Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Once, they were one city. Now, divided by an arbitrary line designed to coerce and control.”

The stench of rust and rain was constant in Satellite. It hung in the air like a warning—sharp, metallic, and unyielding. Rainwater trickled through shattered gutters and puddled between piles of scrap, reflecting the flicker of old neon signs that hadn’t worked in years. In this city of leftovers, the only things that ever seemed to grow were scars and dreams.

Yugo crouched inside the shell of an overturned van, a wrench in his hand and grease up to his elbows. The engine core glowed dimly in the dark, a salvaged chunk from an outdated, abandoned Duel Runner he and Rin had found buried under a collapsed building. It was fried, half-eaten by corrosion and wire worms—but to him, it was beautiful. It was the heart of something better.

“Think this’ll run?” Rin’s voice came from behind, steady and skeptical.

Yugo glanced back at her with a crooked grin. Her silhouette framed by the broken van window, she looked like a statue carved out of defiance—arms crossed, goggles pushed up, wind-blown hair catching the amber dusk. She was always calmer than he was, more grounded. If Yugo was the engine, Rin was the frame. She kept things from flying apart.

“It’ll purr like a Saber Tiger,” he said. “After I rewire the ignition core and convince it that it doesn’t hate me.”

Rin rolled her eyes and handed him a protein bar. “Eat something, you maniac. You’ve been down here for six hours.”

They sat on the van’s hood, watching distant lights flicker across the bay—Neo Domino City, the gleaming skyline far beyond the forbidden zone. To most Satellites, it was a fantasy. To Yugo and Rin, it was a promise, heralded by the looming, unfinished bridge connecting the two regions.

“We’ll get there,” he said quietly, unwrapping the bar. “One day, we’ll ride right over that bridge.”

“You mean the unfinished scrap pole guarded by Security drones and rigged with lock-down tech?” Rin smirked. “Sure. Easy. Once we build a Duel Runner that grows wings.”

Their laughter was interrupted by the sound of wheels screeching on gravel and a burst of familiar shouting. Down the slope, a makeshift transport rolled into view—Crow Hogan’s bike, with a makeshift cart behind it. A pile of food rations, broken toys, and a few intact textbooks wobbled dangerously in the back.

“Guess who scored a whole crate of canned peaches!” Crow announced, triumphant, as he skidded to a halt. A gang of younger kids, street orphans, darted out from a nearby warehouse to swarm the cart.

Yugo hopped down, grinning. “Crow! You beautiful lunatic!”

Crow gave him a lopsided salute. “Hey, greasehead. Rin keeping you from blowing yourself up?”

“She tries,” Rin muttered, half-smiling.

Not far behind came Martha’s voice—gentle but commanding. “If you break your necks on those bikes, don’t expect me to glue you back together!”

She was a legend in Satellite, a gray-haired matron with a spine of steel who had turned a half-collapsed apartment complex into a refuge for the forgotten. Orphans, drifters, victims of misfortunes, ordinary folk born in the wrong place at the wrong time… all were welcome at Martha’s. Even Crow and Jack had once been her wards.

Jack Atlas, the self-proclaimed King of Duels.

Yugo caught sight of him not long after, standing by the warehouse wall, arms folded, eyes sharp as broken glass. Jack Atlas, the self-proclaimed “King,” had once ridden with a duel gang that tried to tame Satellite's chaos. Now he spent most of his time training alone or glaring at the horizon like it owed him something. He was older than Yugo by a few years, taller, colder—but something in him resonated with Yugo.

“Jack!” Yugo called, jogging over. “Got time to look at our chassis design?”

Jack didn’t turn. “I’m not your babysitter. You can go take care if it yourself.”

Yugo shrugged, unfazed. “Sure, but you’re the best duelist around. I figured you’d at least pretend to care about what’s coming next.”

That made Jack turn. His eyes were hard, but behind them was a flicker of interest. “You really think you’re getting out?”

Before I do?

“I know we are.”

Jack glanced at Rin, then back at Yugo. “You’ll need more than hope and scrap metal.”

Yugo grinned, eyes gleaming. “Good thing we've got a lot of both, with plenty to spare.”

As the sun dipped behind the rusted spires of Satellite, the stars came out one by one—half-hidden by smog, but still burning. Yugo and Rin worked late into the night by flashlight and instinct, patching together a dream from broken pieces. And somewhere, in the shadows of the city, Director Goodwin’s agents watched and waiting.

This was the age of duels and dragons, of machines and monsters, of gods and ghosts.

But in Satellite, it began with two kids and a dream on wheels.

Satellite never really slept. Even at night, the air buzzed with the low hum of generators, the distant clang of salvage crews, and the whispers of things best left unheard. In this part of the city, peace was something you built with your own hands—and guarded with everything else.

Yugo worked with a rare kind of focus, fingers blackened with grease, goggles tight over his eyes. The Duel Runner chassis was coming together—still skeletal, still fragile—but it had shape now. It looked like it belonged to someone with a future.

A future outside.

Rin handed him a bolt and sat down beside him on the cold concrete. Her expression was unreadable. “Do you ever wonder if we’re being stupid?”

“Constantly,” Yugo replied. “But it beats doing nothing.”

“I mean it. This… it feels like a fairy tale. Build a machine, escape the slums, defeat the injustice of the world with a well-timed Synchro Summon.”

“That’s not how Synchros work,” Yugo muttered, but he wasn’t laughing. Not this time.

They sat in silence for a while. The half-built runner cast long shadows in the flashlight’s beam.

“We’re doing this for real, right?” Rin asked softly.

Yugo didn’t answer immediately. He just looked at the machine and saw something more than metal—he saw movement, escape, the wind on his face, her laugh behind him. A future with choice.

“Yeah,” he said at last. “We are.”

Later that week, they tested the engine in the back lot behind Martha’s. The smell of ozone filled the air as the motor sputtered to life and then died again.

“Try increasing the capacitor output!” Rin shouted over the mechanical coughing.

Yugo gave her a thumbs-up and slammed the side panel. The engine roared to life for a glorious three seconds before exploding in a puff of smoke and sparks. The noise echoed like a gunshot.

Crow laughed, ducking behind a wall. “It’s alive! And also probably radioactive!”

Jack, watching from a nearby rooftop, didn’t laugh. He narrowed his eyes and turned away.

Yugo coughed, waving smoke from his face. “Okay, maybe dial it back a notch.”

Rin glared at the runner. “We need better parts.”

Crow leaned over, tossing them a water bottle. “You’ll never get that kind of gear in Satellite—unless you take it.”

That night, over soup and cheap bread, Crow shared intel.

“There’s a new Security patrol shipping in Duel Chassis parts from Neo Domino. Mid-level tech. Enough to build a working Runner—maybe better than that.”

“Let me guess,” Yugo said. “You want us to steal it.”

“Not steal,” Crow said innocently. “Liberate.”

Martha shot him a sharp look from across the room. “You want to put these kids in danger for a few spare parts?”

“It’s not about parts,” Jack said suddenly. His voice was low but firm. “This is about proving they’re more than where they were born.”

Everyone turned. Jack rarely spoke like that—like he still believed in something.

Of course, Yugo's decision was simply fate, even before Martha had turned her back.

“Then let’s do it.”

The heist wasn’t cinematic. It was rain-slicked rooftops and broken security drones, adrenaline and timing. Rin nearly fell crossing a cable line. Yugo caught her wrist just in time.

They got the parts. Barely.

They also got a warning.

Security drones, not meant to be active in Satellite, appeared hours later—searching, scanning, interrogating. A crackdown was coming.

That night, Martha’s shelter was quieter than usual. The younger kids were scared. Rin clutched a wrench like it was a weapon. Yugo sat alone outside the back entrance, staring at the parts they’d stolen.

He didn’t feel like a hero.

Jack found him there, silent as the dark. He leaned against the doorway and said, “Every king starts in chains.”

Yugo looked up, surprised.

“I’ve seen what Neo Domino does to people like us,” Jack continued. “But if you want to be free, you need to be willing to climb over the broken pieces.”

“And the people standing on them?” Yugo asked.

Jack didn’t answer.

In the days that followed, they worked harder. More careful. More driven. The Duel Runner began to resemble a real machine—a sleek frame with functioning wheels and a core that glowed like a heartbeat.

But the dream was getting heavier.

Security was everywhere now. Kids were getting taken for questioning. People were whispering about new restrictions, rumors of the unfinished Daedalus Bridge being sealed off for good.

And then one night, while walking home with spare circuit boards in hand, Rin and Yugo saw something new—a Security poster projected on the side of a collapsed building.

It showed the city skyline behind razor wire. In big, red letters:

"Order Requires Obedience. Stay Where You Belong."

Rin stared at it for a long time.

Yugo tore it down.

It was nearly finished.

The Duel Runner, patched together from scrap and hope, coughed and roared beneath the overhang of a ruined warehouse near Satellite’s edge. Rainwater leaked through the rusted roof, but the trio working beneath it—Yugo, Rin, and Crow—barely noticed. Their hands were black with grease and grime; their faces streaked with sweat and soft grins.

“She’s purring,” Yugo muttered, tightening a bolt near the exhaust, “like she knows she’s about to fly.”

Crow gave a low whistle. “You actually pulled it off, gearhead. You took a broken frame and made a beautiful beast.”

Rin stood nearby, drying her hands on a tattered cloth, eyes fixed on the Runner. “This could be it. Our way out.”

Yugo looked up at her, his expression softer. “No. Our way forward. We’re not running—we’re riding into something better.”

Thunder rumbled distantly. A storm was coming.

Across Satellite, far from the noise of the workshop, Jack Atlas stood beneath a rusted catwalk where flickering lamps painted crooked shadows across his face. He waited, hands clenched in his jacket pockets, until the click of polished shoes echoed against the concrete.

Lazar arrived like a whisper of death—slick-suited, always smiling, always watching.

“Director Goodwin sends his regards,” he said, voice silken. “He’s impressed with your dueling prowess, Jack. Very impressed.”

Jack didn’t respond.

“He’s prepared to offer you a place in Neo Domino City—permanent residence. Identity cleaned. A fresh career as a professional Turbo Duelist. Top billing. Everything you were born for.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “What’s the price?”

“Let’s not insult each other with pretense. We need the Duel Runner. And we need the boy’s signature ace, the Dragon-type Synchro monster. You know the one.” Lazar’s smile widened. “Little Yugo doesn’t know what it is—what it means. But we do. The Director has a great need for it.”

Jack looked away. The rain was starting to fall harder now.

“And the kids?”

“They’ll survive. Or they won’t. Either way, your record will be erased. No one will ever tie you to Satellite again, you have the Director’s word.”

Jack was silent for a long time. The storm began to rise.

Then he nodded once.

That night, Rin woke to thunder and the sound of someone knocking—no, banging—on the shelter door. She opened it to find Jack standing there, soaked and unreadable.

“Can you do me a favor?” he asked, voice low.

She blinked. “You’re asking me right now? In this storm?”

Jack’s expression was blank. Not sad. Not hopeful. Just… resigned. “I’m not asking.”

She stared at him. Something in her chest tightened.

But she said nothing.

Yugo was already riding when he realized something was wrong. The warehouse was empty. Rin’s pack was missing. Her deck. Gone.

He rode through the alleys and overpasses, shouting her name. Lightning flared overhead. The Duel Runner’s wheels hissed against soaked pavement.

He finally reached the pier.

The wind whipped the ocean into fury. Dark waves smashed against the rocks. And there—barely visible through sheets of rain—was Rin, tied up and drifting away in a decaying rowboat, her silhouette swaying with the current.

“RIN!” he shouted, tearing off his helmet.

She turned at the sound. Her face was pale, lost, afraid.

And then he saw him.

Jack stood on the pier, arms folded, eyes glinting like cold brass under the lightning.

“Jack? What’s going on?” Yugo shouted, voice cracking with disbelief.

Jack looked at him the way a veteran might look at a child before a firing squad.

“The world doesn’t care about your dreams, Yugo. It crushes them. Grinds them beneath the gears of people like Goodwin. Did you think you could outrun that on a custom bike and pure sentiment?”

“You… You sold us out.”

Jack shrugged. “I learned the truth early. If you want to escape the system, you don’t fight it. You use it.”

Jack pointed toward the sea.

“You have a choice. Leave Clear Wing and the Runner—everything you’ve built—and maybe you can save her. Or keep them, and let her drift into the storm.”

Yugo’s fingers twitched.

“But you don’t really have a choice, do you? You’re not built for sacrifices. You’re still young enough to believe true love can win.” Jack scoffed, slowly walking towards the Duel Runner.

Yugo trembled. His fists clenched.

“If you do this… I’ll make you regret it. Even if I have to hunt you to Neo Domino and back.”

Jack’s smirk twisted into something uglier. “No. You won’t. But I’m sure you’re already regretting plenty.”

Yugo cursed, took off his jacket and card case holder and dove into the churning sea.

Jack rummaged through Yugo’s card case and retrieved Clear Wing Synchro Dragon, glittering in his gloves like a trophy of ill fortune.

Having gotten what he needed, he dumped the rest of Yugo and Rin’s cards on the ground like refuse.

“Goodbye, Yugo.”

With a roar, the Duel Runner peeled off into the storm.

As Yugo hit the water, the cold hit him like a hammer. Salt filled his lungs. The current pulled at him like claws.

“RIN!” he screamed, flailing toward the drifting boat.

But the sea had made its choice.

A wave rose—towering, black as oil—and shattered the boat like paper.

Rin vanished beneath the water.

Yugo dove. He groped through darkness. He caught her hand. Held tight.

But something shifted. The current twisted. Her hand slipped from his grip.

He opened his mouth to scream—only to inhale silence.

And then, darkness.

No Runner.

No Rin.

No Clear Wing.

Only waves and the sound of something falling apart inside him.

The sea was quiet now.

Not in the way it ought to be, with rhythmic tides and the whisper of wind across water. No. This was an eerie, infinite quiet. The waves were no longer waves but glass—soft and impossibly still, like the world had stopped turning and forgotten how to breathe.

Yugo floated—drifting between the dirty currents of Satellite’s sea and the mythic hush of something deeper. Something older. His limbs were numb, his lungs light, as though filled with wind instead of breath.

Above, or perhaps below, stars blinked—then blinked again—and became eyes.

A whirl of dragons spun around him.

They emerged not with sound, but with sensation: a sudden pressure on the soul, like ancient names remembered.

A colorful dragon with mismatched eyes shimmered through time, scales blinking red and emerald like split destinies.

A dark dragon howled, mute and resentful, wings sharp with contradiction and a terrible yearning to defy fate.

A violent violet dragon slithered like perfume through poison, laughing to itself with a knowing grin Yugo felt in his bones.

Then came the dragons of the past—not just a past, but the past, the one buried deep in the bones of Satellite.

A ruby red dragon of demonic fury, burning with apocalyptic pride.

An elegant, deadly dragon that was part dragon and part thorn, whispering ruin with every wing-beat.

An ancient dragon of untouched wilds, radiant but fractured, singing lullabies in a forgotten tongue.

A draconic hunter clad in black wings, prowling through the silent night.

A bright, bold dragon armed with gadget and armor alike, hiding a brilliant pulsing interior.

And then—two white comets, spiraling toward each other through the black sea-sky.

One howled, unsure. The other hummed, resolute.

They circled, wary, twin gods born from passion and resolve. But as they met in silent collision, their auras shimmered—no longer suspicion, but solidarity. Twin wings opened, the space between them forming not a boundary, but a bridge.

Together, they turned toward Yugo.

They did not speak. They simply were. That was enough.

In their presence, he felt seen—not as a failed dreamer, but as a bearer of something fragile. Something irreplaceable.

And then the waves turned to shadows, and the stars fell inward.

Yugo gasped awake—but he did not wake.

The sea was gone. The storm was gone.

He now stood in a tunnel—a derelict subway lined with flickering lights. But these were not electric lights.

They were stars, constellations mapped in broken circuitry and holograms smeared with time.

Overhead, the cosmos flickered, dying and re-birthing in the hum of collapsed timelines.

At the tunnel’s end sat a figure, resting atop a well-maintained crimson duel runner.

His head was hidden by his old and scratched, but clean red helmet.

Eyes like twin novas blinked at him—blue-white, ancient, tired, yet kind.

“Yugo,” the figure said.

His name cracked like thunder in the stillness.

Yugo’s throat tightened. “Are you… is any of this real?”

A pause. Then a smile.

“Does it matter?” said the man, or what remained of him, passed through legend, grief, and myth.

“You saw the cracks,” he continued. “Now you’ve fallen through them.”

“I didn’t fall,” Yugo said bitterly. “I was jerked around by a total jackass.”

The man looked up. “I know the feeling. We all were, in the end.”

They sat in the silence. Not the awkward kind—the reverent kind.

Two generations of runners, bound not by blood, but by resistance.

Resistance against a world designed to flatten.

“This place… the system,” the man said. “It was built to chew up kids like us. Those who dream. Those who try to build. The more things change…”

Yugo’s fists clenched.

“It’s not fair. I really thought we could make something together. Me, Rin, Crow, Martha, the kids, heck, even Jack… a real future. All of us running on the same road to... glory.”

“You can,” the man said. “Just not yet. But the time will come. I promise.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a single card.

Worn. Faded. But the text was unmistakable.

[Monster|Effect|Synchro] Dragon/Wind [★8] 2500/2000

1 Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters

When a card or effect is activated that would destroy a card(s) on the field (Quick Effect): You can Tribute this card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy it. During the End Phase, if this effect was activated this turn (and was not negated): You can Special Summon this card from your GY.

Yugo stared.

“I can’t give you answers,” the man said. “But I can give you this. A reminder. That there are a lot of people out there who still believe it is possible to protect dreams, even if it means risking everything.”

Yugo took the card with trembling hands.

The man leaned closer, voice soft now.

“I know that my friend’s might alone won’t fix everything. But he remembers. And sometimes… that’s enough to keep going. He certainly helped me more than once, back in the day.”

A pause. Then—

“Maybe one day… he’ll help you take back your other half. To find them again. Both of them.”

Yugo blinked. “Huh?”

But the man was already fading—his silhouette dimming into constellations.

Yugo woke with a ragged cough, lungs filled with salt and pain.

He lay on the shoreline, soaked to the bone, breathing like it was his first time. No stars. No tunnel. No glowing eyes.

But in his hand—

Stardust Dragon.

Still warm.

Still real?

There was no figure. No Duel Runner. No proof.

Only the feeling—raw, aching, but alive—that something ancient had seen him.

And the road? It hadn’t ended. It had just cracked.

Cracked enough to let the starlight in.