Summary: A month after the Yubel incident, Jaden's not feeling so great. After hurting all his friends, the last thing he wants is for them to suffer again because of him, which might happen if they find out what he's become. But they're all in for it, because there's someone new about, someone who wants the game of Duel Monsters to go their way. Once this person's done with him, Jaden must now pick up the pieces of his shattered Deck and bounce back as he faces his greatest challenge yet.

Rating: T

Things of Note: Tyranno Hassleberry's name will be changed to Kenzan Hassleberry. There will be a mixing of both the English and Japanese phrases. The cast of GX will definitely appear obviously, along with one or two characters from the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, namely Yugi and Kaiba. Also, there will be a bit of mixing between the GX anime and manga continuities. This Fanfic may also be somewhat AU. By the way, I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

Chapter 1 - Emergence

The sun shone brightly on an island located a good distance away from the mainland. On this island, there was a school called Duel Academy, where young Duelists trained to become great. One such person enrolled in this school was Jaden Yuki, who had risen against all odds in multiple situations and emerged victorious. Through the example he set, Jaden had brought about change at Duel Academy, where lower-ranked students of his dorm, Slifer Red, were mocked for being lowest on the totem pole by their higher-ranking peers. Ignoring all of it, Jaden nonetheless prevailed against incredibly powerful foes such as Kagemaru, the Light of Destruction and Yubel, who had come to share Jaden's soul.

Jaden sat alone in his room in Slifer Red. Most of the other students who used to share this dorm with him had either been promoted to higher-ranking dorms, as was the case with some of his closest friends, or dropped out of the Academy altogether, leaving Jaden the only Red student. Not that he particularly cared. As a third year student, Jaden had a lot of free time, which he unfortunately chose to spend in the same way: sitting around his dorm room, doing absolutely nothing. He only really went outside his dorm when he had classes, and even then, he still felt the same way. Not about classes; Jaden had never cared much for classes or studying throughout his tenure at Duel Academy, and now that he was in his second and final semester of his third and final year, he sure as hell wasn't going to start now. He liked Red, and he liked being where he was, so Jaden really didn't care much about getting good grades. Unless the Academy needed saving from evil forces that were out to commit terrible acts for nefarious purposes, Jaden really wasn't interested.

Which was exactly why Jaden spent all of his remaining days in his dorm room: unless he sensed a presence, Jaden was hardly seen outside his dorm, except when he had to go to the bathroom, which was never within his own dorm room. Only then would people get a glimpse of the former life-of-the-party type who had done a sudden one-eighty and become the Academy's most well-known recluse. It had all happened earlier in the year during the Yubel incident, with Jaden's formerly happy-go-lucky outlook on life severely tainted by the horrific mass murders he'd committed in an alternate dimension after submitting to his dark side when he thought his friends had died. He'd been in a different dimension because he'd been desperately searching for his good friend Jesse Andersen, who had disappeared after a two-on-one Duel alongside Jaden against Yubel.

Jaden had blamed himself for Jesse's disappearance. While searching for him, Jaden had become obsessed, neglecting his friends, causing a rift between him and them, culminating in them being sacrificed by Brron, the Mad King of Dark World to create the powerful Super Polymerization card. In his grief, Jaden had turned to darkness, becoming the powerful, dark entity known as the Supreme King, a darkness that Jaden had had to force himself to conquer in order to save everyone and stop Yubel. In a way, Jaden supposed, he had also saved Yubel from herself. All this had harshly impacted Jaden, turning him cynical. He'd stopped going out with his friends and had become a shut-in. His friends had all tried to get him to come out and spend time with them, but Jaden just wasn't interested anymore in things that used to get him raring to go, like playing Frisbee, eating at the Academy's food court, and best of all, a good Duel.

Despite their best efforts, Jaden remained a recluse. His friends, who had tried so desperately to get him to come out and spend time with them like before had stopped trying, admitting that their attempts were in vain and ultimately deciding that moving on would be a much more worthy endeavor. Oddly enough, Jaden still considered them his friends, even though he refused to spend even an ounce of time with them. There were a few reasons for this: except for Syrus, the majority of his friends had no idea of what he'd done as the Supreme King, and Jaden just couldn't bring himself to face them after all he'd done. Besides, how would they react if they found out he'd been a despotic mass murderer? Telling them the truth would only hurt them, and he didn't want to do that again.

Furthermore, upon returning to Duel Academy, Jaden had had to face down a few threats from rogue Duel Monsters. Some had tried to destroy the world, others had tried to take it over, but no matter what their aim was, Jaden had stopped them at every turn. They'd been minor threats, but there was always the possibility they could use his friends against him and hurt them, and Jaden refused to take that chance. Besides, even if he told them and they took it well, what if they thought they should try to help him and try to Duel one of these threats only to lose? They'd come to harm, and Jaden was not willing to put them in harm's way again.

So to recap, Jaden avoided his friends and isolated himself from them because he felt he couldn't face them again after hurting them so much and bringing them back into his life would only endanger them. By driving them away and keeping them at an arm's length, Jaden was protecting them from being hurt, both by outside forces and from himself too, even though it made him miserable. There was no denying how unhappy he was; living in isolation, Jaden was inactive, bored, depressed and lonely.

The loneliness was the worst of all; even though he knew what he was doing was for their own good, Jaden missed his friends terribly; voluntarily staying away from them made him pine for them even more. He'd give anything for Syrus' usual nervousness and attraction to the Dark Magician Girl, Chazz's dickish confidence, Kenzan's endearing habit of calling him 'Sarge,' Blair's delightful cheeriness and the usual antics of the Rhodes siblings; usually Atticus would embarrass Alexis by either revealing some humiliating secret about her or just acting like a goof while calling himself the Master of Love and setting up an elaborate scheme to get Jaden and Alexis together to be a couple. But their safety was more important than his happiness whether Jaden liked it or not. If he missed them, too bad; he had to protect them, and avoiding them was the best way to do that. But every time Jaden reminisced about his friends, he sank deeper and deeper into loneliness, wishing he'd never allowed himself to lose control and kill over fifty thousand people.

But he had, and thus he did, and he had nobody to blame but himself. The first few days after he got back from the alternate dimension when he still showered, Jaden would look in the mirror at his reflection and admonish himself for what he'd done earlier in the year. Of course, when he did this, the man in the mirror admonished him back, as if to say, "Hey, this is your fault too, buddy," and that was true; Jaden had been the one to cause his friends to be sacrificed, and though his friends being sacrificed was Brron's doing, they never would've been sacrificed if Jaden hadn't led them into the alternate dimension, and that never would've happened if he'd been able to rescue Jesse when the latter sacrificed himself so that everyone else could get back to their own world, and that never would've happened if Jaden had never sent Yubel up in that space capsule to be bombarded by cosmic rays that messed her up in the head and caused her to take revenge on him.

All of it was his own fault, and since he only had himself to blame, that was exactly what Jaden did. Over the first week of being back, the self-recriminations became more and more scathing and before he knew it, Jaden had become a bitter self-loathing mess. Eventually he grew tired of hating himself in the mirror, so he kept to his bedroom. Halfway through the second week, Jaden had ultimately stopped showering. He still went to the bathroom to relieve himself though, and whenever he washed his hands, he'd inevitably look up in the mirror and the bad feelings would flow. During the third week, he gradually stopped doing things he used to do that brought him joy, like playing video games. He even stopped doing things necessary for day-to-day life; he no longer got up in the morning to change clothes and neglected his hygiene. By the time the fourth week was half over, Jaden's loneliness and self-loathing had reached the point where he stopped eating, and while he was self-aware enough to realize his negative feelings towards himself were the cause, he still did nothing about it. So now the disheveled, skinny seventeen-year-old had resigned himself to this boring, lonely life of day-to-day separation. Recently he'd taken to lying in bed above the covers. As with most days, this one was slow.

Jaden turned over in his bed: goddamn it, life was so boring. He felt suddenly like he was being watched. He turned onto his side, supporting himself with his elbow, to see a dark shape standing over him, and then turned back over when he realized it was only Yubel.

"You need to get out," she urged. "You can't keep staying in here all the time. It's not good for you."

Jaden turned over again to face her, looking at her as if she were odd. "Since when do you care so much about my social life?" he inquired.

"What I care about," retorted the spirit, "Is your well-being, which you're poorly maintaining. Life isn't meant to be lived like this."

Jaden ignored her and turned back over. Whenever Yubel insisted that he needed to get out more, he'd always sternly refused, claiming he didn't want to. He'd overlooked her actions and given her a chance, placing her three cards containing her three forms into his Deck, keeping the promise his past life had made to her to always keep her by his side. But he was hurting himself by laying in bed all day and not taking care of himself, and Yubel didn't like it one bit, because while Jaden was mainly hurting himself, he was hurting her as well, even though she existed for the purpose of taking pain on Jaden's behalf, and would do so with a willingness that would make most people squirm with discomfort, she still had feelings after all, and whether Jaden realized it or not, he was hurting them. Yubel was his guardian spirit; she was tasked with protecting him, and right now, she was failing. She didn't care whether or not he showered though, because hygiene wasn't a basic human need. But food was and always would be, and if Jaden kept up the way he was, he'd end up starving and wasting away to nothing.

"I know you're trying to atone for your actions," she said, making the concern in her voice evident, "But you can't live like this; you're hurting yourself, and when you hurt yourself, you hurt me too. I have a sacred duty to protect your well-being but you're not letting me do it!"

"That's enough!" Jaden said curtly, and in a tone that told Yubel that she'd spoken for long enough and that he wasn't in the mood. "I'm not going out, Yubel, and that's final. There's no need to."

"I'd say there is," she continued, ignoring Jaden's sternness as much as she could. She treaded carefully when trying to convince him to take better care of himself, and always tried to stay on his good side, even though Jaden had told her over and over again that he would never overlook what he'd done. Strangely, Yubel kind of enjoyed being told off, mainly because of her masochistic nature. She admitted to herself that she loved it when Jaden was stern with her. Truly, her love for him was twisted. And also currently unrequited, since Jaden had told her that he didn't feel the same way about her that she did about him; even though he and the Supreme King were the same person, Jaden told her that seeing the origins of them being together felt like someone else's memories, not his. But Yubel didn't mind too much; even though Jaden was only the reincarnation of the Supreme King and wasn't exactly the King himself, Yubel believed that Jaden would come around eventually. He just needed some time. But that didn't mean she'd stopped caring for him. She'd never do that. "You're not getting any exercise," she said, simply for the sake of having something to say to convince him. "Your body's suffering for it, and…"

"Stop right there," Jaden interrupted. Yubel quieted somewhat eagerly; even though she knew she was getting on his bad side, she stillgot a strange kick out of Jaden putting her in her place; it emphasized the fact that he was the master and she was there to serve him. Yes, that was the reason. Yubel tried to hide her dirty excitement as Jaden turned over to tell her off.

Jaden meanwhile, had had it up to the neck with her constant nagging. "You don't get it, Yubel. I became something terrible and inhuman; I ended lives and ruined others! I'm no better than the likes of Hitler or Stalin, so don't try to get me to move because of some bullshit like concern over my health! Also, on a side note, you're not my mother, so don't try to be."

"I may not be your mother, but that doesn't mean I don't have your best interests at heart!" Yubel snapped, ignoring how good she felt. "I want you to be healthy! You need to eat! You're neglecting your basic needs, and if you don't do something about it soon you'll never go back to being as healthy as the person you once were!"

"Shut up!" Jaden shouted at her. Yubel quieted once again. Shit, she thought. She always enjoyed irritating him a little, but she knew getting him mad like this was going too far. As much as she enjoyed being told off by him, it wasn't worth this, and while she didn't look the type to be cowed by anyone, Yubel was easily intimidated when she made her master angry.

"Listen here," said Jaden, sternly and angrily. "I made it so that I'd never go back to the person I once was when I turned into the Supreme King and slaughtered millions, so just shut up about wanting me to be as healthy as the person I once was; I will never be that healthy again." Yubel's brow shot up. She could tell Jaden wasn't referring to his body.

Jaden's face softened into its familiar miserable expression. "Besides," he added, "I don't belong here anymore."

"What?" Yubel asked, surprised. "What are you saying?"

"Think about it," Jaden explained, "I can do things other people can't. I can see Duel Spirits, resist mind control and generate wind when I Summon a monster. I'm not normal anymore Yubel, and I never will be." Jaden looked downcast. Even though he'd spoken to Yubel with a certain striking harshness, his tone towards her now was softer. "I have a responsibility to everyone I care about now," he said forlornly. "I have to keep them safe, and part of that is keeping them safe from me. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to spend some time with Sy and the bunch, but I just wouldn't find any joy in it anymore." He turned over and stared at the wall. "I just wouldn't."

"I don't believe that," Yubel countered, "I know you miss them Jaden, and that it's hard for you to push them away even though you feel letting them in would hurt them again. But it won't, trust me. They miss you just as much as you miss them."

"Please stop," Jaden begged. Yubel quieted once again as he turned back over in his bed. "I just don't want to, okay?"

But Yubel wasn't giving up that easily. "Take out your Deck and look at it please," she insisted.

"Why?"

"Just do as I ask."

Hesitantly, Jaden obliged her. "What about them?" he asked.

"Remember what it felt like to look at those cards for the first time," said Yubel. "Remember the feelings that those pictures inspired in you when you first laid eyes on them."

Jaden's eyes gleamed with nostalgia. "I remember when Koyo-san first gave me this Deck," he said softly. "I was just a little kid, and he just gave it to me out of the blue, entrusting me with it, saying he wanted me to have it."

"Because he probably knew you'd have fun with it," Yubel added. "Now, take a look at Winged Kuriboh in particular."

Again, Jaden obliged. "It's the one card Koyo didn't give you, remember?" Yubel asked.*

*Again, like I said, I'm mixing the manga and anime continuities.

"Yeah," Jaden responded, his voice a whisper.

"Who was it that gave you that card?" Yubel asked, although since she had access to Jaden's memories, she already knew the answer. Jaden however, did not know this.

"The person who I admire," Jaden acknowledged. "A living legend. Someone who's the best at what he does."

"Say his name," Yubel insisted.

"Yugi Muto." Jaden suddenly twitched a little; saying Yugi's name was… doing something to him. He felt something familiar, something he hadn't felt in a long time: an urge to confront someone and let his cards do the talking.

"What was your lifelong goal before… me?" asked Yubel, feigning ignorance of Jaden's lifelong ambitions.

Jaden's eyes gleamed with recognition. "I wanted to become the next King of Games," he murmured softly.

"Do you still want to?"

Jaden kept looking at Winged Kuriboh. "I'm not sure," he admitted.

"Well," said Yubel, "You won't find out by just sitting around here all day. Get up and go outside and do something. Even if it's only just watching a Duel, it's better than sitting around here, waiting for the next doomsday threat." Jaden looked at her curiously, and then Yubel hit him with her finishing statement. "Don't do it for your friends," she advised. "Do it for you, because you love doing it, and because you still want to be the best at it."

Jaden looked at his cards that bore the depictions of iconic-looking heroes that he'd admired since childhood. He had to admit, Yubel had a point: he used to love Dueling. He had said it himself that it had even been his life. So what was he still doing here? If he still loved to Duel, shouldn't he be going outside and doing it?

Jaden pocketed his cards and stood up. Walking over to another corner of his darkened unlit room, he stood over a desk supporting a lone Duel Disk. Would he Duel today? Jaden mulled it over. Perhaps he would start today, and he would try to get over all that had happened to him and those he loved. Because now that he was remembering what had made him the person he used to be, he was remembering all that had made him happy: good friends, good Duels, and good times to be shared by all, except Chazz who was a snooty rich asshole, but for the most part, there were good times to be shared by plenty. Strapping the Disk to his left arm, Jaden went to the door to his room and opened it to step out into the light.

Big mistake; while the light was nice, it was also blinding and it hurt his eyes like hell. Jaden groaned as he covered his eyes with his hand, waiting for them to adjust to the sudden influx of photons. "Ahhh, goddamn it," he groaned, "You absolutely suck for this, Yubel."

Yubel grinned; she could give a fuck about his retinas. "Now walk forward," she insisted. Shielding his eyes with one hand, Jaden slowly stepped out into the light, which draped his Slifer jacket in a dull red; months spent in darkness had dulled what was once a lovely crimson into an almost maroon color. Jaden took a moment to notice this, and he felt a little sad acknowledging it.

Jaden exited his room, closed the door, and walked down the staircase in disappointment. There was no one around the Slifer dorm. What did you expect? He thought to himself. You're the only one in Slifer Red now, and everybody stopped trying to get you to come out ages ago.

He pulled his school palm pilot out of his pocket; every student had been given one upon their entry to Duel Academy, and they always returned them when they graduated. Jaden switched it on and reviewed his contacts: Alexis Rhodes, Syrus Truesdale, Kenzan Hassleberry, Blair Flanagan and Chazz Princeton. Jaden thought for a moment about calling them, but decided against it. One bridge at a time, Jay, he thought, and smiled when he called himself that; Syrus used to call him that for years.

"Don't stand around being nostalgic," Yubel interrupted Jaden's brief moment of recollection. "You'll have plenty of time to do that when you're old and grey. Now get out there and make some memories while you're still young." For the first time in months, Jaden allowed himself a small smile.

He looked at the main building of the Academy. Today he would break his usual cycle of sitting around and doing nothing and he would go and see who was out there. Ready or not gang, he thought, Here I come, back into our lives.

And with that, Jaden Yuki ran towards the main building, where soon he would see all of his eagerly awaiting friends…