They moved like a small storm down the blimp's main corridor—five figures carrying too much purpose for the narrow space. Fluorescent strips buzzed overhead. The deck swayed almost imperceptibly beneath their feet, the steady thrum of engines a heartbeat in metal.
Yugi led, the Millennium Puzzle steady against his chest, the gold catching every stray glint of light. His expression was composed, but his eyes had that faraway depth—the Pharaoh close, like a second pulse beneath the skin. Beside him, Joey walked with his shoulders high and jaw tight, fists opening and closing as if squeezing down a temper that kept trying to climb up his throat. Rebecca kept pace on Yugi's other side, notebook under her arm, mouth a thin line of worry that hard facts could not quite flatten. Connor stayed just half a step behind—quiet, watchful, eyes flicking from door to door, taking in angles, distances, blind spots as if mapping a chessboard no one else could see. Odion, last in the line, was carved from something steadier than stone; he carried silence like a shield, the set of his face saying more than words had patience for.
"Jason doesn't get to vanish into a corridor and call that a plan," Joey muttered, not for the first time. "We find him, we end this, then we can let Kaiba go back to his 'science beats magic' bedtime stories."
"We find him," Yugi agreed, voice even, "and we stop him."
Rebecca glanced up at Yugi's profile and then away. "Assuming the system still lets us find anyone after last night. Jason messed with more than the duel field. I pulled the diagnostics—several of the blimp's subsystems spiked like they were caught in a magnet storm."
"That's not good,Once we find Jason" Joey said. "Then maybe we can throw him out an airlock."
They rounded a corner—and stopped.
A figure in a crisp black suit stood in the center of the hall, feet apart, hands respectfully behind his back. The blimp's head of security, Roland, was a slab of composure; even his side-parted hair looked like it had been ironed into place. Two junior guards flanked him, visors reflecting everyone's faces back to themselves in faint fish-eye.
"Yugi Muto. Mr. Wheeler. Ms. Hawkins. Mr. Connor. Mr. Odion," Roland said with a shallow bow. His voice was courteous, neutral as a sealed envelope. "On behalf of KaibaCorp, I must request your cooperation."
Joey snorted. "Oh this'll be good."
Roland straightened. "Per Chairman Kaiba's directive, all finalists' decks are to be inspected for irregularities. The previous match raised questions. I'm here to ensure the integrity of the tournament remains intact."
"Integrity?" Rebecca snapped before she could stop herself. Pink crept up her cheeks, but she didn't take the words back. "Jason stole a Millennium Item and sealed a duelist into a card on your platform. Maybe aim the suspicion in the right direction."
Roland's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes gentled by a single degree. "I understand your frustration. KaibaCorp investigates everyone. To ensure that nothing else is going on just in case."
Yugi touched the Puzzle, the chain giving a faint metallic whisper. His gaze measured Roland for a breath, then he nodded once. "All right. Inspect away."
Roland inclined his head. "Thank you." He produced a black velvet tray from a slim case and, one by one, they set their decks upon it—Rebecca first, then Joey, then Connor, Odion, and finally Yugi. The gesture was strangely intimate; a duelist's deck is something like a diary and something like a blade. Handing it over always felt like a small surrender.
Roland lifted Yugi's deck with the care of a curator handling a priceless manuscript, setting it on a portable scanner whose light pulsed soft cyan. He did the same with Odion's, his movements unhurried, almost meditative. The two junior guards stepped aside, eyes forward, forming a respectful barrier between the group and the open corridor beyond.
"Routine scan," Roland said, watching the readout without blinking. The screen scrolled harmless numbers and meaningless letters. "All cards conform to tournament standards. No weight irregularities. No RFID interference tags. " His tone traveled the delicate line between ritual and reassurance. "May I perform a brief manual verification?"
"Make it brief," Joey said, crossing his arms.
Roland's gloved fingers ghosted the edges of the cards with surprising deftness—no bends, no flash drops; he lifted and replaced like a stage magician refusing to be a thief. When he reached the middle of Yugi's deck, his hand paused for the tiniest fraction—not long enough to be seen by anyone not already watching for it. Connor's eyes flicked to the security man's knuckles.
Roland continued, closing Yugi's deck, squaring the edges with practiced precision, and placing it back on the velvet tray. His fingers moved like a craftsman's—steady, precise, and unhurried. When he reached for Odion's deck, his movements mirrored the same quiet perfection, but his hand lingered an extra heartbeat longer than before.
The faintest whisper of motion—a card sliding into place. Sleight of hand refined to art. No one saw it, not even the Pharaoh.
Odion's sharp eyes flicked toward the motion, but Roland's composure never faltered; the gesture was so smooth, so methodical, that even suspicion had nothing to cling to. Within seconds, both decks were sealed again, their edges crisp, perfectly aligned, as though untouched.
For a breath, the world narrowed to the soft shush of paper and the subtle tap as the stacks met the velvet.
Rebecca shifted her weight, arms crossed. "We done here?" she asked, her tone clipped with impatience.
Roland gave a small, practiced nod. "We are done. Thank you for your cooperation."
He slid each deck back across the tray, offering them out one by one. Yugi reached first. The familiar weight rested easily in his palms, as natural as breathing.
Odion accepted his cards next, face unreadable as always. His eyes moved once, reflexive, scanning for imperfection—edges, corners, weight—but Roland's work left no trace. His thumb brushed the side of the deck, a silent inventory by touch. Everything felt… the same.
Roland's expression remained politely impassive. "Mr. Kaiba thanks you for your time," he said with a bow, voice calm, controlled, and devoid of guilt.
"Next time," Joey said, reclaiming his deck and shouldering past, "test the guy with the sunglasses and the god complex. We'll save you time."
"We test everyone, Mr. Wheeler," Roland repeated as they started down the hall. "That's how rules mean anything."
They moved on, conversations unspooling, complaints muttered, nerves slowly cooling back to simmer. None of them saw Roland glance down the corridor the other way, where no one waited. None of them saw him exhale—a measured, almost human sound—before he turned on his heel and walked away, his posture never once losing its line.
They reached the lift. Yugi pressed the call panel. The doors slid open with a polite hiss.
The blimp shuddered.
A hush passed through the metal like a ripple across water. The floor trembled a second, then steadied, then trembled again—deeper now, like distant thunder. Rebecca's head snapped up. "That's not normal turbulence."
The overhead lights flickered once. A soft chime—cheerful, horribly out of place—blinked to life on a nearby wall monitor. The KaibaCorp logo spun twice, stalled, and then smeared into green static as if a hand dragged across wet paint.
The static cleared.
A boy's face smiled out at them from the screen—too bright, too smug, hair an odd green that would have looked ridiculous if it weren't framed by the digital halo of a system he had clearly just stolen. His expression was all sweet malice, a mask with dimples. Behind the smile, the eyes were cold.
"Good morning, passengers," he said, voice silken through the speakers. "And good morning, big brother, wherever you are watching. This is your pilot speaking."
Joey went rigid. "Aw, no."
"Noah," Connor breathed, eyes narrowing.
"Bingo," the boy said, as if he had heard. He clasped his hands under his chin. "You've all been such wonderful guests aboard the KaibaCorp blimp. Really. Exemplary. But I'm afraid we've hit a little… detour."
The lift doors snapped shut by themselves. The floor of the corridor hummed—louder now, a vibration crawling up through the soles of their shoes and into knees and teeth. Outside the small port windows, clouds shifted sharply left, then right, as if a giant's hand had jostled the blimp's spine.
"Don't panic," Noah went on sweetly. "I've simply wrested control of navigation and set us on a more… educational flight path. One that ends somewhere very close to my heart. Somewhere KaibaCorp pretends never existed."
Odion stepped closer to the monitor, shoulders squared. "Where?"
Noah's smile widened. "Ah-ah. Spoilers."
The corridor's emergency strobes flashed once, twice—then cut off. The regular lights returned, but their color temperature had shifted a few degrees toward the sickly. The difference was small and immediate, the way a room feels when you know someone has just left it.
Yugi lifted his chin. "What do you want, Noah?"
"To educate," Noah said, every syllable a pat on the head. "To enlighten. To correct unhelpful myths about who really controls KaibaCorp. Consider this the next round of your tournament—only with stakes Seto never had the courage to write down."
Joey looked like he wanted to punch a speaker. "You little—"
"Language," Noah chimed. "There are children aboard."
His eyes slid, unerringly, to the camera nearest Connor and lingered, curious, like a cat taking the measure of a new chair. Connor stared back, unblinking. For a moment, the two boys regarded one another through a pane of glass thick with threats only adults would name. Noah smiled first.
"Fasten your seat belts," he sang in a tone that made seat belts sound like a dare. "We'll be landing shortly."
The screen went black.
A louder groan rolled through the blimp. Somewhere deep inside the ship, engines spooled down, then up again, a juddering seesaw as systems argued with one another. The floor went light—just a fraction—then heavy again. A coffee mug zipped from a counter in a nearby break alcove, skittered, and exploded in brown shards.
"Brace," Yugi said. "Find something to—"
The world heaved.
For three long seconds they were all weightless—no grav, no floor, only air and surprise. Joey grabbed the lift rail, boots scrambling. Rebecca's fingers snapped shut around a door frame, knuckles white. Connor's hand found the back of a bench and held, body streamlined, head ducked; Odion planted himself like a pillar, one arm braced against the ceiling, the other catching Rebecca by the elbow without looking. Yugi seized the rail with both hands, the Puzzle swinging wide and heavy against his chest before settling back with a jolt as the blimp stabilized.
Silence. Then the drone of a descending craft forced to be humble.
Outside the slit of window, the clouds thinned. Gray turned to washed-out blue, and then, abruptly, to the bruise-colored shape of land—an island where there should not have been one, a steel-edged scar in the ocean. The outline was wrong for sand; it was too square, too intentional. Stamped into the middle like a brand was a vast circle of darker earth pocked with craters, and around that circle, half-buried hangars hunched like sleeping animals.
KaibaCorp had once tested weapons here.
The blimp lurched again as autopilot fought a leash it couldn't see. Noah's voice returned, smaller now, piped through a different speaker. "And we're down in three, two—"
The landing gear hit with a scream of rubber protesting its burdens. The entire ship bounced, then slid, then settled into a long, slow sigh across ancient concrete.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The kinds of silence that follow a crisis are very particular. This one was fragile, jittering at the edges like glass cooling too fast.
Joey blew out a breath he must have been holding since the first flicker. "I hate kids," he declared. Then, because the universe was watching, he added with a quick glance at Connor, "—present company excluded."
Connor's mouth quirked, there and gone. "Accepted."
Rebecca rubbed at a bruise blooming on her forearm. "KaibaCorp kept this place off the public maps."
"Of course they did," Joey said. "Nothing says 'good press' like 'hey, remember that time we built a doomsday playground at sea'."
They headed for the stairwell—lifts were not to be trusted in a hack. The corridor felt longer than it had on the way up, the shadows a little more interested in the people passing through them. As they reached the first landing, a PA crackled overhead with the too-cheerful chime of an elevator in a horror film.
"Attention passengers," Noah's voice purred. "Please proceed to the designated duel stations. There will be refreshments, revelations, and maybe, if you behave, a miracle."
"Fantastic," Joey muttered. "I'm bringin' my own refreshments. It's called a punch."
"Don't," Yugi said mildly, and Joey didn't argue.
Two decks down, they cut across the observation lounge. Through the long windows they could see the island properly now: rusted gantries, skeletal cranes, barricades made of concrete teeth. A wind had risen from nowhere, dragging through the weeds in low, restless waves. On the far side of the tarmac, a cluster of pylons stood in a ring, dead screens bolted to their faces. Someone—recently—had scrubbed off the KaibaCorp logos, but not well enough.
Rebecca pressed her palm to the glass. "He's going to turn the whole island into an arena. Not a duel disk field—a grid. If he wants to isolate us, he can pipe the brackets wherever he wants."
"Then we don't get isolated," Connor said, already scanning exit maps. "We move as a team.."
Odion gave him a single, brief nod. "Agreed."
In the middle of the lounge, a bank of monitors flared to life. Noah's face bloomed across them, larger than before, the pixels a touch too green.
"Welcome to the KaibaCorp Proving Grounds," he announced, stretching his arms theatrically. "Where toys were tested and truth was buried. Today's lesson: obedience."
"Turn it off," Joey said.
Yugi stepped past the monitors without a glance. "Let him talk. We need information ."
They cut into a service corridor that smelled like dust and old coffee. The overheads were dimmer here, the green of emergency guidance strips bright against gray paint. Odion took point, hands open, eyes forward; Joey fell to the rear, watching the back trail; Rebecca and Connor held the middle, quiet and focused; Yugi walked at pace, breathing slow, the Puzzle warm and steady against sternum and stern will.
They reached a junction—and nearly walked into Roland.
He came around the corner at speed, stopped a precise two paces back as though he had measured distance ahead of time, and offered a short, controlled bow. His eyes went to Yugi, then to Odion, then flicked once—short as a blink—toward their decks. It was nothing. It was everything.
"Follow me," Roland said. "Chairman Kaiba has requested your presence. Communications are compromised; we're routing through hardlines only."
"You mean Noah cut your toys," Joey said.
Roland didn't dignify that with a reply. He turned, moving fast without running, the kind of pace that produces obedience by not allowing room for argument. They followed, shoes thudding, hearts catching up.
They reached a security door. Roland palmed a panel; a light scanned him up and down, decided he was still made of man, and slid the door open with a growl. Inside, the air felt denser, as if more decisions had been made in this room than oxygen granted permission for.
Kaiba waited at the far table, sleeves rolled, tie loosened by the barest allowable degree, impatience draped over him like an expensive coat he refused to take off. Mokuba hovered by a terminal, fingers flying, eyes flicking at readouts with the efficiency of someone born bilingual in both panic and code.
"Took you long enough," Kaiba said by way of welcome. He didn't look up from the schematic he was knifing with a stylus. "Noah has control of externals and navigation. He doesn't have full environmental or life support—yet. We're going to keep it that way."
"Maybe start by unplugging the evil child," Joey suggested.
"Working on it," Mokuba said. "He's in a subsystem I thought we mothballed with the VR servers. He's… creative."
Yugi stepped closer to the table. "What does he want?"
Kaiba's mouth thinned. "An audience. And a stage. He's landing us in range of one of our old ground grids. We can't leave until he is dealt with."
Out on the forward gangway, wind hit them—salt and metal. The blimp's hatch had been opened remotely, stairs extended to concrete below. The island's old banners had rotted away, leaving only bolts and ghosts. Far beyond the runway, the ocean broke itself against rock and kept trying.
"Stay together," Yugi said, and they descended, five shadows stretching long across a dead company's mistakes, engines cooling behind them like a sleeping beast that dreamed in wires.
Above, on a catwalk no one was watching yet, a camera pivoted. Somewhere in the ship's spine, the VR cores hummed a key that was not quite a note. In a side pocket of a duelist's deck—two decks—cards rested that had not been there an hour before. They did not glow. They did not hum. They simply waited, the way a parachute waits while still folded: for the air to fall out from under everything.
Noah's voice coasted over the runway, now tinny with distance, now near as a whisper in the ear. "Welcome to the Proving Grounds, duelists. Let's see what you can do."
Yugi didn't answer. He lifted his eyes to the hard horizon and kept walking.
Odion's expression did not shift.
Joey cracked his knuckles, grin too sharp to be comfort and exactly sharp enough to be courage.
Rebecca adjusted her glasses and tucked her notebook deeper under her arm, the better to keep her hands free.
Connor scanned left, then right, then forward, then up—always up—and nodded once to himself as though taking attendance of the sky.
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