Chapter 1: Rude Welcome

Grant groaned as he blinked into consciousness, the world around him a blur of gray and rust. Cold concrete pressed into his back, the chill biting through his hoodie like he'd been lying there for hours. A dull throb pounded at the base of his skull. He sat up slowly, wincing as his spine popped, and took in his surroundings.

Steel. Wires. Filthy streets and crumbling buildings, their windows cracked or long gone. Satellite dishes jutted from rooftops like jagged antennae, all pointed skyward. The air stank of oil and something burnt, like a machine had burnt itself out nearby.

"Where… am I?" he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

This wasn't anywhere he recognized. It looked like the industrial district of a city that had been gutted and left to rot. No signs, no people—just the far-off sound of machinery humming, echoing faintly through the alleyways like the city itself was breathing.

And it was definitely not the area surrounding the card shop he had just left.

His backpack lay beside him. Weird—he didn't remember packing it. As far as he could recall he hadn't even brought it with him when he had left his apartment that day.

He unzipped it and blinked at the contents: three structure decks, unopened at that. With a furrowed brow he picked one of the boxes out of the bag and held it to where he could properly read its name

Mechanized Madness.

There was a growing frown taking over his face. He recognized what they were, he went out of his way to buy them to begin with after all. A fresh start to properly playing the game again, even if the archetype itself were a bit… dated by the standards of many other players.

That in of itself was not where the issue lay, no, the issue was that they were different now. Previously they'd been little more than cheap cardboard boxes containing what would be tantamount to little more than cheap pieces of cardboard with text and artwork printed on to them.

Now?

Now they looked as if someone had put some actual effort into making them, or at least paid a bit more to have them made. They were larger too, oddly enough, if not by that much more. Solid too, as whatever they were made of now didn't bend quite as easily as one might expect.

Pulling the newly apparent tab of one of the boxes, he was greeted by the expected deck. However, they had changed as well. Taking the cards from the box he quickly thumbed through the cards.

Machina Citadel, Machina Fortress, Machina Gearframe…

These weren't knockoffs that someone had swapped the originals for either. Everything that was supposed to be there was still in fact there, the cards had just somehow changed in a similar way to the boxes.

Again, they were a tad larger than he remembered them being, and the back of each card now featured a muted brown finish bordered by a lighter brown with a plain black oval in the center. Any indication that they'd been produced by Konami had seemingly just vanished into thin air. Well, that and they felt much… firmer for a lack of a better term. Heck, he bet if he threw one of these he might even put a dent in it; the wall, that is.

"What the hell…?"

A burst of static made him flinch as a speaker crackled to life somewhere above him.

"Curfew in Sector 4 begins in ten minutes. Unauthorized movement will result in detainment."

Grant whipped his head around, scanning for the voice's source. The announcement repeated once, then went silent, swallowed by the mechanical hum of the city.

He frowned. What kind of place had curfews like that? First he wakes up in some random pile of junk, and now he seems to be risking getting entangled with whoever might have set up a curfew. This didn't feel real at all, and out of all the places he had been to and had lived he couldn't recognize anything around him. Was this some kind of experiment? A dream? A prank with an insane budget?

"Just my luck, guess I need to get a move on."

He got to his feet slowly, brushing dirt off his jeans and tightening his grip on the backpack. He didn't recognize a single building. No familiar landmarks, no street signs. Just grime and rust and cold air.

The city was quiet again. Too quiet.

Further searching of his person also revealed another glaring issue, his pockets were empty. He had no phone, no keys, and no wallet. Only the clothes on his back and a set of altered cards.

Lovely.

He took a deep breath, trying to push down the panic crawling up his throat.

"Okay," he muttered, eyes sweeping the empty street. "Okay. Just… figure it out. One step at a time."

Grant didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten here, but he knew he needed to start moving. Yet he couldn't fight a nagging feeling in the back of his skull that those decks were about to become much more vital than he could imagine.

A thought he quickly shook out of his head, that was ridiculous, they were just trading cards. Why would they suddenly be more than that?

Grant wandered through the rust-choked streets, eyes scanning for anything that resembled safety—or even civilization. Towering steel husks of buildings surrounded him, most broken or burned out, with exposed wires like veins spilling from their ribs. The deeper he went, the more it felt like the city itself was watching. Breathing.

He kept his backpack close. It was the only thing that felt remotely familiar.

He didn't hear the footsteps until they were too close.

"Hey," a voice snapped behind him. "Nice bag, tourist."

Grant spun around to find three guys stepping out of the shadows—grimy jackets, scuffed boots, and that lean, hungry look that meant nothing good. The one in front wore a ripped vest over bare shoulders and had a visor hanging from his neck. The others flanked him, one wiry with a scar down his cheek, the other bulky and radiating muscle.

"Hey, I'm just passing through," Grant said, voice calm but cautious. "I don't want any trouble."

"Too late," the scarred one smirked. "One? You don't look like a local, especially dressed like that, and a local wouldn't be caught dead around here this late. Which means you're new… and easy pickings."

"Outsiders don't last long around here," the bulky one added, cracking his knuckles. "Especially ones carrying bags like that."

Grant's fingers tightened around the backpack strap, already backing up to make a break for it. Just his luck, evidently he'd managed to wander into gang territory on top of everything else on this absolute treat of a day.

He had taken three steps before the trio moved in for the kill.

He had already turned to run, but the bulky one slammed into his side—tackling him into the wall. Pain bloomed across his shoulder before his head was forced to snap to the side, the fist of the scarred man. The pack was ripped from his shoulder before he could recover, let alone retaliate.

"Let's see what goodies you're packing in here," Vest-guy muttered, dumping the contents onto the grimy ground.

They tore through the deck boxes like scavengers, eyes lighting up as they pulled out card after card.

"Yo! This one's attack is huge—Machina Citadel?" Scarface held it up like a trophy. "Have you ever heard of this one?"

"No," the big one said, grabbing a copy of Machina Irradiator and whistling. "But look at this one. Whoever this guy is he must have some solid connections, these are probably some kinda special projects!"

Grant pushed himself up, breath shallow. "Hey, hands of-"

A boot to the gut knocked him back down.

"You had these," Vest-guy corrected, stuffing the stronger cards into his own pockets. "Now they're being donated to a better cause."

By the time the three vanished into the maze of alleyways, laughing and boasting about their new haul, Grant was left on the ground—bruised, winded, and furious.

Slowly, he pushed himself up and looked at the wreckage of what used to be three pristine structure decks.

Most of it was gone.

Machina Citadel, Fortress, Irradiator, even the copies of Redeployment had all been picked clean.

But they hadn't taken everything, having mercifully tossed aside a few of the box's contents.

He knelt and began sifting through what remained.

Three copies of Machina Gearframe were miraculously untouched. Scrap Recycler too, all three copies, scattered in different directions. He picked one up first, staring at the name and letting out a breath that was halfway between a laugh and a groan.

"Figures," he muttered. "Of course they leave you behind."

The irony wasn't lost on him. Picking through garbage for whatever was left. Fitting, considering he'd now have to rebuild everything from the ground up now.

He gathered the rest of the cards that had been left behind, singular copies of Machina Soldier, Sniper and Defender, the thugs had even been generous enough to leave the Tuner monsters behind as well. Lefty Driver, Righty Driver, Torque Tune Gear, Deskbot 01 and 03. All that remained of the spells were a single copy of Pot of Avarice and Supply Squad.

The less said about the trap cards the better.

This was all he had left, barely even a skeleton of a deck. But it was something, at least. He slid the cards back into one of the emptied deck boxes, his hands sore but steady.

No way to make power plays. No hope for any sudden miracles either.

Just scraps.

But he could work with that.

He had to.

For now, he needed to get out of that area as quickly as he could manage, hissing at the occasional abrupt movement as he forced himself back to his feet.

All the while he tried to ignore the fact that out of everything they might have stolen; they hadn't even bothered to search for any actual valuables. Just packing up and leaving once they had picked through the cards.

And here he was worried about those same cards even after he'd gotten jumped for them. Had they hurt his head more than he had thought?

Just more worries to tuck away for later, Grant thought, moving slowly but surely away from the alleyway, even now not quite sure where he was even going himself.

Some hours later, Grant sat slumped against the wall, one arm wrapped around his bruised ribs, the other clutching the remaining deck box like it was some kind of anchor. Blood pulsed behind his eyes, a slow, throbbing rhythm that matched the dull ache spreading through his side. The distant sounds of machinery, clanking metal, and the occasional shout drifted down the alley like a lullaby of rust and concrete.

He didn't know how long he sat there before the quiet crunch of boots on gravel made him snap to attention.

A silhouette stood at the mouth of the alley. Tall, broad-shouldered, wrapped in a heavy coat that had clearly seen better days. A long scarf was wrapped around the man's neck, and a beat-up duel disk hung from his belt like a tool, not a trophy.

The man didn't speak right away. Just looked at Grant. Not like prey. Not like a threat. Just… looked.

"You alive?" the man finally grunted.

Grant nodded, looking up at the man. "Barely."

The man stepped closer, squatting down to eye him at ground level. "You got jumped. Guessing they took most of your cards?"

"Yeah," Grant said, jaw clenched. "Didn't care what they were—just saw power and ripped it away."

"Sounds about right," the man muttered. "You new?"

Grant hesitated. "What gave it away?"

The stranger snorted, standing up again. "The part where you were walking around alone with a fancy bag and clean shoes. Around here, that's like hanging a 'rob me' sign on your back."

He held out a calloused hand.

Grant blinked. "Why are you helping me?"

The man shrugged. "I'm not. Not really. Just not interested in watching some clueless kid get scooped up by Sector Security. I help you walk, you owe me a favor. Could be a duel, could be carrying parts, whatever I need done. Sounds fair?"

Grant stared at the hand for a moment, then took it. "Fair."

The man hauled him up with little effort. Grant swayed slightly, but managed to stay upright.

"Name's Briggs," the man said. "You?"

"…Grant."

"Well, Grant, congratulations. You've officially hit rock bottom."

They began walking slowly down the alley, Briggs half-guiding, half-supporting him. As they moved, Grant looked around—really looked—for the first time. The steel scaffolding overhead, the endless pipes along the walls, the makeshift cables slung between rooftops like urban vines. Trash fires burned in barrels down some side alleys. In the distance, the skeletal frame of an old dueling arena stood like a monument to a forgotten dream.

Something about it all struck him harder now. It wasn't just the grime or the tension in the air. It was familiar. And not the comforting sense.

Wrecked Duel Runners, the duel disk digging into his side at this very moment, even the whole odd card fixation the thugs had had. His breath hitched.

He remembered now, having already seen this place before, Not from personal experience, mind, no. But from late nights binge-watching an anime, from digging through wiki pages for deck ideas, and, of course, reading up on lore.

Shakily he gripped the other man's shoulder a bit tighter, forcing the pair to a stop for a brief moment. He had to

"Did you just say Sector Security? Where are we?" He eventually asked, dreading the fact that he knew the answer already.

For his part Briggs kept a schooled expression, though there was a brief flash of something that might have resembled concern at some point in his life, before it quickly faded back to the gruff mask the man had held until then.

"They must have roughed you up more than I thought, you're in Satellite, kid."

Satellite.

If it weren't for the pain, he would have been sure he was dreaming. After all, if this was the Satellite he was thinking of, that meant…

Grant's legs nearly gave out again, but Briggs caught him again. Thankfully, he had seemed to mistake the reason for Grant's partial fall.

"Easy," the older man muttered. "You still owe me, remember? Don't pass out on me now."

Grant just nodded as the realization settled into his guts like a block of steel.

He was a lot farther from home than he had first thought, with barely anything to his name. And somehow, he was going to have to survive in a world that rested on the edge of a card.

Recovery in the Satellite wasn't exactly restful. There were no clean beds, no painkillers, no hospitals—just a rusted cot in the back of a converted storage container, a few stitched bandages, and the sharp, metallic tang of the air that never really left your lungs.

Briggs' place was… surprisingly put together. Not comfortable per say, but walls were obviously patched with just about anything the man could reasonably expect to keep the weather out, the occasional scrap sheet and old billboard vinyls, and somehow rigged up a working light from scavenged parts. Everything smelled faintly of motor oil, but it was dry, and that alone made it rare.

"You're lucky they didn't break a rib," Briggs had said, tossing him a can of food that tasted vaguely like beans but more like it was full of rust. "They hit harder when they think you've got something worth taking."

Grant spent the next couple days in a daze—sleeping, sorting his remaining cards, and trying to process everything that had happened since his untimely arrival to this city. The answer, frustratingly enough, always rounded back to a big question mark, as the last thing he could remember was walking out of a card shop carrying the structure decks, his friend ribbing him on not just buying a recently released Jack Atlas based one instead.

Fate, it seemed, had a bad sense of humor.

Briggs didn't talk much at the same time, but when he did, it was didn't mince words at all, almost as if he were trying to waste as little precious oxygen as possible. Grant just figured the man hadn't had much reason to talk as of late, but he kept it to himself lest he have to play Dodge Wrench.

He had learned that the hard way after one wisecrack too many.

Briggs' ran a delivery service of sorts, Grant would learn, if someone needed something moved from one end of Satellite to the other, it would get there on time, no questions asked. That wasn't the questionable part however, no, it was the clientele that proved to be the strange part.

As it turned out when Briggs' had told him that he was a delivery man, he had also left out that he didn't just serve the general public of the scrap heap they called home. No, the man had left out the minor detail that what he had meant by delivering for anyone, he had meant it.

Over the last week alone, Grant had seen people ranging from your average man trying to scrape by just the same as everyone else in this place, to the same type of thug that had robbed him drop by with various packages of differing shapes.

And Briggs' gruff as ever, simply nodded to them and that was that.

It was dangerous work, but it kept them fed, even if he could do without some warning bell on an instinctual level blaring in his mind when he cracked a can open.

"You wanna repay me?" Briggs asked on Grant's third day there, after he had insisted on beginning to pay the older man back by doing something. "Fine. You've got hands, use 'em. We're heading out tomorrow."

Their trek always started before dawn.

The place was a maze of twisted steel and broken dreams— and they were hoofing it through it as quickly as they could. Mostly on foot. Grant's legs were sore by the end of the day, but he made do. He had insisted on this, after all.

And in a way it felt good to do some work. Honest, almost if one ignored the more questionable deliveries they made. And fortunately, or unfortunately if viewed from a certain angle, It gave him time to think.

"I didn't ask before," Briggs said one evening, as they returned with two thankfully empty bags they had repurposed for their own uses, "but you didn't just choose to come here, did you?"

Grant paused, then shook his head. "No. Not even close."

Briggs didn't press. He just handed Grant a bottle of water and nodded. "Didn't think so. You look like someone dropped you into the deep end and forgot to teach you how to swim."

"Sounds about right," Grant muttered.

That night, he laid out his cards, the few cards he had left to his name, looking over them like they were some sort of lifeline. In a way, they were, especially in this abandoned heap of a city. Besides the fact that the world basically ran on the importance of cards, they were going to be what would determine his fate in the future.

At the moment, the thing couldn't even really truly be called a deck, seeing as all he had as of right now to rely on was Gearframe and the single copies of the base Machina monsters. The less said about even considering using Scrap Recycler to attack anything the better. This was, of course, also ignoring the fact that he had more than a few Tuners he couldn't even use, having no Synchro Monsters, or even an Extra deck to begin with

Absent-mindedly flipping Scrap Recycler between his fingers as he laid back on the bed, Grant ran over the choices he had going forward. Satellite was where all of New Domino City's trash was thrown out to be forgotten.

Which obviously included who knew how many cards people overlooked or just outright didn't want anymore.

He stopped flipping the card in his hands, turning it to look at the artwork on its front. A little one wheeled machine mindlessly picking up abandoned pieces of metal to recycle. He chuckled a bit.

It seemed like he and the little guy had more in common than he thought now.