PROLOGUE

Heartland Tower, Heartland City

Xyz Dimension

The last time Byron Arclight had run this fast in his life, he'd been part of the hundred-meter dash that would have decided the class champion at his school's sports day. That had been twenty years ago—twenty years of dedication to science, technology, and innovation that had supplanted any further wish for unnecessary physical activity.

And yet, something about the inherent danger of the situation in which he'd found himself scarce minutes ago seemed to have evaporated those decades of slacking off at his computer rather than burning off calories at the gym, or in trying out the revolutionary Solid Vision that had introduced an entirely new dimension—turn of phrase completely intended—to the world's most popular pastime.

Byron knew, however, that that pastime had become a weapon of war all too well. He'd been one of the millions upon millions sealed into cards during the invasion—it had happened so fast and so quickly that there'd been no time to rediscover what might have remained of his athletic talents. Then, as suddenly as it had happened, he was back, only to find that entire months had passed without his knowledge. For him, the war had begun and ended in the blink of an eye—and in almost the same flash of light that had blinded his eyes, and forced them open forever.

So he'd been one of the first to react when the soldiers struck.

But the last time he'd run this fast in his life had still been twenty years ago.

Most of the men and women in the room with him didn't even make it to the elevators. Not that they would have helped. The last thing Byron saw before he slammed the door behind him, heart racing was more squads of those gray-clad soldiers streaming out from the lifts. He heard a feral, mechanized growling; then a woman screaming—

Quiet.

Far too quiet.

Far too quickly.

Then, Byron jumped back from the door in alarm as a glowing black sword, edges hissing with crimson energy, sliced through the inch-thick metal like it wasn't even there. He scrabbled back on all fours with a gasp—

—right into the lap of another man, smaller than he, but older, and with blond hair that stuck up from his head as if he'd been electrocuted.

"Faker!"

That wasn't Dr. Tenjō's real name, to be sure, but the founder of Heartland City had escaped detection from the invading forces of Academia so many times in the past that the Resistance made sure that nickname had stuck even after they'd finally found him. Even then, he'd done so knowing that his sacrifice would have ensured the safety of Kaito and Hart. As a father himself, Byron knew the lengths a man would go to protect his own children.

And indeed, Faker's children looked like they were the first two things on his mind. "Run!" he said hoarsely.

He sounded like he'd been doing just that for longer than someone his age ought to be. But Byron heard the squeal of metal yielding against a blade of Solid Vision as thinly projected as any laser, and knew he had no other choice.

They sprinted upstairs. "Have you warned them?" Byron asked.

"I didn't have to," panted Faker. "Kaito was practicing with Kurosaki when they saw the first explosions hit the tower. Hart's already been moved to safety, but the Resistance is already mobilizing for a defense."

He didn't sound too optimistic. "What about you?" He meant Byron's children.

Byron bowed his head. "I didn't have time to reach out to them," he said ashamedly. "They were on the thirty-sixth level. I can only hope that means they had time to get away."

He took the stairs three at a time, blinking away tears and ignoring the stitches in his chest. "Who the hell are those soldiers?" he wanted to know. "Why are they here?"

"The sentries on the gates didn't pick up a thing," Faker replied. "These soldiers didn't just stroll through the front door—they teleported right onto the seventieth level of Heartland Tower. I think that tells us exactly who they are."

His face darkened. "And very likely why they're here."

Byron knew he shared the same clearance level as Faker. He knew what the scientist was talking about on both counts. And he was inclined to agree with him.

"What do we do?"

"We have to safeguard the fragment. Everything else is secondary—including our lives." Faker had reached a door, and punched in a code as quickly as only the urgency of the situation could allow him.

Durasteel panels slid apart with a hiss, and they quickly made themselves scarce inside.

The air was frigid inside the circular chamber, and lit with a greenish light that made everything feel doubly alien. Tendrils of coolant snaked from vents in the ceiling, and clouds of vapor caressed the floor. Byron felt the air sting his lungs with every grateful breath he took, but he ignored the pain—every breath he took was a reminder that he was still alive—that they could still have some chance of success before all was lost.

He eyed the object in the center of the room—the source of the yellow-green light that bathed his face, hovering there without any visible means of support.

Faker was already working a console. "Where are we sending it?" Byron asked.

"I don't know," came the answer. "I'm programming a basic wormhole transmission. Exit coordinates have been completely randomized. We won't know where or when the fragment will be sent."

His face was set. "But neither will they."

The console beeped. "We're set!" Faker took out his Duel Disk as he stepped back from the control panel. "We'll have aperture in five minutes. The energy overload will short out every piece of instrumentation in this level—they won't be fast enough to recover any data that might betray its new location."

Byron gaped. "But—five minutes?!" With all the soldiers he'd seen storming the building, they'd be lucky to have five seconds.

Faker knew it, too—his grim nod told all. "We have to buy time for the reactor to gather the energy required," he said. "And we'll have to do it very soon. By now, those soldiers will have detected a massive neutrino discharge in this very room. When they do, they'll come for us en masse."

Byron took out his own Duel Disk. He could hear shouting from below. "Then we hold the line here."

Twin blades activated simultaneously. "For our children," said Faker, starting the countdown. "For our home."

Byron set his jaw. "For Sakaki Yūya."


Approximately 5 km from Heartland Tower

The overlook was humble—only a single tree decorated the grassy hillock. It was all to the better for anyone who wished to get a spectacular view of the entire city—including the old, shaggy-haired man who'd positioned himself under the sole spot of shade the tree afforded him.

"I see," he spoke, cradling the device to his ear. "Withdraw your troops to level sixty-five and hold position. I'll take over from here. … Multi in unum, Captain."

The moment the call ended, a mechanical arm lowered the device from his silvery hair, setting it down on his lap. Another press of a button shuffled the cards inside it, ejecting five of them an instant later. The man inspected them, squinting through rheumy eyes, and betrayed his satisfied smile for only an instant.

Then he glanced once more at the tower. There was work to be done.

As he played his cards in the sequence he needed, the shadow of the tree above him wriggled at the edges, then blossomed out from under him as if it had suddenly grown tenfold in size. The old man needed only to hear the low growl of the monster responsible, and see its endless scarlet coils, before he smiled once more.

Servomotors whined as they brought the screen of the Duel Disk up to his wizened face. Endless telemetry flashed before him, and every spidery symbol told him exactly what he wanted to know.

He spoke two words, and smiled again. "Hyper Blaze."


They held the line for all of sixteen seconds. Neither scientist heard the explosion that blew their chamber apart.

As durasteel plating crumpled like tinfoil, and sinister violet light, horribly familiar, emerged from behind the peeling panels, Byron Arclight's last thoughts before it consumed him for the second time in his life were of his three sons.

Dr. "Faker" Tenjō had one less child than his colleague, and stood slightly behind him. This meant that he had marginally more time to think of one last thing besides Kaito and Hart before the light claimed him, too.

Unfortunately, the only thought his scientist's brain could conjure was of his final contribution to Heartland City, and the Xyz Dimension with it: a wormhole he now knew would arrive far too late.


Duel Palace, the City

Synchro Dimension

Of all the dizzying heights to which the City soared, all the monolithic crystal-like superstructures—designed to be self-sustaining cities within a City—that jutted upwards at angles from the sprawling metropolis, the Duel Palace topped them all. The amalgamation of luxury apartment building and Dueling stadium, each capable of holding tens of thousands of people—yet the former often attracted far less, and the latter far more—was one of the crown jewels of architecture in the entire world, and the entire Dimension by proxy.

Whatever majesty it might have possessed, however, was fully lost on Jack Atlas as he maneuvered his D-Wheel through traffic. Cars honked to no avail as the famous blue-and-white Wheel of Fortune streaked past them, the monowheel's unique design and carbon-fiber/titanium chassis carrying its pilot at almost twice the highway's listed speed limit. If the City Security Forces had not been officially disbanded and reorganized some months ago, Jack might have had to Duel them to keep his pride and joy from being ignominiously carted off to the local impound. He doubted they would, though; he had good reason to be in the hurry he was.

The notion that his residence might well have been destroyed mere seconds ago was just one of them.

Something vibrated in his helmet just then. Jack saw the caller ID in a split second, spilling across his visor and obscuring his view of the plume of smoke currently belching from the top of the Duel Palace.

A quick push of a button in his helmet's integrated keypad answered the call. "Oh, thank God you're all right!" a woman's voice cried through the earpiece. "I saw the explosion just now—I thought you might have been killed!"

"I was lucky, Carly," Jack said. The bespectacled cub reporter had been assigned to interview him so many times during his time as Duel King that she hardly ever contacted him through her workplace anymore. "I'm on my way back there now. If whoever's responsible is still there, I can promise you they won't be nearly as fortunate."

He patted the Deck tucked neatly into his Duel Disk; Jack could almost hear the growl of the dragons that lived inside it, and knew that his words were not spoken as a threat—but as a promise.

His helmet buzzed again. "I have another call," he said shortly. He saw the prefix that accompanied the ID, and knew this one couldn't wait. "Send word to Shinji and Crow. Make sure they're safe with the rest of the kids."

"Got it. Stay safe out there—bye!" Jack moved to answer the second call before Carly had even hung up. He tapped at his helmet again, switching to a different frequency.

"Don't bother, Mr. Atlas. Secure lines won't do us any good today."

Jack grimaced. Partly due to the five people on the other end of the line; partly because "Mr. Atlas" made him sound like just as much of an old fart as those five people. Maybe he wasn't a King anymore, but he still commanded respect in the City—and that meant people invariably found new ways to address him. The trouble was, being called Mister Anything made that respect feel cheap to someone like Jack Atlas.

It made him feel like he'd never earned it at all.

"Let's hear the bad news then, Gael," he said. "And I'd better still have my damage deposit—"

"This is no time for jokes!" He could practically feel the protuberant, pug-like gaze of former Councilor Gray burning a hole in his skull. "A paramilitary force has infiltrated the upper echelons of the Duel Palace! Casualties are already in the dozens and rising rapidly!"

"Give me five minutes!" Jack said, slicing the Wheel of Fortune past a sedan so quickly that the poor driver mounted the curb, narrowly missing a bus stop. "I'm within site of the building—I can reinforce you as soon as—"

"You do not understand." The imperious contralto of Ms. Azul pealed in his brain like a thunderstorm. "The upper echelons have been penetrated. We estimate seconds before the inner sanctum is compromised. The fragment must be safeguarded. That is our only cause for concern."

"Protocol one-oh-one-three-one-eight has already been initiated," grunted a male voice. "Your primary concern"—he raised his voice, perhaps anticipating Jack's sudden anger—"is to make sure all civilians within the vicinity have been evacuated. We will do our part to ensure any fallout is minimized."

Jack was incensed. "Mr. Bordeaux, I must protest! That fragment means too much to the Synchro Dimension—to me—that I will not see it simply whisked away just so that—"

But Mr. Bordeaux did not appear to have heard him. "Whenever you're ready, Mr. President," he intoned.

"There's no need to call me that," said the old man, Taki, his voice jovial but austere. "We're not the High Council anymore—we're simply the stewards of the Duel Palace. And however diminished we have made ourselves, Jack Atlas, we still have some leverage on paper. We have already made our decision as to—"

He broke off suddenly. Jack was close enough to the Duel Palace to see precisely why that might be.

Great leathery wings, their folds and pinions a bright, deep gold, had expanded from behind the spindly, smoking skyscraper. That Jack could see them at all from this distance meant they must be scores of meters in span—almost certainly more. And though he could not see the monster capable of reaching such an incredible size, he didn't need it to know that whatever it was easily equaled his dragons in sheer physical strength.

Maybe even exceeded them.

He heard someone shout, "Mr. President!" He wasn't sure which of the former Council it was.

Then he heard someone else, his voice aged and wheezing, completely unfamiliar. "Lost Paradise—"

The thunderclap and flash of blue that followed left Jack blind and deaf for the longest split second of his life. Only the emergency autopilot—standard among all D-Wheels of the city, up to and including his own hand-built, custom-made marvel of engineering—saved him from certain fiery death against the broad trailer of an idling semi.

He barely heard the truck driver cursing at him—only to find that flood of invective rapidly dwindling to a trickle when he realized just who had nearly hit his trailer. Far more important things were on his mind.

Namely, that the topmost spire of the Duel Palace—and the secret it contained—had been shattered by a single bolt of blue lightning. Blown to shards. Decades of work—from design to construction—had been mutilated in the space of a second, reduced to nothing but a gleam in the eye of its long-dead creator.

And the more Jack saw, the more certain he was that the monster he'd seen just then had been responsible.

There was no sign of it now. Probably no sign of those soldiers the former Council had mentioned—and most likely, he thought, no sign of the Council themselves, either.

He stood there for a while, thinking, before gunning Wheel of Fortune once again. His damage deposit could wait.

He had more important things on his mind now.


Kingdom of Misgarth, Capital City

Fusion Dimension

There were other countries and empires in the world, other principalities and protectorates. Most were bigger or more populous; others had superior healthcare or some other quality of life. Each of them was set apart from one another for a very specific reason—but all of them only had to look at the Crown Prince Ojin to see why his tiny little slice of the world was the foremost power in the entire Fusion Dimension.

He sniffed, looking out the gigantic window at the procession unfolding on the main thoroughfare of the palace grounds. Was, it appeared, was about to have an exceptionally appropriate meaning today.

Other world leaders were taller, broader in stature. Some were more bombastic in their movements, more elegant and inspirational in their speech. But behind the blue eyes of Ojin danced a single, solitary spark that none of those men and women had ever possessed in their careers on the world stage. It had been that one spark that gave Ojin the impetus to assert his place on that stage, and to set himself apart from them all thenceforth: the spark of knowledge.

Ojin knew the value of knowledge on the world stage. Knowledge gave way to innovation.

Innovation yielded supremacy.

Supremacy created fear.

Put quite simply, the Fusion Dimension feared Ojin. They feared the spark of knowledge in his eyes—just like they feared the mind that fueled that spark. The prince's endorsement of the legislation that had transformed Academia from an educational institution into a fully-fledged, internationally staffed paramilitary task force had been the catalyst for every nation to do the same. Corporate tax breaks had allowed his nation to produce the technology that made Academia's goals possible—even those ingenious programs that sealed human beings into cards to preserve their life force, and to traverse the dimensions as easily as walking over to the neighbors for tea and gossip.

Of course, there had been protests. Humans didn't like sudden change if it forced them to change with it. And perhaps Ojin had moved a little bit too fast to satisfy Academia's timetables. But it wasn't as though the people had too much of a choice in the matter. There was one other thing that made the spark in his eyes such a fearful thing.

Namely, that it looked rather like the spark of one of his military's orbital satellites about to reduce any idea of resistance or protest to a smoking crater.

Supremacy created fear.

A more reckless man than Ojin would have used those satellites by now, he thought as he continued to look on the scene outside his window. Popular in the world he was not, especially after recent events—but he was not about to reduce his whole kingdom to ruin for the simple pleasure of exterminating a threat to his personal safety.

Perhaps that lack of recklessness was why he could feel the tiny creature gnawing at his stomach—the germination of the very seeds of terror he himself had sprouted the world over.

And perhaps that sense of restraint was why that creature stayed so tiny, and did not grow inside him, did not choke him with the same fear he instilled in almost everyone in the world who knew his name. Almost.

The double doors behind him yawned open, freshly oiled and whisper-quiet in the melancholy mood of the chamber. Footsteps echoed on the marble floor. Ojin, still looking outside, caught the sound of heels on the polished marble.

"The palace is surrounded, Your Grace," said the stately young woman behind him, every strand of auburn hair combed to perfection. "We still have some loyalists in our intelligence sector. They … estimate that seventy-five percent of our military forces have already joined the dissident movement. We have furthermore received reports that our neighboring countries are experiencing uprisings of a similar nature in their metropolitan areas."

Ojin did not speak, but bade his longtime confidante to continue. "Sixty-three percent of the capital has been placed under martial law, including the financial and administrative sectors. As yet, they have made no demands. No mass arrests have been made. No casualties have been sustained aside from sporadic encounters."

A bloodless coup, Ojin thought. "How close are they to the palace itself, Lind?" His voice was surprisingly heavy.

Lind didn't answer. That tended to happen to people when they suddenly grew a glowing sword out of their chest.

There was a flash of purple light. Ojin whirled around just in time to see Lind's body disintegrate into billions of swirling photons—right before it was sucked into the night-black blade that had pierced her breast so cleanly, not one drop of blood had been spilled.

He knew enough about Duel Disk technology to know that pierced wasn't even the right word—it was more proper to say it had been phased right through her flesh. But the quickness and brutality of the act could conjure up no other term for what had just happened to his secretary … and childhood friend.

And yet, even as Lind's final scream echoed in the hallway—even as the owner of the Duel Disk that had sealed her ejected the fresh card it had created from her essence—the creature of fear inside him remained stunted. Feeble.

All he felt was disgust at what had been done.

"That"—the crown prince summoned up his most insulting sneer—"was uncalled for."

The huge man before him, still inspecting the card of Lind, did not speak as he finally pocketed the object. It looked tiny in his spade-like palm.

Ojin shook his head—more out of resignation than sorrow. "How did it come to this?" He asked the question as much of himself as he did the man that stood within Dueling distance of him—but the man answered anyway.

"It's obvious." His accent was coarse, the words it lined no-nonsense. "You failed."

The crown prince scoffed. "Failed! Tell me something, Colonel. How precisely did I fail? Was I the one who activated the ARC-V reactor prematurely? Was I the one who Summoned a gigantic, dimension-destroying dragon into existence?"

"You sanctioned Academia's actions. Our interests aligned at the time, and so we did everything we could to carry them forward. But … they still failed."

Ojin nodded. "And you don't tolerate failure, do you?" he said ruefully. "Thirty years, you served my father and my kingdom—three full decades of military service. You could have been an excellent general. You could have cultivated a career for yourself that would've earned you a funeral with full honors. But no—you could never bear to leave the battlefield, because you wanted to make sure failure was not an option. In all that time, that was the one thing I knew most about you. Ever since I was born into my station. You didn't like to fail—and you didn't like it when other people failed."

"Genau."

A wry smile creased the prince's lips. "So … would you say you've failed now?"

The traitorous colonel blinked, momentarily confused. "You brought the vast majority of the country's standing army—and what looks like quite a few private security forces as well—to my doorstep," said Ojin. "You intended to drag me out on the street, kicking and screaming. Because it was your intent to show that the failures you believe I should be blamed for … would make me weak in the eyes of the world. And yet"—he shrugged—"here we are."

He cleared his throat. "So now that we've established the script already isn't unfolding as planned, you may as well permit me the dignity of getting us back on track. Is this the part where you list your demands, and expect me to accede to each and every one of them?"

The colonel sighed. "If there is one thing my service has taught me about expectations, Ojin," he said, "it's that reality is never what you expect. Reality just is. There will be no expectations here. No pretend games or fantasy. You will accede to each and every one of our demands."

Ojin smirked. "Or?"

The colonel activated his Duel Disk. The huge black blade it generated spoke for itself.

"Ten minutes from now, you will issue a proclamation of abdication," said the colonel, "and dissolution of the monarchy and nobility that governs the Kingdom of Misgarth. You will then submit yourself to arrest, trial, conviction, and execution by sealing and card destruction, on charges of gross misappropriation of funds—to wit, the failure of the Arc Area Project—and of heresy against ?donai doctrine. To wit, that your failure to unite the Dimensions per the Arc Area Project, and to subjugate them in the name of the Fusion Dimension, is tantamount to suggesting the lack of supremacy of the Summoning method we celebrate, and by proxy, that the imitations of the other Dimensions should be anything but inferior to our own … "

Ojin couldn't help it—he laughed. Even knowing that his once-most-trusted military commander wanted to see him turned into a card and then ripped to shreds, to hear those words out of the man's own mouth took the cake.

"'Supremacy of the Summoning method'?" he said incredulously. "I'm all for the old guard and sticking to the proverbial roots, Colonel, but there's such a thing as living in the past. You can't simply force the people to—"

"I won't be forcing anyone," the colonel said bluntly.

That was when a third voice was heard to speak up. It sounded like it was coming from the entrance hallway.

"Heaven-Crushing Fist!"

The explosion that followed didn't just dent the doors—it blew them right off their hinges. That was not an easy thing to do; like every other door in Ojin's palace, the hinges were reinforced, and the doors themselves were solid, quantum phase-shifted titanium underneath all that meticulously crafted wood. The main batteries of a battleship could have knocked down such a door—but denting it was another story.

The colonel, entirely unruffled, thumbed over his shoulder. "He will."

Ojin stood very, very still. He knew this new voice, had heard it in his mind almost every day since he was a boy.

He didn't feel quite so cocky now.

In the silent void left behind from the explosion, the sound of creaking wheels, and the thin whine of the motors that powered them, buzzed in his ears like so many mosquitoes. Their owner drove over the crumpled door, emerging from the dust at last with little fanfare.

He coughed, a long, wet hacking noise that made Ojin wince. "My apologies for the delay, K?mpfer," he wheezed a minute later. "The palace guard wished to make a final stand. I had little choice but to … teach them a lesson."

"You didn't miss much, Direktor," the colonel said idly. "We were just beginning to discuss our demands."

Ojin found his voice at last. "Well—welcome to the twenty-first century," he addressed the newcomer, staring for a long time at the high-tech wheelchair that conveyed him. "It's been a long time since we last met. I was beginning to think we never would again." He wondered if the man had missed the implied hoping we never would again, and repressed the urge to swallow.

No luck. "You sound awfully confident for a deposed princeling," snapped the old man from his electronic throne. "The only reason I haven't sealed you where you stand is because I know you weren't to blame for my exile."

Ojin knew the story behind that. He wished he'd been old enough to remember it firsthand. "Yes, well, I don't expect you'll be treating Akaba Leo like you are me," he said, crossing his arms. "The Standard—er, Pendulum Dimension, pardon me—is dragging their heels in bringing him to trial. You may very well end up dead of old age before they end up punishing him for whatever crimes they manage to conjure up."

Green eyes, still sharp despite being so clouded with age, narrowed dangerously. "We will see about that."

The colonel stepped forward. "If we might return to the matter at hand?" he said, not a little bit impatiently. "I'm a rather busy man. A coup d'état may be on the top of my to-do list, but it is hardly the only order of business I must attend to today."

"About that." Ojin had been using the time bantering with the unexpected arrival to do some quick thinking. "The colonel makes a rather tempting offer, but as much as I'd prefer to go to my grave with my head held high," he said sarcastically, "I don't feel like martyring myself just yet. So I'd like to propose an alternative."

He turned to the man his colonel had called Direktor. "I still have people in intelligence who are loyal to me," he said. "They tell me some pretty interesting stories about what you've been up to these past few days. You seem to be in search of something … or someone. They don't exactly agree on which it is, but there is one thing their claims do have in common. A fragment," he said meaningfully, "of something the public thought lost, but never was."

Ojin paused to take in the effect of his words on the old man. He saw the spark within the cloudy green eyes, and fought the urge to grin. "You will have your abdication … your dissolution, all those things—even the show trial and the time in prison. But in return for my life"—he paused again—"I offer you that fragment. Free of charge."

The two men traded glances. "I know how many lives were affected when it was part of a whole," Ojin said. "How many people could have been saved because of it. I rather think the loss of one"—he pointed to himself—"seems a trivial price to pay for its recovery."

He could almost hear the gears turning in both gentlemen's heads. The prince hoped the noise masked his own.

Finally, the Direktor spoke. "All right. Tell us where it is. And there's no need for you to take us there," he said.

He pressed a switch on his wheelchair. In an instant, no less than a score of gray-clad soldiers had rushed in the door, taken up positions, and leveled the blades of their Duel Disks right at the crown prince.

The colonel smiled thinly. Ojin had seen less dangerous expressions on the nu-level Duelists that formed his secret police. "You'll have plenty of time," said the huge man, "to compose your resignation speech while we're busy."

Ojin returned the smile in kind. "Damn. And to think I was actually entertaining making a break for it," he said.

But just as quickly, the smile was gone, and he'd adopted a warning tone in his words as his two uninvited guests turned to leave. "I know why your organization wants those fragments," he called out to them. "I've even heard rumors that it's only the first step of what you plan to accomplish. Are you mad?!"

They disappeared through the door. And Crown Prince Ojin, though his brain was already drawing up plans of rebellion, was left to shout at nothing but the twenty troops that advanced on him.

"All you're doing is repeating history!" The marble halls resonated with every word. "That fragment didn't spare my life—it just bought me a front-row seat for when you fail! And when you do—!"

He stopped, and allowed himself one more smile. "When you do," he said, so quietly that even the soldiers had to strain to hear his words, "you will grovel for a quick end. All of you … "


The two men continued down the palace hallways. Occasionally, they cast dispassionate glances on the cards—once the guards who'd sworn an oath to protect the prince with their lives—that now littered the spotless floor.

"He certainly has conviction," remarked the elder of the pair as they turned a corner.

"Conviction means nothing if it's misplaced," the colonel said shortly, pulling out a mobile from his pocket. "We will not fail, Direktor. We have already invested enough in this venture that the very notion is impossible."

The old man nodded. "If you are wrong, K?mpfer," he murmured, "you won't be making your explanations to me."

He was staring at the phone in the colonel's hand as though it were a grenade. The colonel stared at it as though his Direktor had just pulled the pin.

He took the hint. "Jawohl." Thick fingers scrolled through his speed dial. "I will make the call."


A/N: And so begins the third story in my series. Not one chapter in and I've already made the scope of it quite a bit bigger than its predecessors. Ho-o-o boy.

As ever, for purposes of faithfulness to the source material, any canon cards, archetypes, and characters in this story will be referred to in their original Japanese translation, as listed on Yugipedia. Any cards exclusive to this story will be listed at its conclusion.

Lastly, the obligatory legalese: Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V are ? 1996 and ? 2014 by Kazuki Takahashi and the Konami Corporation; all original characters and content herein are mine.

Hope you all enjoy! – K