Kylie counted out five cards. "… I summon Gimmick Puppet Egg Head in attack mode."

There was a long pause. "Um… maybe we should do something else."

Zachary waved a hand dismissively in the air, keeping his eyes closed. "Logan, this was your idea to begin with. Suck it up."

"Yeah…"

The sounds of a duel continued while Zachary let his mind wander. He didn't know what exactly had gotten into Logan recently, but he was definitely being an inconsistently whiny baby about it. First he invited himself over with the idea of playing against Kylie's deck for the first time ever, then started talking about how they could watch one of Zachary's movies afterward, selected from his large collection of horror films. Kylie, of course, jumped at both ideas, and was presently sitting on Zachary's floor with Logan playing Duel Monsters on the carpet. Zachary decided to content himself with relaxing on the bed, making a feeble attempt at getting his mind off the many stressors that had been plaguing it lately.

"It's touching my Jam!"

"Sorry, Logan," the sounds of Kylie leaning forward and rearranging cards filled the otherwise quiet room.

"No, I should apologize. I'm being irrational."

"No kidding," Zachary mumbled, sitting up and looking at the scene. Kylie's Gimmick Puppets were slowly swarming the field, as they were designed to do, and Logan had a few Jam tokens out, as well as his field spell. It definitely looked like Kylie was at a clear advantage; she would be able to start using her Xyz monsters very soon.

His attention on the card game was interrupted by a knock on the door. Zachary groaned and went over to answer it, then groaned even louder when he saw who it was. "How did you get in here?" He demanded, scowling at Evan Suzuki, who was standing awkwardly in the hallway with a small box clutched against his chest.

"Well, now that Slifers are living here, no one really second guessed me when I just walked in and—"

"Leave."

"But I brought you something," he held the box out away from his chest, using his thumbs to open the lid and present whatever was inside to Zachary. "Do you want egg? You can have any one of them."

Zachary's eyes narrowed at him. The eggs in the box, all lined up perfectly in three little rows, were lumpy and mildly discolored, just like the ones he'd collected at the chicken coops. He was tempted to ask if the Slifer had snuck out there when they weren't scheduled and essentially stole them, but he decided that he really didn't care. "No."

Logan's voice came from the room behind him. "Just let him in."

With a huff, Zachary turned and walked back inside, leaving the door open behind him so Evan could follow. He may let the doll-eyed weirdo into his room, but he certainly wasn't going to be polite to him about it.

"Hi, Evan!" Kylie exclaimed with a large smile when he entered, protectively carrying his box of eggs. "We're just having a few pickup duels. Do you wanna go next?"

"I didn't bring my deck."

"You can use mine," Zachary suggested, gesturing toward the stack of cards neatly placed on his bedside table. Anything to keep Evan distracted and away from lighters.

The duel between Kylie and Logan finished up a few turns later, with Kylie winning after strategically doing what no one else was willing to do and very carefully reading the fine print at the bottom of Logan's Amulet of Ambition card. Logan dejectedly got up and joined Zachary on the edge of the bed to watch Evan and Kylie play, although there was a hint of pride on his face — probably at having been able to touch Kylie's Dreary Doll card that she dropped in order to hand it back to her without freaking out.

Evan flopped Zachary's deck on the floor in front of him and began shuffling Sartoriously, mixing the cards by spreading them around in large arcs with his open palms. Zachary watched uncomfortably, glad he wasn't one of those weird people with an unusual attachment to his monsters who would probably have a complete fit at them being 'mistreated' like that or something.

Both players prepared their opening hands, and Kylie graciously let Evan take his turn first. Zachary watched him stare at the cards with a look of confusion and panic on his face, realizing that was most likely how he looked every time he played as well. Then he shook his head to clear any thoughts of actually relating to Evan.

"DUELIST KINGDOM RULES BITCH!" Evan shouted unnecessarily loudly, as he slapped down Divine Dragon Lord Felgrand on the carpet, an eight star monster that he had no tributes out on the board to play.

Kylie stared down at the dragon lord, completely mystified. She seemed to be doing some kind of complicated calculations in her head before she met his eyes with a look of grim determination. "I'll allow it," she told him, as though playing an opponent who was openly cheating was her one shot at a real challenge.

She just reached out to draw a card when the room went completely dark. The sounds of girls shrieking followed by giddy laughter sounded from somewhere far away. The four sat in silence for a long moment, waiting in the blackness for the power to come back on. When it didn't, Zachary swore loudly. "Come the hell on! I hate this stupid place!"

"The weather was looking a little overcast on my way over here," Logan said from somewhere beside him. The weight on his side of the bed disappeared as he made his way over to the window. "I'm sure the whole island lost power." The curtains moved back, allowing a small amount of light into the room. Zachary could see a sliver of Logan's face illuminated from a light source somewhere outside. "Hmm… the street lamps are all on, and I think I can see lights from Ra…"

"No crap you can," Zachary grumbled, crossing his arms. "Obelisk is officially a dump. At this rate, they'll be shipping all the Blues over to the burn damaged Red dorm."

"It's not that bad," Kylie argued from the floor.

"Oh yeah? Didn't you just tell me yesterday that none of the electrical outlets in your room were working any more? It's no wonder that more and more Obelisks are dropping out of this hell hole of a school."

"What do you mean?" Logan asked.

Zachary sighed heavily, wondering why no one would just take his word for it that everything was terrible and nothing was going to get better ever. "They're just bouncing, okay? Haven't you noticed the Blue student body shrinking? I just wish Toma would hurry up and find a different school already, but at least Madison Saitou has if the lack of people bullying Kylie when she's trying to eat is any indication. I just wish some of the Slifers and Ras would hurry up and follow suit, but I suppose it's mostly a financial issue."

"I'm here on a merit-based scholarship," Evan told them.

"You can't convince me that's true, Suzuki."

"Why don't we just find something else to do," Kylie asked. "You know, until they get the power back on? I don't really want to sit here in the dark, it's depressing."

"Fine," Zachary stood and went over to his door, opening it. "Let's go out, I need a break from this place anyway."

The others followed him into the hallway, where other students were apparently playing a game of flashlight tag that pitted Slifers against Obelisks. The harsh artificial lights of cell phones glanced across the metal candelabras uselessly hanging on the walls as people ran around the winding hallways. "Get back here, Slifer slime!" one Obelisk girl shouted playfully, chasing after a boy with her phone held out in front of her so she could see where she was going. Zachary pressed himself against the wall to avoid her, running his hand along the surface until it gave away into the spacious main entrance, where someone — probably Doctor Crowler — had placed several large white and blue candles on many of the tables. A few students were scattered around on the couches, trying to do their homework by the meager light they provided.

"Where are we going?" Kylie asked quietly from behind him.

"Abandoned Dorm," Zachary answered, leading the way to the front entrance.

"Wait," Logan nearly whispered, as though the soft lights and subdued atmosphere of the room required solemnity. "You want to leave a place you think is falling apart to visit a place that already has?"

Zachary rolled his eyes and responded in his usual volume, which sounded a lot louder after all the whispering. "First of all I don't think it, it just is. Second, the construction crews are going to be done with the Slifer repairs soon so they'll go back to tearing down the Abandoned Dorm. I want to check it out before it's gone."

"Okay but why?"

"Because it's cool, okay? I don't need a better reason. Do you have anything better to do?"

"We could go back to my dorm and finish our duels," Logan suggested as Zachary pulled open the heavy Obelisk front door and let the others pass. When Evan, who was in the back, started going through, Zachary cut in front of him and tried closing the door in the Slifer's face. Instead, Evan caught it with an 'oops, you almost forgot me!' that made Zachary cringe.

"Abandoned dorm is closer and less lame."

Zachary noticed immediately once they were outside that the rest of the island was well-lit, meaning only Obelisk was affected by the power outage. On the stairs, the group passed Duel Academy's visibly annoyed and overworked electrician, carrying a box of tools in his hand. He didn't even glance at the group of students as he trudged up the steps, sighing audibly before throwing the door open and walking into the darkness.

Logan fell into step next to Zachary behind Evan and Kylie, who were talking quietly about the Destiny Hero card Double Dude, and if he should only be played when one dude simply wasn't enough or if sometimes a duelist needed to be flexible and use him when two dudes was one dude too many. Zachary took a deep breath, assuming the following conversation was going to be more annoying than he was willing to deal with and hoping the two in front actually knew where they were going or if they would end up leading everyone into the ocean or something.

"How much do you know about the Abandoned dorm?" Logan asked, looking up at the top of the trees at the sky. Zachary glanced over at what he was looking at but only saw slowly dying leaves blowing in the gentle wind against the dark gray, starless sky.

He shrugged. "Enough to know that I want to see if before I can't. It sounds awesome."

"It was the original Obelisk dorm, wasn't it?"

Zachary didn't bother to answer in the affirmative; the question sounded rhetorical.

"What happened there?"

Zachary sighed. "A bunch of convoluted crap that no one understands. Duel spirit nonsense, a weird alchemy lab, probably Devil worshipping, missing students, and I heard a professor died in the basement. The old Slifer headmaster or something like that."

Evidently Zachary's fears of meeting a watery grave this day were unfounded, because the large dome roof of the Abandoned Dorm came into view over the treetops in front of them. Everyone went silent then, as they made their way around the brush surrounding the former lawn and through the badly damaged fence, ducking under the chains crisscrossed over where the gate used to be. Zachary took the building in: it wasn't nearly as large as the current Obelisk dorms, mostly because he wasn't entirely certain there were any female students back then since it had no designated girls and boys wings. The yellow paint on the walls was badly discolored, and most of the windows were cracked or the glass was missing entirely. Still, he thought, at the rate things were going it would be more habitable than the Obelisk dorms so maybe Seto Kaiba may consider not tearing this one down.

There were deep tire treads in the soil outside, from where the construction crews had parked their equipment in preparation of leveling the building, all of which were moved over to the Slifer dorms more recently.

"So where are we?" Evan asked as Zachary threw open the creaky front door to reveal a three story tall cylindrical foyer. The room was completely bare except for the dust that accumulated over however many years the place had gone unused — he thought it was around four or five at this point — and some broken curtain rods propped up against one wall. Taking a few steps inside and turning his phone's flashlight on, he could make out shapes in the dirty floorboards where furniture used to be.

The place was creepy and kind of cool, but he couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed. After all the horror stories and urban legends about this place, his expectations were to find something a lot more interesting than, well, an abandoned dorm. There certainly wasn't an aura about the place that indicated anything more interesting had happened here than the place got too run down to live in.

Kylie turned on her flashlight and went over to one of the two darkened doorways on the other side of the room. She peered inside, sweeping her light back and forth. Based on the expression on her face, she wasn't terribly impressed either. "I guess Doctor Crowler wasn't joking when he said they cleared this place out," she said, her voice echoing against the bare walls.

"Are we sure this place is safe to be inside?" Logan asked, still standing in the open entryway.

Zachary sighed, taking in the mildly impressive high ceiling above them. "Safe enough. I didn't come all this way for nothing. Let's walk," he walked through the only other doorway no one had tried yet, hearing the other three follow reluctantly behind him.

This path was just a long corridor, with doors on either side that probably were once dorm rooms. Logan would occasionally stop and try one, but they all were locked. "Hey, Zachary," he called. "Did you say something about missing students here?"

"Something about that, yeah."

"Do you know any details?"

"Why do you care?"

Kylie turned her head to address Logan. "I know a little," she told him.

Logan jogged up beside her and Zachary, "Like what?"

"Not much," she trained her light on a large chunk of wallpaper peeled almost from the ceiling to floor with cobwebs collected in the gap before the group walked passed it. "Just rumors and stuff. I guess Yusuke Fujiwara was one of them, but he turned up again last year. He's in one of my classes; he missed like two years of school so now he's being held back while he makes up for it. I think he graduates next semester."

Logan was silent for a moment, deep in thought. Zachary turned around a corner at random, which just led to yet another unnecessarily long hallway filled with doors placed every ten feet.

"Why did he disappear?" Logan finally asked.

Kylie gave him a small shrug, her flashlight bouncing in her hand as she did so.

"Do you think it has something to do with the missing students now?"

Zachary gave him a humorless laugh. "What missing students?"

"The Obelisks."

"I told you they're not missing, they just transferred out of this cesspool."

"You know that for a fact?"

Zachary cast him a sneer. "I can infer. After living in the Blue dorms for three months and seeing it look more and more like Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations minus the molding wedding cake, I sure as hell would if my parents let me."

"Guys really, I don't know where we are," Evan's whiny voice said from the back of the group. "I can't figure out how to get home."

"I don't know what any of that meant," Logan said to Zachary, ignoring the Slifer.

"For a Ra nerd you don't explore other culture's literature much."

"He listens to Scatman John!" Evan supplied unhelpfully.

"No I don't!"

A large door loomed in front of them that Zachary hoped wasn't locked just like all the others, otherwise they'd likely need to turn back and find a different direction to go in that would probably end up being just as disappointing as this one. Maybe it led to the second story? He didn't see any staircases at all and the exterior of the dorm gave no indication how they could go any higher than the first floor. He pushed it open with little effort, revealing winding stairs that led downward.

Zachary's flashlight went off suddenly. He stopped, letting the others pass by, as he fiddled with his phone trying to get it working again. He stood in darkness at the top of the stairs by himself for a moment, cursing at himself when he saw his phone battery was lower than five percent, before it switched on again, illuminating Evan's red-clad form as he descended the stairs into the basement.

"Crap!" Logan shouted from ahead, followed by a sloshing sound.

"What is it?" Zachary hurried down the stairs. He was met with the sight of Logan and Kylie standing knee deep in water at the foot of the stairs, about ten feet away from an old bookcase crammed with papers and books with damaged bindings across the small room. Evan was a few steps above them, safely out of the water.

"It looks like it flooded down here," Logan explained, trying to sound calm despite his apparent discomfort.

"Well then get out," Zachary stopped next to Evan and turned off his phone to conserve the little battery he had left.

Logan looked behind him at the bookcase. "In a minute, I want to take a look at this stuff," he said, making his way through the water with Kylie following him.

Evan reached down and snatched something from by his feet: a small book that looked like some kind of manga to Zachary, although the cover nor title looked familiar. He watched Evan flip through the pages disinterestedly, until he stopped on one panel, bringing it closer to his face for closer inspection. "Whoa! This is none of my business!" He jerked his head away from the page, looking completely distraught.

Zachary leaned over's shoulder to take a look for himself. "I believe that is called hentai," he smirked, enjoying the Slifer's discomfort.

Slamming the book shut, Evan turned his head to Zachary with large confused eyes. "You believe what is called what?"

"Tell me, do you have a fursona, Suzuki?"

The other boy looked absolutely traumatized. Zachary had to stifle laughter behind his hand, not wanting Logan or Kylie to catch wind of what they were talking about and yell at him for freaking out poor innocent Evan.

Logan took a thick white book off the bookcase, which Zachary noticed was some kind of sketchbook with papers crammed inside haphazardly. "Didn't you say that mannequin came from the Abandoned dorm? The one we saw in the woods?"

"So?"

Zachary saw Kylie take the sketchbook, turning it over in her hands. From this distance, a colorless drawing of the mannequin in a detailed pencil outline was just visible, as well as some writing scrawled over the picture, covering up its face and part of its upper torso. Kylie began turning pages, each one with yet another drawing of the mannequin that seemed to get less detailed and less humanoid in its outline. The handwriting, in contrast, got darker and larger, taking up more and more space on each page she turned.

"Spider!" Logan slapped at the sketchbook, knocking it out of Kylie's hand and into the water below. It splashed into the water in front of her, the loose pages fluttering across the surface. Logan recovered quickly, snatching the sketchbook up in his hands before it sank more than a few inches. "Oh no…" he tried separating the pages out, but they just tore apart wetly, the damaged paper hanging wetly from his fingers like seaweed.

"Well?" Zachary asked, although he already knew the answer.

Kylie shook her head, keeping her gaze on the sketchbook. "I can't make anything out," she told him sadly.

Logan shook wet paper off his fingers and pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. "That could have told us what was going on," he muttered, barely audible from where Zachary and Evan were standing.

Zachary scoffed. "Going on with what? The mannequin? I can already tell you: jack."

"It could have told us what happened to the missing students, like Madison Saitou!"

"She's not missing!"

Kylie nodded. "I haven't seen her since the woods."

"Yeah well, be grateful," Zachary told her, crossing his arms. He certainly didn't miss seeing Kylie bullied on a regular basis.

Logan set the damaged book on the bookcase carefully, opened in the center like airing it out would suddenly make the smeared pencil markings return to their original positions. "Students were missing from this dorm and they're missing now. Don't you think that maybe this is connected?"

Zachary threw up his hands. "Probably not!" He shouted unnecessarily. "That got resolved."

"We can talk to Fujiwara, maybe he can help—"

"This is stupid," Zachary interjected viciously. He did not appreciate this excursion into a delightfully creepy condemned building being coopted by some nerd who wanted to solve a super secret mystery that didn't even exist. "There is nothing to talk to him about, got it? I don't know what the hell your deal is lately trying to be a big hero but you are not Jaden Yuki or Yugi Mutou, okay? You're just a mundane Ra who is unexceptional in every single way and will never accomplish anything other than being a mundane, unexceptional adult. There's no puzzle to solve here and even if there was we are not the people who are going to do it. So just drop it." He turned to Evan, snatching his phone out of his hand. "Let's go, Suzuki."

Using Evan's phone for light, the two climbed the stairs and made their way toward where Zachary was pretty certain was the exit, leaving the others to stand in knee-high water in a disgusting musty basement and act like junior detectives by themselves.

"You know," Evan started, visibly anxious about being alone with Zachary. "Soulja Boy once said that words are powerful, and when you make mistakes it's important to go back to clarify what you meant."

Zachary glanced over at the Slifer, who was wringing his hands and looking down at the ground. "Did Soulja Boy really say that?"

"Mmhm."

Zachary opened the heavy door they came inside from and shoved the phone into Evan's un-expectant hands, starting down the dirt path away from the Abandoned dorm. "Go home. Try not to get lost."