What Was, What Is, and What Shall Be
Long ago, before the dawn of creation, there were only ideas. The thoughts and feelings that flow through every living being stem from these ideas. These ideas in many ways could be thought up as creatures, for though they were only concepts they were raw and unparalleled in power. As has long been said, 'The Pen is Mightier then the Sword'.
As creation dawned there came something new, powerful beings who were no longer raw ideas, but possessed combinations of these concepts. They would become the gods. For the most part these newborn gods kept to themselves, avoiding their forebears, the ancient ones who have existed since before time even became a concept, in fact one of those many ancient ones is the concept of time. There were many concepts such as joy and love that the gods cherished, and welcomed amongst their kind, as they themselves helped to shape the future of creation.
However not all of the concepts were positive ones. The gods soon came in contact with the concept of destruction, a vicious concept whose mere presence caused terrible harm to the process of creation, and in this first meeting thousands of gods perished. The Concept of Destruction had never before been anything but a concept, but when creation began it gained a purpose as well and surpassed its former limits. It was no longer a mere concept, it was the raw force of destruction.
The ancient Egyptians speak of a legend about the first battle that their gods ever participated in, but in truth it was the final battle in a war against the tidal wind of destruction that had fallen upon the gods. Destruction reigned and in that final battle it was three of the gods, who would one day become Egyptian gods, who found the answer. Giving up their own massive energies they succeeded in trapping the force of destruction in a prison of its own power. The gods fled to all corners of the universe, each of them determined to never have to face their terrible foe again. So the task fell upon the Egyptian gods to watch over their foe's prison, and to make sure that it never escaped.
*********************
Vacation was fast approaching the city of Domino, but the nights were still quite cold. It was one of these cold nights that found Drake Ihachi leaving Kaiba Land. Sighing in relief that his long night was over he slipped his black leather jacket on and stepped out into the night. Nestled in a pocket of the jacket was his dueling deck, which was his major source of income.
It couldn't have been more then four or five months previous that he had been complaining to Mokuba Kaiba, younger of the famous Kaiba brothers, about the fact that his reserved dueling platform had been taken during his allotted time. The longed hair boy had been unflinching when he said that Drake's lost time was unimportant and that he'd be rescheduled for another time. Someone far more important then he was had the rights to using it during his allotted time. That important someone turned out to be Seto Kaiba himself, CEO of Kaiba corp. and World Champion of Duel Monsters.
Drake had gone the easy route, he decided to take his available time and use it. Ignoring Mokuba he had burst into the dueling area and watched Kaiba handily defeat a computer simulated opponent. He had been testing new strategies. With the duel over Drake proceeded to challenge Kaiba to a duel, duel with his all, and lose spectacularly. In that order.
To Drake's surprise Kaiba announced that he had been impressed by Drake's skill and hired him on the spot. Making him a payed duelist for Kaiba Land. He'd officially be dueling anyone who payed to duel a professional and teaching anyone who payed for that service.
So Drake had been working there for nearly five months, and had improved considerably since then. He had also been undefeated by all paying challengers, and all challengers at Domino High School. Except for one person who he had challenged. Yugi Motou, the King of Games. Drake had pulled out all the stops in his duel against the Game King, and though he managed to bring Yugi close to defeat, the young dueling prodigy had managed to snatch victory out of Drake's grasp with almost uncanny luck.
When Drake asked how Yugi had beaten him so easily the boy told him it was the 'Heart of the Cards' and explained the whole thing. Drake had taken that in mind and incorporated it into his dueling and quickly found his skill improving. The strange philosophy worked shockingly well. He grinned widely at the memory.
Drake opened his eyes, staring out across Domino City. His violet eyes, uncommon for a Japanese youth, shone with a restrained fervor that he hadn't felt since his brief stint at Duelist Kingdom, about six months previous. He had gained six of the ten needed star chips before he was beaten by a gorgeous, and extremely talented, duelist by the name of Mai Valentine. It wasn't until after their duel that he found out she had already had ten star chips, and was merely dueling him for the hell of it. But his loss to her hadn't been all bad, he had learned an excellent lesson from that defeat, and it made him better because of it.
Brushing a hand through his russet-brown hair, hair that h could never quite control, he walked through the streets of Domino City heading home with that spark that every true duelist has growing inside of him. The whispers had gone through Kaiba Land like a plague, word spread incredibly quickly. Seto Kaiba was making plans for a tournament to be held in Domino City itself, and everyone was saying the tournament would be even bigger than Duelist Kingdom had been.
Still grinning he held up the small golden disc that hung from a cord around his neck, it was less then half an inch thick and seemed a simple enough design. All that set apart from other solid gold discs, since you found plenty of those, was the Eye of Ra, set in the center of the disc. And an ancient power that had yet to make itself known to Drake, even though he had held the item, that the shopkeeper had called the Millennium Disc, for nearly a year. In fact it was shortly after he began dueling...
***************
Ryu Shigeru felt the cold, but unlike the rest of the city he didn't feel any cold on the outside, he felt all his cold on the inside. He had been cold inside for a very long time, so long that the coldness felt completely natural to him. The feeling had been with him since that terrible night, so many years ago.
Suddenly he fell to the ground in pain, "No, not again."
Ryu looked around the abandoned warehouse, all around him were dead bodies. Every single one of them had a limb or two shot or cut off in some way. A floor tile opened up and a sobbing little boy came out and walked over to one of the corpses.
The young boy remembered this particular body as his gang leader, the one who took him in as a son. He started bawling again, twice he had to experience the loss of a guardian, and twice his world fell apart. He was only ten; he'd be alone again, out on the streets to fend for himself.
The young Ryu wandered around the room picking up money from the pockets of the dead; friends and rivals alike. When he was finished he wandered out of the building, "You'd think three hundred dead guys could come up with more cash than this."
Ryu's vision returned, "Fifth time I''ve seen that, must be something I missed."
In every single one of his flashbacks there was supposed to be a clue to his parents'' deaths. He started getting them a little after he got his Millennium Item which had the power to see into the holder's past and point out things. He slammed it into the wall but it didn't break, "Not even a scratch……"
As much as he wanted to find out who killed his parents, he didn't want to have to relive those moments. He checked his watch, it was seven thirty, he'd been knocked out for about two and a half hours, "Damn, now I gotta stay up late to do all this homework……"
He headed towards his apartment, alone, as he had been for the past seven years of his life. Ryu's gaze fell upon the gauntlet that covered his right fist, his eyes tried to bore holes through the solid gold, and through that hideous gold eye that stared up at him. Millennium Gauntlet, that's what it was called, and fat lot of good it did him. All it did for him was give him visions of his past, usually things that were important for one reason or another. That and the fact that it seemed impenetrable.
So impenetrable in fact, that he couldn't remove it. In a rage he swung his fist and slammed it into the brick wall next to him at full force once more. He didn't feel a thing through the gauntlet, but a tiny set of cracks spider webbed across the brick the gauntlet had struck. One of the few useful things about the gauntlet was that it had somehow gained a little slot for his dueling deck.
Ryu wasn't exactly sure how the slot had gotten there. He had gone to sleep one night and woke up the next morning to find the slot was there. He didn't even duel that much, he had just discovered the fad and used it to take his mind of more serious things. Such as life or death fights, and turf wars that he had to go through. He hadn't been in a gang for a while, but he knew what it was like, and things like dueling were just one of those things a person like him needed to not go crazy seeing the things he saw.
His deck did however contain one thing that was worth quite a lot, and meant a great deal to him. A very special card that he had discovered during a gang fight in an old warehouse. The warehouse belonged to Industrial Illusions, and apparently was used to manufacture Duel Monsters cards, it had been shut down temporarily for renovation. When the fight had ended he found that one of the computers had been accidentally turned on, and in it were files that told him some very special information. He had rushed through old stuff kept in storage and found what he was looking for. He put the cell into the machine and turned it on to produce the card, and before the cops arrived the machine had finished making one of the cards, so he grabbed it and ran.
Ryu grinned widely as he drew the card off the top of his deck. Staring back at him in all its pearly white glory was one of the rarest and most powerful cards in all of Duel Monsters. Only four had ever been made until he cheated. It was his special card, and it was always good to see the look on an opponent's face when he played it. Nobody expected a good for nothing punk like him to have a card as rare and powerful as the Blue Eyes White Dragon.
***************
Autumn sighed to herself as she walked down the sidewalk. The day had been very awkward. She had been sensing strange, dark presences.
She froze, hearing faint footfalls behind her. Her body tensed. She narrowed her eyes slightly, and started to run down the sidewalk. She heard the footfalls speed up too. She sprinted down the sidewalk, her breathing rapid. She didn't bother screaming. A scream would waste energy, oxygen, and time. No one could help her anyway. She made her Millenium Staff materialize, ready to kill, or at least stun, whoever--- or whatever was after her. She stopped breathing to listen for the footfalls. She no longer heard them. She stopped running. Whatever was chasing her had vanished.
Autumn stood there, temporarily dazed. Her staff dematerialized. She sighed angrily and punched a wall. Then in she rubbed her hand in pain, it had been stupid to lash out like that, but she hated running from problems. She thought it made her weak...
'That's because you are weak. You are too weak, hikari. That's why whatever is chasing you will kill you with ease...' "Leave me alone, Misuno..." she said aloud.
'I hate to admit it Autumn, but Misuno is right. You know running should not be an option..it will make you vulnerable to attacks. Even with soul obliteration on your side.' Autumn cringed slightly at AB's words. She saw a few people she knew from school and waved absently. She sensed something following her. And it was getting closer every second.
Her grey eyes, flecked with green at the irises, darted about, clearly searching for any sign of what had been chasing her. She sighed and continued her walking, there was a chance that she was running from nothing but her imagination...but if she second guessed her own senses now, she might not have a chance to make any further guesses. For now, all that was left was to flee, her auburn hair whipping about behind her.
***************
It was cold beyond all reason. The cold was not simply of the material, of the flesh, of life. It was something far deeper, something closer to the origins of all things. It was a cold that cut through flesh and bone, and bore straight into the soul like a knife. Needless to say, he began to shiver uncontrollably.
There was nothing unusual about this. Something deep within him spoke of the cold numerous times, spoke of how it was always present at times like this. However, that same voice spoke of the sweltering heat, a blaze of heat that also etched itself into the soul. There were images that accompanied the remembrance of the heat, images of a far-off place where it burned like fire during the day, and chilled you to the bone at night.
Something called out to him through the haze of darkness that surrounded him, kept him shrouded for all time. The darkness that imprisoned him within itself, kept him from seeing the light once more. Yet deep within him he knew that soon the waiting would be over, and he would once more be free to carry out his purpose.
He cried out as a intensely bright ray of light burst through the darkness, ripped at it, tore it into pieces. He fell far, and yet fell no distance at all, as the womb of darkness that had so constantly surrounded him crumbled at the touch of the light.
Millennia, or perhaps mere moments later, he sucked in his first breath in a long time. The air that filled his lungs was just as the voice deep within him had said. The air was hot and dry, and seared him to the soul. It was exactly as he envisioned it, or maybe it was memory. Slowly his eyes opened, blinking back the light that he was so unaccustomed to, and at last he took his first, or maybe not, look at the world around him. The first sight that greeted him was of a person, standing there above him, leaning down to give him a hand.
He looked up at the man...no, the boy, and smiled. The boy's white-haired countenance and the golden object held in his hand seemed a strange comfort in a world that was so strange, and yet all to familiar. As he reached out to take the boy's hand he noticed for the first time that he wore nothing, nothing at all except for the silver dragon biting its own tail that connected the four fingers of his right hand, like some kind of strange ring. His hand stopped short of the boy's, and darkness fell upon him once more.
***********************************
Author's Note and Disclaimer: Disclaimer, which I didn't want to put at the top for this part, is that I don't own Yu-gi-oh, nor do I own Ryu or Autumn and her spirits. I do however own Drake, a friend own's Dalin, and another own's Taichi. Multiple people worked together on the ideas for this story that was originally set up as an RPG, and it is being converted into story form for posterity. I wrote the final version and my two lazy friends, the only ones left from the RPG at the point of this being posted, don't want to set up an account an monitor it, so I am left with the task of putting everything up. Hope you all enjoy.
Next Time: Drake is given an interesting job by his boss, a job that may place him in extreme danger. Meanwhile Ryu finds himself confronted by a specter of his past...
Long ago, before the dawn of creation, there were only ideas. The thoughts and feelings that flow through every living being stem from these ideas. These ideas in many ways could be thought up as creatures, for though they were only concepts they were raw and unparalleled in power. As has long been said, 'The Pen is Mightier then the Sword'.
As creation dawned there came something new, powerful beings who were no longer raw ideas, but possessed combinations of these concepts. They would become the gods. For the most part these newborn gods kept to themselves, avoiding their forebears, the ancient ones who have existed since before time even became a concept, in fact one of those many ancient ones is the concept of time. There were many concepts such as joy and love that the gods cherished, and welcomed amongst their kind, as they themselves helped to shape the future of creation.
However not all of the concepts were positive ones. The gods soon came in contact with the concept of destruction, a vicious concept whose mere presence caused terrible harm to the process of creation, and in this first meeting thousands of gods perished. The Concept of Destruction had never before been anything but a concept, but when creation began it gained a purpose as well and surpassed its former limits. It was no longer a mere concept, it was the raw force of destruction.
The ancient Egyptians speak of a legend about the first battle that their gods ever participated in, but in truth it was the final battle in a war against the tidal wind of destruction that had fallen upon the gods. Destruction reigned and in that final battle it was three of the gods, who would one day become Egyptian gods, who found the answer. Giving up their own massive energies they succeeded in trapping the force of destruction in a prison of its own power. The gods fled to all corners of the universe, each of them determined to never have to face their terrible foe again. So the task fell upon the Egyptian gods to watch over their foe's prison, and to make sure that it never escaped.
*********************
Vacation was fast approaching the city of Domino, but the nights were still quite cold. It was one of these cold nights that found Drake Ihachi leaving Kaiba Land. Sighing in relief that his long night was over he slipped his black leather jacket on and stepped out into the night. Nestled in a pocket of the jacket was his dueling deck, which was his major source of income.
It couldn't have been more then four or five months previous that he had been complaining to Mokuba Kaiba, younger of the famous Kaiba brothers, about the fact that his reserved dueling platform had been taken during his allotted time. The longed hair boy had been unflinching when he said that Drake's lost time was unimportant and that he'd be rescheduled for another time. Someone far more important then he was had the rights to using it during his allotted time. That important someone turned out to be Seto Kaiba himself, CEO of Kaiba corp. and World Champion of Duel Monsters.
Drake had gone the easy route, he decided to take his available time and use it. Ignoring Mokuba he had burst into the dueling area and watched Kaiba handily defeat a computer simulated opponent. He had been testing new strategies. With the duel over Drake proceeded to challenge Kaiba to a duel, duel with his all, and lose spectacularly. In that order.
To Drake's surprise Kaiba announced that he had been impressed by Drake's skill and hired him on the spot. Making him a payed duelist for Kaiba Land. He'd officially be dueling anyone who payed to duel a professional and teaching anyone who payed for that service.
So Drake had been working there for nearly five months, and had improved considerably since then. He had also been undefeated by all paying challengers, and all challengers at Domino High School. Except for one person who he had challenged. Yugi Motou, the King of Games. Drake had pulled out all the stops in his duel against the Game King, and though he managed to bring Yugi close to defeat, the young dueling prodigy had managed to snatch victory out of Drake's grasp with almost uncanny luck.
When Drake asked how Yugi had beaten him so easily the boy told him it was the 'Heart of the Cards' and explained the whole thing. Drake had taken that in mind and incorporated it into his dueling and quickly found his skill improving. The strange philosophy worked shockingly well. He grinned widely at the memory.
Drake opened his eyes, staring out across Domino City. His violet eyes, uncommon for a Japanese youth, shone with a restrained fervor that he hadn't felt since his brief stint at Duelist Kingdom, about six months previous. He had gained six of the ten needed star chips before he was beaten by a gorgeous, and extremely talented, duelist by the name of Mai Valentine. It wasn't until after their duel that he found out she had already had ten star chips, and was merely dueling him for the hell of it. But his loss to her hadn't been all bad, he had learned an excellent lesson from that defeat, and it made him better because of it.
Brushing a hand through his russet-brown hair, hair that h could never quite control, he walked through the streets of Domino City heading home with that spark that every true duelist has growing inside of him. The whispers had gone through Kaiba Land like a plague, word spread incredibly quickly. Seto Kaiba was making plans for a tournament to be held in Domino City itself, and everyone was saying the tournament would be even bigger than Duelist Kingdom had been.
Still grinning he held up the small golden disc that hung from a cord around his neck, it was less then half an inch thick and seemed a simple enough design. All that set apart from other solid gold discs, since you found plenty of those, was the Eye of Ra, set in the center of the disc. And an ancient power that had yet to make itself known to Drake, even though he had held the item, that the shopkeeper had called the Millennium Disc, for nearly a year. In fact it was shortly after he began dueling...
***************
Ryu Shigeru felt the cold, but unlike the rest of the city he didn't feel any cold on the outside, he felt all his cold on the inside. He had been cold inside for a very long time, so long that the coldness felt completely natural to him. The feeling had been with him since that terrible night, so many years ago.
Suddenly he fell to the ground in pain, "No, not again."
Ryu looked around the abandoned warehouse, all around him were dead bodies. Every single one of them had a limb or two shot or cut off in some way. A floor tile opened up and a sobbing little boy came out and walked over to one of the corpses.
The young boy remembered this particular body as his gang leader, the one who took him in as a son. He started bawling again, twice he had to experience the loss of a guardian, and twice his world fell apart. He was only ten; he'd be alone again, out on the streets to fend for himself.
The young Ryu wandered around the room picking up money from the pockets of the dead; friends and rivals alike. When he was finished he wandered out of the building, "You'd think three hundred dead guys could come up with more cash than this."
Ryu's vision returned, "Fifth time I''ve seen that, must be something I missed."
In every single one of his flashbacks there was supposed to be a clue to his parents'' deaths. He started getting them a little after he got his Millennium Item which had the power to see into the holder's past and point out things. He slammed it into the wall but it didn't break, "Not even a scratch……"
As much as he wanted to find out who killed his parents, he didn't want to have to relive those moments. He checked his watch, it was seven thirty, he'd been knocked out for about two and a half hours, "Damn, now I gotta stay up late to do all this homework……"
He headed towards his apartment, alone, as he had been for the past seven years of his life. Ryu's gaze fell upon the gauntlet that covered his right fist, his eyes tried to bore holes through the solid gold, and through that hideous gold eye that stared up at him. Millennium Gauntlet, that's what it was called, and fat lot of good it did him. All it did for him was give him visions of his past, usually things that were important for one reason or another. That and the fact that it seemed impenetrable.
So impenetrable in fact, that he couldn't remove it. In a rage he swung his fist and slammed it into the brick wall next to him at full force once more. He didn't feel a thing through the gauntlet, but a tiny set of cracks spider webbed across the brick the gauntlet had struck. One of the few useful things about the gauntlet was that it had somehow gained a little slot for his dueling deck.
Ryu wasn't exactly sure how the slot had gotten there. He had gone to sleep one night and woke up the next morning to find the slot was there. He didn't even duel that much, he had just discovered the fad and used it to take his mind of more serious things. Such as life or death fights, and turf wars that he had to go through. He hadn't been in a gang for a while, but he knew what it was like, and things like dueling were just one of those things a person like him needed to not go crazy seeing the things he saw.
His deck did however contain one thing that was worth quite a lot, and meant a great deal to him. A very special card that he had discovered during a gang fight in an old warehouse. The warehouse belonged to Industrial Illusions, and apparently was used to manufacture Duel Monsters cards, it had been shut down temporarily for renovation. When the fight had ended he found that one of the computers had been accidentally turned on, and in it were files that told him some very special information. He had rushed through old stuff kept in storage and found what he was looking for. He put the cell into the machine and turned it on to produce the card, and before the cops arrived the machine had finished making one of the cards, so he grabbed it and ran.
Ryu grinned widely as he drew the card off the top of his deck. Staring back at him in all its pearly white glory was one of the rarest and most powerful cards in all of Duel Monsters. Only four had ever been made until he cheated. It was his special card, and it was always good to see the look on an opponent's face when he played it. Nobody expected a good for nothing punk like him to have a card as rare and powerful as the Blue Eyes White Dragon.
***************
Autumn sighed to herself as she walked down the sidewalk. The day had been very awkward. She had been sensing strange, dark presences.
She froze, hearing faint footfalls behind her. Her body tensed. She narrowed her eyes slightly, and started to run down the sidewalk. She heard the footfalls speed up too. She sprinted down the sidewalk, her breathing rapid. She didn't bother screaming. A scream would waste energy, oxygen, and time. No one could help her anyway. She made her Millenium Staff materialize, ready to kill, or at least stun, whoever--- or whatever was after her. She stopped breathing to listen for the footfalls. She no longer heard them. She stopped running. Whatever was chasing her had vanished.
Autumn stood there, temporarily dazed. Her staff dematerialized. She sighed angrily and punched a wall. Then in she rubbed her hand in pain, it had been stupid to lash out like that, but she hated running from problems. She thought it made her weak...
'That's because you are weak. You are too weak, hikari. That's why whatever is chasing you will kill you with ease...' "Leave me alone, Misuno..." she said aloud.
'I hate to admit it Autumn, but Misuno is right. You know running should not be an option..it will make you vulnerable to attacks. Even with soul obliteration on your side.' Autumn cringed slightly at AB's words. She saw a few people she knew from school and waved absently. She sensed something following her. And it was getting closer every second.
Her grey eyes, flecked with green at the irises, darted about, clearly searching for any sign of what had been chasing her. She sighed and continued her walking, there was a chance that she was running from nothing but her imagination...but if she second guessed her own senses now, she might not have a chance to make any further guesses. For now, all that was left was to flee, her auburn hair whipping about behind her.
***************
It was cold beyond all reason. The cold was not simply of the material, of the flesh, of life. It was something far deeper, something closer to the origins of all things. It was a cold that cut through flesh and bone, and bore straight into the soul like a knife. Needless to say, he began to shiver uncontrollably.
There was nothing unusual about this. Something deep within him spoke of the cold numerous times, spoke of how it was always present at times like this. However, that same voice spoke of the sweltering heat, a blaze of heat that also etched itself into the soul. There were images that accompanied the remembrance of the heat, images of a far-off place where it burned like fire during the day, and chilled you to the bone at night.
Something called out to him through the haze of darkness that surrounded him, kept him shrouded for all time. The darkness that imprisoned him within itself, kept him from seeing the light once more. Yet deep within him he knew that soon the waiting would be over, and he would once more be free to carry out his purpose.
He cried out as a intensely bright ray of light burst through the darkness, ripped at it, tore it into pieces. He fell far, and yet fell no distance at all, as the womb of darkness that had so constantly surrounded him crumbled at the touch of the light.
Millennia, or perhaps mere moments later, he sucked in his first breath in a long time. The air that filled his lungs was just as the voice deep within him had said. The air was hot and dry, and seared him to the soul. It was exactly as he envisioned it, or maybe it was memory. Slowly his eyes opened, blinking back the light that he was so unaccustomed to, and at last he took his first, or maybe not, look at the world around him. The first sight that greeted him was of a person, standing there above him, leaning down to give him a hand.
He looked up at the man...no, the boy, and smiled. The boy's white-haired countenance and the golden object held in his hand seemed a strange comfort in a world that was so strange, and yet all to familiar. As he reached out to take the boy's hand he noticed for the first time that he wore nothing, nothing at all except for the silver dragon biting its own tail that connected the four fingers of his right hand, like some kind of strange ring. His hand stopped short of the boy's, and darkness fell upon him once more.
***********************************
Author's Note and Disclaimer: Disclaimer, which I didn't want to put at the top for this part, is that I don't own Yu-gi-oh, nor do I own Ryu or Autumn and her spirits. I do however own Drake, a friend own's Dalin, and another own's Taichi. Multiple people worked together on the ideas for this story that was originally set up as an RPG, and it is being converted into story form for posterity. I wrote the final version and my two lazy friends, the only ones left from the RPG at the point of this being posted, don't want to set up an account an monitor it, so I am left with the task of putting everything up. Hope you all enjoy.
Next Time: Drake is given an interesting job by his boss, a job that may place him in extreme danger. Meanwhile Ryu finds himself confronted by a specter of his past...