The soft shuffling sound of tarot cards filled the room as a tall man with blue and grey hair robotically went through the same few motions he had constantly repeated year after year in order to divine and influence the fickle will of the fates. One by one he laid out the cards, placing them in a peculiar wheel pattern for purposes only known to him. As the last card fell into place, an ominous grey aura swept over the man and he began to flip over the tarot cards.
“Justice reversed. The earlier redirection of fate was successful and The Fool shall continue on a path similar to his original predetermined one, free of all unforeseen distractions.”
Sartorius nodded in satisfaction. As expected, that rumored new teacher at the academy truly had his own goals. But were they simply temporarily aligned with the Shadow Rider incursion through the chances of fate, or more firmly bound?
“The Magician, upright… for now. Closely aligned with The Fool as well. Troubling.”
Similar to the unexpected new teacher, The Magician was something that the tarot had not originally foretold. An anomaly, one that strengthened The Fool sooner than expected and provided enough support that The Fool kept showing signs of going off-script.
Sartorius frowned and looked at the card again as the grey aura flared to light up the small, windowless room he occupied. “It shows signs of reversal, however. Manipulation? No… poor planning. The Magician schemes, but his current plan will cause many difficulties in his future that could be avoided with forethought.” He took a moment to think, pausing every single action, even his breathing, to ponder the problem.
“Of course.” Sartorius nodded in agreement towards a pocket of thin air. “It would not be completely impossible to influence through the tides of fate. Difficult, but not impossible. Concern towards the looming possibilities of that specter of Kul Elna. Willingness to endure hardship, but a stubborn refusal to subject that same hardship on the people he cares about when given a choice. As The Magician can be upright, those qualities given by the orientation can also manifest themselves as downsides. Resourcefulness and power shall lead to increased self-reliance and tunnel vision towards what possibilities Tragoedia may master in his meditations. Perhaps that creature may even send me a thank-you gift in the mail once he gets his claws around this second anomaly.”
Sartorius sat back with a huff of exhaustion and a satisfied smile. He hadn’t had to influence fate that much since the last time he was forced to duel personally. And that had been many, many years ago, long before he had acquired Aster Phoenix as a champion. He smiled and shook his head, basking in the satisfaction of a job well done before leaning forward to focus on the table in front of him.
“The Strength… The Strength is no longer a factor. Completely reversed due to unintentional consequences of the butterfly effect. How interesting. That was not his original fate. Nevertheless, he no longer shows to be an influence on The Fiend.”
Then, Sartorius raised his eyebrows in surprise as he looked towards the next card in the circle. It was The Hanged Man, as expected, but somehow it, along with The Sun, was partially overlapped by The Tower reversed. He scowled.
“The Hanged Man…” Sartorius glanced around the cards. “Influenced by the nearby Magician, has led towards personal transformation and a disaster averted. Unless drastic, sudden change is taken, he can no longer be subverted towards my cause as a champion. The same case is for The Sun.”
As Sartorius spoke those words, a card next to The Hanged Man trembled. “I see. The Hierophant, upright. My champion, Aster, continues to conform to my visions. If The Hanged Man and The Sun shall not be my new champions, then The Hierophant shall continue as my old one and take care of the changes The Tower initiated.”
Satisfied by his predictions, Sartorius moved onto the final two cards, ones that were close but not linked together. He hummed to himself in thought.
“The Moon rises. A new player in the game, one beset by illusions, fear, and gradual suppression to the subconscious. Surviving his encounter with The Magician may yet prove to be a boon for me, though…” Sartorius blinked as he saw both The Empress and The Hermit, the former upright and the latter reversed, seemed to be closer to The Moon than at first glance. “Contradictions already. Fascinating. Loneliness brought forth by a nurturing presence.” Sartorius took a good, long look at the cards, making sure that there were no other miniscule changes before he made his judgment. “The spirit has latched onto The Moon. Perhaps as a surrogate for the child she lost thousands of years ago? Or for some other purpose? Yet the events of Kul Elna warp her mind into a twisted abomination of what it once was. How interesting, that event is more relevant than it should be. Originally… yes, Kul Elna should only be even remembered by that creature that seeks the planets by now. Fate twists and churns in directions not originally predicted. Something, or someone, has caused alarmingly drastic changes that should not be. Still, the changes may yet prove to be fortuitous. If The Moon continues his course, then a collision with The Magician later on is inevitable.”
Yet, there was one card left that continued to stay the same ever since Sartorius had first placed it all those years ago.
“The Fiend. Still upright.”
Where Sartorius had once panicked upon seeing it, he now only acknowledged the card with a small tilt of his head. It hardly mattered anymore. What was done was done, and all he had to do was to share the glory and beauty of his light with the world.
“Aster.” Sartorius said after pressing a button on the nearby wall phone to speed dial a certain number. “I need you to take a flight to New York. Tell that creature’s servants that they should expect both The Magician and The Moon over the summer. He should consider the information my congratulations for his inevitable mastery of synchro summoning. After that, rendezvous with me in Domino City. We must recruit The Emperor before the tides of fate change once more. It is our destiny, after all.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil stared blankly at the chaos that was the infirmary while the sun rose ever-so-surely into the morning sky. At first glance there was nothing wrong with the room if one was to just look at the door. The shattered window and the nurse with the broken arm, however, told a different story to the people inside.
“-and then he leapt out of the window?” Professor Crowler asked Nurse Fontaine with a concerned expression while he wrote her words out on a clipboard.
“Yes, right through the glass. It was the last thing I saw before I fell unconscious.” Nurse Fontaine replied, her face stark white in pain as she finished setting the splint on her own arm. “I don’t know how he did it, that glass should be rated for forces with far more weight than a small first-year kid, but he went right through it first try.”
“Looks like he didn’t make it unscathed, though. The contractors must have missed this room when they were going through and installing safety glass.” Ms. Hibiki added. She gingerly leaned through the remains of the window, careful not to catch her skin or clothing on the remaining shards of glass on the windowsill to observe the trail the boy had left. “The amount of blood on the grass outside is quite frankly, alarming. We can only hope that Professor Bernardello will be able to find Dimitri before he bleeds to death.”
Then, Ms. Hibiki swung her head to look at Phil. “I still can’t believe you didn’t get one of us last night.”
Phil sighed with a crestfallen expression. “I’m… sorry. I should have, but I wasn’t thinking. Hell, the duel started in the first place because Dimitri said he had seen some shady people lurking around and would give me the details if I beat him. I… I wasn’t expecting it to turn into a damned shadow duel, and he was stone-cold unconscious after it ended. Freaked me out a bit I guess. Especially since it didn’t seem like he meant to turn it into a shadow duel, or even knew what one was.”
“Enough.” Professor Crowler gently interrupted Phil’s rant as the boy began to talk faster and faster with each sentence. “Phillip, you did what you had to do in the duel. If you had lost the game, well… I don’t want to think about what might have happened. No one here is blaming you for forgetting something after being forced to duel for your life. Shock, stress, both of those make it easy to forget about even the most important of things. How about you get some breakfast inside of you and we’ll talk a bit more later?”
Phil mutely nodded, taking one last look at the makeshift cast on Nurse Fontaine’s arm and the splintered remains of the window before turning and heading towards the cafeteria.
Meanwhile, Ms. Hibiki walked over to Crowler. “I still can’t believe he was walking around trying to run into a Shadow Rider. If the recklessness wasn’t completely on par for his personality, I would be beginning to wonder if Phillip was working another angle with this stunt.”
“If we…” Crowler sighed and placed a hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if we were to ignore how terrible this situation is, this could be seen as an upside. According to Phillip, Dimitri was originally aiming to duel Jaden. If the Shadow Duel had triggered then, and considering the top duelist of Ra Yellow narrowly won himself, we might have lost another key last night.”
Ms. Hibiki’s face hardened, though she did not miss that Crowler had used Jaden’s actual name for the very first time since the start of the school year. “That was out of line, but you have a point. Are you sure, though, that Zane lost? We still haven’t found him yet after he disappeared from his room.”
“We can’t know for sure, but if the Chancellor says Zane’s key has been lost, then I’m inclined to believe him. Hopefully Professor Bernardello will be able to find Zane in his search with the security guards. With how aggressive the Shadow Riders have been these past two days, I don’t know if he will, though.”
Ms. Hibiki fell silent, considering Crowler’s words while she moved to stand next to Nurse Fontaine. “Are you sure you’re okay, Fonda?” She gently asked the nurse.
Nurse Fontaine weakly smiled. “I’ll manage. Though, if anyone else who can’t move gets sent to the infirmary, I might need to call you to get some strong boys together to help me now that I’m down an arm. Just… make sure you find that kid, alright? I’ve seen him around the campus before, and he’s always seemed like such a nice lad. Quiet, but nice enough. Last night, when he woke up, he didn’t seem all… there. I don’t know. It was something about his eyes and how he moved. His arms and legs were all jerky, like how a robot would move. And his eyes.” Nurse Fontaine looked straight at Ms. Hibiki, her previous smile disappearing to be replaced by a grim frown. “Midori, it was like his eyes were pleading with me for help, and I couldn’t do a damned thing. Whatever the hell is going on, that kid isn’t all there anymore.”
Professor Crowler shared a startled look with Ms. Hibiki and they both came to an unspoken agreement.
“Easy there Fonda.” Ms. Hibiki eventually replied. “Crowler will join Bernardello in the search, and I’ll only be a quick yell away. Just sit tight and we’ll find him. I know we will.”
“Yes of course.” Crowler said, projecting the very image of dependability. “Bernardello was my very best student, and he’s developed into a truly dependable man. The adventures the two of us got up to after he graduated and I helped him enter the pro leagues, well, I’d be surprised if there weren’t legends about us by now.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Ms. Hibiki chuckled and shooed Crowler out of the door with her hands. “Sorry about that Fonda, with Vellian you have to cut him off early when he gets to talking about past students of his. Anyways, like I said earlier I’ll just be a shout away. I need to let Ms. Rhodes know her brother is still safe and then I’ll start reviewing the security footage for last night. I’ve already asked the janitor, Mr. Gorg, to check in on you in half an hour, so please just take a moment to rest. You’ve had quite the night.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Marco Bernardello lit another cigarette as he sidestepped a tree covered in poison ivy vines, noting with some displeasure that he was on his second-to-last cig. Beside him, the head security guard yawned in boredom while the grey-haired policeman Chancellor Sheppard had called up in a hurry adjusted his eyepatch and smoked a cigarette he had bummed off of Bernardello.
The group had been following the messy trail all morning. Drops of blood and broken branches were all they had to go off of after the boy’s rather heavy-handed escape from the infirmary. That, and the testimony of a frightened nurse.
“Oi, over here.” Police Inspector Magure said with a voice made rough by lungs scarred from many years of smoking. Bernardello looked towards where Magure was pointing and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Well hot damn, he’s almost made it out.” He eventually said around a thick cloud of smoke. On the beach, just past the tree line, Dimitri worked to drag a rowboat out to the water with jerky, halting movements. Multiple large shards of glass still stuck out from his skin in all sorts of odd angles and oozing rivulets of blood wounded their way down his arms and legs. However, the three men went completely unnoticed by the boy on the beach as they watched, the thick undergrowth of the jungle-like forest hiding all but their barest silhouettes.
The head security guard shared an impressed look with Bernardello, and then turned to grab his handheld radio from where it was clipped on his backside.
“Guess we should probably call this i-“ Was all the guard could say before his words transformed into a hushed gasping sound.
“Ah, yes. Sorry, sorry. Just be a good man and pass on quietly, yeah? Shhh shh shhh. It’ll all be over here in a few seconds.” Bernardello said with soft tones as he supported the head security guard’s body with one hand while his other hand drove a long-bladed knife through the guard’s back.
“Wow, that kiddo just keeps on trooping.” Police Inspector Magure observed dispassionately from the side, not even paying a single whit of attention to the act of murder happening in his vicinity. In fact, his tone of mild boredom would have been more fit for a spectator of a golf tournament than for a policeman watching a bloody kid next to the scene of a felony homicide.
“I know, right?” Bernardello replied in similar casual tones, as if the two men were discussing the weather. “The little cattivello must’ve lost at least half a pint of blood by now. I tell ya’ Magure, they’re like little Energizer Bunnies. They keep going and going and going.”
Magure took a satisfied puff on his bummed cigarette while he considered Bernardello’s words. Then, once Dimitri had finished pushing the rowboat out to sea and hopped on, the inspector turned back towards the forest and the school beyond the trees.
“Don’t suppose we should be getting back? What’re you thinking, did we see the kid get away just in the nick of time, or did he disappear without a trace once we got to the beach?”
Bernardello slid the knife out of the head security guard’s back, muttering a few curses as he moved the man’s body into a nearby bush.
“Disappeared without a trace, I’d say. And the sec guy seems to have gotten separated from us early on. We were sooo~ concerned about the poor kid that we didn’t even notice until we turned back to report.” Bernardello eventually replied while lighting the final cigarette in his pack. He shook his head in mock exasperation. “Ah, the things I do for my precious students. That bitch Hibiki must be rubbing off on me or something.”
Magure didn’t care enough to respond, choosing instead to grab the brown bottle of rum that the security guard had been carrying at his waist next to his walkie-talkie and taking a long draft of the foul liquid.
“Woof, that guy had terrible taste.” Magure muttered in dissatisfaction before taking yet another long gulp of the drink. “Eh, momma ain’t raised no coward.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil fidgeted on a wooden chair in the depths of the library while Bastion digested his story.
“You really should hav-“ Bastion began to say, but Phil cut him off almost immediately.
“I know. I know. I was a fucking moron. I don’t regret taking the heat off Jaden, but my top priority after dropping Dimitri off at the infirmary should have been getting either Crowler or Hibiki. Fucking hell, what a damned mess this all is.”
Bastion nodded silently in agreement as he picked a few more books off the nearby shelf to place on the table. “Now that the ‘shoulda woulda coulda’ is out of the way, it really is a pity the library has so few materials regarding possession. I gather it must not have been much of an issue in the past, or perhaps past cases mainly happened without other people on hand to document such incidents.”
“Well, off the top of my head, I think Bakura was possessed in Battle City.” Phil began, wracking his brains for anything that could even slightly help the situation. “Marik Ishtar, I’m not sure. That whole mess might have just been him being a damned nutjob. I think there were maaayybbeee one or two other times where some sort of possession happened in the past, but for the life of me I can’t think of any specific names off the top of my head.”
“The Bakura case would make sense.” Bastion agreed. “If we factor in the assumption that the millennium items did in fact exist and were in fact magical, that would fill in a lot of holes regarding his actions in Battle City. In fact, if we compare Bakura with how you recounted Dimitri acting last night, then our impromptu case study on the subject can hold some water. Let’s list the facts.”
Bastion and Phil went back and forth for several minutes, being so wrapped up in their theory crafting that they failed to even notice Jaden, Chazz, and Alexis finding their table in the depths of the library one by one. However, the pair were eventually able to agree on the following facts of the situation that they listed on a whiteboard.
“Firstly, Dimitri appeared to be extremely sleep deprived at the time of the duel. Dark circles around his eyes, confusion, difficulty speaking, and hearing voices. Secondly, once the shadow duel began when Dimitri activated Destiny Board, Phil was able to faintly hear those same voices.
Bastion looked around, noticing the additional presence of Jaden, Chazz, and Alexis for the first time. “Interestingly enough, the deck Dimitri was using seemed to be either a one to one copy of the deck Ryou Bakura used in the Battle City tournament, or the original, authentic article. That would explain the presence of the Destiny Board strategy, Dark Necrofear, and other monsters such as Dark Ruler Ha Des. Thirdly, from how lifelike Dark Necrofear was acting, it’s highly likely she is a duel spirit and was the one that provided the power to start the shadow duel.”
Phil stood up and took Bastion’s place near the whiteboard, the boys trading out positions in one smooth moment without even having to speak. Phil began pacing back and forth as he expanded on Bastion’s points with increasingly animated gestures.
“Right, so we don’t have any 100% positive proof, but it’s our theory that the poor guy is being gradually possessed by Dark Necrofear. By looking through this library’s piss-poor example of an occult section, most of the books that even mention possession in the first place tend to agree that a spirit would have to fight against the host's willpower in order to complete said possession. It’s something that a human will naturally reject. So if a nasty spirit would gain a foothold, it would focus on wearing down the target mentally and physically as much as possible. The end result would be the erasure of the host’s mind and personality so they could insert their own. If I were a spirit trying to possess some poor sap, off the top of my head I know I’d focus first on making it near-impossible to sleep. I’ve been on some wild sleep-deprived binges before, and I tell ya once you get to around 24 hours to 48 hours of next to zero sleep, your mind starts to act like the train of thought was blown up at the station by a nuke. That would probably get me enough of a foothold to maybe start influencing actions, and then I could just start running the target’s body as hard as possible until complete possession is doable. Mix that mental exhaustion with heavy doses of physical exhaustion. Depending on how much I’d care about the condition of the body once the possession is complete, that would also decide how much intentional damage to do to it along the way.”
Phil looked around at his mildly horrified audience before shrugging. “Or maybe not. I don’t know, I’m not exactly an expert in occult shit and what I’m going off of is what I saw in the duel, a few crappy books written by a crazy guy, and the little brainstorm sesh I put together with Bastion. I’m really trying not to think about how absolutely fucked it would be if we’re right. Bottom line is, even if we’re wrong, I’d bet cold hard cash that Dimitri’s in for a bad time. Something’s messing with his head and there’s no way in hell that he could have gotten the strength to burst through that window with his body by himself. Let alone being able to throw Nurse Fontaine into the wall so hard she breaks her arm. That’s something that a 200 pound MMA fighter could probably do, not a 13 or 14 year old kid that’s clocking in at no more than 150 pounds. Glass is way harder to break with your body than you’d think. Trust me on this guys.”
“And that brings us to another problem.” Bastion brought up as he got up to stand next to Phil. “Dimitri said he was originally aiming for Jaden. Normally that would make sense because he’s lost to Jaden in the past and might want a second try, but with that shadow duel triggering? And him potentially knowing something about the Shadow Rider issue? That’s quite a coincidence.”
Bastion shook his head. “Moreover, why pick Bakura’s deck? Dimitri’s known for copying decks, but why not go for Yugi’s, Joey’s, or Marik’s deck? Bakura only made it to the top eight in Battle City. There’s far more famous targets available, even if Dimitri couldn’t find any copies of the vital cards those three used in their strategies.
“Besides, I checked with Ms. Dorothy earlier, right when her shop opened. Dimitri hasn’t bought cards from her since he tried to copy Jaden’s Elemental Hero deck. Could he have possessed the deck beforehand? Possibly, but that would be far too much of a stretch for my liking. It’s much more likely that someone else gave him that deck. Something is afoot here on the island. Our guess? Dimitri got approached by a Shadow Rider… or we have a mole.”
“A mole? So one of the students or teachers?” Chazz spoke up with clenched fists. “You have got to be kidding. This is Duel Academy! Someone willing to be a rat wouldn’t make it here in the first place.”
Phil and Bastion hesitated, but eventually with a nod they decided to share their original theory.
“We’ve been thinking about that possibility for a few days now, but we didn’t want to say anything until there was more concrete proof.” Bastion began. “Too many coincidences happened when Alexis got involved. With Dimitri, there are once again a number of oddities that stick out, ones that only make sense if he either collaborated with a Shadow Rider or with the hypothetical mole.”
Phil stepped forward to elaborate. “If there is a mole, it’s not one of the students. We’re sure of that. Of the faculty that know about the Shadow Riders, only Sheppard and Bernardello are possibilities right now. Then there’s that new guy, Police Inspector Magure. However, we don’t have any rock-solid proof. It’s only hypothetical right now, so keep it on the down low. Just make sure to be wary around those three, and you should be fine. Don’t be around any of them without another person you can trust.”
Alexis nodded slowly. “Chancellor Sheppard and Professor Bernardello. I see… but why that Magure guy?”
Phil stopped pacing and looked steadily at Alexis. “Lady, have you seen his eyepatch? It’s practically a straight-out copy of the millennium eye. The dude looks shady as shit to me. Hardly anyone messes with that sort of imagery without being up to something. He may have only shown himself today, but it really gets the brain going. Again, though, like the other two we don’t have any solid proof. It’s just us trying to put the pieces together of a puzzle that we don’t know what the end result should look like and someone ate the corner pieces. Follow your gut and have someone you trust watch your back, but in case Bastion and I are being overly-paranoid, don’t do anything rash. Please. Also don’t pull a me and forget to grab a trustworthy professor if you get stuck in a shadow duel.”
Phil had a point, the four of them realized. The police inspector had been brought on in the light of Zane’s disappearance and Dimitri’s escape. Now that they were a key down, Sheppard had ordered that the keepers take steps to hide their keys, steps that were assisted by the inspector in doing so. But if he was a suspect…
“Should we re-hide our keys, then?” Jaden asked. “The whole thing kinda seemed like a let-down anyways. I’d rather beat them in a sweet duel than deal with all this cloak and dagger stuff. I’m no good at it anyways.”
Phil and Bastion both cocked their heads to the side as they considered Jaden’s question. “Well… that wouldn’t be a bad idea. However…”
They shared a look and Phil finished Bastion’s train of thought. “How about this. We re-hide Chazz’s and Jaden’s, but keep Bastion’s in the same place that we know Magure knows about. Then Jaden, Chazz, and I have a good ol’ sleepover in my room. If Bastion’s key gets looted, he gives us a shout and we’re close enough to gank anyone who tries to go for it. We’ll also know that Magure is an asshole. If nothing happens, then we can rest easy that the good inspector is only trying to help us. Alexis, you can join us too if you want. It’s already gonna be a bit crowded in my room, though, so it’s up to you.”
Alexis giggled at the thought of the four boys trying to squeeze in the tiny dorm rooms the school provided to Ra Yellow and below. “No, I was planning on sticking close to Ms. Hibiki already, just in case one of those jerks sends that bird after me again. And if push comes to shove, the two of us can team up to take down another Shadow Rider.”
“Easy there lady.” Phil chuckled for the first time that day. “Save one for the rest of us, ay? If you keep this up you’ll make us look bad while you’re over there with fifty Shadow Riders in the bag.”