- on the docks, mere moments before the start of the bombardment –

Ms. Hibiki sent a suspicious glance across the ferry. In her hands she clutched at a clipboard, one that clearly stated the expected arrival and departure times of the ferry. It was clear. Clear that the ferry was not supposed to be here at this time of night. There was no reason for it to be here. It had never arrived this late before. There weren’t even any deliveries the academy was expecting.

The gangplank lowered to meet the docks with a thud and Ms. Hibiki looked up to see the grizzled sea captain staring at her with arms crossed.

“Do you have an explanation for me?” Ms. Hibiki questioned the man. Cautiously, she moved one of her hands to ease her duel disk into the ready position.

Meanwhile, the captain stared at her and grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin, but more like a soulless, empty grin.

“A beautiful night, isn’t it?” He said in hollow tones. “Nights like these are meant for taking care of business. For doing dark deeds that the Light should not shine on.”

“Wha-“

Before Ms. Hibiki could finish expressing her confusion, the sea captain raised his hand to his face, grabbing at his skin and pulling. His face contorted, but with a gruesome tearing sound, the skin split away. Ms. Hibiki's face blanched with disgust, but instead of the fountain of blood one would expect to see from a man tearing his own face off, there was nothing.

Nothing, aside from a face under where the sea captain’s face used to be.

“Midori Hibiki. You will die tonight.” A woman’s voice echoed out. The rest of the sea captain’s body shimmered and disappeared to reveal a blonde woman in a skintight black bodysuit, the sea captain’s face still clutched in one of her hands like a used-up rag ready to be discarded into the trash. “My name is Ninja Nan. By the seer’s words, Duel Academy shall fall.”

Ms. Hibiki’s face contorted into a grimace and she stepped back, duel disk snapped out to a ready position. Behind the ninja, rows of tattooed men silently filed out from belowdecks, ignoring the gangplank in favor of simply jumping off the ferry to splash into the shallow water below. Each man was garbed in clothes of pure white. Most ignored the two women, though some of the men directed scathing sneers toward Ms. Hibiki.

"This is Little Cat." The walkie-talkie at Ms. Hibiki's waist buzzed to life with Lyman Banner's voice. "Brace for impact."

Before she could grasp the 'talk' button to ask what that even meant, Ms. Hibiki understood. She could see it clearly from where she stood on the docks. She could see the night sky roar to life, covered with screaming spheres of metal and flame that bloomed in the night sky like handfuls of falling lotus flowers drifting down from the heavens to touch the ground.

“What have you done…” Ms. Hibiki gasped in horror, turning back to glare at Nan. “What have you done!”

“Why does it matter?” Ninja Nan replied, tilting her head slightly to the side as she readied a duel disk of her own. “The seer’s plans will come to fruition. And when they do, everyone will die. It matters not who dies in the bombardment. Or who dies on this dock. Or who dies anywhere else on the island. He will complete the key and rain fire from the heavens, and then everyone will die. All to make way for the advent of the Light.”

“DUEL!” Ms. Hibiki said with a thunderous shout, a word that Nan echoed with a more subdued voice soon after.

Ms. Hibiki: 4000 Ninja Nan: 4000

Meanwhile, the white-clothed Yakuza split into two groups. One group steadily picked their way across the beach, while the other climbed up the sides of the dock to circle around the two women, standing like a pack of scavenging predators waiting for their prey to be worn down enough for them to pounce.

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

Jaden couldn't hear the sounds of someone munching on a sandwich, but he could darn well see it. The feeling was weird, not being able to hear anything. Frankly, he should have expected weird things to happen. This was a dream, after all. He was sitting on a rock overlooking a vast desert canyon while Yubel sat next to him and ate a grilled cheese sandwich. Something like that wouldn’t happen anywhere else than a dream.

Progress, progress, progress. Sure Yubel ripped off his ears, but that was it. The overpowering aroma of a sandwich cooked to perfection was enough to stop the usual train of violence from fully descending upon his noggin, a welcome respite from all the deaths he’d experienced in his dreams.

The two sat together. Yubel said something but Jaden couldn’t understand it because of the overwhelming damage done to his hearing. Yubel said another thing, looking more annoyed this time, and with the wave of a hand Jaden’s hearing popped back into existence.

“Another.”

“Darn right!” Jaden cheered and slapped another set of ingredients on the portable grill. Internally he cheered even louder. Not only was he still in one piece, but Yubel had actually asked for more and was even speaking to him instead of letting loose the usual incoherent screams of pure, undiluted rage.

Butter was spread onto both sides of each piece of bread. A hearty slice of cheese was cut off the wheel nearby, still sitting nice and cool due to the amazing power of super sweet dream magic. The strange beetle man who’d shown up a few nights ago wordlessly produced a ball of fire in the palm of his hand and pressed it into the depths of the grill. Meanwhile, the even stranger human-shaped lump of glowing green moss poured another set of drinks for the two diners. Jaden took a deep satisfied whiff of the liquid after he gently placed the sandwich onto the grill to start cooking. Mhm, that was the stuff. Some kind of weird fizzy drink for him, and something that smelled slightly alcoholic for Yubel.

With their jobs done, both of the strange men backed off and Jaden took a long gulp of his beverage. It was some sort of grape-pomegranate fusion. Weird, but somehow the mixture still ended up being pretty interesting. Meanwhile, Yubel drained their glass in a single quaff before devouring the last corner of the sandwich in their other hand. The monster’s bat wings twitched, but ultimately there was still no sudden lurch into a terrifying bout of violence that Jaden would have expected to happen by now.

It was almost downright nic-

“Jaden! Wake up!” Yubel shouted. Jaden offhandedly noticed through his own surprise that Yubel’s words almost sounded like they carried a hint of concern in them, before his thoughts were distracted by Yubel’s hands closing around his throat and his own eyes snapping open to reveal the dark ceiling of his dorm room.

Jaden blinked and groaned, his hands pressing at his skull in an attempt to get the room to slow down with all that spinning.

“Woah. Mad wobbles.”

Chumley glanced up from where he’d been writing at the desk in the corner of the room to look at Jaden, who was sitting up in the top bunk.

“Are you alright dude? Bad dream?”

Jaden glanced around the room. All the lights were off aside from the small lamp at Chumley’s desk. Syrus was snoring in the bunk bed below his own, and a glance out the window showed that he hadn’t been sleeping for long. An hour, maybe.

“More like a weird one.” Jaden eventually replied. “Are you still working on those new cards, Chum?”

Chumley’s face brightened up by several notches to nearly look like it was flat-out glowing. “Yup! I’m glad you asked dude, because check this out!”

Jaden swung his legs around to leap off the top bunk…

Then the world shook and the sky screamed.

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

Lumina arced her eyebrows and shot a glance at Phil.

“Will you stop all that pacing? You’re messing with the signal of my TV. There’s supposed to be a good fight on tonight.”

Phil didn’t dignify her question with an answer.

“Raizou survived but couldn’t tell us much more than we already know. Syrus dueled that Aster Phoenix guy earlier today but he left without causing a fuss. No one else has tried their luck with Rose. Alexis would know if they did since she’s been keeping an eye on Rose’s hall. We still know jack diddly squat about this Seer fella other than he wants Jaden’s half of the key and he likes to brainwash people. We do know the conditions for the brainwashing, that’s good at least.”

The sounds from the TV grew quieter, causing Phil to break out of his pacing to glance at Lumina questioningly.

“Look. You and Bastion have thought all you can about this. Just get some rest, Phil. Tomorrow is a new day. Mark my words, some sleep will help you think of some more answers. It always seems to help.”

“I know.” Phil threw his hands out in annoyance. “It just annoys me. I know something’s coming, but I don’t know much about it. Why couldn’t I have just watched the anime all the way through back on Earth!”

“Come on. If you aren’t going to do the smart thing and sleep, watch the fight with me. Take your mind off the things you can’t figure out. It’s a Dinowrestler grudge match tonight! The King T Wrextle versus Giga Spinosavate! My coworker Raiden swore up and down to me that Terra Parkourio might be making an appearance tonight as a surprise third combatant.” Lumina shrugged halfheartedly at that last part. “Of course he might be full of crap. Hard to tell with that guy sometimes, he does like his pranks.”

Phil laughed, regardless of the serious thoughts that were threatening to overwhelm him mere moments ago.

“Dinowrestlers, what the fuck. Scooch over lady that sounds too weird not to see.”

Lumina grinned and slid over to make room for Phil to sit. He walked over, passed the window, and paused. Though it was nighttime outside, the campus being almost completely dark aside from some of the dorm rooms, he could see fire blossom in the sky.

It was like the blooming of a lotus flower, but drastically sped up. The fire flower spread in the sky and came screaming down to the earth. With each half second that saw the flower come closer and closer to the earth, it felt like the world moved in slow motion. A singular petal of the flower grazed a tree, and the tree was no more.

Another flower bloomed in the sky. Its fiery petals twisted to form a ball of hurtling fire that tore through the roof of the infirmary. A third smashed into one of the classrooms. A fourth collided with a crackling barrier of blue energy and arcane symbols in the general area where Phil remembered Banner's classroom being. A fifth, a sixth, and a seventh lotus flower bloomed and warped into blazing spheres of shrieking metal and flame that reduced the administration building to rubble. That brutalized the remaining walls of the infirmary. That collided with the side of the Obelisk Blue dorm.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Phil lunged into action, grabbing his duel disk, slotting in a deck that was less of a tool and more of an old comrade at this point, and etching the memory of the fiery lotus flowers into his mind – more specifically, the memory of the arc they’d followed. Starting from the jungle, arcing high into the sky, and landing at their target.

Behind him, Lumina scrambled out of her bed in surprise, though that emotion hardly lasted long on her face. She grabbed a jacket and threw it around her tanned shoulders in preparation for the slight chill outside, moving to stand next to Phil.

“You know…”

"Yeah." Phil nodded in agreement. Tension was mirrored on both their faces. "Some sort of weapon firing from the jungle.”

Lumina nodded, clearly pleased they were on the same page.

"A mortar? Or a Duel Spirit with a long-range attack? I've seen both before in the corporate wars back home."

“Either way it needs to be silenced.” Phil replied, shrugging his own yellow jacket over the top of his shoulders and sprinting out of the dorm room. Lumina followed behind, her footsteps only inches after his own. Before they even got a few steps down the hallway Bastion poked his head out of his own door and looked at Phil with eyes wide in surprise.

“Bastion!” Phil shouted before his friend could say a word. “Enemy attack! I’m off to stop the bombardment. It’s originating somewhere in the jungle. The infirmary and the Blue dorms got hit first. The classrooms too, but I don’t think anyone was in it. Banner’s classroom has some sort of barrier.”

Bastion sharply nodded his understanding.

“I saw. I will gather the rest and prepare a defense, rendezvousing at Banner’s.”

“Yes.” Phil agreed. “Check the security office if it’s still in one piece, see if the cameras are working. Try to get a measure of our opponents if they do. Prioritize the infirmary, though. It got hit first and worst.”

“Obviously.” Bastion drily replied, dipping behind his door to grab his jacket and his duel disk. “Best of luck, Phil. Don’t make me go in after you for revenge.”

“Aye, you too. And don’t go in after me if I fail. Send Jaden in instead. He’s the one with the crazy luck.” Phil left those words hanging in the air as he continued his breakneck sprint down the hallway.

Behind him, Bastion let out a grim snort of amusement before starting his own dash out of the dorms, yelling at each student that poked their head out of their room to ‘get the heck over to Banner’s class stat!’. Those words only took a moment for each student to process before they too joined the hasty, yet somehow still somewhat organized rush to get out of the dorms before the next salvo was fired.

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

Chazz’s eyes snapped open. That rumbling. It was no earthquake. The entire dorm building creaked. He could even feel it sagging downwards.

He leaped out of bed. Ignored the drowsy confusion of his roommates. Dashing over to the window, he could see fire blooming in the night sky. From where his room sat on the second floor, he could see a plume of smoke billowing from the first floor. The first floor, as in almost directly under his own room.

“Everyone! Get up!” Chazz snarled and moved over to his roommates to slap them awake, finishing the process that the explosions started. From his brief glance out of the window he could see that the girl’s dorm hadn’t been damaged yet, but more importantly that there seemed to be some sort of barrier flickering to life around the cat professor’s classroom, a blue sphere around the building that glowed with shimmering, arcane symbols and hieroglyphs.

Another sphere of sparking inferno slammed into the foyer in a crunching explosion of glass. On the other side of the door, he could hear Zane Truesdale yelling for everyone to evacuate. Shortly after, Chazz bolted out of his room, duel disk on his arm and Obelisk Blue jacket around his shoulders to add his voice to the fray. Between Zane, Atticus, and himself, there was at least someone the prideful group of students would listen to.

“The back door you nerds! The back!” Chazz yelled himself hoarse, gesturing wildly for good measure. He hadn’t seen for himself but considering what he’d seen from the window, the front entrance likely wasn’t even a teensy bit safe.

“Run! To Banner’s classroom!” Atticus added in uncharacteristically serious tones. Clearly, he’d seen the same barrier Chazz had.

Students flooded the hallways in a disorganized mass, some still in their nightclothes, some clutching duel disks, but all had made sure to grab their jackets, the symbol of their pride.

Zane shot a hurried nod of acknowledgment toward Chazz and between the three of them, the disorganized mass turned into a slightly organized retreat down the hallways, through the back doors, and toward the classrooms.

Now that he was outside, Chazz was able to get a view of the pandemonium he wished he’d never gotten. Students streamed out of each and every dorm building. He could see Alexis leading the girls out of their dorm, Bastion sprinting across the quad with a sea of mustard yellow following in his footsteps, and Jaden leading a zig-zagging line of reds across the lawn. Fire bloomed behind the broken windows of the Obelisk Blue dorm. The administrative building let out the shrieking groans of bending metal as it collapsed inwards, and the infirmary…

The infirmary was a smoking ruin.

The realization split across his mind like lightning darting through a stormy sky. Chazz wordlessly shared a look with Zane, who split off with him and a few other students to dash over to the infirmary with all the speed they could pump into their limbs. The infirmary shouldn’t have been packed, at least not that Chazz remembered. Nurse Fontaine would have been there, along with Raizou and Professor Crowler. Adding a hypothetical one or two students to the number just in case tentatively brought it up to five people at max. In essence, not many compared to the dorms.

That hardly mattered to Chazz. The infirmary was a smoking ruin. It couldn’t even be recognized as a building anymore. In the back of his mind, the bit that was standing away from the chaos to look at the big picture, he noted that the infirmary must have been the primary target. Chazz didn’t even want to think about what kind of person was capable of making that decision. No one in there was a threat. Nurse Fontaine knew how to duel, but she was first and foremost a nurse. Her skill level was around that of a first-year student in their second semester. Crowler was still unconscious. Raizou was recovering from the shadow duel.

The thoughts spinning through the back of his mind caused Chazz to pick up his speed to a blindingly fast sprint he never even knew he was capable of. Zane easily kept pace with him, the older teen’s longer legs causing a gradual distance to form. Right after them ran the students Zane had gathered to help. Two boys of Obelisk Blue that Chazz wasn't anything more than the barest of acquaintances with. Yet, they were all gathered together moving as one toward a single goal.

The small group of boys reached the remains of the infirmary right around the same time that Chazz could see the rest of the students start to enter the classrooms. Zane dropped to his knees and started flinging shattered roof tiles out of the way, heedless of how the sharp edges gouged into the flesh of his palms.

Chazz, meanwhile, firmly grasped the shoulders of the other two to get their attention before moving toward a thick wooden support beam. The boys moved as one with him, each one heaving with all their might against the beam. The wood was resting at an angle. It wasn’t completely flush with the ground, instead being caught on part of the wall that hadn’t been fully destroyed.

"COME ON YOU NERDS! HEAVE! HEAVE!" Chazz screamed with such effort that he could feel the lining of his throat split to let a few droplets of blood mix with his spittle. The beam shifted but largely remained where it was. Zane moved the last of the large tile chunks and ran to join the boys in moving the beam.

Fire lit up the sky above them, but all four teens ignored it. Every drop of focus they possessed was on that one length of wood, the thick beam that had once supported a large chunk of the building. Inch by inch it groaned along with the boys. Inch by inch…

It moved.

Inch by inch the beam moved sideways. Zane let out a mighty roar as he threw every inch of his strength into it. Right next to him, Chazz and the other two mimicked the larger boy. Chazz’s mind flashed white with strain, and before he fully processed it, the beam was sent flying to reveal Nurse Fontaine. She was crouching in the corner with Raizou and Crowler, shielding them as best she could with her own back. Frankly it was a miracle they were even in one piece. If it hadn’t been a particularly sturdy corner, if the beam had fallen in any other way, that might have been it - three people reduced to three bloody smears on the ground.

Raizou’s face was white and his whole body was shuddering, his skin caked with sweat. Crowler was motionless apart for the slight movement of his chest, clearly still unconscious.

As soon as the absence of the wooden beam revealed the figures of Chazz and Zane to Nurse Fontaine, she unsteadily rose to her feet, waving off the concern of Chazz and Zane in favor of sternly ordering them to help the two patients out of the rubble. While they did that, the nurse busied herself by darting over to the remains of her medicine cabinet, directing the other two boys to load their arms up with as many supplies as they could rescue from the melted metal box.

Right as Chazz was about to direct her attention to Banner’s classroom, Nurse Fontaine’s sharp eyes picked up on the difference and she snapped out orders to head that way, as fast as they could without hurting the injured. All around them, countless more flaming meteors rained down to gouge deep craters into the ground, to destroy what was left of the Obelisk Blue boy’s dorm, to splash against Banner’s barrier. A few even landed in the wreckage of the infirmary, mere moments after the bedraggled group cleared the area.

Chazz bodily lifted Raizou onto his back, while Zane did the same with Crowler’s bulk. More explosions filled the air, the group collectively held their breath, and then they ran. One of the boys stumbled and Nurse Fontaine roughly yanked him to his feet. Zane, as dwarfed by Crowler’s muscular body as he was, hardly seemed bothered by the extra weight. Chazz, however, found that it was all he could do to keep one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t even look up to distract himself. Doing something like that only invited an overwhelming dread to fill his stomach. Doing something like that would only hammer home the realization that they’d only made it this far due to sheer luck alone. A moment’s flash of bad luck would be all it would take for one of the meteors to hit one of them.

One of his companions, one of the teens that Chazz had seen walking around the dorm countless times, had maybe even dueled a few times before, one of the students who had voluntarily chosen to go with him and Zane was no longer there. Chazz turned his head, and he was no longer there, replaced by a slow-motion scene of flame enveloping the remains of a human body. Right before his eyes, one moment the guy was there, the next moment he no longer existed. Zane and the other boy were lucky. They were far enough ahead to miss seeing it. The distance was nothing but a few feet of difference, but it was enough. Chazz and Nurse Fontaine weren’t as lucky.

The sound was strange. Not just the sound of one of his peers dissolving into a cloud of fire, but the sound Nurse Fontaine made. It was like a cross between a choked sob and a guttural snarl of rage, grief, and shock.

Chazz forced his traitorous legs to keep moving with all the speed they could muster, and before he’d even finished processing the death of the boy whose name he didn’t even know, the translucent blue barrier enveloped them.

They’d made it within the range of Banner’s classroom, of whatever esoteric magics the alchemist had summoned up. Chazz, Zane, Fontaine, and the other boy slumped to the ground in equal parts relief, equal parts grief. They could still see it even now, the barrage of explosions gradually, methodically, and efficiently reducing the campus to a blazing hellscape bit by bit. In between the shots were slight pauses, some no longer than a few seconds, others lasting a few minutes. The longest lasted five minutes.

Chazz narrowed his eyes, shoving his grief and how his stomach threatened to betray him to the side to be dealt with later.

“It has to reload?”

Another barrage splashed against the barrier. Each impact was heralded by a swarm of hieroglyphs that glowed as the flaming mass hit. Then the symbols would disperse, only to converge where the next shot would hit.

A flurry of movement distracted Chazz from his pondering as Bastion hurried over to him.

“Is that everyone?”

Chazz's eyes roamed over the crowd of people. Some were still milling around outside like he was, but the majority looked to be inside the handful of classrooms under their professor's protection.

“Looks like it. I can see Jaden with his pack of Slifer slackers. Is Ra all here?”

Bastion sharply nodded. “Mostly. Phil went off to try and stop the bombardment. He was under the impression that the arcs of the shots led to the jungle.”

“Of course.” Chazz scoffed. “That cocky geek. He’d better not die out there.”

“Aye.” Bastion acknowledged with a dip of his head before continuing the headcount. “Alexis ran in with everyone from the Blue girl’s dorms. The Red and Yellow girl’s dorms were right on her heels. I haven’t seen Ms. Hibiki or Chancellor Sheppard yet. The few teachers that have made it in so far are inside speaking with Banner.”

Chazz glanced over to the nurse, who was ordering a few students around to help her move Crowler and Raizou inside so she could start setting up a temporary field hospital. Zane was right next to her, and between the two of them, everything was going as smoothly as it could considering the situation.

“How many didn’t make it?”

That was the question everyone dreaded asking.

“I don’t know.” Bastion quietly replied. The answer wasn’t much. In fact, it didn’t say anything at all. That didn’t stop both Bastion and Chazz from flinching and abruptly changing the topic.

“So, what next?”

Bastion looked out past the barrier, to the fire that still bloomed in the night sky. The silence between the two stretched until finally, Bastion nodded toward Jaden in the distance.

“We get the rest together. Jaden, Alexis, me, and you. Then we go over to Banner and devise a plan of action.”

Chazz wryly smiled. “All while we hope that Phil doesn’t get lost in the jungle before he can silence whatever’s attacking us.”

“Truly.” Bastion agreed. "If I had been thinking properly when I last saw him, I would have insisted on going with him so I could navigate.”

Chazz and Bastion took one last long look at the jungle in the distance before turning away to gather their friends and head inside.