The edge of a cliff filled Jaden’s vision, the dark shadows cast by the massive natural structure only able to partially obscure the terrifying drop not even an inch away from his feet. Winds howled around his ears like the weather was trying to split his hearing into a billion non-working pieces. And past the cliff, flying in mid-air with wings of black and purple leathery skin, a monster stared back at him.

Yet, the way the monster stared at him was… different. Much different than it had been in the past when Jaden had first started noticing the monster as a regular visitor in his dreams. At first, he thought it was nothing but another nightmare. Maybe it was just some weird sign made up by his noggin’ to show how the fearsome specter of ‘classwork’ and ‘lectures’ was gradually approaching as summer ended. Then summer left Jaden to the terrible mercies of school, and he still kept noticing that same presence in his dreams. The contents were often different, but the monster was always there, watching in the background from places it didn’t seem to realize Jaden could clearly see.

Right after that realization, Jaden immediately turned around to ask Bastion and Phil for advice. It was always a bit weird trying to fully describe a half-remembered series of dreams, but if anything was going on in his dreams that Jaden needed to pay attention to, those two would find it – and find it they did.

The first time Jaden actually went out of his way to approach the spikey-haired monster in his dreams, he found out what it felt like to be ripped in half lengthways in a dream.

The second time Jaden went out of his way to approach the purple and black-skinned monster, he found out what it felt like to have his eyes gouged out with a pair of thumbs in a dream.

The third, the fourth, the fifth, and so on and so forth. Each one ended in such sudden and painful violence that it was enough to make Jaden lurch awake feeling all sweaty and kinda pukey. A normal guy would have tapped out by round two. Truthfully, Jaden considered that, at least until he got a glimpse of the monster’s eyes. The contents of those eyes were best described as 50/50, just like their appearance. Fifty percent pure, undiluted hatred, fifty percent… loving care, for some weird reason.

That settled it. The day after round seven, Jaden moseyed his way over to the Ra Yellow dorm to get some more ideas from his boys. Syrus and Chumley came along, of course, since they were also in the loop. Between the five of them, it was certain that the solution couldn't stay hidden for long. It was a pretty great day, actually. A day of skipping classes, eating copious amounts of food Chazz 'borrowed' from the kitchen when Phil ran over to pull him into the loop, and just generally mucking about. By the end of the day, a strategy was refined past the initial suggestion of ‘making some grilled cheese or something’ that was brought up when Jaden initially told his friends about the dream.

Jaden went to bed that night feeling ready to rock and roll. He closed his eyes, darkness settled around his vision, and as soon as he realized he was in a dream, he imagined Chumley’s chosen weapon appearing in his hands – a George Foreman electrical grill. Without wasting a second, even as the monster in his dreams flew towards him, he whipped a warm loaf of bread, a fresh wheel of delicious cheese, and a tub of butter out of his pockets, which were nowhere near large enough to actually hold any of those ingredients had this not been in a dream. The loaf was split into sandwich-sized slices. Two slices were buttered, with the delicious spread going on both sides of each piece of bread (Chumley’s secret step, shared only with his closest bros!). The grill was plugged into a rock, which had no actual electrical plugins – rocks were simply something that could generate electricity in Jaden’s dreams. His dreams were rad like that.

The monster flew closer and closer, wings generating sonic booms as it raced through the sky. Jaden simply winked at the monster and turned his attention to the wheel of cheese. Carefully, he blew on his nails and then spread open his fist in an imitation of the martial arts movies he'd binged with Syrus and Chumley the day before in preparation for this moment. His hand, open in a wicked karate chop, sliced through the block of cheese like a hot knife through butter. One slice! Two slices! Three slices of sharp cheddar cheese, which giggled and threw itself onto the slices of bread with reckless abandon for their cheesy lives, using the force generated by the movement to help slide the sourdough slices onto the sizzling grill.

Finally, Jaden shouted the magic words suggested by Phil, though he still didn’t fully understand what they actually meant.

“Woohoo! Can you smell what the Rock’s cooking?”

Despite that, Jaden was still ripped in half by the monster. The feeling was sickening, but he wasn’t down and out yet. As soon as the monster grabbed him, Jaden lunged over to his grill, produced the perfect, Chumley-grade grilled cheese, and stuffed it in his assailant’s mouth. The last thing he saw before his dream faded away was the monster chewing with an expression of extreme surprise, and if he dared say, relish, on its face.

After that, Jaden repeated the process every night. Every single night, until he finally stood on the edge of that cliff, looking the monster that had tormented him every single night right in the eyes. The George Foreman stove sizzled merrily away near Jaden’s feet, the winds whipping through his dreamscape unable to extinguish the contraptions blazing energy powered by Jaden’s will and his happy memories of his friends. He stared at the monster, and the monster stared back.

It did not attack him. It did not try to strangle him or split his flesh apart. It simply stared at Jaden with an unreadable expression. To be fair, Jaden also had some amount of conflict in his noggin’ about this whole thing. Being nice was one thing, but dying in his dreams hurt. It hurt to blue blazes and back.

The timer on the portable electric grill dinged, causing both him and the monster to slightly flinch in surprise. Jaden glanced down at the grill and grinned.

“Hey… Yubel, if that’s your name. Food’s up.”

For the first time since Jaden had seen the creature in his dreams, it spoke.

“How… did you know my name? Do you remember me?”

Jaden shook his head and opened up the grill, retrieving the grilled cheese sandwich and lightly tossing it toward Yubel.

“No, sorry. One of my friends showed me a card that looks like you. Are you a duel spirit? Bastion says you’re my sleep paralysis demon, but Phil thinks you’re a duel spirit like Winged Kuriboh.”

Yubel bit down on the sandwich without any further words. Crunches filled the air and Jaden sat down on a nearby rock, a safe distance from the edge of the cliff as he watched his strange companion try and fail to hide their satisfaction with the sandwich. Maybe another guy would have missed it, but Jaden knew very well that one of the unbreakable rules of the world was that no one, not anyone, could keep their composure from even the smell of Chumley-style grilled cheeses. Forget nukes, those sandwiches were the strongest weapons in the world.

Then Yubel lunged forward and began to strangle Jaden with both hands. His world darkened, a sight with more shadows than the cliff he was near could ever cast. He struggled to breathe… and his eyes snapped open to see Syrus standing over his bed, shaking his arm.

“Bro! Bro!” The blue-haired boy wailed.

“You good dude?” Jaden groggily asked, glancing at the clock near where he slept on the top bunk in the dorm room.

“I found out why no one’s seen Professor Crowler since lunch yesterday!”

Jaden massaged his neck with a hand. He could almost feel Yubel’s fingers wrapped around it, even now. What was even odder, an odd thing that honestly scared him a bit that he actually noticed it, was that Jaden could tell Yubel hadn’t used their full strength this time. The attempt felt half-hearted compared to his dreams in the past. Maybe he needed to see Nurse Fontaine to make sure he wasn’t going crazy.

“What?”

Syrus gulped loudly. It was a bit odd. This time last year, neither of the boys would have been particularly concerned about the headmaster of Obelisk Blue. Why would they have been? The dude had been a complete jerkwad until the thingy with the shadow riders. But now? The way Syrus looked, Jaden actually felt a knot of worry for the professor form in his gut. Crowler had been gone for an awfully long time.

“Crowler got hurt real bad. Alexis saw him in the infirmary when she went to tell Nurse Fontaine who we think might have been that Obelisk guy, you know the one that tried to break down Princess Rose’s door?”

Jaden half-remembered the conversation all the boys had in the afternoon once Alexis told them about the freaky incident. Chazz, Phil, and Bastion hadn’t even needed five seconds to put two and two together to realize the culprit was probably Raizou. They seemed convinced that the coincidence was too much, and who was he to argue? Even Jaden thought it was fishy.

“No kidding…” Jaden shook his head and rubbed his eyes to clear out all the weird sleep gunk in them. “Was he awake? Is the big guy alright? Does he need our help like the chancellor did with the Shadow Riders?”

"Dunno," Syrus mumbled. "Alexis said he didn't seem to be moving, but Fontaine chased her away before she could get a closer look.”

Jaden cleared the last of the fog from his brain and leaped down from the bunk bed, eliciting a yelp of surprise from Syrus.

"Right!" Jaden resolutely grabbed his duel disk and tossed his Slifer Red jacket around his shoulders. "Let's go support the big guy! Slifers, roll out!”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Meanwhile, Phil was sitting in a tree. The thing about trees is that they have leaves. Leaves, and branches. Bark, too, but that bit hardly mattered. What mattered was that with his eye-catching Ra Yellow jacket temporarily shed from his person, and with all the leaves he glued to his shirt and pants to form a makeshift ghillie suit, Phil was pretty fucking hard to make out between all the branches and leaves in the tree. He also cut a pretty comical sight, but considering Bastion and Chazz were also with him in the tree on their own separate branches, they could all look ridiculous together if anyone actually thought to look up.

“He doesn’t look awake to me.” Phil muttered, squinting his eyes to peer through the window of the infirmary.”

Bastion fiddled with the pair of binoculars he’d brought from his dorm room before replying.

“Poison. Definitely poison, assuming those medical charts I can see next to his bed are correct. Knowing Nurse Fontaine’s competence, they are. I can’t quite tell exactly what poison it is. Nothing but medical jargon I lack the knowledge to understand right now. Perhaps we should consider swinging by the library on the way back to the dorms.”

“Which means some geeks are trying to mess with Duel Academy again.” Chazz summarized, leaning back to rest his body against the trunk of the tree. “Looks like we were correct earlier, like usual.”

Right now, the infirmary was quiet. No visitors and the only occupants were Crowler and Fontaine. Ms. Hibiki had shown up earlier, but soon enough she had been forced to return to teach her classes, along with assumingly finding someone to cover Crowler’s.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Phil mimicked Chazz and leaned his own back against the tree trunk.

“Poison. That takes a certain type of person. Most people would just try to settle things with a duel. Hell, a shadow game if the beef is nasty enough for poison to be considered.”

Despite Phil’s own words, he knew that poison, while rare, was still possible in this world. The crimes of Bernardello had convinced him of that much. While the murderous Italian had indeed started his fair share of shadow duels, Sartyr had been stabbed to death by him, along with the head of security. That hardly meant everyone would turn toward more physical means of removing enemies, but it did show there were exceptions to the rule of solving most problems through a hearty game of duel monsters.

“The key here is what action is next?” Bastion murmured, taking another look through his binoculars to soak up every detail he could observe of Crowler’s condition. “Crowler is unconscious, his life hanging by a thread. That means for an unknown amount of time, a powerful duelist is out of action. The only other professors on the island with any sort of notable dueling ability are Ms. Hibiki and Professor Banner. What is this a prelude to?”

“An invasion?” Phil offered, fingers absentmindedly playing with the glued leaves on his makeshift ghillie suit. “Take out one of the big guns and it gets a whole lot easier to get dudes on the island. I guess by that logic it could just as well be an infiltration. One less strong duelist keeping a sharp eye out means it’s easier to sneak in.”

“The light. A seer.” Bastion mumbled in thought, his fingers tap-tapping away on his knee as his brain chewed through the scant amount of information available. “Alexis stated that Rose didn’t know much when they spoke yesterday evening. She vaguely knew Raizou, not by name but by presence. She met a man calling himself a seer at some point during the summer. She found the term 'the light' familiar but didn't know anything specific. Yesterday we decided that all this business with seers and the light was happening too often for it to be a coincidence. But what can it mean?”

“A cult?” Chazz broke in suddenly. Phil and Bastion turned toward him with a gleam in their eyes.

“Yesssssss…” Phil drew the word out. His entire body was wound tight like a spring just about to be released as he considered the worrying implications. “That does sound super culty. You guys think this is an optional thing or a brainwashing thing?”

“Brainwashing.” Bastion instantly replied. “Every subject we’ve encountered has had strange behavior. Actually, not just strange, but straight-out bizarre. All but Raizou have attempted to duel us. What if…”

Bastion and Phil turned to face each other and said the exact same words at the exact same time.

“The requirement for brainwashing is the cultist winning the duel.”

Bastion nodded. “Now, keep in mind this is only a hypothesis. We need more data to be sure.”

“More data he says.” Chazz clapped quietly while his voice dripped with sarcasm. “I am sure, if this is like the last time, we’ll get plenty here real soon. Evil cultists, come here! These Ra Yellow nerds need more data! Queue up one at a time please! Respect the line, anyone who cuts will get sent right to the back!”

Despite the seriousness of the circumstances, all three of the boys chuckled at the thought.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Soon enough, the boys collectively agreed that there wasn’t much else to see at the infirmary and carefully extracted themselves from the tree. While Crowler hadn’t moved the entire time they peered through the window, what Bastion could see through his binoculars of the vital monitors reassured the three of them that Crowler’s life was at least temporarily as stable as it could be considering the circumstances. Any more lingering around the infirmary would be pointless.

So, the boys marched across the academy grounds, heedless of the befuddled looks shot at them by students for their strange choices in leafy style as they headed right for the library. Raizou hadn’t been seen in the Obelisk dorm since the day before, so there was no obvious solution right in front of their faces, no upfront enemies to fight.

“Ah, Jaden.” Phil abruptly raised his hand in greeting upon seeing a familiar trio of Slifer Reds making their way across the quad. “Heard the news, I assume?”

Phil, Bastion, and Chazz stopped walking and waited for the rest to catch up. All three approaching boys sported expressions of general worry and concern over the recent events.

“Yuppers.” Jaden hastily nodded. “Have you seen him? Is the prof okay?”

Bastion waggled his hand in a so-so gesture. “Could be better, could be worse. Students aren’t allowed to visit though. I think the staff is trying to keep this secret for as long as they can. I don’t blame them, really. A professor poisoned? After what happened last year, this is most certainly ominous.”

“Aw.” Syrus said with a crestfallen expression. “I’m still miffed over how mean he was to us last year, but I don’t want him to die… Crowler’s actually a good dude now.”

Phil nodded in agreement. “Aye. We’re heading to the library. Bastion saw some medical weirdness on Crowler’s charts when we were totally not spying through a window. If we’re lucky, we might be able to figure something out in some dusty corner of the good ol’ book place.”

“And what if we do?” Chumley asked. Skepticism was written all over the chubby boy’s face as clear as day.

“Fuck if I know. At least we might know how good or how bad the big guy is doing.” Phil shrugged. “The problem is that our main lead, Raizou, has split to who knows where. I’d love to find him and squeeze him for info, but ya’ know… the whole finding him bit. We’ve already exhausted the Rose angle. She’s told us all she knows. So, it’s either we sit in the library and sift through basic medical books while we scheme, or we walk around the island and hope we get lucky. Besides, you never know. This could turn out like some crappy detective TV drama and the poison ends up being the key to it all.” Phil shrugged again, clearly unimpressed with their scant choices in the matter.

“We could try spying on the teachers.” Chazz mused. “I think they know more than we do about what is going on. The who’s, the why’s, all that. Maybe not all of the answers, but more than we have. What we have is practically nothing.”

Syrus looked straight into Chazz’s eyes and said, with the calmest tone Phil had ever heard the boy take, “Do you have a freaking death wish? Ms. Hibiki would kill us if she found out. Also, don’t think I’ve forgotten about how Banner tried to literally kill us on the beach last year! I get that he turned a new leaf. I get that his punishment is to get trapped in the body of a cat for who knows how long. You know what I also get? That if Banner sees us spying on him, he might use literal freaking dark magic to inflict horrors beyond human comprehension upon our poor noggins. Nope, no spying.”

Syrus flung out his arms and crossed them into an ‘X’ to further drive home his point. “Heck, even if we don’t get sentenced to one hundred years of detention if we get caught, do you know how much of a breach of trust that would be? Ms. Hibiki cares about us! I know you guys want to help, I do too. But the adults don’t want us involved. Sure! Go to the library! Research! Plan! If we can stuff that jerk Raizou in a bag, I’ll hold the bag open while you do it! If we need to interrogate him, I’ll pass the rag and the jug of water! Just anything. Anything, other than betraying the trust of the adults that deeply care about us.”

Phil blinked silently in shock at Syrus's rant. It was out of the blue, but it made sense. Hopefully their tree shenanigans earlier that day didn't count as 'spying' or a 'breach of trust'.

“Alright. Fair point. We do this our own way, with values and morals and cool stuff like that. Maybe some blackjack and hookers if we feel like it. Bastion, I think the library is singing its sweet siren song.”

Bastion inclined his head toward Syrus, a new respect for the short Slifer Red glimmering in his eyes.

“Well said Syrus. Phil, I think I am hearing that song as well. It pairs nicely with the detective drama siren song that I can also coincidentally hear right now. Shall we go partake of the written word?”

“Until I want to claw my own eyes out from reading dry medical texts all day.” Phil confirmed, patting Chazz on the back and continuing along the path to the library.

“Spying on the teachers would be some real Mission Impossible stuff.” Jaden joked, causing Chazz and the other boys to let out a few chuckles of their own.

“Maybe after this is all over?” Chazz regained control over his expression and said in a deadpan voice, almost like that of an announcer in a movie trailer. “Mission Impossible: A Student’s Guide of How To Not Die When Ms. Hibiki Sees You Break Into Her Office.”

“Featuring!” Syrus swept out his hands as if he could already visualize the movie, “Recommendations for running shoes and a reminder that Ms. Hibiki was a track star in her youth.”

Chumley’s face filled with a wide grin as he hopped onto the joke that was admittedly doing a pretty good job at distracting them all from the worry Crowler’s condition had caused. “Also featuring the special guest, Professor Banner the morally dubious mad scientist and hobbyist user of terrifying dark magic!”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A cold spray of sea water battered the deck of the ferry from Domino City to the island of Duel Academy. At the helm of the vessel, a grizzled, wiry sea captain manned the wheel as he watched the island steadily come into view. His hands, scarred from countless bar fights, expertly guided the unwieldy vessel through the sea.

“Ready up!” He shouted, those words bringing the deck to life. Yet, it was not brought to life by sailors. In fact, the captain was the only man on the ship that actually looked like a sailor. Boots rang against wood as ranks of brutal, tattooed men swarmed out of the cabins below deck to snap to attention. Some were elegantly clad in white three-piece business suits, others more simply dressed in similarly white collared shirts already soaked with seawater. There were even a few only wearing threadbare shorts and stained sleeveless wife-beater undershirts, as if they had just rolled out of bed. Each one of the men, regardless of dress, had tattoos covering nearly every inch of exposed skin. Roaring dragons, snarling tigers, and fierce Buddhas, all displayed in brilliant ink against scarred and tanned skin.

In front of them all, one man, aside from the grizzled captain, stood out apart from the crowd. A tall, well-built man with an easy smile, a puffy blue jacket wrapped around his otherwise bare chest in a casual display of confidence – or perhaps, arrogance. The blue jacket was well-worn, as if it had seen its fair share of deadly trials and tribulations, but the gold lettering of 'Security' written on nearly every bit of the cloth still stood out just as well against the jacket as it had been when the piece of clothing had first been made.

“Yeah. Not bad. Alright boys.” The man casually swept a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket to place over his eyes, the lenses of the object spelling out the word ‘Boss’. With his other hand, he sent a casual two-finger salute toward the captain, who nodded back with a measure of coldness that wouldn’t usually tend to be seen on the face of a ferry captain who was normally known in the community for his boisterous cheer.

The ferry neatly slid into place at the dock. No one came out to investigate, as this was the normal time for the ferry to arrive to bring supplies such as food ingredients from the mainland. It was all on the schedule. Bon Lectro took a deep breath and strapped a duel disk to his arm.

“This is it. It’s time to cross the Rubicon. Follow me, boys.”

He jumped off the ferry, not even bothering with the gangplank nearby, and the rows of violent-looking thugs quickly followed suit. With a snap of a finger, one man raced over to the nearby office that contained the man in charge of the dock. As soon as the man burst through the door, screams filled the air, soon followed by the roars of some strange, yet terrifying monster, and then silence.

Two men walked out of the office. One rejoined Bon Lectro’s line, while the other walked up the gangplank to speak with the grizzled captain.

So far, so good. Now it was time for phase two of the seer’s plan, and he could only hope these Yakuza thugs the seer had picked up in Domino City would be worth their salt in a duel. If they could be useful, if the handful of sleeper agents they had available were kicking up a proper distraction on the island… then the coming days would be interesting for sure. Without another word, Bon Lectro turned away from the ferry and marched across the sands, his sights turned away from the school buildings in the distance in favor of the jungle ahead.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

So focused were Bon Lectro and his men on the jungle, so focused was the sea captain with his ferry, that no one noticed the lone, tiny sailboat also fight through the waves to land far away from the dock, running ashore on the beach as a sort of rudimentary and strange way of making land. A few minutes passed until a hand, still shaking from the cold waves that had battered it barely minutes earlier, heaved a sodden boy in a gray tuxedo over the side of the boat to flop to the shore like a dead fish.

Aster Phoenix let out a great sigh of relief, a sigh that was swiftly followed by a large and undignified spatter of vomit that was more seawater than bile at this point. Still, he chuckled.

“Destiny wants me to come to this island, huh? Destiny. Destiny protected me from the cruel ocean. Was it my destiny to lose to Truesdale?”

He shivered again while he mused over the topic. Even though the last vestiges of summer could still be felt in the air, it was nothing compared to the cold fury of the sea.

“Was it my destiny to be abandoned like a dog by Mr. Sartorius because I lost just one time? If I perform admirably enough here, is there still a chance for a reversal of my fate?”

Aster stood on shaking legs, peering under his tuxedo to check that his duel disk was still dry. The device had been wrapped tightly with a waterproof cloth before he left Domino City, and Aster was thanking his lucky stars that he did. Otherwise, with that much water and with such rough seas, his trustworthy companion might have been ruined.

“Fate and destiny. Am I truly beholden to them?”

He didn’t know. What was once so clear, was like a pond full of murky water after the word Zane Truesdale oh so casually uttered at the end of that fateful summer day in Domino City. That duel itself was strange to him still. By all accounts, Aster should have won. He’d studied Zane’s games constantly. He’d fully understood what kind of man Zane was. Yet, when they dueled, it was like his opponent was fully opposite of what he should have been. Like the other side of a coin. Fate said that Aster would win that duel.

But fate was wrong. He lost. Zane changed his own fate.

Was it his fate to be abandoned by his teacher?

Or could Aster change his own fate too?

Aster's eyes sharpened, his body straightening like a sword piercing into the sky. Resolutely, he turned his vision toward the only place he could think of to find the answer to that question. He turned his vision toward Duel Academy and walked toward the buildings in the distance.