

So much for a green orktober...
*Sad WAAAAGH! noises*
However, because I didn't want to leave you all with nothing, I wrote down the prologue for this story from my "Appreciation for the Unloved" stories. It might not be orky or something, but at least the main character is green. And as all ya gitz know, green iz da bestest! Even if it'z on some grot like dat un'.

So without any further delay, let us begin...

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any other media that might end up being referenced or mentioned within this fanfiction. All rights belong to their respective owners.

Kodoku

Prologue - A Pathetic Worm's Death

Kodoku = A form of dark magic from Japanese folklore. A large number of venomous and poisonous animals such as insects, spiders, centipedes, toads and snakes are placed inside a vessel, usually a jar or urn. Overtime the creatures kill and devour one another until only one is left. The one with the strongest poison.

The skies above Domino City were covered with thick gray clouds as a chilly autumn wind blew through the mostly deserted streets and sidewalks. The shrubs and trees in the parks and planters had already begun to lose their leaves, which now laid as a brown mass in the parks and the edges of the road. In the dim twilight, the city with its many sky scrapers and wide streets appeared completely different from its usual bustling self. Here and there large monitors advertised the newest additions to Duel Monsters or ran some other commercial with it on them, acting like singular spots of colour in the otherwise grey city. It was almost crazy how fast the gmae of Duel Monsters had pretty much made its way into almost every aspect of life. One could barely turn their head and not see something else being put into relation with the game. It was as if someone had plastered those cartoonish mascot characters from cereal boxes on everything... which Maximilian Pegasus actually did do with his Toon monsters among other things aimed at a younger consumer base.

The first drops of rain had already begun to fall down, heralding the downpour that the weather forecast had said to come that night. Those that were still out in the streets mostly just had some last minute business or grocery shopping to do for the day. But not everyone...

Walking through the streets with their gaze turned to the pavement of the sidewalk, one person seemed to aimlessly wander the streets when they stopped in front of a shops window. Multiple televisions had been set up inside to face the streets as they all displayed the same image. It was a recording of a duel between Yugi Muto and Seto Kaiba during the Battle City Tournament, perhaps the tournament that ultimately earned the former of the two the moniker "King of Games" and turned the previously nobody of a duelist into a world champion. The figure in front of the shop balled their hands into fists, before sharply turning away from the shop and walking off at a faster pace as they could not stand to look at his face.

Unfortunately for them, Yugi's face was pretty much everywhere as he had become a symbol of the game that the world seemed to now revolve around. Even commercials for the Duel Academy featured video clips of Yugi and Kaiba... Not exactly something that heightened their mood at all as they kept walking down the street, not even turning their head towards the comments of other pedestrians as they shoved themselves past them.

The rain started to pick up fast and the previously few drops quickly turned into a drizzle and finally a downpour. Other people quickly put hoods over their heads or hid beneath umbrellas to escape the rain. He didn't even bother to shield himself from the rain though as he just dashed into an alleyway between two larger buildings and pressed his back against a wall, hoping to escape most of the rain that way. His green hair in a bowl-cut was drenched in cold water and his glasses had fogged up a bit, forcing him to take them off and try to get the vapour off with wet fingers. His green jacket had no hood and was already heavy from all the water that the fabric had absorbed into itself.
Overall, Weevil Underwood was but a shadow of the duelist he had once been.

After his losses in the Duelist Kingdom against Yugi and in the Battle City Tournament against Yugi's best friend and current number 3 in Duel Monsters, Joey Wheeler, Weevil's career had taken a nose dive straight to the bottom of the totem pole from which it never truly recovered from. Where the former regional champion once had enjoyed the fame and luxuries of a Duel Monsters celebrity, he was now reduced to little more than a bad joke. It certainly also didn't help that his cheating from the past had come to light, but it really was his losses in the tournaments he had taken part in that hammered the last nails into the coffin. It was not long before the previously famous insect duelist had faded completely from the public's eyes and memories.

Years had passed since then, but Weevil never recovered from the loss he experienced. And while he had tried to renew his dueling career and make it big once more, Weevil had found himself outcompeted at almost every turn. Eventually, he had to accept the fact that he was no longer the Duel Monsters champion of the early days of the game he used to be and all he had been left with was resentment and bitterness towards the one person that seemingly started the downward spiral of his life. A previous nobody, who had been invited to the Duelist Kingdom.

Naturally, there was nothing he could actually do to Yugi, leaving Weevil to fester in his own resentment for the King of Games. His repeated attempts at making it in the Duel Monsters community and consequent failures only created more mockery towards him. Try as he might, his insects simply could not compete with the decks of younger duelists these days. If anything, Weevil had the tenacity of a cockroach, but even that was slowly weathered down as he was simply no longer taken serious.

It was sometime during these years, that Weevil eventually also lost his only remaining ally in his quest for retribution. While Rex Raptor had previously been more of a rival, they were united in their fame being destroyed by their losses to Yugi and Joey during the Duelist Kingdom Tournament. Due to their duel during the Regional Championship, which had earned Weevil his previous title, the two had formed a close friendship with one another. One that was build on mutual respect for one another.
Therefore, it hit Weevil even harder when Rex decided to quit Duel Monsters all together and turn his passion for dinosaurs into a career in paleontology. Weevil certainly also had the route open to become an actual entomologist, but he certainly would not have expected Rex to throw the towel on being a duelist entirely like this. To him this was completely out of the blue and incomprehensible. They had been some of the top duelists of their time. For them to give up the game was like losing the part of their identity that made them who they were. Or at least it was to Weevil.
What followed was a pretty nasty fight between the two. A lot of things were said in that exchange that they likely both regretted later on, but it ended with the two parting ways, walking their own paths forward and never speaking again.

And here he was now. Standing alone on a cold and dark rainy day in autumn in some alleyway. And even so, he knew deep down that the only one to blame for how things turned out was himself. Even if he would never admit that...

His mind desperately tried to focus on something else other than his self-loathing. Weevil's hand slid into the pockets of his pants before he started counting his money and frowned at what little he had, letting out a frustrated groan. Getting something to eat was out of the question. Going home also didn't really appeal to him, especially when everything there aside from his entomology books reminded him of who he had once been. He wanted to hit something, destroy something to vent out his anger. Unfortunately, there was no trashcans around for him to knock over in this alleyway, so he instead decided to kick the wall... only to hurt his foot in the process. His ears barely registered a quiet tearing sound of fabric, mixing his pain with more frustration as his worn down shoes started to slowly fall apart around his feet apparently.

As he held his foot and crouched down on the ground, Weevil didn't notice how another person had entered the alleyway from behind him. He only did when the newcomer kicked an empty soda can away, sending it flying past him and tumbling further down the alleyway. At this the former Duel Monsters champion turned around to come face to face with a man covered in a heavy raincoat. Or at least, Weevil assumed it to be a man given their height and proportions. The face was covered by a mask and sunglasses while they wore a baseball cap beneath the hood of their jacket, leaving nothing of their face exposed. Though, it was obvious that they were looking down at him.

"What? What do you wa-AAUGH!" Weevil's snide remark was cut off when the newcomer kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying to the ground. Immediately, the insect duelist felt bile rise up in his throat while clutching his stomach and writhing ont he ground like a worm. The kick had knocked the wind out of him, yet he couldn't get his mouth open as the nausea felt like he was about to throw up instantly. The newcomer didn't care though as they walked over and stomped hard on Weevil's wrist.

This made Weevil press out a strangled cry of pain as the cracking of the bones under the newcomer's black shoes rang through the alley. He tried to pull his arm out from under them, hitting the leg with their other arm, but his efforts were only rewarded with more pain as the foot twisted and pressed down harder while a gloved fist smacked him across the face, sending his insect themed glasses flying. The glass of the lenses cracked from the impact and one shattered completely upon hitting the wall of the alleyway. Weevil tasted blood in his mouth and could feel it ooze out his nose.

"W-Who are...?" Weevil wanted to ask, but the newcomer didn't care. Instead they pulled something out from within their jacket. A long object that had a dull shine to it in the dim light of the afternoon. It didn't take a genius to see it being a sturdy metal pipe. And before Weevil could plead for mercy, the newcomer swung their weapon down on his head. Again and again, the pained cries of Weevil were drowned by the rain as it picked up more intensity.

When the newcomer was done, Weevil was thrown to the ground again. Now laying on his stomach and facing away from his attacker, his head bled profusely, staining the green hair crimson as it oozed out the fractured skull. The newcomer took a few deep breaths, before walking over to Weevil and crouched down a bit. Apparently not satisfied with just that, a gloved hand grabbed Weevil by his green hair, staining the black gloves with his blood before sinking the fingers into his head. Weevil let out a strangled cry of pain as his head was pulled up slightly by the masked person, before they leaned in a bit close to make sure that Weevil could hear them.

"That's for the card you took from my bro, you punk!" They said in the voice of a young man before dropping Weevil's head instantly, letting it fall back onto the pavement before he left without another word. The greenhaired young man was simply laying on the ground as the rain kept falling down onto him, creating a thin layer of water on the concrete floor.

'Ah... so it's like back then...' Weevil thought to himself as he recalled getting beaten up by some student before for having taken a card he had won from one of his fans back in the day. He was still somewhat conscious, though his vision was fuzzy and he couldn't stand up. His whole body hurt from the beating he had just taken causing him to spasm and ache in pain, while lacking shallow breaths that seemed to get more difficult with each time. Weakly, he began to move his arms and legs, though it felt like he couldn't get up. A few strong hits to the legs had left him unable to do so. Instead, he started to use his hands to crawl forward. As he recalled that event, Weevil also remembered that he was not only one getting beaten back then. Rex had been with him that day and also took a punch despite him not even doing anything to that kid back then. A memory that now filled him with guilt for dragging his former friend into this.

'The street... need to get into the street again... call an ambulance... I'm not done yet... Still need to...' Weevil thought to himself, trying to keep going. He had only managed to crawl a few meters as his consciousness began to slip away. The feeling of the pain dulled and darkness consumed his vision. The shadows around him seemed to lengthen and take shape like the spindly legs of a spider slowly reaching out to grab onto its prey and deliver its killing bite. The irony wasn't lost to him. He was a duelist, who used insect monsters, and now he was dying in some alleyway like a cockroach.
In that moment, he noticed his own Duel Monsters cards scattered on the floor around him as they had apparently been knocked out of his pocket during the beating. His eyes landed on all those cards he held dear to him. Insect Queen, Great Moth, Parasite Paracide, Cockroach Knight, Pinch Hopper and all his other cards now laid on the ground, being drenched in rainwater. He reached out to them, wanting to grab them and put them back. He still needed them to defeat Yugi after all and his cards certainly did not deserve to be left in the rain like this. But he could barely move his bloodstained fingers, let alone his arms. At last, his head fell down onto ground when he lost the strength to keep it up, leaving him staring at the cards in front of his eyes as he felt the muscles in them starting to relax and the eyelids grew heavy.

The last thing he felt was the coldness of his body, the breeze, the concrete floor beneath him and the rain washing over him as well as his own disappointment in himself, before his eyes closed never to open again.

Weevil Underwood's body was found the next day by a pedestrian walking their dog in the morning and immediately reported to the police. By that time, Weevil had already long since passed away, making any attempts at reanimating him pointless from the start. Due to the incident's isolated location and a lack of surveillance cameras in the area around the alleyway's entrance, the culprit was never found or persecuted for their crime. The police eventually stopped the investigation after only 2 months.
Only a handful of people took note of these news with shock or grief.
First and foremost, Weevil's former rival and friend Rex Raptor, who mourned the death of his former friend.
Secondly, Yugi Muto and Joey Wheeler as well as their close friends, who despite their dislike for Weevil as a person would not have wished him dead.
Finally a small group of duelists, who had been fans of Weevil back during his time as the regional champion, did make posts on social media platforms to express their sadness at the death of a once big name in the Duel Monsters scene when the game had just begun to pick up pace.

As Weevil had no immediate family, relatives or friends, his body was cremated and the urn with his ashes buried without a funeral on a small graveyard outside of Domino City.

In the years to come, the media would label Weevil's death the result of his past actions, but also a heinous crime, that just like his previous actions of cheating and sabotaging his competitors and opponents, had no place within the Duel Monster community as a whole.

Other than that, the world at large simply forgot about him shortly after...

Consciousness didn't return to him slowly. It was more of a sudden change if anything else akin to someone switching a channel on television. One moment, he had been laying in the rain, dying with his head throbbing and bleeding profusely. The next thing he knew was that he was looking down at what looked like the bottom of a pond or a river. beneath him the ground was muddy and littered with fallen branches and leaves that were covered in a thin brown layer of detritus and algea. It took him a moment to realize this as this whole situation made no sense to him at all.

The next thing his mind came to conclude was that he was in fact not merely looking down into the water, he was floating on its surface and submerged. Cool water surrounded him from all sides as he just idly floated around.

The instant he noticed that, he panicked. The instinctual reflex to get out to avoid drowning took hold immediately, causing him to thrash around and lift his head up in hopes of breaching the water's surface. But something limited his movement. He could not lift his head up high enough, not even making it halfway to the surface before his body simply couldn't move. In a panic he twisted and turned, trying to make sense of this situation. That was when started to truly feel like drowning as his body twisted sideways and only heightened his panic. His mind wanted him to flayed about with his limbs to steady himself, but he couldn't feel them.

'WHAT'S GOING ON?! WHERE AM I? WHY CAN'T I BREATHE!' He thought as his body rightened itself once more, making face the bottom of the pon once more, yet somehow he was able to breathe once more... Which was when he realized that it was his behind that made contact with the water surface. '... wait a second...' He thought as he tried turning his head around to look around himself once more.

It was then that he noticed more of his surroundings clearly as well as himself. Next to him he saw the stem of a large waterplant with various leaves lining its lengths. The thing was that it appeared far too big for his liking as it seemed larger than himself. Even the leaves at the bottom of the pond looked like they were far too large to be leaves. Then his body twisted around and he took a look at himself or rather his abdomen. And that was when everything started to make sense to him.

The reason why he couldn't feel his arms or legs was simply because he didn't have any. He felt like drowning earlier, because he was not breathing through his mouth, but through a tube at his rear that connected to the water's surface. He could only thrash around because his body was worm-like.

The facts began to sink in and painted a very clear picture in the former insect duelist's mind.

He had become a mosquito larva.

'THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN BEING A COCKROACH!' Weevil thrashed around in frustration. If he had his original body, he'd be grabbing onto his hair and whip his head back and forth in frustration. To anyone else, it would have simply looked like your average mosquito larva wiggling around in the water. After a moment of furiously whipping around his head from side to side, Weevil stopped as he no longer had any energy to keep raging on. '... at least it can't get any worse, right?' He thought to himself.

Just when he thought that, the water erupted into motion as something landed in whatever body of water he was in. The waves were violent and Weevil instinctively wiggled his way deeper as he could not maintain contact with the surface through his siphon at his abdomen. This time it closed up, making it more akin to him holding his breath as he looked into the direction of what had fallen down to cause this chaos. What he saw would have made him vomit if he had still be the same as before.

Through a thin veil of bubbles, he could see that it was a human arm, quickly sinking deeper into the water. Blood leaked out into the water in thin fans of red from the torn off lower part, while the appendage itself was clad in what looked like metal armour akin to what he knew from both Duel Monsters cards and medieval suits of armour from his past visits to museums, even though he usually just walked past the historical section to walk into the zoological one. In the severed hand, the fingers were still tightly wrapped around a long handle of a spear as it sunk to the bottom and finally let go. He looked up, trying to figure out what exactly had happened, but saw nothing but the canopies of trees above the water surface through which he could only see some specks of sunlight shining through.

'Just what is going on?!' Weevil screamed inside his head mortified at the situation he now found himself in, while the blood stained the water around him dark red. He almost didn't realize it at first until the iron-rich taste of blood sank into him mind, but he was sucking in the crimson water through his mandibles. It made him somewhat disgusted with himself as he recoiled away when all of the sudden he felt something foreign appear in his mind, causing him a headache while new information was absorbed into his brain.

[Skill {Assimilation} activated. Aquiring new skills.]
[Skill {Spearmanship (Beginner)} acquired.]
[Skill {Mana Manipulation (Beginner)} acquired.]
[Skill {Wind Magic (Beginner)} acquired.]
[Spell {Breeze Step} acquired.]

'... what... what was that just now?' Was all Weevil could think in a moment of shock while he floated slowly back to the surface.

And with that we are at the end for this prologue. I hope you could at least somewhat enjoy it.

As you might have been able to guess from the synopsis and what has happened just now, this is one of my story ideas inspired by Monster Reincarnation stories such as Re:Monster with the Ability Steal tag. That might sound a bit weird considering that Weevil is the one who got turned into a mosquito, albeit a larva, but let me explain.

What I think is rather strange about Re:Monster is the fact that the protagonist of that series Rou was originally reborn as a goblin whereas Rimuru from TenSura as a slime actually makes a lot more sense given the nature of slimes being essentially oversized amoebas. So at some point in the past, I thought about what kind of creatures or animals would make more sense to have an absorption ability like that. The answer I came up with was essentially "anything that's known or associated with eating a lot", which spawned more than one idea in my mind over the years.

To be honest with you all, I was thinking really hard on this one, because it was Weevil, who didn't exactly have a lot of duels to begin. He certainly has quite the voracious monster with his Insect Queen since she literally eats one of his bugs anytime he wants her to attack, but I didn't really felt like going with a spider, despite them also being known to catch and prey on anything that gets trapped in their webs.
So I instead decided on not one but two insects notoriously known for their appetite, resulting in his current state.
The first one being a caterpillar, who much like locusts eat quite a lot in comparison to their own bodyweight, which also ties in with Weevil's first ace monster being the Moth card series associated with Cocoon of Evolution. I did not really want to make him just some regular mothman though either.
The second and more important one is a mosquito, who I'm sure we all hate with a passion due to their female's persistence to rob us of our sleep with their high-pitched buzzing and need to sting other animals and drink their blood to enable them to reproduce.
Also, mosquitoes are notoriously known to spread diseases by stinging multiple animals of different species, which is another reason why I chose this specific type of insect. After all, Ability Steal stories live from the fact that the protagonist takes the abilities of various monsters and/or people to amass a wide and versatile array of powers and abilities over the course of the story, growing ever more powerful with each new defeated opponent.
However, mosquitoes being exoparasites who merely take a sip of blood instead of eating their host entirely, even though it sure feels like it sometimes, would enable Weevil to essentially move around that issue by consuming a certain quantity of blood.

Also, I didn't know this prior to doing research for this, but there are apparently mosquito larvae of some species that actively hunt other mosquito larvae rahter than simply filtering algea and plankton through their mouths, so I guess the more you know.
In either case, that's the whole background about this version of Weevil. It has nothing to do with Mosquito Girl from One Punch Man or those yet unprinted Mosquito Forces cards from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, which I also previously didn't know about until checking the card lists for past booster packs... I didn't get to finish ZEXAL, sue me.

One last piece of information I'd like to point out here is that this is an original setting made by yours truly. I unfortunately couldn't find a place to insert Weevil into under these circumstances and that also included the Duel Spirit Realm of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Plus, I doubt anyone would want to read about that sort of story happening in that place.

Anyway, write your thoughts and opinions into the review and tell me what you think so far and what you might want to see in the future here.

Like I said earlier, I won't have the luxury of free time to spend on writing fanfictions for a pretty long time now, so I don't know when I'll finally get around to write more and update my other stories. And I apologize for that.

With that, I wish for you all to stay safe and hope to see you around next time.