AN: Okay let's kick this off with our basic dimension counterparts. So Yuri? Serena? You're up. (The majority of this is slightly AU, as I wanted Academia to be more like the Duel academy as in YGO GX. Also I wanted the Yuu-boys and bracelet gals to be a little older.)

Disclaimer: I don't own YGO Arc-v. Not even a little bit *sad face* *tear*

Of Summer Flings- Yuri & Serena (Predatorshipping)

Fusion dimension,

For, perhaps the the seventh time that morning, Serena stopped completely in her tracks. The corridor fell silent, as the echo of her boots on the tiled floors faded. Subtly, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw... Nothing. Absolutely nothing and no one in sight.

That in itself wasn't particularly unusual; the corridors of Academia were empty as the Summer months had come around. Most students had left for summer vacation, understanding that in the year to follow, there wouldn't be any holiday time. The Professor's plans to unite the dimensions were in place, after all, and the battle for unity would come with the fresh school year. As summer rolled in, Serena was one of the few students left to roam Academia's grounds; and of those students, all besides her were busy with internships and summer jobs... So why did she get the feeling that someone was following her.

Whilst the professor kept a very close eye on Serena during term time, forcing her to be accompanied by bodyguards or supervisors; in the holidays she was tagged with only a tracking device, allowing her to roam as she pleased. She smiled slightly at the feel of the cold anklet underneath her boot, which was giving her some time to herself... Or rather, supposedly giving her some time to herself... Honestly, why did he bother tracking her movements so closely? There was plenty for a 16 year-old to get up to in the state-of-the-arc facilities but it wasn't like she was planning to cause trouble- So far she had spent the majority of her holiday lounging on the beach, attempting to get a tan!

"...Ugh. I don't have time for this." She muttered under her breath and continued on her way, undeterred by her suspicions. It wasn't like she was a small child who couldn't defend herself. If someone was following her around, they'd have to face her and her deck sooner or later. It may even work out in her favour- she could test her new and improved deck out on them, hopefully humiliating them into submission. After all, she had spent the last couple of days fine-tuning her Moonlight deck; adding the new cards she'd collected and discarding unnecessary ones, to the point where her deck was made up of exactly forty cards. It was the best one she'd ever built, even if she had done so whilst in her bikini, soaking up the sun. It was so good she reckoned she could give Barrett a run for his money. In the same afternoon, she'd also managed to reorganise and reorder all her spare cards into spells, traps, normal monsters, fusion monsters and effect monsters. Then she'd further organised those into alphabetical order… All 1545 of the cards she owned… Truth be told, she was incredibly bored.

The fact that she (pretty much) hadn't put her deck down since the summer started made her wince. It wasn't like she didn't have her reasons- following the announcement of the professor's noble goal to unite the dimensions, all anyone had spoken about was the arc-area project. Serena wanted to be up on the front lines; hence, the improved deck. Equally, just because school was out, it didn't mean her skills as a duellist would suddenly crash, burn and disappear. She should spend more time doing things for herself- having a some fun! Living a little! Serena was one of the best duellists Academia had to offer, full stop. The professor would be a fool if he didn't put her in the first wave of enforcers, at the very least.

To attest to that, she had just won two consecutive duel simulations with said deck, before deciding it was time for lunch. That was even without her favourite card 'Moonlight Cat Dancer.' She must have left it in the Slifer dorms this morning. That was where she was going at the moment. The main school kitchens only served dinner in the holidays but Serena was free to use the Slifer-red kitchens as she pleased for other meals in the day. One of the kitchen staff, Ms Dorothy, was sweet on her and had promised to leave out some fresh pastries for lunch. After spending the morning duelling and strategizing, the thought of those pastries was getting more and more appealing. She could practically taste the crispy layers of buttery goodness. Maybe there would be some strawberries in the fridge she could have with them. Or perhaps some of that raspberry jam she'd been eyeing up for the past week. Whilst walking from the main building to the dorms on autopilot alone, Serena was so busy imagining her lunch choices that she nearly walked straight into a tree. The only thing that saved her from an unsightly bruise in the middle of her forehead was a rather graceful last minute dodge, managed only through her years of intensive gymnastics. 'Stop thinking about the bloody pastries and focus on getting to them!' In this scenario, perhaps the voice in her head was right.

By the time she arrived, Serena wasn't surprised to find the kitchens empty. However, she was surprised to find that the promised plate of pastries was nowhere in sight. She checked the kitchen counter tops, the fridge and the dining hall next door before finally accepting defeat. It wasn't like Ms Dorothy to break a promise! Serena gave a small sigh and went back to the fridge to grab that jar of raspberry jam. She'd have something proper to eat later in the evening. Grabbing one of the many bread knives, she resigned herself to a jam sandwich.

It wasn't before long that Serena got that prickly feeling on the back of her neck again. She was certain someone was watching her. In that moment, it suddenly occurred to her that if the professor was tracking her with the anklet, it was unlikely he would send someone else to follow her around as well. Especially not when they were so close to the interdimensional conflict and when all hands were busy preparing the interdimensional transportation and duel disk technology. So who else would be following her around? And more to the point, why?

Feeling discomforted by the thought, Serena whipped around to see if indeed there was someone else in the room; but only managed to knock the jam off the countertop by mistake. She swore loudly and internally cursed her overactive imagination. Luckily the glass jar hadn't smashed and she'd already finished spreading her sandwich- but the bright red jam had splattered a good distance across the floor. What a waste. She hung her head in shame. She really was not having a good day. Gingerly picking up the sticky jar, she tossed it in the glass recycling and set about clearing up the mess. No sense leaving it to Ms Dorothy or another one of the staff to do later.

...

Just as she'd finished cleaning, she found a small yellow note sticking out from under a countertop. She was surprised to find that it was addressed to her:

'Hi Serena! Here are those pastries I promised, I ran out of the strawberry jam ones you like but I hope you like these anyway! -Ms Dorothy.'

Serena scowled, contemplating the fate of her pastries. If Ms Dorothy had indeed left the pastries out, along with the note in her hand, then who could possibly have had the audacity to eat someone else's pastries?

-The day before-

Yuri had just realised that he would be having an extremely boring summer. He'd found and recorded the details of his targets in both the XYZ dimension and the Synchro dimension, two months too early. Now he was just waiting on the professor's orders to capture both of the girls; and it seemed that the professor wasn't making any important moves till September, when the first wave of enforcers would be ready to go. Yuri would have to find some patience. Find another way to occupy his time… Brilliant.

He flopped back onto his double bed and stared up at the ceiling. Since his room was on the very top floor of the Slifer dorm, the heat that rose through the building tended to accumulate and his room was disgustingly hot. Perfect for winter, less so for summer. Yuri supposed that it was still an improvement on the original Slifer rooms- he'd found the blueprints a few months ago, whilst exploring Academia's confidential records out of curiosity. About 30 years ago, when Academia's student intake had doubled, the old, brown, crumbling building, which had served as the Slifer red dorms, had been knocked down and an impressive tower-like structure had been put in it's place; more befitting the divinity of the crimson egyptian god and with a larger student capacity. As a result, Yuri had the best view of the whole island and the Slifer dorms were far superior to the rest. The same could be said for it's occupants. Yuri smirked at that thought. These days the dorm you were placed in was based on your type of duel strategy. With a reputation for ruthless offensive strategies, Slifer red was definitely not somewhere to be trifled with.

Although, in his current state, an obelisk blue might even give him a rough time, perish the thought. He groaned at the feeling of his sweaty clothes clinging to his skin. The heat was too much. He'd already removed his entire uniform but for his black undershirt and some black shorts he'd dug out from the very back of his closet. He didn't particularly want to open the windows, lest someone decided to climb in from the roof- this had actually happened before- but at this point, he didn't care. Consequences be damned. He unlatched the windows and opened them as wide as they would go. For a moment, he stood enjoying the cool breeze from outsi-Wait. Was that a girl sunbathing on the beach?

Who in the world was sunbathing? Hadn't all the students gone off on holiday? Wasn't that the whole reason he was sitting around in his room, overheating and bored out of his mind!?

He leaned forward out of the window and narrowed his eyes, trying to get a closer look. Oddly enough, the girl seemed to bear resemblance to both Ruri and Rin, the two girls in his mission; though her hair was a different colour and judging by the Slifer-red uniform lying on the sand, she seemed not only to be a part of this dimension, but also a student in Academia... Perhaps she was another part to the professor's plan? A girl for each dimension- It did seem to make sense. She was sorting through an exceedingly large stack of cards, in nothing but a bikini. How very odd. Just who was she?

Despite technically being one of Academia's students, Yuri didn't attend normal lessons and he'd never seen her before... His curiosity was peaked. If she was a Slifer red student, then her records ought to be in the office downstairs and she should have a room somewhere in the building. Fortunately, Yuri just so happened to have the means to access the office and the student database system. He sauntered out of his stifling room with a grin and took the elevator to the bottom floor. Boredom assuaged, he decided that finding out more about the girl- Whoever she was- would make for a pleasant distraction. Not only that, it may even prove helpful to his mission later on, if she was indeed needed for The Professor's plans.

Once there, he picked the lock to the office with practiced ease and slid into a large leather chair. He logged into the office desktop and quickly scanned through various folders, stopping at the Slifer-red student profiles. With an efficient system, separating students by year and gender, it wasn't long before he found the information he was after. When he did, he sat back in the chair in smug satisfaction.

"So, your name is Serena... And what a coincidence, you're the same age as both Rin and Ruri. Very interesting." He made a note of her room number and floor, deciding that a little more snooping was in order. Leaving the office as he had found it, Yuri felt rather proud of himself. He resolved to do more digging when the coast was clear.

...

Late that night, when Yuri was certain all occupants of the building were asleep, he slipped out of his room; creeping down the long flight of spiral stairs to Serena's room on the third floor, cat quiet. It was somewhat of a trek, made difficult by the lack of lighting; but Yuri had done so much night-time spying over the past few months, the darkness and silence came to him second nature. Unhurriedly, he picked the lock and softly closed the door behind him. As he cracked her curtains open a fraction and moonlight streamed in, Yuri was mildly surprised by how plain the room was. It was very similar to his, albeit a little smaller and closer to the ground. There was very little in the way of decoration and Serena's bright purple hair was the most colourful thing in the room, as she snored away on her bed in the corner. Yuri couldn't glean much information about her from the room. He was about to give up on the reconnaissance mission, when he caught sight of a duel monsters deck beside her pillow. If her room hadn't yielded any answers, it was possible her deck might. Edging towards her bed slowly, Yuri could feel his face heating up and turning pink as he narrowly avoided stepping on a bikini top, bottoms and some underwear that had been casually strewn across the floor. He was beginning to regret this decision a little bit.

Briefly losing focus and his sure footing, the floorboards creaked loudly; Yuri almost stopped breathing as Serena turned over. He relaxed when he saw her eyes were still shut and she was still gently snoring. He pushed his purple bangs up and out of his eyes as he studied Serena more closely. She did bare an uncanny resemblance to Rin and Ruri, right down to the highlights in her hair. Cautiously, he plucked the deck from beside the sleeping girl's head and flipped through it.

'Hmm. so she uses a Moonlight deck...' Yuri noted that the deck seemed to focus on beast warriors- specifically felines. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into it; she probably had an impressive One-turn-kill rate. After a few minutes, he took a closer look at 'Moonlight Cat Dancer'- which seemed to be the key fusion monster in her deck. Looking between the card and the expressionless face of it's owner, he concluded that the card suited her strangely well. A dark attribute monster that couldn't be destroyed in battle; if he were to dwell on it, the card probably said a lot about her personality. He wondered what she would do if the card were to go missing… A sly grin spread across Yuri's face. It might be quite entertaining to mess with her- see if the cat had any claws, so to speak. He replaced the deck by her bedside but added 'Moonlight Cat Dancer' to his back pocket. With that, he slipped back out the room, holding in a chuckle. With sadistic glee, he imagined the look of panic on her pretty face, when she realised her favourite card was missing...

-Back to the present, a few hours after Serena's pastries were stolen-

Serena was getting intensely frustrated. She had gone back up to her room after lunch to try to retrieve 'Moonlight Cat Dancer'- only to discover that it wasn't to be found. Once she'd torn her room apart and fumbled through all the pockets in all her jackets, she'd gone so far as to tip the box of extra cards (the ones she'd so painstakingly organised the day before) out onto the floor, in case Cat Dancer had gotten mixed up with them by mistake. In short, the card wasn't there and the extra cards were no longer in alphabetical order. She gritted her teeth angrily at the thought of having to sort through all 1545 cards once more.

In an effort to retrace her steps from yesterday morning (since she was certain that, that was the last time she had seen the card) Serena had visited the beach, the quayside, the kitchen and both large duel simulators in the main building. She was at her wits end. It was almost time to head up to the main building for dinner, but Serena had decided to do one final search of her room before calling it quits for the evening.

Rummaging around in her pockets, she pulled out a tangle of keys and flipped to her room key. Just before she stuck the key in the hole, she could've sworn that she'd heard the rustle of fabric from inside. She hadn't left the windows open; so it couldn't have been the curtains blowing about…

Uneasily, Serena remembered the prickly feeling on the back of her neck from earlier. Was there someone in her room? With no further hesitation, she unlocked the door quickly, slamming it shut behind her. She placed a hand against the door. That sneak was not getting out.

"I know there's someone in here. Face me, you coward." Whoever had snuck into her room was going to be extremely sorry.

"...Well, I suppose the game is up. Pity too. It was fun messing with you." The voice came from behind her and Serena spun on her heel to glare at the intruder. He was a boy, about her age, with purple hair undercut by pink highlights. The red jacket underneath his cloak seemed to imply he was also a Slifer, though Serena hadn't seen him around before. The most smug expression was painted on his face as he held up a familiar card.

"It was you! You took my Cat Dancer?! I've been looking for that card all afternoon." Serena's vision flashed red. Just who did this guy think he was?

"Oh, I know. It was quite amusing to watch. You should really keep a closer eye on your cards." He drawled, oozing arrogance. It was him. He'd been following her around all day. Serena's already limited patience snapped. She lashed out with a fist but it didn't connect with his face as she had hoped. He was quick as well as confident it would seem.

"That was rather violent. What a shame. This Catdancer looked so nice in your deck." Did this boy have a death wish?

"Give it back." She reached out to snatch it off of him, but unfortunately he was taller than her by several centimeters and dangled the card just out of her reach. He glanced down, seemingly amused by her anger.

"Make me." He said with far too much confidence for his own good. Well, if that was how he was going to play it, he was about to find out he had bitten off much more than he could chew. She smoothed the expression on her face. It was time to change tactics. She was going to wipe that shit-eating smirk right off his arrogant little face.

Yuri let out a small shocked gasp just before Serena grabbed his shirt collar, pulled his face down and pressed her lips to his. He flinched for a good few seconds, before relaxing into her touch. Serena deepened the kiss, touching her tongue to his, hoping to catch him unawares. Thankfully, her plan seemed to work as the boy put a tentative hand around her waist. In response, Serena entwined a hand up into his hair and tugged on his bottom lip. He wasn't a bad kisser. Not a bad kisser at all. Serena was actually rather impressed, but remained focused on her ulterior objective. Whilst he was distracted, her other hand went searching through his pockets for his deck, or at the very least, another card to blackmail him with. About a minute later, the intruder pulled back, as if coming to his senses and realising what he was doing.

"Wh-What was that?!" Serena was rather pleased to see that the boy was breathing heavily and had a deep blush staining his cheeks. She was equally pleased to be holding a deck of cards in her hand that she'd snagged from one of his back pockets.

"Well, that was a damn good kiss and this-" Serena pulled out a card from the deck and took a moment to read it's name. "-Starve-venom dragon looked rather nice in your deck. What a shame." It was her turn to smirk as she repeated his own words back at him. For a moment she could see hurt and anger flash across the boy's face but only for a moment. It was quickly masked and realising his game was up, he laughed, a little uneasily.

"I guess I deserve that. Truce? Your Catdancer for my deck." Serena could see that the boy was uncomfortable with her examining the Fusion-dragon card. She must have plucked his ace card from the deck by chance. How interesting. She tucked the dragon into her jacket pocket and shuffled through his other cards.

"Hmm... Maybe. I guess that depends…" Serena dragged out her sentence and continued to skim through his deck. She wasn't about to make this easy for him, not after the panic he'd put her in earlier. Yuri gulped.

"It… It depends?" He questioned, hesitantly. Serena whipped her gaze up.

"Who sent you spy on me? Was it the professor?" She noted his shocked response.

"No! No one sent me. You just... reminded me of two girls that I know."

"...And your first instinct was to mess with me?!"

"Err…"

" Right, of course it was." She rolled her eyes to that. "I take it that it was also you who stole my pastries at lunchtime?" The wide-eyed look on his face was telling. He really thought she was going to do something to his precious cards. Maybe she could have a little fun with him.

"I-I didn't mean t-"

"Save it. I'm not going to do anything to your deck, even if you do deserve it. I'm not that cruel. Give me back Moonlight Cat Dancer and you can have your cards back." The boy sheepishly held out the card and Serena handed back the deck, though he didn't look entirely satisfied. His eyebrows furrowed in frustration.

"...Can I have my dragon back too?" He asked quietly, though it pained his pride to do so. Serena contemplated her options. She couldn't just give the card back, that would be too easy.

"Mmm… What's your name?"

"...It's Yuri." Serena continued weighing up the pros and cons of what she was considering. Despite all the trouble he had caused her today, Yuri was quite good-looking and a rather mind blowing kisser. Clearly, he was also quite attracted to her, judging by how easily she'd managed to snag his deck of cards. She hadn't had this much excitement in ages. This situation could definitely work out in her favour.

"Well, Yuri, I'll be honest. I've had a really dull summer up till this point and if you have enough free time to bother messing with me, I'd say you're in the same boat." He looked a little confused by what she was saying, but nodded along. Maybe she'd hit the nail right on the mark.

"Don't suppose you'd fancy a duel tomorrow? If you gave me some decent competition, I might be persuaded to forgive you for taking my pastries. As for your Starve venom dragon? Well…" She took a step towards him and backed him up to the door.

"Why don't you make me give it back?" To this she gave him a cheeky wink and pulled him down for another kiss. Yuri quickly shook off his surprise and reciprocated, going on a rather unnecessary "search for his card" despite knowing exactly where Serena had put it.

In that moment, the same thought ran through both of their minds:

'This summer might turn out to be more exciting than I expected...'

AN: Wow, I did not expect this to be so long. I was just trying to get some of the YGO arc-v feels out of my system… Well, if anyone else is struggling to function due to their love for YGO arc-v, please message me and let me know I'm not alone -Saz.