“-and that is the difference between hard once per turn and soft once per turn. Any questions?” Professor Bernardello turned towards the class while dusting his hands off from the chalk that had covered them during his lecture. The lecture itself was ordinary enough, but even Jaden (who had slept through at least half of it) could tell that Bernardello was tired. The man had dark circles clearly ringing his eyes, his voice was thick with exhaustion, and for some reason he seemed to be covertly glancing at Phil’s group whenever he thought he could sneakily get away with it. Overall, the man looked like life had crunched him between its teeth for a half-eaten breakfast of a hairy Italian man, and then spat poor Bernardello out halfway through once the man’s protests of ‘Mamma mia, life! I have class in half an hour!’ had stirred enough of the abstract concept’s pity to do so.
“Zero?” Bernardello laughed softly, shrugging and moving over to the office chair next to the lecturer’s podium to flop in it like a dead fish. “I suppose that’s the lecture, yes?” Bernardello pulled on a thin gold chain that was hanging off the side of his battered blue jeans to produce an equally battered pocket watch. “Well, it seems we have a few minutes left to spend with each other, so do any bambini’s here have questions not related to the lecture? It would be a shame for old ‘prof C to nag me about letting class out too early again, after all.”
For a few minutes the classroom was silent save for a few chairs scraping against the ground and a few awkward coughs. Then, once it became clear that no one else was going to ask anything, Phil raised his voice. “You are a pro duelist, right? How do you become one? Can you just show up in the circuit or is there a whole process?”
Bernardello’s half-closed eyes widened partially with interest. “Hm. A fair question.” Leaning back in his office chair in thought, Bernardello swiped a palm-sized orange from the nearby teacher’s deck and slid a knife with a long, straight blade from a sheath at his side to begin peeling it. “I suppose to begin, I feel as if I should remind you, Mr. Jenson, that the professional circuit does not accept underaged duelists. So, no running off to Tokyo, London, Rome, or New York to become a pro next weekend because you got bored here.” That got a bashful little laugh from Phil, which Bernardello acknowledged with a wry smile before continuing. “Of course, there are smaller tournament series specifically for teens and children, as Mr. Princeton can likely attest to, but those are more for getting experience. No large payouts for winning there like there are in the actual pro series. Once you become an adult, you can make an appointment with a proctor to test if you have enough skill to enter the pro leagues. Of course, Duel Academy graduates can skip that process since they’re certified by an establishment created by the man who owns the pro league. If you really want to make a splash when joining the league, you can wait for the World Championship in Tokyo or the preliminaries in Rome, London, and New York to happen, and then publicly challenge any of the pros present at those events who have a ranking of no better than top 1000. It’s what I did when I first joined after graduation. Crowler had me flown back to my birthplace of Rome, where I challenged and defeated the rank 1001 duelist at the time, ‘Doc’ Horner. It was a difficult duel, far trickier than going against a regular proctor, but defeating someone recognized as decently strong and doing it publicly can give you a good leg up against the competition starting out. Plus, if you do well enough, Seto Kaiba himself might see the replay and let you participate in the preliminaries immediately afterward. That’s the bulk of the process, really.” Bernardello finished. He twirled his knife around his fingers, sheathing at his waist and once more opening up the floor to questions while he nibbled at his orange. Upon hearing not even a single one after Phil’s, Bernardello then raised himself from his chair and clapped his hands.
“That’s it for today then! Jaden, Chazz, Bastion, Chancellor Sheppard wants to see you three in his office. Dimitri, please stay after class for a bit. Everyone else, shoo! You have your whole life ahead of you, no sense in staying in my dusty old classroom more than you need to! Laugh! Smile! Make memories!”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil leaned against the wall in the hallway outside of Ms. Hibiki’s lecture hall, his thoughts swirling chaotically in his head while he waited for his three friends to come back from the Chancellor’s office.
Sounds like going pro during the summer is a bust. Shame, that would have been an easy way to make some money to finance my way to America to deal with the Tragoedia problem. What to do… what to do… There’s no way I can get the money for a plane ticket off a part time job. I’m probably too young, anyways. What’s this body’s age? 14? 15? Gotta be somewhere around there, considering I’m a first year. Unless, does Japan have looser child labor laws than the U.S.? No… even if they did, I would probably need parental permission to work at my age anyways at any job that would pay enough to buy me a plane ticket. A boat ticket might be a bit easier, but it would take way too long to get there and back on a boat. Shit.
Phil had bounced some thoughts on the subject a few times with both himself and Lumina during his free time, but none of the possible plans were ones that he was completely happy with. They all had various sticking points, whether that was legality, high out of pocket expenses, or being at risk of exposing his collection of cards that should not exist. Frankly, the last sticking point was the least worrying out of them all, as long as he was extremely careful with who it was exposed to. Yugi Muto and Joey Wheeler would probably just think the collection was cool. They would probably also not be all that useful in getting to America. Even if they had the money, Phil didn’t have a passport in this world, and they probably wouldn’t be willing to break the law to sneak him in. Pegasus would be trickier, but Phil didn’t remember him being outright evil after Duelist Kingdom finished. Just really fucking weird, which was enough to make Phil disinclined to ever contact him, even if Pegasus could probably get him into the country without many issues due to the power of being filthy rich. Then there was Kaiba. Another man that Phil had some amount of wariness to. While he was nowhere near the murderous insanity of his Death-T years, the sheer obsession Kaiba had towards the Pharoah and the game of Duel Monsters could end up causing problems if Phil handled him wrong. From what Phil had seen of the 2017 movie, the man had broken into the afterlife, of all things, solely so he could have one last duel with the Pharoah. In Phil’s experience, when a man gets to that point of obsession, he is best to be avoided when possible. After all, even good men can be driven to bloodshed through sheer obsession.
Caught in his musings, Phil jumped as Bastion tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, noticing almost immediately that Bastion’s face was quite a bit more serious than usual.
“Yo. How’d it go with Sheppard? Something serious or did you just piss him off somehow?” Phil questioned, hoping to get Bastion to open up without scaring him off by demanding answers if the situation was actually serious.
Bastion shook his head with a sigh, the movement leading Phil to notice that Chazz and Jaden were a bit further down the hall and were looking rather subdued as well. “You can keep a secret, right Phil?” Bastion eventually said. Phil nodded hesitantly, and the brown-haired boy gestured to Phil to follow them to a nearby empty classroom. It was always a strange feeling to Phil being in an empty classroom, a place where usually there would be a vibrant feel in the air with people you saw every day and got to know fairly well laughing and talking about whatever came to mind.
An empty classroom, however, never had that sense of life to it. Hell, Phil could almost swear he could still see that pool of blood on the floor, even if he wasn’t even sure if this was even the same classroom he had dueled Titan in. Even if it was, the custodian had likely cleaned up the blood quite a while ago anyways. Still, the vivid memory of Titan being torn apart… it was something that always seemed to peep out from the little box of memories Phil tried to forget he ever had every once in a while.
“Phil, it’s about why we were called into Chancellor Sheppard’s office.” Bastion began once all four of them had found a chair each to collapse in. “At first, we thought it might be about another tournament, but you weren’t there so it couldn’t be that. When we entered the office, Ms. Hibiki and Professor Crowler were waiting for us. A few minutes later, Professor Bernardello slipped in too. Hell, even Syrus’s brother Zane was listening in on the office phone from where he was in the Tokyo port. Have… have you ever heard of the Sacred Beast Cards?”
Realization dawned on Phil in an instant. He didn’t know most of the details of what should have been happening in canon by this point in time, but he had heard of the Sacred Beast cards, mainly because they were touted as the replacement for the god cards in the GX era. Surprise, surprise when it turned out that the Sacred Beasts sucked almost as much as the god cards when they were printed.
“The name rings a bell.” Phil eventually answered. “Why were they brought up?”
Chazz opened his mouth in response. “They’re sealed under this academy, blocked off by gates that can only be opened by these special ‘Spirit Keys’. Chancellor Sheppard got word that there is a group out there called the ‘Shadow Riders’ that are hellbent on collecting the keys to unleash the Sacred Beasts. Cards that are said to be on-par with the god cards that were fought over in Battle City. Seven keys, in fact. Seven keys defended by seven duelists, the best duelists the academy has to offer. Three are split between Crowler, Bernardello, and Hibiki. One will be guarded by Zane, who was called back from his exchange program early. And the last three go to myself, Bastion, and Jaden”
Phil raised his eyebrows. “Sheesh. Talk about heavy stuff indeed. Too bad there weren’t eight, I’d say we made a pretty good team in the tournament.”
“Yeah…” Bastion responded with an uncomfortable look on his face. “We asked that too. You weren’t chosen, Phil, because while Chancellor Sheppard knows you are a good duelist, hell, you are the top duelist of Ra Yellow, he also sees you as unreliable.”
A silence so thick that you could hear a pin drop followed Bastion’s words. Then, to Bastion’s, Chazz’s, and Jaden’s evident surprise, Phil sighed and nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. It’s my bad. I dug that grave myself. Sorry guys, maybe next time, ay?”
Surprised but relieved at Phil’s calm acceptance of the situation, the topic of the conversation swiftly moved onto strategy talk while Bastion slipped out of the classroom to grab Alexis and Syrus from where they sat in Ms. Hibiki’s lecture hall. Even if they didn’t have a key, all four of the boys agreed that their involvement in the Jinzo affair gave them the right to know about the Shadow Riders.
“How many baddies are we talking about?” Phil wondered, partially to himself and partially to his friends. “Will it be seven Shadow Riders for seven spirit keys? Or are their numbers in the double digits?”
Jaden shrugged. “No clue dude. Shep’ only said to keep an eye out and make sure to win all of our duels because our souls are on the line.”
Phil snorted with laughter in spite of the seriousness of the situation. “Yeah, I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to be the norm around here. Ten bucks says Jinzo would have eaten our souls like a pulled-pork sandwich at a neighborhood barbeque.” That comment eased the tension somewhat, so when Alexis, Syrus, and Bastion arrived, the three boys were feeling much more lighthearted about it all. A few more minutes were spent bringing Alexis and Syrus up to speed, then one or two more past that were filled by Alexis expressing her disgust that Sheppard had dumped a responsibility like this on first years, while Syrus became slightly pale in the face and began to jump at shadows. Eventually, however, a few decisions were made that everyone could agree on.
“Right, so we’ll want to follow the buddy system. That way if it looks like a key holder is about to lose, the buddy can run and grab the rest of the key holders to get their soul back and gank the Shadow Rider to hell and back. Or would that be to the shadow realm and back?” Phil shrugged. Going down that path would be an endless rabbit hole anyways, knowing him and Bastion.
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“Be prepared for anything, too. Jaden, didn’t you say that you felt real, physical pain during your duel with Jinzo? I wouldn’t be surprised if those Shadow Riders try tricks like that to catch you off guard or lower your ability to duel. We should watch out for hostage situations, too. I can see it in my mind’s eye even now – they nab me, Alexis, or Syrus, maybe even Chumley, Jasmine, and Mindy, then next thing you know you’re on top of the island’s volcano trying to fight off some demented evil duelist while keeping one of us from being dumped in the lava James Bond style.” Phil hesitated for a moment, and then continued with his last suggestion with some amount of visible reluctance on his face.
“Last of all, I hope you key holders remember one takeaway. Bastion, you mentioned that Sheppard said if these cards get released, ‘chaos and darkness will cover the world, destroying everything’, right? If they get all the keys we’re fucked.” Phil made sure to look all three of the present key holders deep in the eyes one by one to further sink his point in. And, by the look of it, Jaden, Chazz, and Bastion knew of that possibility as well. Then, Phil pushed out a cheeky grin to cover up his previous seriousness. “Ah hell, might as well cheer up a bit! Not much we can do anyways, not until some big bad guys with horrendous accents and dark cloaks start walking around the island looking for some keys for their collection, right? Here’s what I say – let’s raid the cafeteria for milkshake supplies and enjoy the rest of the classes today in style!”
Jaden immediately whooped in joy, dragging Syrus off with him to beat everyone else to the kitchens, while Alexis and Chazz followed at a more sedate pace, with Chazz trying and failing to keep up his cool persona in the face of milkshakes. Meanwhile, Bastion hung back near Phil with what looked like more than a few unsaid words waiting to burst out from behind his lips.
“Phil.” Bastion began, clutching Phil’s shoulder with a serious expression. “I know you said it’s fine, but I am truly sorry that the Chancellor passed you up on this. I know you are a bit… erratic at times, but I don’t think he fully understands that when the situation becomes serious, you step up. I tried telling him that, but he brushed me off. I’m sorry, Phil.”
Phil blinked in surprise while a warm grin spread across his face. “Bastion, buddy, no worries. Honestly, I’m happy enough that you went to bat for me. What did I say earlier? It’s my fault. I should have seen this coming and been more restrained. I didn’t, so here we are. Besides, even if I don’t have a key, I’ve got your back dude. The boys stick together key or no key, even if it means we have to shadow duel some wankers on the way. Now. Milkshakes?”
Bastion laughed, obviously reassured by Phil’s words. “Yup. Milkshakes.” Then in a move completely uncharacteristic of the boy, Bastion took off sprinting after their friends, with Phil right behind him.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dimitri sat by himself in Professor Bernardello’s deserted classroom, mulling over the words the teacher had left him with before he was required to attend to a spot of business for Chancellor Sheppard. Dimitri hardly blamed Bernardello for keeping him after class. Even with the pro duelist’s advice, he had failed against Jaden. Against Chazz. And he was told point-blank that if he were to duel Bastion, he would fail there too. If it had been anyone else telling Dimitri that, he would have scoffed at those words. But Professor Bernardello? Ever since Dimitri’s string of losses beginning from the start of the school year, it seemed like the Italian Stallion was the only person who was still willing to give him the time of day. Maybe the man was simply fulfilling his duties as temporary head of Ra Yellow, or maybe he was genuine. It hardly mattered to Dimitri. All that did was that Professor Bernardello was more than willing to help Dimitri in his quest to become a better duelist in his own way. That alone was far more than any of the other professors, his old friends, or even his fellow dormmates were willing to do. So he listened to Bernardello. He threw himself at Jaden and Chazz using his old methods of trying to use their decks against them, failing yet doing his best to learn from those experiences. This helped him learn that his old methods simply did not work anymore. He wasn’t good enough to make them work.
Dimitri’s eyes danced across the empty classroom, only pausing for a moment to hover over the words Bernardello had scrawled onto the chalkboard for the benefit of the class, and the smaller set of words the teacher had added below, almost too small to be seen at any distance beyond arm’s length, that were for Dimitri alone. Yes, his old methods were not enough. How so? Dimitri had wracked his brains for hours, no, days about that. How were they not enough? Eventually he gave up and asked Professor Bernardello that question before class started, but the man only smiled and replied that he would think on it during class so he would have an answer at the end. Dimitri had easily accepted that logic. The man was a pro duelist, after all. There was no doubt that he would be better than Dimitri. Smarter than Dimitri. As soon as class ended and Dimitri had been called to remain behind, that logic had been proven right. Bernardello had looked at him with a serious glint in his eyes, giving the Ra Yellow student a quick once-over before he reached into his desk to pull out a stack of cards. It was obviously a deck, an old one at that, Dimitri realized when he noticed the faded backs of the cards. Several years old.
‘I thought about your problem, bambini.’ Bernardello’s voice had reached Dimitri’s ears with an almost silky-smooth purr. ‘You believe strength can be gained by watching, learning from your betters to emulate their strength. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps not. Yet I have been keeping an eye on you, young Dimitri. You try to follow in the footsteps of students. Students! No, you must look to better heights. I know of your plans for Yugi Muto’s deck when it is sent to the museum. That should be what you aim for. The footsteps of formidable duelists. The ones that tore their way through the madness of Battle City with tooth and nail.’ Dimitri felt utterly captivated by Bernardello’s words, how they made complete and utter sense to the boy. He had indeed been planning to borrow the deck of the King of Games. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Bernardello’s words of approval only served to show Dimitri how right he had been when thinking about it. But then, the Italian man continued.
‘Your plan should be changed, though.’ Bernardello had paused, clearly amused by Dimitri’s shock. ‘Yes, yes. I know. The deck of the King of Games should be the best, no? That is what I would think in your shoes too, if I didn’t know what I know. The deck that the museum holds is incomplete. There are no god cards in that deck, no Slifer, nor Obelisk, nor Ra. Incomplete. Worthless. What if I told you that there was a man in Battle City that would have defeated that so-called King of Games if it were not for the intervention of the god cards themselves?’ Dimitri’s shocked expression intensified at this revelation. True, he had never gotten the fortune of watching the Battle City tapes, but he hadn’t heard about a duelist that great! If there was a duelist like that in Battle City, and if the god cards had truly been removed from Yugi Muto’s deck, then Professor Bernardello must be right. Like he always was. Then, Bernardello handed him the stack of cards from his desk, saying with a mysterious smile that if Dimitri wanted to win, he would need to inherit the will of that duelist and make it his own. After a quick look-through of the deck, feeling how the cards somehow managed to call to him to tug at his heartstrings, Dimitri wholeheartedly agreed. It was like he thought. Professor Bernardello was the only person on the island, no, in the world, that was in his corner. Now he just had to follow the rest of the good professor’s arrangements. If Dimitri wanted to live up to the rest of Professor Bernardello’s expectations, he would need to utterly demolish Jaden Yuki in a duel tomorrow night. No need for spectators, or teachers. Dimitri didn’t need them anymore, aside from his mentor. Professor Bernardello had already promised to be watching the duel from a distance as to not get in the way of Dimitri’s path.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Later that day in his dorm room, Phil caught Lumina up on the day’s events while she busied herself with folding up a set of fishing gear on the spare bed she had claimed.
“So, that’s that with the Shadow Riders?” Lumina asked him, her hands dexterously working to untangle a length of fishing line.
Phil shrugged. “Yup, them’s the breaks. I was already trying to watch my actions now that I know about the whole ‘impulse control’ thing, but this means I have to be extra careful. Maybe you could smack me when it looks like I’m about to do something colossally stupid?”
Immediately after Phil finished his sentence, Lumina’s fist smacked onto the top of his head. “What? It looked like you were thinking about doing something stupid. Spit it out, man, so I can judge whether or not to give you another smack.” Lumina replied to Phil’s wronged expression.
“Well…” Phil took a step away from Lumina, who responded by grabbing a single flip flop from her dresser nearby and holding it menacingly over her head. “I was thinking, with the pro duelist route gone, Kaiba is probably my best option if I want to get to America over the summer break. The problem is, I need some way to prove to him that I’m not some random snot-nosed kid who won a tournament and thinks he’s in the big leagues now. The thing is, organizations like the Shadow Riders usually have some way to identify themselves, to make themselves known as ‘the bad guys’. I figured if I manage to track one down, force a duel, and beat them, I can hopefully get some identification from their body to help make Kaiba take me more seriously. Give-me-a-plane-seriously or take-care-of-the-issue-himself-seriously would be nice. Best case scenario, those Shadow Riders have some sort of artifact like the millennium items they can use to create shadow duels, instead of relying on nebulous magic powers or duel spirits. Yeah, that would probably be the easiest way to convince Kaiba, at least that my pea-sized brain can think of.”
Lumina squinted her eyes at Phil, ominously raising her flip flop over her head as she mentally weighed whether Phil’s idea was incredibly stupid or somewhat workable considering the timeframe and resources available to him. She sighed, and then as quick as a striking viper she smacked him over the head once with her flip flop.
“The plan might work, but that smack was for good measure. Just in case, you know?”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As the night fell over the island, a small group of students and professors closed their eyes to sleep. Some were worried about the battles to come, uneasy about putting their lives on the line but knowing refusing Sheppard’s invitation could cause untold harm if the rest were to fail. Some were eager, seeing this as a chance to further prove themselves or an excuse to duel even more. They could not fully comprehend the stakes of the situation. Others bit down their dislike of Sheppard providing four of the keys to students. There was no choice. With one teacher already murdered, only the best of the best at Duel Academy could possibly protect the keys. The fact that four of the people included under that ‘best of the best’ tag were students was a shame that had to be ignored. For now. One student, a certain Zane Truesdale, was just really, really tired. Jet lag is a hell of a drug.
The rest of the island, however, was not quite so peaceful. The volcano belched out pitch-black motes of smoke as a tall, masked man wearing all black landed on its slopes using a hang glider. The earth creaked as if the very ground itself that the man walked rejected his presence outright. Yet, despite it being the dead of night and the volcano being a good few minutes’ walk from the dorm, there was another man awaiting the masked figure at the crater of the volcano, watching how the lava within roiled and spat like the waves caused by a typhoon at sea. It was as if nature itself was trying to scream out to anyone who was listening that this new arrival, nay, these two creatures clad in the flesh of humans, were not supposed to be here.
“You’re early.” The man casually greeted the masked figure, though his tone made it quite clear that he cared little if the masked figure was early, late, or arrived precisely when he meant to. The masked figure remained silent, giving the man a quick glance up and down. There was little of the man’s appearance that could be used for identification aside from the clean black suit the man wore and the snarling wooden tiger mask that covered the man’s entire face. Barely even an inch of the man’s skin was showing. The tiger mask, though, was enough. The masked figure knew to expect that.
The man wearing the tiger mask paused to fish out a stack of papers from an inner pocket of his suit, clearly not phased by the lack of a greeting from the masked figure. “Here’s the details on the keepers, along with my suggested takedown route, the names of the people on the island they care about, their personalities, and any potential sensitive subjects you can bring up in a duel with them to throw them off their game. There are also a few notes made by that man.”
The masked man nodded and snatched the stack of papers from the man wearing the tiger mask. “There is another asset on the island?” The masked man finally asked in a cool, collected voice.
The man in the tiger mask nodded. “Unknowing, but there are some grievances that can be exploited. He has prior grudges with the Slifer boy and the Obelisk boy.”
“I see. I shall bring down The Fool first. His power shall be snuffed out before it can be controlled.”
The man in the tiger mask chuckled, the sound building upon itself until he began roaring with full-throated laughter. “That Fiend’s going to be pissed if you take that kid down before they can meet.”
The masked man did not even bother to give his companion’s jest the dignity of a response, merely choosing to turn to walk down the volcano’s slope. The man in the tiger mask shrugged at the masked man’s cold behavior. After all, you couldn’t expect a possessed man to have a sense of humor, could you? Eh, that was Nightshroud for you. Always far too serious.