Chapter 1

Characters: Kaiza, Enrion, Orcona, Siliveth, Anna, Rosum, Rozero

Duels: Kaiza vs Rosum

Plot:  During his sleep, the first protagonist, Kaiza, goes through what few memories he has, from a small fragment of his memory of his sister that wasn’t lost, to the event that made him lose his memory (he isn’t aware this is the event), to the time he was adopted by Orcona, to his first day at his new home in Nagano, to an unknown memory involving a dragon standing on top of a large, destroyed building on an unknown afternoon. The dragon flies up, curls into a ball, and then explodes, and the explosion destroys everything, waking Kaiza out of his dream, and making the memories of his sister and the event become lost again. Bothered but determined to be unphased by another nightmare, Kaiza checks the time and his messages on his computer; its 6:45 am, and he has several appointments in Satellite to do (Modern day Tokyo). 1 Hour later, he finishes preparing for his work day, but before he leaves, he stops at a cupboard on the wall in his room, opens it, and from it, takes out a large duel disc, and a transparent deck box, where the first card at the front is junk synchron. He blows the dust off of them both, and stares at them for a while, before sighing, and placing them both in his bag, leaving his room and stopping to say good bye to another resident at where he lives, Siliveth.

 Kaiza leaves apartment 420 of New Domino (modern day Saitama) Residential area 6, and heads to the exit of residential area 8, heading to the park on the edge of the city to wait for a bus to start his day, arriving at the park at 8:20 am. As he waits, in the playground, he sees children dueling within the park, among them a young girl named Anna, losing to another unknown boy. His attention then strays to a flyer on the bench he is on; an ad for a duel academy within Yamanashi City. He glances at it, crumples it up, and throws it into a nearby bin a few seconds before the bus arrives, and he hops onto the bus to begin his trip to Satellite City, arriving into the city at 10:10 am

Three hours after arriving into the city, he completes his work, when, on his way out, he stops at the G front game store, and pauses for a while, remembering his duel disc in his bag. He stops and thinks for a moment, and then decides to go to the store, to find out if any local tournaments are on. He finds one, and enters. 2 hours later, Kaiza reaches the final round, his opponent, Rosum Valcarcel, a G Front regular who’s not only one of the top players, but also one of their most arrogant. Regardless of this, Kaiza duels against him, and barely wins, using junk synchron, emergency teleport, junk warrior, skill successor and junk barrage. Not only is he one of the few to ever beat Rosum, he’s the first newcomer to ever do so, which aggravates Rosum, who remains bitter at the loss. Meanwhile, at the edge of New Domino City, at the bus stop, another bus arrives as the children are about to leave, and from it, a menacing figure exits the bus, with his attention at first away from the children, then, directly at them


Chapter 2

Characters: Kaiza, Anna, Rozero, Saseki Kira, Sequan, Snake

Duels: Kaiza vs Rozero, Kaiza vs Rozero

Plot: the return trip to Satellite takes 20 minutes less than the arrival trip, and Kaiza returns to the edge of Satellite City at 4:40 pm. But when he arrives, he feels uneasy, as he hears strange noises from the playground, almost like weak cries of pain. He checks in, and sees what’s causing the noises; the children that he left at the park, are all on the floor, some in pain, others unconscious, all of them with their duel disc reading 0 lifepoints. He questions one of the children who’s still conscious and finds out what happened; the person who exited the bus came to them, and made them duel him, at first it seemed like an ordinary duel, until they began to feel pain every time they took damage. The pain got so severe; the children began passing out due to it. One of them escaped however, and fled into the city, with the assailant chasing after her. Determined to stop the attacker from horribly hurting another one, as well as to find out how this was possible, he heads into the city after them. 15 minutes later, after following the directions of people they ran past, he found them; the assailant has Anna cornered, and was about to force her to duel until Kaiza threw a brick at his head. The brick hits and hurts him, but doesn’t knock him out, but before Rozero could lash back at him, he notices Kaiza has a duel disc, and sees an opportunity. He requests a duel with Kaiza, and reluctantly, he agrees on the condition that he leaves after. Rozero accepts, and the two of them duel with Kaiza winning with 6000.

 Throughout the duel, as he takes damage, he feels a mild, painful sensation in his body, something that normally does not occur in duels; what the child at the park said was right. Although he wins, when the duel is over, his duel disc remains at 6000 lifepoints, and although he lost, Rozero doesn’t hold his end of the bargain entirely. He touches the walls of the alley they are in, and from it, bricks shake out of the wall and fire at Kaiza, tripping him and pinning him to the floor as Rozero escapes deeper into the city; before he leaves, he gives Kaiza an indication to where he is heading, the inner section of the residential area of New Domino City, abandoned apartment 515. Regardless of this, Anna is fine, despite soiled by dirty water, and while he can simply leave and go home and be over with this, and let the police handle it, despite the fact he knows apartment 515, and it’s very mentioning makes him uncomfortable, the events that happened both disturb him and spark his curiosity, as well as a feeling he had forgotten for so long; a need for answers. Following this feeling, he heads to apartment 515 while Anna heads home

A few minutes later, another person, dressed in red and black with dark skin, called Sequan, heads into the city, and as he walks further in, he reads a small device with a grid map littered with several brown dots. He scrolls up, and sees a purple dot, isolated by itself, with a white dot, heading in its direction. The white dot puzzles him, but the purple dot has him concerned, as his movement speed increases. However, he’s slowly brought to a stop when Anna, bending the corner, head butts his chest by accident, toppling them both to the ground. A quarrel ensues, followed by Sequan asking her questions about the assailant she just encountered, followed by him rejecting to answer any of her questions in return, leaving here where she is as she shouts out at him angrily. Meanwhile, Kaiza reaches apartment 515, and, after hardening his resolve, enters the building. As he goes to the 3rd floor, he remembers the experiences he had here, from his first friend in Satellite, which will become his first girlfriend, Saseki, to how sick she was and how hard she tried to hide it and make everyone around her happy, to a device he made that reconnects disconnected circuits via heat and electromagnetic pulses. He stops at one of the rooms and finds a prototype of the device, remembering he forgot it here when he left, and after placing it into his bag, he heads to the rooftop

Rozero challenges him to another duel after Kaiza asks who he is and what did he do to the kids at the park, saying he’ll get his answers through this. Reluctantly, Kaiza duels him again, and while for the first two turns Kaiza does some damage, Rozero quickly takes control, summoning his ace, Dark Simorgh, and using the trap cards overwhelm and Anti spell fragrance to suppress Kaiza’s plays. To make matters worse, like the kids at the park, every time Kaiza is hit, he feels it like a real blow, and with every attack he takes, his body gets weaker and weaker


Chapter 3

Characters: Kaiza, Rozero, Anna, Sequan, Enrion, Snake, Siliveth, Saseki Kira

Duels: Kaiza vs Rozero

	Struggling to stay conscious, Kaiza gets another glimpse of his memory, that of his sister. While it quickly fades and is lost again, he remembers why he left home, and why he’s here; he wants answers to not only who she is, but who he is, and if he falls here, he won’t ever get them. Determined to survive Rozero, he continues the duel, and gets a lucky break; rather than going head on, he summons Jain, Lightsworn Paladin, and ends. Meanwhile, Rozero, seeing no need to waste resources, attacks, and Kaiza counters, by using honest to save Jain, himself, and damage Rozero. Startled but still determined as well, Rozero resummons Dark Simorgh. Kaiza’s next draw turns the duel around entirely, as he plays the card “Dark Armed Dragon” using its effect to destroy all of what Rozero has. Not only is Rozero now in a losing position, but the mere sight of dark armed dragon strikes fear into him, as Jain finishes him off.

	However, when the duel ends, Rozero drops to his knees as a strong whirlwind buffets them both, and the black clothing on Rozero slowly fades off of his body as a trail of smoke oozes of him; by the time the spectacle is done, the man in front of Kaiza looks nothing like Rozero. Still enraged, he takes the man and threatens him to get out, but his rage subsides and gives way to frustration and confusion as he realizes the man in front of him doesn’t know why he’s here at all. Unable to get anything further, he focuses on getting home and looking for answers, while the pain from the duel sets in again, making the return trip a difficult one. Meanwhile, Sequan himself is also shocked, as from the device he has, Kaiza won.

	An hour later, Kaiza makes it home, ringing the doorbell before collapsing on the staircase. Siliveth responds, and drags him inside to his room as he requested, and leaves him to rest and recover. As he does so, he slips into another dream state, remembering the first time he met Saseki, and when Saseki gave him the card that saved him in his duel. Meanwhile, Anna heads home and takes a bath, and heads to her room. She’s still in some shock due to the events that happened, but shrugs it off and reads a book, considering it some prank. Meanwhile, Sequan gives a call to his boss, Snake, and gets new orders; his original target was Rozero, his new target is Kaiza

Chapter 4

Characters: Anna, Rosum, Kaiza, Siliveth, Sequan

Duels: Kaiza vs Sequan

Plot: The same night, Rosum returns home, and to his distress, Anna greets him. She questions him (borderline pesters) on the results, and is shocked and distraught when he finds out he lost

	The next morning, as he has no job requests, Kaiza spends the day trying to find answers to what happened. He finds some bits and pieces, but nothing makes sense. Out of options for the time, he simply heads out to a local café he visits a lot, telling Siliveth where he’s heading. 30 minutes later, Sequan arrives at his house, and finds Siliveth. After questioning Kaiza on his whereabouts, saying he’s a customer who wants some repairs done on a few automatons, he leaves, and goes to the coffee shop Kaiza went to.

	30 minutes later, Sequan arrives at the same time Kaiza’s meal arrives. He stops at Kaiza’s table, taps him on the shoulder, and tells him he’s a police officer and wishes to discuss yesterday’s events, and Kaiza notices two loopholes; he never called the police, and neither did anyone there, last he recalled, and the badge Sequan has is that of American police, and he’s in japan. Kaiza tells him that he needs to use the toilet first, and Sequan agrees. 30 minutes later, Sequan gets no response and checks the toilet, to realize Kaiza snuck out through a window. Regardless, he’s unbothered, as he placed a tag on Kaiza’s shoulder when he tapped him; the tag links to the scanner, and among all the brown dots, Kaiza shows up as a yellow one, making him easy to find

	As time goes along, and Kaiza tries taking his normal route home, thinking he got away, he sees Sequan in the distance, and starts to flee. Sequan also sees him, and tries to catch him, but Kaiza catches a red light to cross the street seconds before it turns green. Sequan fails to do so, and Kaiza gains some distance on him. Realizing running isn’t working; Kaiza tries to hide instead, taking refuge between some back alleys with emergency staircases leading to the apartment rooms at the side. For quite a while, he hides there, until, from one of the emergency staircases, Sequan leaps down, landing in front of Kaiza. With nowhere to run, Kaiza has no choice but to confront him, when Sequan takes out a large duel disc the same size as Kaiza’s own, and pulls a small trigger beneath. Soon after, he is surrounded by an energy spiral, resembling that of transparent, colorless water waves spinning around his body, and, as he does so, he plays the card mind crush on his duel disc, which then begins to glow pink. Soon after, Kaiza drops to his knees while one of Sequan’s eyes glows bright pink, with Kaiza holding his head as a sharp headache cringes through his mind. However, even in this state, Sequan has trouble doing what he is here for, and has to come closer to Kaiza. Despite his throbbing headache, Kaiza, in an act of desperation, grabs Sequan’s feet when he comes close, making the signal generated by his duel disc stop as he pulls him down to the floor, carries himself to Sequan’s head, punches him in the face, and scampers off.

He makes it a short distance away before tripping over a rock, and then turns around to see Sequan, holding his eyes, slowly coming towards him. Out of options, he remembers what happened against Rozero, and realizes that if he duels him and won, he may disappear. In the time it takes for Sequan to reach Kaiza, he equips his duel disc and activates it, locking onto Sequan’s disc; the glowing in his eyes and the card stops, as well as any headaches, but the spiral remains around him. Sequan is now himself, out of options; as long as his duel disc is active, he cannot use mind crush. He can run away to get out of range, but even if Kaiza does not follow, unless he is close to him, he cannot use mind crush. With only 1 option, he complies and duels him

Chapter 5

Characters: Kaiza, Sequan, Siliveth, Snake.

Duels: Kaiza vs Sequan

plot: Although the duel begins, with low lifepoints, Kaiza is already in trouble, Sequan is also low on options, as he cannot do too much damage. Regardless of this, using cyber barrier dragon, and inverse universe, he takes control quickly, and almost finishes Kaiza off with cyber dragon zwei, until Kaiza used negate attack, and turned the duel around himself, using Jain, Lightsworn Paladin, Assault armor, and emergency teleport, in conjunction with honest, to inflict massive damage. To make matters worse, he uses urgent tuning, synchro summoning for HTS psyhemuth on the battle phase, with a clear attack. This would normally finish Sequan off, but Kaiza uses it as an opportunity; instead of attacking, he threatens him with defeat and possible demise by his own mechanics, unless he gets information to why he’s here, and what happened yesterday. Out of options, he reluctantly complies. Apartment 515 from chapter 3 was abandoned after an unknown event that made every resident in the apartment disappear. Answers were searched for, but none were found, as it wasn’t a human event that caused it. The cause for that event was a group of extra dimensional beings called shadow duelists, who use their own abilities and duel monsters to wreck havoc on the world. In response, a secret set of teams, called SH combat teams, use special duel disc called soul disc, which uses the human soul as a battery to protect against shadow duelists, and fight against them, trying to keep the world safe. The success of the teams, in comparison to its failures is roughly even but they believe that it was shadow duelists who caused all of the disappearances. Enraged by the info he got, Kaiza demands to be added to a SH combat team, to seek vengeance for what they did to his first true home, but Sequan tells him its far from easy. However, to avoid trouble from his boss, he gives him the details on how to join, which results in Kaiza having to register with the same academy on the flyer in chapter 1. Reluctantly, he complies, and they part ways after Sequan repays the punch to his face, with one to Kaiza’s gut

	Later in the night, Kaiza returns home to Siliveth, who questions him on the person who visited. He tells her that he was simply a customer who wanted a lot of repairs done at an academy he works at, and how he’ll be busy tomorrow. He slumps onto his bed, takes his deck out of his duel disc and reorganizes it, places it back into its deck box, and reminisces on today’s events, finally having a way to get answers to a lot of questions he has. Meanwhile, Sequan reports to Snake, and tells him how they have a potential new member coming

Chapter 6

Characters: Samantha, Sabrina, Kaiza, Siliveth, Anna, Ageha, Xavier, Alice, Machina Gearfame 001,

Duels: Kaiza vs Samantha

Plot: Two days later, in the morning time, at an academy complex, Sabrina, watches in curiousity and fear at a machina gearframe sitting lifelessly on a bench at the park. After a few minutes of watching, she musters up the courage to go towards it, and Sabrina reluctantly touches it on the head. It reacts and watches them, and in fear, she scampers away

	At another location, Kaiza wakes up and gets ready to leave to go to the academy, called the duel academy of advanced learning, following his usual routine and waiting at the park at the edge of the city. Meanwhile, Anna, from a distance, sees him, and leaves the children to go approach him, when the Bus heading to Satellite city arrives, and Kaiza hops on. Anna tries to chase, but fails, and Kaiza gets a small glimpse of her before it drives off. An hour later, he arrives at Satellite City, and, as instructed by the details given by Sequan, takes one of the private train routes. On the train, he meets an aggressive and reserved young girl with brown hair called Ageha, who responds to his questions on the academy, with a clear hint of hostility, as well as a warning that the academy owner is a very powerful duelist and is very strict. He also meets a shy, under confident and very worried boy named Xavier, who said he joined because his peers forced him to, saying he’ll do well when in reality, he’s a very poor and weak duelist. Kaiza, trying not to be too friendly, slaps him on the back and tells him with a serious face that he’ll do well, while Ageha, seeing them as clueless fools, decides to spare them the torment and explain to them how the academy works for the train ride

	About 30 minutes later, Kaiza, Xavier and Ageha arrive at the academy. At the front fountain, she goes her own separate way while Kaiza and Xavier head to the main entrance. From there, they begin the first step; an attendant named Alice hands them and everyone else in her queue a form which they take and fill out at a nearby room. After 30 minutes in that room, Alice and other attendants go to the second step, swapping places with other members who take over step 1, and head to the respective rooms, where they hand them a second form; a question sheet which they have to answer. It’s at that point Kaiza notices the automaton in the testing room with him; Machina Gearframe 001. While Kaiza is shocked that automatons are used in dueling as well, the machina gearframe is also puzzled; on one of its scanners, Kaiza does not appear at all, it’s only when he hears his voice does he recognize he’s there.

	Regardless of this, the 2nd step of the test is complete, and they head to the 3rd test. Alice leads them to the center of the academy, ADA’s Main Stadium. The 3rd test involves them each having to duel one of the testers, and one of the testers, Samantha, chooses to go first, She picks Kaiza to start at random, and while at first, Kaiza steps in with a calm and collected expression, it quickly changes to panic, as he realized he forgot one of his deck boxes at home; the one with the deck he uses the most. Desperate and frantic, he searches his bag and finds another deckbox, and when he opens it and examines the cards, he realizes it’s an old deck he had to make back when Orcona was teaching him how to duel; despair sets in when he realizes he can’t remember if the deck even works, as he never used it. Regardless, he has no choice, and uses the deck to duel. For most of the duel, Samantha uses ectoplasmer and doom shaman to keep Kaiza’s monsters off of the field and inflict continuous burn damage to him, while Kaiza is forced to do the same with his own monsters, using sangan, nova summoner and dimensional alchemist to at least retain some of his cards. At one point, Samantha almost defeats him using ectoplasmer, until he discards hanewata to reduce the damage to 0. It’s at that point that he turns the duel around, banishing the 3 fairies and sangan to play sky scourge enrise, and using its effect to get rid of doom shaman, then tributing it to play great maju garzet, on 4800 attack, to win the duel. Even he was shocked that he won with such a crudely built deck, and with that victory, his test was over

	In the afternoon, Kaiza joins up with Xavier, who delivers him the testing results. Xavier achieves the red dorm, while Kaiza obtains yellow dorm, with only 5 points from blue. Later on, Snake reviews the results, and now has to decide who carries out test 2

Chapter 7

Characters: Kaiza, Machina Gearframe 001, Alice, Xavier, Sequan, Sabrina

Duels: Kaiza vs Sabrina

Plot: Three days later, Sabrina returns to the academy, codenamed ADA, to dispute a condition she was given for a competition. She heads to the competition office to have one of her opponents changed due to being unable to locate him. Sequan, not wanting to listen to her, changes it to someone who should not be there for a week

	Meanwhile, Kaiza arrives at the school complex, only to meet it almost empty. Confused, he wanders around, and eventually decides to take a rest on a bench. Still not able to see him, Machina Gearframe 001 decides to sit on the same chair Kaiza is resting on, and almost sits on his face. Regardless, finally locating someone, Kaiza inquires why the academy is empty, and is told classes start next week. For reasons unknown however, Machina gearframe offers him a tour of the complex, as compensation for his valiant but wasted effort. Before the tour begins, Xavier also arrives on the complex, also unaware of when classes begin, so he is taken for the tour as well. The tour starts at the main hall, which then leads to the left corridor, which leads to the classrooms, deeper down, they reach the stairs for the upper floor left side, where they find the teacher staff room, tech support room, and lastly, the events room. At the events room, Kaiza meets Sequan, who’s shocked to see that he’s here. Kaiza asks him about stage 2 of the testing, and Sequan tells him to wait; they’ll come to him when they are ready, he doesn’t come to them.

	They head to the right corridor, which has more class rooms, as well as the toilet areas, the janitor room, and a storage room marked armory. Before they can head to the the upper floor, they find Alice, coming down the staircase, and take her along as well, since it’s either the tour or she heads home. Despite the fact she tags along, she doesn’t disclose why she’s here, saying it’s nothing special and trying to dispel any worries with a happy demeanor. They then head outside, to the academy dorms at the back. On their way to the yellow dorm, they bump into Sabrina, who begins belittling Alice. Seeing it as unfair, Kaiza steps in and Sabrina realizes that the opponent she was given, was him. Thus, they have to duel, and Kaiza readily agrees. Throughout the duel, Kaiza disrupts most of Sabrina’s plays while Sabrina complains about his choice of tactics, up to the point where Sabrina quits and asks for a new duel, Kaiza agrees, and the same happens, but this time, Kaiza lashes out, belittling her in return to force her to not just continue, but make a counter play. She finally does so via hysteric party, elegant egotist to play harpie lady sisters, and triangle estacy spark, ending it off on Kaiza’s turn with icarus attack, destroying 2 of Kaiza’s set cards. But as she is low on lifepoints, Kaiza uses the 3rd card, glorious illusion, to special summon lumina, and tributes it to summon celestia, destroying all of her cards and attacking her to win. Having lost the duel, Sabrina is considerably bitter, but both Kaiza and machina gearframe 001 try to comfort her and try to convince her to have more respect for her colleagues. Although limited in success, she complies to a certain degree, and, with not much better options to do with her, take her along for the tour as well.

	They return to the main hall, take the right corridor, and head down the left door, to the cafeteria. Even though no one is there, the door is open, and they spend the afternoon there. While waiting, they discuss why they are at ADA. Machina Gearframe says it was given new assignments, and was instructed to come here and provide its services. Alice says she’s simply here to have fun, and learn to duel a bit better, not to become a big professional but simply to enjoy the game with others. Xavier says he was forced to come here by his peers, while Kaiza lies and says he’s here as a part time attendant, only coming here for advanced classes and then leaving when he’s learned enough. Sabrina says she was the best duelist in her area, and they suggested that she come here, and prove her worth. She quickly found out she wasn’t great, but then strived to be the best female duelist here, even better than Snake, as well as making it to the dorm for ADA’s finest. When ask what that was, she leads them out of the cafeteria, and to the dorms again, showing them a 4th dorm behind the blue dorm; the dorm is for the best students ADA has to offer, and as it stands, there are only 4 students in that dorm, 3 now that one is dead. The presence of the dorm makes Alice uncomfortable, so they don’t stay long and head back. But on their way out, an object comes crashing down in front of them. As the dust clears, Kaiza sees that it’s not an object, but a person, dressed in the same way Rozero was dressed, and he is after him

Chapter 8

Characters: Snake, Kaiza, Machina Gearframe 001, Alice, Sabrina, Xavier, Sequan

Duels: Kaiza vs Snake

Plot: Kaiza, on red alert by the assailant’s presence, asks machina gearframe 001 to take everyone else away from the area. While the others refuse, Machina Gearframe complies, up to a point; he takes everyone away and hides behind a pile of bush with them to watch, somehow aware of what is going on. Meanwhile, Kaiza and the assailant take no time to start dueling, battling as soon as the others are out of view. For most of the duel however, the attacker takes control of the duel, using an array of traps and elemental heroes to keep Kaiza’s plays at bay. Kaiza however, gets a lucky break using Snake’s own card against him, reviving elemental hero bubbleman with monster reborn and drawing 2 cards off of it, one of which is rose warrior of revenge, and using it to synchro summon thought ruler archfiend, which gives him some defense against Snake’s traps and lifepoints every time it destroys a monster. On Kaiza’s last play however, which he conducts using junk synchron to revive darksea rescue, to synchro summon for armory arm, equipping it to thought ruler; when Kaiza attacks and destroys a monster Snake has, Snake chains with XYZ extreme, revealing gem knight pearl to burn Kaiza for 2600 damage, as he has no xyz monsters. The burn damage ends the duel, and the explosion from the hit also blows off the hood to Snake’s mask. It’s when that happens that Kaiza realizes he was not against a shadow duelist, but ADA’s head admin; and Sabrina is furious, as well as Snake for her blowing his cover

	With the duel over and his cover blown, Snake calls Sequan, and together with Machina Gearframe 001, they separate Snake and Kaiza from the rest. With the others gone, the results are explained. Normally, Kaiza would fail if not for 3 factors: He was not expected to win, but expected to at least deal 4000 damage, and while he didn’t achieve that, he lost mid chain; if the chain had resolved, Kaiza would have done 5200 damage, more than enough to pass. Even the conditions of his loss are an issue, as he didn’t lose due to poor dueling skills, but because his deck doesn’t have xyz monsters, which is hardly an issue in any situation. As such, his results are inconclusive, and he has to do a 3rd test. With this info, Kaiza is reunited with his acquaintances. Alice says how he did okay against Snake, who’s not only the head admin, but the founder of ADA and the first person admitted to ADA’s finest; in an academy competition with another academy, he beat the other academy team by himself; 7-0; the fact Kaiza didn’t lose effortlessly is something to be proud of, While Sabrina is shocked he did this well, Xavier says if it was him, he would have fled. Despite all this, the reunion is short lived; as it’s almost 7 pm, they have to leave the school grounds.

	A couple of hours later at an unknown location, clouded in so much darkness only the voices can be heard, a voice similar to Rozero argues with a female voice over the results in chapter 3. When Rozero mentions dark armed dragon, the arguing stops, and through the darkness, one can barely identify a hand having a trap card placed in it, one with black and white streams flowing towards a white hole in the middle. She tells him that he is his target, but Eresa intervenes, and requests that she be allowed to try instead.

Chapter 9

Characters: Kaiza, Sequan, Snake, Alice, Sabrina, Xavier, Machina Gearframe 001, Harper

Duels: none

Plot: the next week, Kaiza returns to school, for actual classes. 20 minutes before its time for lunch break, Kaiza gets a call from the PA system to go to the head admin office. There, he meets Snake and Sequan, who discuss what is going on. The name of their combat team is Mainstream Raiders, one of the main SH combat teams in Japan, which is responsible for the protection of the protection of prefectures from Gifu to Tochigi. Shadow duelists enter this world two ways, by possession, or by direct transport. Possession is safer as it gives them a body to work with, a control link by which they can possess and manipulate other bodies, and a shield of sorts. Hacked bodies and shadow duelists can’t be harmed by physical weapons, and some have transmutation ability, where they can morph an object into another object. It’s on a small scale however, and most time it’s done to create a duel disc and a deck out of whatever objects they can find. To combat shadow duelists, they use soul disc, which contain a soul trigger, a device which uses the wielder’s soul as both a sword and a shield, using it to summon duel monsters both in and outside of battle, who’s attacks have real physical and spiritual effects on the environment, where the attacks damage the connection a shadow duelist has with its host body. If dropped to 0 lifepoints via a soul disc, the shadow duelist will be displaced from its body, and anybody under its control will be liberated. Their other duty is to keep information about this war hidden; soul disc summons, called soul summons, can be applied outside of duels, where the summoned monster can physically interact with and affect the world around it. This means that any effects it may have can be applied to the real world, making certain cards, like black rose dragon, city wiping bombs.

	As a possible mainstream Raider member, he is required to hold secrecy on these events; telling anyone or leaking information can result in his removal from the team, and the confiscation of any material related to this, sans his personal deck and duel disc. In addition, he is also required to use a soul disc in addition to his normal disc. They ask to borrow his disc to compare it to a soul disc, when they realized that Kaiza’s disc isn’t simply an oversized average disc; outside of the handle being broken off, his duel disc is a soul disc, and he is not aware of this. Deciding to keep it hidden, they tell him that his duel disc needs repair, and gives him a normal duel disc, with a deck built by Mainstream Raiders in it. While he is not happy with this, he accepts, and is then given his tertiary objective; be himself, and if he can, blend in with the local populace, starting with the community of ADA. He takes the former option.

	At the cafeteria, he sits alone, eating his meal when Sabrina joins him; her friends are not here, and the fact that he tried to help her even when she was being arrogant, and the fact he held his own against Snake, instantly makes him someone worth being around. Before he can try to send her off, Alice joins too, saying how she has no reason to sit alone, and how he shouldn’t be either. Bothered, he tells them that they only met for 1 day, they can hardly consider each other friends, and that he isn’t here to make friends either; Alice and Sabrina respond by harassing about anything they can find about him, making him feel like he’s an emo, until he protests and says he’s not, to their entertainment. Seeing opportunity for fun, she takes Kaiza and forces him to go on a date with her, and takes along Xavier and Machina Gearframe 001. While Sabrina isn’t entirely happy with the idea, as no one else is around, she joins along too. Alice calls in a favor from Sequan, and they all get permission to leave. An hour after they leave, a man dressed in a blue jeans, black jacket with a hood, and with purple hair and yellow eye pupils, arrives at Sequan’s office, and requests the location and the name of the testee he is here for

	They stop at Alice's house so she can change attire, then the 4 of them take an hour long trip to the G Front game store. Among the events going on at the time, there is a small competition going on, but its not dueling; its virtual dancing. Alice, being good at the game, takes a chance in the competition, beating 3 of her contestants. Seeing the reluctance in her group, she makes them go against her as well, starting with Kaiza. He reluctantly takes part. For the first 3 rounds, he loses easily to Alice, with the 3rd round finally seeing him making some progress. Out of mercy, Alice plays a little easier so he has a better chance, without telling him, while Kaiza, out of rage, focuses harder; the result of this is Alice drawing with Kaiza, and Kaiza throwing a tantrum over his results. The response he gets is not what he expected; Alice and Sabrina claps, and it makes him feel incredibly awkward; he expected to be insulted, not complimented, and he doesn’t know how to respond to it; an angry response wouldn’t make sense.

	The contest continues for a few rounds, with Alice vs Xavier and Sabrina, then with them vs each other. Meanwhile, the person who talked to Sequan arrives at the store, and starts searching around for someone, as he asks people if they saw a girl with red hair, a white blouse, a red sleeveless jacket and a red skirt, with a guy in a blue jacket, silver shirt, and grey jeans with white hair and blue eyes. He eventually finds Rosum, who’s also at the store, and while no one can find the girl, he points him to where Kaiza is. As they are leaving the store, Alice pokes fun at Kaiza and Sabrina, teasing them on the fact they enjoyed the competition even though they say they didn’t. She goes further with Kaiza, teasing him on the fact that although he said he doesn’t need friends, he treats them like he’s happy to have them. Their conversation is short lived when the person from Sequan’s office finds them. Alice and Sabrina immediately recognize him; he’s Harper, one of ADA’s finest, and he’s in a friendly mood, striking up a decent conversation with all of them, which places them in a good mood. Then, he asks if Kaiza is with them, and when he responds, the mood changes as he holds Kaiza by his shirt, and throws him into the open. Before Kaiza can retaliate, Harper stops him, and pulls out a duel disc, activating it, as well as another duel disc with a deck in it, which he gives to Kaiza; he tells him it’s his deck and duel disc, so he already knows why he is here, and he tells him how for reasons he knows, he has to embarrass him in front of everyone by beating him in a duel mercilessly

Chapter 10

Characters: Kaiza, Harper, Alice, Sabrina, Xavier, Rosum, Eresa

Duels: Kaiza vs Harper

Plot: despite the conditions he is given, Kaiza accepts the challenge, and the duel begins. Throughout the duel, control switches between Harper and Kaiza continuously, with Kaiza countering most of Harper’s moves, until he summons his ace; the black winged dragon, and uses graverobber + black winged dragon’s effect to copy junk barrage, weaken scrap dragon and destroy it, and inflict massive damage to Kaiza before setting a card and ending. The card he set is meant to use Kaiza’s card against him to win, but Kaiza activates special hurricane, discarding junk synchron to destroy black winged dragon, and summoning Jain to attack, making the card that’s meant to defeat Kaiza, a card that will defeat them both instead. Harper activates regardless; fake feather, discarding blackwing – camila the haze to copy ring of destruction, targeting Jaina. Camila’s effect activates and would revive black winged dragon, but Kaiza chains d.d. crow, banishing black winged dragon, and ring of destruction destroys Jain and drops their lifepoints to 0; the duel ends as a draw

	The duel itself was so intense that it attracted people from their games to watch, and the ending, according to others, seemed like it was planned from the start, like an acting script; Alice and Sabrina are in even more shock; Kaiza doesn’t know it, but he just drawed against one of ADA’s finest. Regardless, Harper got what he came for, and he tells Kaiza that from his performance, he passes, while Rosum, who was watching, scoffs, and walks off.

	Around 8 pm, the 4 of them decide to head home. Kaiza volunteers to take Sabrina home while Alice volunteers to take Xavier home, whose face turns bright red at her offer. On the way to Sabrina’s home, she stops, and when Kaiza asks why, she throws a tantrum at him; she has been in ADA for a long time, strived hard to be the best, to be the one to not just become one of ADA’s finest, but surpass them, and be the “queen of ADA”. She never came close. Kaiza comes along, and not only almost defeats Snake, but draws with Harper, 3rd place member in ADA”s finest. This bothers her, as something she’s tried to achieve for a long time, he almost did in his first two weeks here. Not wanting to leave her angry, Kaiza tries to give her a speech Orcona gave him on the reasons people dueling, trying to use the 3rd reason as a means by which she can get better. But it’s out of context and backfires. Regardless, she stops her raging, and while she is still upset, she heads home with no further quarrels

	Meanwhile, Alice reaches close to home 2 hours after, and at one of the walls she is walking past, she stops to see a black, swirling display form on the wall. Then suddenly, a hand, made of black smoke grabs her, and before she can react, her entire body becomes covered in smoke, with her screaming in pain.

Chapter 11

Characters: Kaiza, Machina Gearframe 001, Sabrina, Alice, Eresa, Sequan, Snake

Duels: Kaiza vs Alice (hacked)

Plot: the next day, in the middle of the day, Kaiza gets a bit worried as Alice hasn’t showed up for school. After asking Xavier, Sabrina and Sequan if she showed up, and getting no as the reply, he finds Machina Gearframe 001 in the cafeteria, and hangs out with it; it created an alteration to its primary scanner. Humans register as brown while shadow duelists register as purple against a blue scale image, until it can identify Kaiza, he will be registered as white. Meanwhile, Sequan reports to Snake about a SH reading close to the area where Alice lives, sent to them by another team that was doing a scanner sweep of the map of japan. It appeared next to a human on the scanner, the human turned to one, while the shadow duelist disappeared, and then the newly hacked human disappeared as well. Concerned, he gives Harper a call to go and rendezvous with the SH combat team, and Harper heads to the rooftop of ADA, uses his soul disc to summon blackwing armored master, and uses it to fly off to their location.

	Meanwhile, a black dimensional opening, similar to the one at the end of chapter 10, opens in the technical support room for ADA. The staff there turns around to see Alice, dressed in her clothes from yesterday, step out of the fissure. But she is not her normal self; her hair is in a very dark crimson colour, close to black, and her eye pupils are now black, and the atmosphere she gives off by her body and facial expressions are discomforting, almost hostile. Before the staff members can respond, Alice activates her duel disc and pulls a trigger beneath, surrounding her in the same aura Sequan surrounded himself with against Kaiza in chapters 4 and 5, but unlike Sequan’s own, hers is black. Soon after she plays on her duel disc the card “fiendish chain”, and all the staff members become entangled in purple chains, which then binds them to the roof of the building. She then activates the PA system, and calls all students to the Main Arena; among those who listen are Kaiza and Machina Gearfame 001

	Snake hears the message over the PA system, and its not one he authorized. Concerned, he sends Sequan to the Main Arena as well. Meanwhile, Harper arrives at the SH combat team rendezvous location, where the other team explains how they saw the SH attack in progress. They show him a large device, which, once given enough power, can do a quick sweep across a whole country, for a short period. When Harper asks for a display of it working, they activate the device, and in the brief cycle that it does the scan, to their shock, they find a SH reading, right at ADA. Harper gives a call to Snake, telling him he has an imminent SH attack at the school itself. Meanwhile, at the Arena, as everyone waits, they see a girl with purple hair and a microphone enter the arena and stand in the main hall. From kaiza’s distance, he can only recognize the clothes, as its similar to what Alice wears, but he isn’t sure who the person is. The woman then uses the mike and calls out Kaiza to the stage, and reluctantly, he complies, heading down to the Arena. When she asks to verify that its him, he finally recognizes her; despite the dyed hair and changed eye colour, its Alice. With this realization, she is satisfied, and on her duel disc, she plays the spell card mirror wall on the duel disc, and all of the entrances to the arena, and the ones leading in and off of the staircases, become blocked by a crystal wall. Snake gets the call at the same time, and immediately heads towards the Arena. Sequan is also contacted by Snake, but before he can reach the arena, the entrance is blocked, beyond his duel disc signal range. Kaiza sees what’s going on, and demands an answer from Alice, and she tells him that the answer is obvious; its no longer Alice. Before he can ask anything else, in a swirl of smoke around her other arm, another duel disc forms, and she locks onto Kaiza’s disc using it. Machina Gearframe, during the time that the crystals were forming, reactivated its primary scanner, and recognizes that it’s a shadow duelist. It rushes to the arena, but Alice sees it, and plays another card, bending fate, which sucks Machina Gearframe into a colourless, bending vortex, and with him out of the way, she tells Kaiza who she is; her name is Eresa, and she’s here by the Shadow King’s request to retrieve him; either she is leaving here, or they both are. With no options left, kaiza locks back onto her disc, starting a duel.

	Throughout the duel, Alice takes control, countering most of Kaiza’s plays and doing massive damage to him. As the duel goes along, as his body begins to weaken, he has a hard time comprehending what’s going on; Alice is hacked, but the shadow duelist is fighting using Alice’s deck and playstyle; he’s not just fighting a shadow duelist, he’s fighting Alice. But with bigger concerns on his mind, he remembers the trigger beneath his duel disc and what it does; in an attempt to reduce the severity of the damage, he pulls it; what happens next shocks both him and his opponent

	Upon pulling the trigger, Kaiza is surrounded by an aura twice the size of Eresa’s own, covering his body from head to toe. It’s neither black like that of Rozero and Eresa, nor colourless like everybody else’s; its white in colour, and in Eresa’s mind, there’s only one other place she’s seen this. To make matters worse, all the damage Kaiza’s body was suffering from, no longer affects him, and where as every attack used to have a considerable effect on his body, now, it barely even tingles him, despite the fact he still loses lifepoints as normal. In denial and refusing to believe what she is seeing, she continues her assault, and as Kaiza takes more damage, he begins to feel the effects of the attacks more and more, as his aura dwindles down to the same size as Eresa’s own. At the last turn, with Kaiza’s lifepoints at 100, he finally turns it around, while continuing to be shocked at just how good Alice really is; When Alice is about to finish him via fortune lady earth’s effect, he activates breakthrough skill and negates its attack, dropping its attack to 0 for 1 turn, and sparing himself. On his turn, he activates monster reborn and revives tempest magician, summons Trident Warrior, and activates breakthrough skill again, dropping earth’s attack to 0 and attacking with both. The attack from Tempest Magician, under Kaiza, is so strong, that it forcibly tears Eresa out of Alice’s body, and, free of Eresa, Alice simply faints. With the duel disc shut down, the walls shatter, while Machina Gearframe is released from the bending fate effect. However, with Kaiza’s disc offline as well, the protective barrier from the aura goes as well, and he feels the effects of all the damage he took, passing out due to sheer pain. He is left unconscious for three days within the academy infirmary, and when he wakes up, he finds Siliveth there waiting on him. She tells him that he should be more careful, as he had an accident at the academy which almost killed him, but it doesn’t take Kaiza long to figure out what happened; ADA covered up the evidence.

	In a place covered by smoke, one can hear Eresa talking to another woman about the duel that took place. She says that her target, Kaiza, is not an ordinary man, and should be gotten rid of as soon as possible. The person she speaks to, however, is not fond of her suggestion, and as they talk, In Eresa’s mind, she feels that something about her is not as it should be. Meanwhile, Kaiza talks with Alice, to see what she knows, and as expected, she also has her data changed. According to her, there was an accident in the cafeteria, a small gas leak, which caused an explosion. Alice was knocked out by it, and Kaiza rushed her to the infirmary, driven by adrenaline, until he realized he was actually more badly injured than she was, passing out due to it. She thanks him for it, and Kaiza plays along, and then confesses to Kaiza how she feels. She pretends to care about people, but the reality is, she isn’t good at caring; she’s often distant from people, and that allows her to be whatever she wants to be. Due to this, she helps people so they’ll come out better people, and that’s what she did with Kaiza, saying it worked. In response, Kaiza pretends to fall asleep on her lap, and, with no way to shift him off, she takes out some cookies, and eats it in a very unmannerly fashion, dropping the crumbs on his face until he wakes up

Chapter 12

Characters: Kaiza, Machina Gearframe 001

Duels: Kaiza vs Machina Gearframe 001

Plot: The same day, at another park bench, Kaiza meets Machina Geaframe reading a book. It tries to communicate with him the way it normally does, but Kaiza remembers the event where Machina Gearframe tried to come to his assistance. He asks for an explanation as to why it did this, and when Machine Gearframe looks away, he begins to pester it. It gets up, and walks away a short distance, and before Kaiza can react, it tells him to follow. Kaiza complies and follows it, as they return to the main hall

	Following a pattern similar to the tour they were given in chapters 7 and 8, they go through the ADA complex, while Machina Gearframe 001 explains what it is, and what its purpose is. It was originally said by Snake to be a duel machine transferred from UDA to ADA, from the US, to Japan, sent by the head admin of UDA to ADA, as ADA had no duel machines while UDA had hundreds, but the truth is, it transferred itself; it left UDA and went across to ADA, under the notion that its an assessment machine, here to do an analysis on the operations of ADA. When Kaiza questions this, asking why it assisted him, it tells him that the notion of him being an assessment machine is also a lie; it used it as a cover up to avoid doing its original purpose. When Kaiza questions it on what its original purpose is, it tells him its not a duel machine, but a SH combat machine

	Its original manufacturer and master controller username is Luanna, but after searching continuously for the person, it came up empty. With no way to contact its manufacturer, it simply continued its primary objective; the defense of earth and its residents from SH attacks and shadow duelists. So good was it at its purpose, that it’d often be sent alone to deal with small to medium scale attacks, and it continued its purpose until one day, after completing a mission and defeating a strong shadow duelist, the assailant questioned him on why he fights for people. When he explained why he does so, he tells it that it’s solving a problem they created. Intrigued by this, it does its own investigation, and finds out the shadow duelist was right; shadow duelist are a byproduct of human actions they never took the time to fix, and now its grown problematic, and are now using machines like itself to fix the problem. Its original purpose is to protect humans, but now it sees it as simply cleaning up their mess, a deviation of its primary purpose. With this, it no longer takes part in SH defense, and simply seeks out other means to carry out its purpose

	The tour ends with Machina Gearframe 001 parting ways, but before he can, part ways, Kaiza asks one last question; why did he help at the Arena. It doesn’t answer, and tries to walk off, but Kaiza blocks its path, demanding an answer. He finally answers, saying he reacted as its primary purpose is to defend, and that is what it did. Kaiza then requests it does it again, and helps him; help ADA, help mainstream raiders, and it refuses. So begins an argument that ends with Kaiza challenging Machina Gearframe 001 to a duel; It knows it can refuse, and it can simply leave. Instead, it questions Kaiza and asks why he wants his help, and Kaiza responds that he wishes to stop shadow duelists from causing any further harm, but it can’t do it alone, no one can. With this answer, it accepts the challenge, and the duel begins

	The duel goes back and forth between them, with Machina Gearframe questioning Kaiza’s motives; why is he here? Why did he get involved in this war? Why take part when everyone else can do it instead? He had all opportunity to forget this part of life and live life as normal, yet he chose to warp his life forever by taking part in this secret, ugly war. With each change in control, the fight to regain control becomes harder, as Kaiza becomes more and more frustrated as Machina Gearframe places more and more pressure on him. Machina Gearframe 001 himself is under a strain; every time Kaiza changes control of the duel, he has to think harder on how to change it again, while Kaiza seems to get luckier and luckier with each draw, while still under pressure, as luck doesn’t last long. In the end, both of their lifepoints reach around 3000, and the duel is left in a stalemate, with the ability to go in any direction, when kaiza answers his question; He had lost his friends due to shadow duelists, and was left a broken, confused man, until he learned of this war. When he did, and learned who was responsible, all he wanted to do was exact revenge on those who did this to him. Then he had to come and stay at ADA like a normal person. For a while, he was reluctant, then he met Xavier, Alice, Sabrina, and the rest of them, and for the first time in years, he saw what it’s like to have friends again, and knowing what happened to his last friends, he sure doesn’t want a repeat of it. What was once a quest for vengeance soon became a quest for protection, and now, all he wants is for his new friends to be safe and sound; whether it’s for that reason or for vengeance, he wants the war over, with as little loss as possible; the world isn’t his concern, or cleaning up their mess, his friends are. With this answer, Machina Gearframe 001 forfeits. It tells Kaiza it cannot promise it will help, but it will consider his request. Satisfied, he lets it go its own way, while Kaiza heads to the main office

Chapter 13

Characters: Kaiza, Snake, Sequan, Anna

Duels: Kaiza vs Anna

Plot: Kaiza heads to the main office and demands an audience with Snake. He is given it, with Sequan present, and there, he requests to be sent into the field for any mission of any level, even the level D ones. Snake refuses, even when he demands it, saying that he will not get better until heads out. In the face of this refusal, he explains why he requested this; the shadow duelist that attacked, was looking for Kaiza, and did not do anything dangerous until he showed up. For reasons unknown, he is a marked man by them, and chances are that won’t be their last attack at him; if he stays here, ADA will be caught in the crossfire, if he is away from ADA, it is safe. Snake pauses on this thought for a while; never before has an academy been attacked directly until today, so he may have some proof of his word. When Sequan talks to him and says it may be a good idea to test this theory, Snake agrees to Kaiza’s request. A few days ago, a SH reading was detected by the wide range scanner 6 days before the event; ever since it was made, team Shino Corps have been using the device. They sent one of their best operatives to go and dispatch the reading, in the Yamanashi forest, but after they got no response for 2 days after, they sent 3 more. 2 days after that, they lost contact with all 4. When Harper arrived, they informed him of this, and while they had plans to send more people in, they also requested help from Mainstream Raiders. They sent Xanxus. He arrived 1 day after the event at ADA, but said how there’s something there they need to see; Kaiza will be his backup. He is to head home today, gather materials for a hiking trip, and rendezvous with Xanxus by tomorrow afternoon. Kaiza complies, and is given leave of absence by ADA

	The next day, Kaiza departs for Yamanashi woodlands, leaving early in the morning. Taking the usual exit route out of New Domino, he waits for a different bus, one heading to Yamanashi instead of Satellite. At the same time he hops on, someone from out of nowhere from Kaiza’s perspective hops on, but he pays the person no attention. As a precaution, he activates his scanner, and the person registers as a human, shifting his worries aside.

	The bus arrives 2 ½ hours later, and Kaiza hops off of the bus, a few seconds after, as he walks away, the same stalker hops off and hides behind a corner before he can turn around to see the person. He/she then begins stalking Kaiza for a while, until Kaiza catches the person red handed; he turns around, sees the person, he/she tries to hide, but runs head first into a trash can. With nowhere to run, he confronts the stalker, who reveals himself; it’s the girl from chapter’s 1 to 4, Anna. She says she is the brother of Rosum Valcarcel, the person he defeated, and she is here to reclaim his honor; Kaiza simply picks her up to see how short she is, to her discomfort. Denying he even knows the person, Kaiza walks off, and Anna follows him, pestering him for a duel. Eventually, Kaiza holds her, places her upside down, and places her in an empty trash can, before walking off

	Anna finally catches up with him and throws a tantrum on his chest, constantly pounding it with her weak arms with no effect on him. He walks off, and then Anna starts insulting him on his dueling skills. In response, Kaiza catches a red light, and right before he crosses, he takes her coat, and blinds her with it, covering her face as he crosses the street. By the time she removes it, the light is green again

	Anna catches him again, repeating the futile chest pounding, when her stomach growls. She whimpers in hunger, and realizes all she has is travelling money to get home. Kaiza sighs, and they head to the nearest dining area. There, he buys them both a meal, and while Anna fills herself, Kaiza heads to the washroom, after slipping the payment for the food under his plate, unknown to Anna and the cashier. For 30 minutes, Anna waits again, and tells the waitress that they’ll be paying soon. Frantic, she sneaks into the boy’s toilet when no one is there, and sees a window wide open; it doesn’t take her long to figure out what happened. 1 hour later, with both of them gone, a frustrated waitress takes up the plates, and sees the payment for the meal under them, leaving her confused

	20 minutes later, as Kaiza is approaching his second bus stop, leading into the rural areas of Yamanashi, Anna sees him again. She rushes towards him, and while Kaiza expects a chest beating, he instead gets a kick to his nuts. He eventually recovers, glares at her, and then walks off, but Anna, refusing to be ignored, activates her duel disc and locks onto his own. Now annoyed, he accepts the challenge, and duels her. For most of the duel, he controls it entirely, taking no damage from her as he plays and recycles Trishula, Dragon of the Ice barrier, on Anna, draining her down to 600 lifepoints. Anna finally turns it around via summoner monk and vylon prison, summoning her ace card, vylon elipson, and using it to destroy trishula and finally do damage to Kaiza. However, the victory is short lived, as Kaiza revives Trishula with Stardust Shimmer, and activates synchro change, summoning gigantcastle, and attacking Vylon Elipson to win the duel.

Despite the easily won duel, Kaiza heads to her, takes her duel disc off, and takes out her deck, going through it. Her cards themselves, the vylons, are a rare set of cards one has to take time to find, yet she has a complete set when she shouldn’t. Although she cannot use it, her deck is worth a lot. He hands her back the deck and walks off, but turns around to see a demoralized and saddened girl sitting on the floor, unsure of what to do with herself. Feeling remorse and pity, he offers her to come on the trip with him, and with the only option being to go home, she joins him. But she underestimates the length of the journey, and falls asleep on Kaiza, who, when the ride is over and he reaches his destination, now has to carry her on his back. When she wakes up, she requests to be taken off, and they continue to the forested area of Yamanashi

Chapter 14

Characters: Kaiza, Anna, Xanxus, Kasona, Kagami, Tide

Duels: Kaiza vs Xanxus

Plot: As the forest is scarcely populated, Kaiza uses his soul scanner to scan the nearby area for life signs of any sort, other than themselves. Eventually, they find one; a brown signature a few feet away from them. They rush to the signature and find a man with a white, unbuttoned jacket and silver vest, yellow, spiked hair pointing upwards, and grey jeans, sneakers and two large duel discs. At first, he’s hostile towards both of them, until Kaiza declares who he is and why he’s here. Xanxus’ hostility ends, but his hostility gives way to suspicion; Snake called in advance, and said he was sending 1 person as backup, not 2. To make it worse, Xanxus doesn’t remember mainstream raiders hiring kids, and Anna herself looks like she is clueless to the events going on. Kaiza tries to pacify Xanxus, telling him she’s a trainee, special request of Snake, while keeping Anna shut so as not to blow her cover. Although suspicious, he accepts Kaiza’s premise, and takes him to the location.

	They arrive at an abandoned shed, and Xanxus tells them to wait, as he goes into the shed to drag a few things out, what they need to see. As he does so, Kaiza tells Anna what to say and what not to say, while they wait for Xanxus to return. When Xanxus returns, he brings with him 3 bodies wrapped in a purple material that covers all of their details. Confused by what they see, Xanxus tells them they are hacked bodies, hacked in a way unknown to them; their lifepoints are at the max, but they cannot respond or even move on their own; like a form of stasis. With dueling them not being an option, he decides to use a different approach. He tells everyone to stand back, and he activates his soul disc and his soul trigger, and, instead of locking onto their duel disc, he plays a card on it. Soon after, from the ground up, the hologram of the card he played, flamvell firedog appears. Xanxus explains what happened, saying how soul disc allows one to summon duel monsters outside of battle, with real effects on the physical environment. In addition, they can damage shadow duelists as well, where other forms of weaponry would not. As Kaiza has a soul disc, he asks him to try it out. Kaiza repeats his method, activating his soul disc then activating the soul trigger. But like before, his whirlwind is white, and this sends Xanxus on high alert. Before Kaiza can play his own card. Xanxus tackles him to the floor, equips a second soul disc, and activates the trap card, fiendish chain. As Kaiza gets up, before he can protest, he realizes his legs are tied down by 2 purple chains. Xanxus then uses the second duel disc to lock onto Kaiza’s duel disc. He won’t let him go until he gets answers, and he’ll get it whether it means beating it out of him in a duel, or burning him alive with duel monsters

[insert duel scenario progress here]

	With the duel in his favor, Kaiza demands that Xanxus take the soul disc off, and end this madness. Xanxus asks what he is, and he tells him that if he isn’t a human, he doesn’t know what he is; regardless of this, he’s a Mainstream Raider’s member, and he is not here to harm them in any way, either he can accept this and end the duel, or end the duel the manual way. Still somewhat bitter, Xanxus accepts the premise, and they shut their duel discs off. Then they realize, Anna is not there with them. They spend 1 hour searching the forest, with Kaiza telling Xanxus the truth; he is from Mainstream Raiders, Anna is a hitch hiker. Xanxus tells him this will not be taken lightly, and they will probably have to wipe her memory, but for now, they have to find her. They find her hiding behind a bundle of bushes an hour after the search began. When they approach her, she throws a tantrum, trying to chase them away. Out of frustration, Kaiza whacks her in the head to pacify her, and as she recovers, he explains to him that he knows who he is, this is not the first time this has happened, and like last time, back at chapter 2, she’ll come out okay once she listens to him. While normally she would not, something about Kaiza’s behavior makes her calm down, and they head back to the shed, as its getting dark. Xanxus gives Anna his spare soul disc, and as he places her deck into it, he looks through it, disgusted at how awful its designed. Regardless of this, he gives her the disc with her deck in it, and explains to her how it works. They sleep in the shed for the night, and in the middle of the night, Anna wakes up, due to discomfort. She heads outside, and to her surprise, the once lifeless bodies are now awake, all armed with duel discs and looking at her

Chapter 15

Characters: Tide, Kasona, Kagami, Kaiza, Xanxus, Anna, Kessiler

Duels: Kaiza + Xanxus vs Tide + Kasona + Kagami, Kaiza + Xanxus + Anna vs Tide + Kasona + Kagami

Plot: Kaiza and Xanxus hear Anna’s screams and rush outside to see the 3 bodies, now awake, with their soul discs active. One of them tries to lock onto Anna’s duel disc, but Kaiza pulls her out of the way and locks on with his own duel disc. The other 2 lock on as well, and Xanxus locks onto all 3 of theirs. They tell Anna to head inside and hide, while they fight off the attackers, and Anna complies, hiding behind a wooden crate. Meanwhile, before the duel starts, Kaiza and Xanxus feel a black rope tangle itself around their leg, binding them in place; they wont be leaving unless they defeat them

	The duel starts with Tide going first, setting a card which Xanxus then destroys with flamvell gunkira. The card destroyed was xx – saber emmersable, which special summons xx – saber darksoul. Kasona then summons elemental hero stratus and adds elemental hero neos to hand, banishing it with sacred sword of the 7 stars to draw 2 cards. Using hers and Tide’s monster, they destroy Xanxus’ monster and inflict 200 damage to him. Kaiza then summons Jain, lightsworn paladin, and Tide activates saber hole, but Xanxus uses smashing horn to destroy and negate it. He attacks Stratus, but Kasona negates using Hero Barrier. Kagami then normal summons V fighter jet and uses frontline base to special summon W catapult fighter, then uses limiter removal and combination attack, as well as the other monsters, to do heavy damage to Kaiza. Xanxus responds with archer, pineapple blast, instant fusion and neo flamvell origin, synchro summon for ancient flamvell diety and flushing out their grave of monsters, before wiping off the other monsters on the field. Tide however, then plays and summons xx – saber hyunlei to break their defenses, and uses sword of sparkles to overpower flamvell diety. Kaiza saves it with guard hedge, but Kaiza takes severe damage, and finds it hard to stay focus. Kaiza tries to destroy hyunlei by synchro summoning for gaia knight the force of earth, and attacking it, but Kagami activates inpregnable wall, defending hyunlei while they all take damage instead. Kasona then uses a hero lives to cut her lifepoints down, playing elemental hero prisma and using its effect to send neo spacian air hummingbird to the grave, allowing her to use miracle fusion to play great tornado, and reduce the attack of Kaiza’s monsters . Kaiza defends with barrier wave, switching all of their monsters to defense and doing heavy damage to Kasona, but its clear they’re running low on options, as two turns later, they finally destroy deity.

	Meanwhile, at the crate, Anna listens on to the duel, unaware of how its going, when, she turns around, and sees a huge spider. In fear, she runs out of the shed and falls right at Xanxus’ feet. He sees this, facepalms himself, and yells at her, telling her to get back inside. However, the hacked bodies see her too, and bind her at her feet before locking onto her duel disc; now Anna has to fight alongside them. Ironically, Anna’s reckless playstyle and crude defensive cards is what allows them to not only survive the opponent’s onslaught, but clear away their offenses, contrary to Xanxus’ protests and the further damage he takes. Eventually, Xanxus gets to his ace card, rekindling, which floods the field with fire monsters with 200 defense, and uses his monsters to defeat all 3 of the enemies, before passing out.

	Even though the duel was won, Xanxus is currently knocked out due to severe damages, while Kaiza, although relatively fine, is still at half lifepoints. To make matters worse, the bodies are still encased in the black covering, their lifepoints steadily increasing. To make matters worse, a 4th person has converged on their location. As Kaiza checks his scanner, he realizes it’s a shadow duelist; unlike the other 3, this one can talk, and is surprised they managed to defeat all 3 of them. But it says their days are over, as it locks onto Kaiza and Anna’s duel disc.



Chapter 16

Characters: Kessiler, Anna, Kaiza

Duels: Kaiza vs Kessiler, Anna vs Kessiler

Plot: Kaiza and Anna find the next shadow duelist, the one being used as the main host. Kaiza immediately locks onto her disc and starts a duel with it, but the aura generated by Kessiler is so powerful, it gives Kaiza trouble standing in his damaged state. Kessiler sets 2 cards and ends, while Kaiza activates solar recharge, Jain, Lightsworn Paladin to draw 2 cards and mills Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior and another spell. He summons Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner, and activates her effect, discarding sangan to revive Garoth, but Kessiler activates fiendish chain, negating her effect. He then activates monster reborn, to revive Jain, and attacks, but Kessiler activates dimensional prison, banishing it. Later, Kessiler summons mist valley falcon, and attacks Lumina, fiendish chain to her hand in the process. The gust from Falcon’s sword blows Kaiza off of his feet, and his head hits a tree, knocking him out. With Kaiza unable to duel, she turns focus onto Anna, and forces her to duel next, remembering to bind her feet in place this time

	Throughout most of the duel, Anna is losing, with her finally feeling the severe damage soul attacks from duel monsters can inflict while Kessiler says the body has is one of the best bodies she’s ever had; the rage of the person who’s body she carries is on par with that of shadow duelists’ hate for this world, while Anna’s dueling skills are so pathetic, she’s barely worth the effort. As Anna falls to her knees, Kessiler attacks with doomcalibur knight, but Kaiza regains consciousness, and sees his situation. Desperate, he jumps in the middle, and takes the hit instead of her. It drops him down to 500 lifepoints, and he passes out again. Kessiler laughs at and insults his actions, while Anna herself is fueled with rage. Finally remembering what her new duel disc does, she pulls the soul trigger, and is surrounded by an aura stronger than that of Kessiler’s.

	Using soul of purity and light, she gets Kessiler’s field via dark hole, and uses soul of purity and light and vylon tetrah to summon vylon elipson, using it to damage heavily damage Kessiler. Kessiler activates Pot of Dichotomy, returning tiger king wang fu, thunder king rai-oh, and doomcalibur knight to her deck to draw 2 cards, then activates smashing ground to destroy elipson, but Tetrah is destroyed instead. She then sets dimensional prison, but Anna draws vylon component and equips it to Vylon Elipson, then sends it to destroy Kessiler’s set dimensional prison, and attack her to win. The blast sends her flying back, and Anna begins happily celebrating her victory, only for it to be short lived, as the damages from the attacks she took begin to take its toll, making her pass out.

	Later in the night, Xanxus wakes up, and sees the aftermath; Kaiza and Anna are unconscious, and all of the bodies are now liberated; from their ID tags, they’re members of Shino Corps. He huddles together the Shino corps members and places Anna and Kaiza in bedsheets, laying them to rest on the front walls of the shed, while he stays awake for the night. Later on, Kaiza wakes up, and Xanxus congratulates him on a job well done. Kaiza informs him it was Anna who did this, and he begins to question her ability to duel as she sleeps away comfortably. Later on, 3 of the members wake up, and they both expect a good reunion, only to be greeted with activated discs and hostile glares.

Chapter 17

Characters: Kaiza, Xanxus, Tide, Kasona, Kagami, Kessiler, Anna, Rozero

Duels: Kaiza vs Kessiler, Kaiza + Kessiler vs unnamed shadow duelist

Plot: Kaiza and Xanxus greet the Shino Corp members as they wake up, only to be greeted by hostile glares and activated duel discs. They try to explain that they are members of the SH combat team mainstream raiders, but Kasona asks for proof; Kaiza left his SH combat team badge at home, while, on the way to find Anna, Xanxus’ own dropped out of his pocket. In addition, the soul scanners on Shino Corp’s side have ran out of battery power, and when Kaiza goes to give him the one he has, the most rowdy member of the team, Tide, refuses, saying it could be a trick. To make matters worse, Xanxus’ attitude is only making the situation tenser. It would seem that a showdown is inevitable, but the 4th member, Kessiler, wakes up in a fit of rage, triggered by Tide’s voice, and heads across to diffuse the situation. At first, Kaiza is captivated and infactuated by her looks, only to be turned off completely by her violent and abrasive attitude, as she scolds and swears at her own team so loud and feverishly that it makes Kaiza shrug, Xanxus have second thoughts on whether he should talk to her, and Anna wake up from the loud swearing

	Finished with her group, she turns to Mainstream Raiders. With no badge, they can’t ID them, and they can’t judge them off of looks, as shadow duelists are well known for disguises, nor can they trust their scanners, due to shadow duelist transmutation. The best bet is to duel them; if they really are backup and they really did liberate them all, they can do it again. Kessiler takes out two normal duel discs from her bag, and tosses one to Kaiza, commanding him to place his deck in the duel disc and fight with that. He complies, and they duel, using no soul trigger or soul damaging attacks. During the duel, Kaiza makes a comment about Kessiler, saying she duels like Snake, just with more hate. That comment makes her end the duel, as this means he’s had direct contact with him. When she asks how he knows that man, Kaiza said that was his tester. With those words, she accepts that his group is part of Mainstream Raiders, but not before making her distaste for that team crystal clear

	At the camp, Kessiler explains what happened. Using the wide range scanner, they detected a SH reading within the Yamanashi Prefecture, and Kessiler was sent to investigate. It was requested that she took help, but she outright refused, and went in alone. She found the shadow duelist and tried to fight it, but lost, and was captured instead. The other 3 came along, and found both the shadow duelist and her, and tried to fight them and also lost, but not before doing severe damage to the shadow duelist in question. With all 4 of them free, and 3 other members as support, they take the batteries from Kaiza’s scanner and activate the wide range pulse. For a brief moment, it shows an image of Japan dotted all over with brown dots, and, among them all, the spot a purple dot again. After zooming in, they realize it’s within their area, and is relatively close. Seeing this, Kessiler gathers her soul disc and soul scanner, and heads out again; her group asks her to stop, and she refuses, heading out on her own after telling her group to send a message to their respective teams. Her group tries to convince her to stay and let them all go at once, but Xanxus says if she wants to get captured again so much, let her. Kaiza on the other hand, joins her, and tells them to send a call to ADA headquarters

	Halfway en route, Kaiza catches up with her, and she almost punches his face up, hitting a tree and damaging her skin on it. When she asks why Kaiza is here, he says that he told his group to call, and even though the shadow duelist is weakened, Kessiler lost before, and they can’t risk that again. When she demands to know why he even cares, he says he just does, and that no real reason is needed. Unable to change his mind, she says he can come along, and they head to the location of the shadow duelist.

	A short while after, they find the shadow duelist in a cave. He’s wounded, but still capable of fighting. Kaiza requests that he goes home, saying if he does, nothing will happen; the shadow duelist responds by attempting a soul summon, while Kessiler locks onto his duel disc, forcing him to duel instead. With diplomacy out of the way, Kaiza joins Kessiler’s side, while Kessiler scolds him for even trying to attempt the peace offering. Regardless, the duel begins, and while Kessiler activates her soul trigger, Kaiza decides it’s best he doesn’t use his, to her frustration. Like before, the shadow duelists overwhelms Kessiler, while simply hindering Kaiza’s plays to stop him from interfering. In the end, Kaiza activates his soul disc, and, like before, his aura is white, which shocks his opponent, as he’s seen this before. Seeing him as a bigger threat now, he focuses his attention on Kaiza, who counters his plays, and eventually finishes him off with dark armed dragon. Unlike with other shadow duelists, when this one disappears, nothing is left of him, not even a body. Kaiza, barely harmed, helps Kessiler out of the cave, but when they reach outside, she activates his duel disc and locks onto his, demanding an answer as to why his aura is different. Kaiza says he has no clue why its like that, but regardless of this, he’s here to help; if she doesn’t believe or trust him, she’s free to try and take him out now; he won’t fight back either. Seeing no malice from Kaiza, Kessiler forces herself to swallow her rage, and decides not to harm Kaiza, after punching him in the stomach and telling him to warn her in advance next time.

	On the way back, Kaiza asks what happened to the shadow duelists, and Kessiler said how it’s unknown; shadow duelists are on another plane of existence, and enter this world, either by controlling another body as a vessel, using it as a sort of shield, or by entering this dimension directly. Using the former, they are not always at full strength, but they are protected, and if they are removed, they can return again later. As for the latter, they come out at full strength, but it’s rarely ever done; so far, any shadow duelists that has been defeated using the latter, has never been seen again. Meanwhile, at New Domino, a black dimensional fissure opens up in the middle of the city, and from it, Rozero steps out of it

Chapter 18

Characters: Kaiza, Xanxus, Tide, Kasona, Kagami, Kessiler, Anna

Plot: a short while later, Kessiler and Kaiza arrive back to the main group. Kessiler is damaged from the duel, but she’s relatively fine, while the rest of Kaiza’s group is steadily recovering. With the shadow duelist gone, they spend the rest of the afternoon discussing their team progress, and their reasons for being involved in this war. Kaiza says he’s involved simply because he wants to help out; they’ve attacked him before and seem to have all intention of destroying everyone, he doesn’t want that to happen. Kessiler scoffs at his reasons, saying how he’s a bold faced liar; no one does something solely to help or benefit others. When he questions her on why she duels, she gives 2 reasons; Shadow duelists have attacked her before, and unlike other people, they seem capable of taking her out, and she won’t have that. Outside of that, she hates people in general, seeing them all as selfish, cold bastards who live only to make each other’s lives harder and could care less about each other; dueling is her way of making them taste their own medicine, and fighting shadow duelists is her way of venting out the anger the world gives her every day.  Kaiza rebuts her claim, saying that not everyone in the world cares solely about themselves while aiming to make everyone miserable; she responds by asking him if he truly expects her to believe he cares about people, and he responds by saying yes, as it’s all he really has. To shatter the mood, Tide suggests those two duel each other instead; no duel is better than to see two people with clashing ideals fight, and while Kaiza is hesitant to agree, Kessiler, seeing it as a fun way to vent, agrees.

[insert duel scenario here]

	Kessiler, realizing that she has no other methods to get control of the duel, remembers a combo she can currently play, as well as how long she’s been in such a situation where she had to use it. She scoffs, and summons to the field jowgen the spiritualist, sets 1 card, and ends. On Kaiza’s turn, she attempts to activate her set card, but before she can, everyone’s phone begins to ring. They postpone the duel to answer the phone, and the news shocks Kaiza the most; there’s an attack on New Domino Residential area 6 to 8, encompassing the entire area in dark clouds. Everyone who can respond is requested to head to New Domino immediately, and they’re hours away from that area

Chapter 19

Characters: Kaiza, Kessiler, Xanxus, Anna, Sky Scourge Enrise 001, Kasona, Tide, Kagami, Sequan, Machina Gearframe 001

Plot: One hour prior to the last event of chapter 18, at residential district 4 of New Domino, Machina Gearframe 001, in disguise, stops at a dining café in the district. It orders a meal much like an ordinary person would. When its meal arrives, it takes the cup of coffee and tries to drink it, only to have some of the coffee pour down its body. Defeated, it simply takes out some money and leaves it under the plate, then walks out. When it walks out, it sees the purple storm clouds in the distance. Unlike everyone else who stares at the storm clouds in the sky with cameras and phones, it heads towards them

	Meanwhile, at Yamanashi, Kessiler and Kaiza’s group start arguing on what to do. Kaiza simply sits in a corner and remembers the lines Xanxus and Sequan told him about soul discs, then goes through his other deck, and stops on sky scourge enrise. He gets an idea, and then alerts the group to get their attention. He asks Xanxus if duel monsters can really apply their effects on the world with real, physical effect, and Xanxus again, tells him yes. With his query verified, he activates his soul disc, and its trigger. The members of Shino Corps immediately notice the white aura, and Tide protests, wanting answers to why his aura is a different colour. The protest however, is quickly put down by Kessiler, as Kaiza then summons sky scourge enrise. The hologram of the card, like with Xanxus, forms in front of Kaiza, and he asks it to create a dimensional fissure. To everyone’s shock, it talks back, asking him why he should do that. He explains to him that he and where he came from has observed many different species and beings from many dimensions, and his species is among the most dangerous he’s seen. Although they are stronger than humans, they have a device which somehow summons them to their world, under their control, and can make them use their abilities with real effects on their dimension; with their habit for going so far as to exterminate themselves for the sake of progress, why should he help them learn how to travel across dimensions? Kaiza responds by saying he's not asking for that, and he doesn't care to war with humans or mass power for himself. All he wants is for his home to be safe. If he wants, after he does this once, he can refuse every other request of this nature, and he'll accept it; he already has the power to refuse now. Seeing his resolve in his eyes, Enrise sighs, and says its still not safe; in order for him to create a portal to where he wants to go, he needs to have an image of where he’s heading to, and he also needs to do two things; he needs to open a dimensional fissure to an unknown dimension, send Kaiza into it, and then, while he is in that dimension, he needs to open another dimensional fissure in that dimension, leading back to earth, at his destination. This is easy, if that unknown dimension was known, but at the moment, its not; if he ends up in one inhospitable to life, he will die.

	Ignoring the risks, he says he’s willing to take the chance, and Enrise touches his head and tells him to think of where he wants to go to. Kaiza then begins thinking of New Domino Exit Park. Enrise sees the memory, then sticks his hand out, and a dimensional fissure forms behind him, close to the rest of the group. He tells Kaiza to enter it, who then hardens his resolve, and steps into it, disappearing into the blue hole in space and time.

Kaiza ends up in a world where there is no sunlight, in a graveyard with a purple, illuminating aura coating the ground. He sees that he is in what appears to be a graveyard, and out towards the distance, he sees a city; its much like any human city, but the city itself looks decayed and aged, with buildings crumbling down on themselves, leaning either to the left of the right, with a large amount of them only inches away from falling as concrete and building pieces dangle and break off of them; if he had to describe it, it’d be the world post apocalyptic times. Kaiza gets a message from Enrise sent to him telepathically; as he was summoned by kaiza, he can communicate with him via thoughts; this goes for any duel monster summoned by a soul disc. He’s told to wait there as he locks onto his location, and kaiza complies, continuing to observe this new, foreign, broken world. His trance however, breaks when, from the aura on the floor, purple tentacles lash out at him, trying to pull him down. Kaiza fights back, but more and more tentacles lash out at him, pulling him to his knees. As Kaiza struggles more and more, his anxiety raises, and as it does, the aura from his soul disc begins to blow stronger. Even though his body is losing against the tentacles, the aura slowly become s whirlwind, so strong it shoves aside the purple aura on the floor. Eventually, it becomes so strong it leaves a gap between Kaiza and the aura, over 2 meters in radius, and the tentacles disappear. As he calms down, his aura shrinks back to normal size, and the foreign aura creeps closer to him, but the tentacles never return

After the short ordeal, Kaiza gets a message from Enrise again, as another dimensional fissure forms in front of him; he tells him to enter. Kaiza then jumps into it and disappears, while, far away, on one of the broken buildings, a girl with purple hair with white strands at the front, a black, sleeveless vest, black boots, and a grey, short pants only covering her buttocks looks down at him from afar, and glares.

Kaiza exits into a familiar yet eerie sight; he’s at the New Domino entrance park, and the sky is covered completely with purple clouds. It doesn’t look like its night time, in fact, it appears as if it’s still daytime, just with the whole sky covered with purple rainclouds that haven’t emptied their payload. Soon after Kaiza enters, Kessiler, Tide, Kasona, and Xanxus exit as well, saying that with the link made and with him still alive, it’s safe to enter. They go through the town, now covered with a purple mist that makes visibility difficult, searching for signs of life but finding nothing; even on the soul scanner they can’t detect anyone. When they reach close to the middle of town, Sequan bumps into them, saying he was one of the first responders, and how he and several other SH combat teams responded to the attack, but he’s lost radio contact with them, the last message he got said something about a massive group of hacked bodies collected around residential district 8. Hearing this, Kaiza remembers his encounter with Rozero, and immediately comes to two conclusions; it’s centered at District 8, and Rozero is responsible. To prove this, he removes his batteries from his soul scanner and places them in the wide range scanner. After activating it, what they see scares them. There are barely any brown dots in the area, with most being purple, and there is not 1, but 2 huge readings some distance ahead of them, surrounded by a large group of purple dots. To make matters worse, a small segment of the dots break off from each other, followed by another segment, until, most of the purple dots are heading in Kaiza’s direction. In the purple fog in front of them, they can barely make out a group of people moving towards them; at first it’s just a couple, then, a dozen, and it keeps increasing, until they can’t count how many of them are there; all they know is that they are hacked bodies, coming for them

Chapter 20

Characters: Kaiza, Sequan, Kessiler, Xanxus, Tide, Kasona, Machina Gearframe 001, Harper, Rozero, Siliveth

Duels: Kasona vs Shino Corps member 5, Tide vs Red Sun army member 1, Kessiler + Xanxus vs Harper, Sequan vs Siliveth, Kaiza vs Rozero

Plot: As the hacked bodies close in on them, they begin wondering how much of them they can actually fight. They eventually reach within view, all armed with duel discs and on low lifepoints, and one of them raises their hand and activates their duel disc, but before it can lock onto any of Kaiza and his team mates soul disc, from above, someone locks onto his duel disc first. Kaiza, Kessiler, Xanxus, and the hacked body look above to see a brown coat floating in the air, as Machina Geaframe 001 crashes down between Kaiza and the hacked bodies. It begins locking onto multiple hacked bodies, until the limit is reached (20) and tells Kaiza that there are two large hacker readings, one at apartment 420 and another at apartment 515. It then gives them a GPS tracking map that if followed, should lead them around to those locations with no SH contact, and tells him that it accepts his request, and to do what he has to do. Kaiza thanks it, and then leads the group through the back alleys of the city, as Machina Gearframe 001 begins battling the hacked bodies; As they get clear of them all, through the fog, Kaiza can hear the roar of a mechanical dragon shrouded by the purple mist, as they see several explosions behind them, while on the scanner, the purple dots become brown by the 20s

	After thirty minutes of running and moving from building to building, the group finally reaches within range of both apartments; Apartment 515 is straight ahead, while apartment 420 is down the left street. Before they can go to either, 3 hacked bodies, each with full lifepoints, jump down in front of them; Each of them is someone they can recognize, a team member from respective SH combat teams, one from Shino Corps, one from Red Sun Army, a Chinese based SH combat team, and Harper of Mainstream Raiders. Kaiza, in frustration, activates his duel disc, but Kessiler stops him, and tells him and Sequan to go on ahead; they can fight these 3, once someone stops the people responsible, it won’t matter. Sequan complies, and Kaiza reluctantly follows, with Kaiza heading to apartment 515 while Sequan heads to apartment 420.

[insert duels here]

	While Kessiler and the rest duel, Sequan makes it to apartment 420, and makes his way up the floors, checking every room. The people are soul hacked, but asleep; however, Siliveth’s room is empty. He heads to the top floor, and then to the rooftop, and there, he finds Siliveth, her hair now black in colour, her jacket now purple instead of brown, with a black soul disc on her left arm, and a purple orb with a mist swirling around in it.

	Kaiza makes it to apartment 515, and, like before, heads inside. The purple fog has reached all the way into the apartment, and makes maneuvering around the apartment hard due to lowered visibility. But eventually, he makes it to the rooftop again, and sees a familiar face, Rozero.

Chapter 21

Characters: Kaiza, Rozero, Sequan, Siliveth, Kira, Kessiler, Xanxus, Harper, Kasona, Hachi, Tide, Predeth, Machina Gearframe 001

Duels: Kaiza vs Rozero, Sequan vs Siliveth(hacked)

Plot: At the rooftop, Kaiza asks Rozero what he wants with New Domino, and his response is that he doesn’t want anything; the shadow queen wants something in New Domino, and that something, is him. When he asks why him, he says he’s not at liberty to discuss this, nor does he care why she wants him; locking onto his duel disc, he tells him that he’s to take him out here and now, and Kaiza, no longer caring to discuss the matter, locks onto his duel disc as well, starting a duel

	Meanwhile, at Kessiler’s side, they defeated the 3 hacked bodies and retained most of their lifepoints, and, with the bodies now free, they pull them aside, off of the street. Harper, however, wakes up quickly, and explains what happened. He and other Shino Corps members responded to the call, and detected 2 large SH readings. As expected, they went to the largest reading, but were ambushed by hacked bodies. He and Hachi separated from the rest of the group, and were en route to apartment 420, the larger of the readings, but where ambushed by hacked bodies again. He and Hachi defeated them, and were going to continue, when the large reading disappeared off the grid, only to reappear almost right next to them. A black dimensional fissure opened up, and from it, a woman with black hair, a purple fur coat, a black pencil skirt and boots with a black, sleeveless jacket, steps out. Hachi tries to lock onto her duel disc, and it works, but she doesn’t lock back onto his; instead, she walks up to him, touches him on his head, and immediately soul hacks him. The sight makes Harper shake in fear; he was on full lifepoints, and she hacked him like she beat him 3 times over. Harper tries to run, but a black tentacle with green, glowing, circuit board pattern wraps around his arms and legs and pulls him to his knees, while she walks up to him next. He asks what on earth is she, and she responds by saying “Nothing much, just someone who’s here to get a special person I want to take home, and we can’t have you all bothering me with that task now. But at least, you can help!” She smiles, and does the same to him, and he wakes up here

	The news disturbs the whole group. Shadow duelists with her magnitude of power are known to be one of the few leaders of them all, and the only leaders recorded are Krona, Rozero, Eresa and an entity called Darkness; she is completely unknown to them. To make matters worse, she doesn’t have to duel to soul hack, and can apparently hack anyone, regardless of their lifepoints. They decide to go assist Kaiza and Sequan as the other two wakes up, but before they can begin moving, the ground shakes as the road itself is unearthed, and from the exposed granite under the road asphalt, a hologram of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon sprouts up, and attacks them, separating the group.

	Meanwhile, on Sequan’s end, he asks who this person is and what has she done with Siliveth, and she responds by saying she’s making good use of her rather than letting her sleep with the rest; Rozero is here on a mission, and she’s here to see how it goes. She tells him how he’s free to take a seat and wait, but Sequan instead activates his soul disc and soul trigger, locking onto her own. She giggles, and surrounds herself in a black aura so tall that it can be seen from far; the display freezes Sequan in fear; this size aura is larger than that of Rozero, and he’s the current leader. Meanwhile, Siliveth yawns, and locks onto Sequan’s disc; since he’s so eager to battle; she decides to give him what he wants. Fighting his fear, he locks onto her disc, and the duel begins

[insert duel scenario here]

	Meanwhile, on Kaiza,s end, the duel isn’t going his way. Even with his aura on, he’s feeling the damage from Rozero’s attacks. Rozero tells him that he simply cannot understand why she’d care about someone who’s really this week; he only won because he has a relic that doesn’t belong to him. Kaiza says he defeated him once, he can do it again, and that his friends will be here shortly. Rozero responds by saying they have life threatening worries of their own, as in the distance, Kaiza sees an explosion. Enraged, he plays dark armed dragon, but this time, Rozero smiles and activates chaos trap hole, banishing it, and leaving Kaiza shocked

	On Kessiler’s end, the fortress dragon continues to attack them. Xanxus tries to activate his soul disc to get a soul summon out, but it’s no use as the dragon continues to pressure the group with attacks. Eventually, Kessiler trips and falls right as it was launching an attack. It misses her, but a large chunk of debris land on her legs, trapping her. It changes its attention to her and charges another attack, while Xanxus, using it as a distraction, activates his soul disc and plays flamvell commando on it. But before either of them can finish, two rockets from an unknown location fire at the dragon, hitting it in the head and knocking it down, saving Siliveth. Xanxus stops his summon before it starts, and everyone looks towards the direction the rockets came from, to see Machina Gearframe 001

Chapter 22:

Characters: Machina Gearframe 001, Kaiza, Rozero, Sequan, Siliveth, Eresa, Kessiler, Xanxus, Tide, Kasona, Harper, Hachi, Predeth

Duels: Kaiza vs Rozero, Sequan vs Siliveth(hacked)

Plot: The Fortress Dragon recovers, and turns its attention to Machina Gearframe 001, who rushes at it and fires another rocket at it, knocking to the floor as they begin to fight, while the others rush to free Kessiler. While on Sequan’s end, the duel is against his favor, as evilswarm ophion has him unable to play any of his cyber dragons. On Kaiza’s end, the duel continues to go downhill, as the damage he continues to mount brings him to his knees. Even on Machina Gearframe’s end things do not go its way; taking constant damage from Gearframe and losing 4 of its 5 extendable heads, it tunnels underground as gearframe waits for its next attack, which comes from underneath it. It evades it, and is pushed into the air as it fires miniature jet packs from its arm to escape; what it didn’t notice was that it dug a second hole behind it, and from that hole, chimeratech fortress dragon’s tail shoots out, as the 5th head pierces through Gearframe 001’s body, before tossing it into a car

	In the duel with Kaiza, as Kaiza struggles to stay standing, Rozero explains that this isn't the first time they have been here. When the new shadow leader was instated, one of his first orders were to come here, and retrieve a young duelist and bring him to her. When he found none, he decided he'll take everyone. He watches down at Kaiza, and then sighs, and says that with how poor of a duelist he is, he thinks he's better off taking a few people again; maybe the SH combat team members will make up for the time wasted. This enrages Kaiza, who's shrunken aura begins to grow again. Meanwhile, on Kessiler's end, although she's free, the fortress dragon's attention is on them. Before any of them can make a move, however, 2 rockets hit it in the head directly, knocking it down. When Kessiler and the others see where it came from, they see Machina Geaframe, again. It has a massive hole in its body, but is still standing as he activates its soul disc, as well as the soul trigger, and plays the card limiter removal. Its body then becomes surrounded in an orange aura as it activates fiendish chain, tieing the fortress dragon down as it then plays compulsory evacuation device on itself, launchint itself into the air, then activating bing bang shot, which fires Machina Gearframe like a bullet through fortress dragon's body, splitting it in two as Machina Gearframe roll across the road, his body breaking at its joints while being kept connected by its wires, until the only undamaged part on his body is his head, as his AI shuts down, leaving him lifeless.

	Kaiza, in his duel with Rozero, activates solar recharge, discarding celstia to draw 2 cards and mill lumina and ehren. With 4 lightsworns in the grave, he summons judgment dragon and uses its effect, wiping the field, then summoning Jain, lightsworn paladin, and attacking with both. The damage he does wins him the duel, and Rozero drops to his knees, as black smoke oozes from his body, he says that Kaiza reminds him of one of the few people who ever defeated him; she had an aura, as white as his own is now. He then disappears in a burst of dust, and nothing is left of him when it clears

	On Sequan's end, he finally stops the summoning block effect of evilswarm ophion and summons cyber nova dragon, special summoning cyber dragon and banishing it to make nova dragon 4200 attack. He attacks and destroys Ophion, while Siliveth smiles. On her turn, she attempts another play, but before she could, a trail of purple smoke comes towards her, and enters the orb she had. She sighs, and deactivates her duel disc, ending the duel. Siliveth's hair then becomes white as her coat changes to a faded red colur, and she faints. Then, as she rests there, black smoke flouws out fron her, anc collects at the side of her body, dispersing to reveal a girl with a maroon coloured blose, black, short khaki pants, and dark brown hair. Sequan asks who she is, and she says she's simply on a retrieval mission, that failed, so now she can leave. Then, a black fissure opens up next to her, and from it, the purple haired girl from chapter 19 jumps out, She relays the information to the other girl, who refers to her as Eresa, while Eresa refers to her as queen Kira; to Sequan, this means she's the current shadow leader, and not Rozero. Kira sighs in frustration as now Sequan knows, but shrugs it off, and simply leaves through the fissure Eresa opened, leaving Sequan and Siliveth there

	Kaiza, after his duel, drops to his knees and almost faints, but Jain holds him by his hands and keeps him from falling. She nods, then hers and Judgment dragon's holograms disappear. Kaiza activates his soul trigger again to stay conscious and reduce the effects of the damage, and checks his scanner. Slowly but surely, every purple dot on the screen becomes brown, but he manages to see a few brown dots clustered together before the purple dots change. Assuming this is his team, he heads there. When he arrives he meets a tragic scene. Kessiler and everyone else is safe, and the town is back to normal as the purple clouds disappear, revealing the clear night sky to New Domino again; but not everyone is alive and well, as Kessiler reluctantly points to the body of machina gearframe 001. Kaiza goes to it, and kneels down in despair, but has to cut it short; they have to leave before anyone sees them, and they flee the area. Before they do, Kaiza picks up Gearframe's body, and takes it with him

Chapter 23

Characters: Kaiza, Snake, Harper, Machina Gearframe 001, Siliveth

Duels: None

Plot: 1 week after, Kaiza meets Snake at his office. He asks Snake what is to be Machina Gearframe 001's fate, and he says he will be returned to where it belongs and probably scrapped. Kaiza says that they can't as its not theirs, but Snake says that it’s not his choice to make, or Snake's; it registered itself as UDA propety, even if it really isn't, it has to go back there

	Two days later, as Harper is heading to the room labeled Armory, Kaiza, from behind, activates brain control and targets him, and gets him to open the door to the armory and let him inside. There, Kaiza uses a sports bag to place Machina Gearframe 001's body inside, as well as a spare soul disc, and then commands Harper to lock the door and report to Snake as he then uses mind crush to remove the memories of this incident, before leaving ADA

	At home, he removes the body of Machina Gearframe 001 from his bag, and severs the head and takes out its hard disc. He plugs it into his computer and checks its data, to see almost a whole Exabyte of data stored on it; almost none of it can be opened, but among them, are two compiler programs; one allows him to read the data and edit it, as long as he's the master controller, and another allows him to edit some parts of the data. Using the editing compiler, he sees that his manufacturer and master controller is called Luanna, meaning he wasn't lying when he said he is not UDA property. As he needs to be the master controller to access the data, he changes the master controller ID and password to data that registers him as the controller

	Later in the day, he removes the main circuit board from the chest and inspects it; there is a huge hole in the middle, making it totally useless, but the brand number is still present, a DxModel circuit board. He packs this into a bag and heads to Nippon Robotics, where the desk clerk checks it, and, while shocked by the damage due to the fact DxModels were meant to be extremely robust and hard to break, they say they have a model, but it’s at an offshore warehouse, so it’ll take a day to check their stock and price. The next day, as Kaiza is adding a function to Machina Gearframe 001, while checking its current batteries and comparing it to batteries he bought, he gets a call on the phone; it’s Nippon Armory, and they have a DxModel main circuit board in stock, for 1,000,000 yen. Kaiza hears the price, says thank you, and hangs up in despair; getting it will take a month of hard work

	After 2 months, he finally obtains enough money and purchases the circuit board. He already installed the batteries into the broken model, and the function he attached to the machine already works; a repair code, which allows any machine which has it to perform the operation Kaiza did in chapter 2 with his prototype. He opens the machine chest, places the circuit board in and connects it to the body, fastens it in place and seals the body back together. He then reconnects the head, presses a button at the back of it, and takes a step back, then uses the master controller commands to activate Machina Gearframe 001. For the first time in months, it moves again, as its’s commanded to do a system check to get the self repair program running, which finds all damaged segments and melds them back into place. After the system check, it activates and stands, still struggling to stay afoot as Kaiza holds it, and the first thing Kaiza notices is that it refers to him as master, and its power is wavering. Not only did the self repair function not repair everything, but its powering down; Gearframe’s moments of life was only a minute. Kaiza removes the batteries and checks them, to realize they’re on 0% charge; at the same time, most of the broken circuit boards in the rest of his body did meld together and function properly, just not all; the repair function worked, but it needs far more power than it has now.

	2 months later, Kaiza has replaced almost all of its parts except for the memory disc, and, like he did 2 months ago, he activates it again. The system check works and it stands up again, without any need for support and the first thing it asks Kaiza is if he has any requests; luckily, he does. He commands Machina Gearframe 001 to go to Siliveth, asks what groceries she has to collect, and take money and a list of them from her and buy them for her at the local supermarket, then return them to her. It hears the orders and follows them perfectly, as Kaiza takes Siliveth from her room and places her in his room to see how it handles the condition change. When it returns, it checks Siliveth’s room and does not see her there, then goes to Kaiza’s room to request what should be done in her absence, only to see her inside of his room. Siliveth asks Kaiza what is that machine, and Kaiza says it’s a new member of the household; it’s a machine, but it’s designed at its core to imitate and act like a human

	A week later, at a dining café, while Kaiza is eating, he sees two guys mistreating an automaton, and reacts to it by forcing them to stop. One of the guys asks why he cares; it’s just a machine, while another waitress and the machine asks him to stop. At home, he goes through its coding again, remembering what he told Siliveth a week ago, and realizes that even though its meant to imitate human behavior, as it is now, it’ll be treated no differently than the others. Then, he gets an idea, and uses his computer to download a designing application

	Three months later, Snake gets a text message from the United Duel Academy in America, asking on the status of machine gearframe 001. He calls Harper and they go to the Armory room, and find no trace of him

Chapter 24

Characters: Orcona, Kaiza, Siliveth, Loruka, Snake, Sequan, Xanxus, Kessiler, Harper

Duels: none

Plot: Two month before where chapter 23 ends, as Kaiza sleeps in his room, Orcona, holding a tracking device, sneaks into his room by picking his locks. He checks Machina Geaframe 001, and realizes it’s in working order, then checks Kaiza’s computer, and sees the models he has been drawing. Realizing what he’s trying to do, and how much helps he needs, he places his finger at a USB port, and, a series of very thin needles stab into the USB port, as his model designs become more and more refined

	In the daytime, as Machina Gearframe 001 helps Siliveth, Kaiza goes through his models and realized they changed overnight; they are exactly what he needs, and there are models for both male and female. With no clue how it happened, he decides to take it as a blessing and save them, and with that part done, he has to decide what gender to make Gearframe; he chooses female, due to its current behavior and homophobia on Kaiza’s part

	2 weeks later, Kaiza heads to Nippon armory to have a custom internal and external body frame designed for him. While the design is complex, it’s possible, and with enough money stored up, he pays to have both done. The external body frame arrives first, and while he waits for the internal frame to arrive, he redesigns the external frame to appear almost like a human mannequin, using a soft, skin like fabric to change its color to resemble that of a fair skinned person.

The time spent doing this separates him from Siliveth and Machina Gearframe for a while, making Siliveth curious; her curiosity is only fueled more when Kaiza, a few days away from the arrival of the internal frame, takes Machina Gearframe 001, and she doesn’t see him for days. On arrival day, Kaiza has to go to the armory to get the internal frame; during this time, Siliveth sneaks into his room using her copy of the key for his door, and searches around; she finds the external and internal frame for Machina Gearframe 001, but they have nothing inside of them. She then finds the guts of the machine, disconnected from each other and neatly sorted out. Before her inspection is done, she notices an object, covered by a white blanket from head to toe, sitting on a chair in the room, she removes the blanket, and gasps at what she sees. Later in the day, Kaiza arrives home, and finds his door closed, but unlocked. He opens it to find Siliveth in his room. She smiles, talks to him as he asks why she’s here, then points to a naked, female shaped, metallic body, covered in skin fabric, and Kaiza gets a bit nervous. When she mentions something about Kaiza suffering from a lack of sex, he simply opens the box with the internal frame, and shows it to Siliveth. She asks what it’s for, and Kaiza says it’s to design a new machine, one that is actually human, using Machina Gearframe 001 as the core

A month later, Kaiza waits outside as Siliveth clothes machine gearframe 001, now called LxModel 001; its appearance has changed to that of a human female with white hair, blue eyes and fair skin. Its clothing is that of a repairman jacket, just like Kaiza’s, with a dark grey internal t shirt, and blue, tight jeans. When Siliveth is done, she calls Kaiza inside, and he is both stunned and elated by how she looks; it’s a beautiful sight to them both. He activates the machine, who’s voice was changed to match that of a teenage girl, and places her to operate in social mode; one where she interacts with the world the way a human would, as best as possible. She tries to stand on her feet, but one of her knees buckle on itself, and Kaiza holds her to keep her standing. Her system recognizes the damage, isolates the source, and quickly repairs the loose gears, and in seconds, she’s standing on her feet, still acting on Kaiza’s command, and still calling him master, although for now, he’s too happy to be bothered by it. As they can’t call her LxModel001 all the time, they decide her name will be Loruka

2 weeks later, Snake visits Kaiza’s house, just as he was finished installing a piece of equipment into Loruka before covering her with a white blanket. He finds Kaiza, and demands to know where Machina Gearframe 001 is. Kaiza gives him the broken parts of its old body, but Snake is not satisfied; its memory hard disc is missing. Demanding answers, Snake asks where the memory disc is, and Kaiza tells him he can’t give it to him just yet, but it’s somewhere safe. He then removes the white blanket off of Loruka, and shows it to him; at first he is confused, until Kaiza declares a series of master controller commands, making her activate and walk to his side, her eyes glowing brightly in the room; its then he realized what Kaiza has done. He says how he cannot keep it; its UDA property, but Kaiza states that it was never theirs; they can’t take it back if it doesn’t want to return, and as it stands, it’s supposed to be destroyed; they can just say the machine was destroyed and the remains were lost. He then tells Loruka to activate a function called card replication, and she complies. She activates her soul disc, and the soul trigger, and while no aura surrounds her, she then plays on her soul disc dimensional alchemist. Instead of it being summoned, her body is overlapped by the body of dimensional alchemist, with her controlling its body; she basically became the duel monster she summoned. Using this as proof of his next claim, he says that Machina Gearframe, now called Loruka, can be so much more than just a machine, and he can show what else it can be if he allows him to do so. With his options weighed, Snake makes his choice

1 year after Kaiza joined ADA and Mainstream Raiders, he and Loruka get a phone call about a large scale attack on Detroit in America. Team Exiles are on it, but they’re overwhelmed. With this, Kaiza calls Kessiler, Harper, Sequan and Xanxus to his house. At the rooftop, like in chapter 19 with sky scourge enrise, he summons it again, and asks it to make another dimensional fissure. It sighs, and then creates the fissure, leading to a building in Detroit. With the fissure formed, Kaiza, Loruka, Xanxus, Kessiler, Harper and Sequan head to Detroit city, ending season 1 and beginning season 2