Random Talk: Hey everyone! Sorry for such a long delay. I was hit by a storm of writer's block. Then stuff happened in real life, so now I have to help take care of my great-aunt. That in itself is a full time job since she's 93 and literally retarded. Hey, it's the best way to describe her condition. I was able to get a vacation from all the crazy stuff, but I got sick on it. So, here we are! Let's get to the fic already!

Chapter 7

It's Time to Duel!

Months passed and everyone was busy. Duo was learning from one of the best duelist that ever existed and was improving fast. At the same time, Trowa noticed that Heero and Quatre have been hanging out more often than before. They still got the day's work done on time, but they would talk about Duel Monsters in their free time away from everyone else. Only Trowa found this suspicious. Everyone else thought it was a good thing that Heero was doing something else other than training or working in the scrap yard. Trowa knew something was going on since Heero was talking a lot more than he usually did, more than when he's with Duo. Something was wrong with Heero lately, and Trowa planned to figure it out.

When the date of the tournament was just a few days away, the six ex-pilots left for Neo Domino City where the event would take place. They were all busy doing recon and setting up security. There was no time for sightseeing this time. Of course, that didn't stop Duo from sneaking onto some of Kaiba Land's rides. It was decided that the preliminaries will be held in Death T since the multiple levels allowed multiple duels at once. That in it caused some problems in that it would make their job harder by spreading out their security between 4 floors. They didn't have to worry about the first floor since that was open to the public for free dueling.

The other issue was that the finals were going to be held in the Kaiba Dome. Moving from one location to the other was a problem since so much could go wrong between the two points. The bright side was that the finals were to be held the next day after preliminaries. With all the planning going on, the ex-pilots rarely saw each other, Heero especially. No one questioned why the Japanese teen was missing, figuring that he was caught up in his work like always.

Before they knew it, it was the day before the tournament. Many of the big duelists had arrived early to have some duels to show off their skills and to test one another. Big names like Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood were there. Yet the biggest commotion was over Kaibaman even though he didn't duel anyone. He was busy signing autographs and taking pictures. Of course Duo was part of the action when he was supposed to be part of security that day. It was a little surprising to find out Kaibaman was about the same height as Duo.

There were also some surprise fans attending. It turns out Mariemaia and, much to Duo's displeasure, Relena were fans of Kaibaman. Unfortunately, Relena spotted the braided teen, thus knowing Heero had to be around somewhere. She hounded Duo for answers as to where Heero was, all of which Duo just said it was classified. Even Kaibaman seemed uncomfortable being around the blonde girl with her "Heero senses" on full power.

Then came the first day of the tournament and still no sign of Heero, yet information was still being sent and received from the missing teen. Wufei got knocked out early on, much to his displeasure, by Kaibaman. It turned out that Heero had that planned since there weren't enough trained eyes to look for the Neo Rare Hunters with all the duels going on. Wufei was still upset that he was chosen for that job. The next to fall was Trowa against the last suspected Hunter that was in the tournament. It was actually Quatre who avenged the banged teen in the following round.

Throughout the tournament, all suspected Neo Rare Hunters were monitored as well as they could for suspicious activity. It was actually the lower leveled Hunters that gave the most away. A few called what they suspected to be a superior. Those who used the pay phone helped out even more by giving a general location of where the call went to. It was amazing that in this day that people still used a pay phone.

The semifinals ended up having Duo going against Quatre and Zechs against Kaibaman. Duo, confident in his skills after training with the number three duelist back in their day, was shocked to find Heero didn't rig it so he could go against his dueling idol. At this Quatre was a little upset, which he hid with his "I'll kill you and you will be smiling when I do" smiles.

To say the least, the duel was quite interesting. It turns out their skills were fairly even with Duo's fiend deck against Quatre's spellcaster deck. But in the end, only one can win. Much to Duo's shock, Quatre beat him with about 1000 lifepoints to spare. Wufei, Trowa, and Zechs were also a little surprised since Duo was training with Jonouchi. Said blond was grinning like an idiot, as if he knew this was going to happen. On the other hand, Zechs' duel with Kaibaman was fairly uneventful. Kaibaman's power deck overpowered Zechs warrior deck with ease. The finals were spectacular. It was back and forth with who was winning. At one point, Quatre had a 2000 lifepoint lead over Kaibaman. But in the end, Kaibaman was victorious by only 100 lifepoints.

Jonouchi sighed. It was the big moment, the moment where he would reveal himself to the world. In the past, he loved being in the spotlight. But as he grew older, he grew tired of it and just wanted to spend time with his friends and loved ones. He wished he could live a brand new life like he was, but this was something that had to be done. After hearing whispers of the Neo Rare Hunters during the war, he had to do something. He needed to flush them out and prevent whatever they were trying to do.

"Congratulations, Kaibaman!" the announcer's voice boomed in the Kaiba Dome. "Now to present the grand prize is Katsuya Jonouchi, CEO of Industrial Illusions!" People started to whisper fairly loudly as the blond walked up to the microphone. People knew that name, but he was supposed to have lived a long time ago. Meaning, he should have long been dead.

"Thank you everyone!" Jonouchi said. The whispering stopped soon afterwards. "I know what you are all thinking, but I'm not him. Just like a few of the duelists here look like their ancestors, I happened to get my good looks from the first Katsuya Jonouchi. But this isn't about me, this is about the victor of the tournament, Kaibaman!" The crowd cheered even louder than before. Kaibaman took his place next to Jonouchi awaiting his prize. "Now with great pleasure, I present to Kaibaman the deck of the one and only Seto Kaiba!" A boy with long black hair walked up with a deck on a pillow. Kaibaman froze before taking the deck with a nod.

"Now for a special treat!" Jonouchi continued. "I will team up with Kaibaman in a double duel against the two of his choosing from those entered in the tournament using the prize deck. So, who will it be?"

"Duo Maxwell and Quatre Raberba Winner," Kaibaman simply said.

"What?" Duo yelled from the private booth the ex-pilots were using for their base of operation. "Why us? I mean, I'm psyched, but still!"

"You coming?" Quatre asked, already at the door.

It was decided by coin toss that Kaibaman was to go first, then Duo, Jonouchi, and finally Quatre.

"I place on card face down and summon Saggi, the Dark Clown," Kaibaman said. "Your turn, Maxwell."

"Right!" Duo said excitedly. It was obvious that he was still excited that he still had a chance to duel a legend. "Perfect! First I play Card Destruction. All four of us have to discard our hand and draw the same amount of cards as we had."

"We know, Duo," Quatre sighed as all four of them did as the card said.

"Er, right," Duo laughed. "Alright, since I had Sillva, Warlord of Darkness in my hand, I get to special summon it to the field! That's more than enough to destroy your Saggi! Attack, Sillva!"

"Duo, wait!" Quatre yelled, but it was too late. Sillva had destroyed Saggi, making Jonouchi smirk.

"You activated my Trap Card," Kaibaman said, "Crush Card! Now if you don't remember what it does, it makes it so you two can't use monsters with an attack over 1500. This includes your SIllva!"

"Crap…" Duo cursed. "I forgot about that…"

"I tried to warn you," Quatre sighed.

"You're screwed," Jonouchi laughed, "and it's my turn."

The duel went downhill from there for the two ex-pilots. They still put up a fight, but in the end, they lost.

"You two put up a great fight!" Jonouchi said when they were all in the private room after all the excitement was done. "And we also gathered a lot of information on the Neo Rare Hunters."

"Thanks," Duo said. "But I have a question. Why is Kaibaman here with us?"

"I think is time to show them," Jonouchi said. You could hear a sigh coming from Kaibaman as he unclasped the mask. There were gasps around the room except from two people.

"Heero?" Everyone yelled. Indeed, it was Heero Yuy, only with his hair styled so it wasn't all over the place. Then something even more unexpected happened. Jonouchi got up, went over to Heero, and kissed him completely on the lips. Everyone was speechless for a while until Duo spoke up.

"What the hell is going on!"

TBC

Random Talk: Sorry for such a short chapter. I just couldn't get a feel for most of it, so I just wrote what I could. The main problem was that this chapter would have been duel heavy. I really didn't want to make decks just for this fic, even if the minimum was two. So, I was talking to someone on Gaia Online, complaining about this chapter. One of them played the card game and happened to favor fiends. So I asked for a good fiend card for the beginning part and it had to beat Saggi. She gave me the move above, which worked perfectly for what Duo's style would be. I don't know what I would have done without her since I'm not into fiends much.

Until next time!

Rubi-chan, over and out!