Playtesting Chapter 1

Story by Jim Wolfie on SoFurry

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_This may or may not end up being furry related, I'm still on the fence about it. Anyway this is my yugioh fan-fiction, designed to challenge the status quo of all the fan-fictions i've read before about this anime. Either they were mary sues, poorly written, or had terrible card games. Some may need the heads up, but the timeline will be established better in future chapters. also if you can name all the references i've listed throughout the story you get a cookie. _

5 years after the End of GX

The TV could be heard blasting through the average apartment shouting a promotion for the Duel Monsters card game from industrial illusions.

"Come one come all and to the Open Grand Prix XD!" the announcer exclaimed with force. "There will be fabulous duelists of all shapes and sizes. Their decks will be fine tuned to perfection and all are welcome. From the old to the new, to the large to the small all have a chance to win the Grand prize of 20,000,000 dollars!" Jace turned off the TV in disgust.

Jace sorted cards with intense fury in search of deck box, which was hidden somewhere amongst the clutter of his humble abode. Or what would be humble if he decided to clean up his cards that he didn't bother using. Spotting the elusive silver hard case he reached for it, noticing his thin hazelnut hair drooping in front of his skinny face. He noted he should get it trimmed later; his hair was as unkempt as his room.

"Phone, wallet, keys, duel disk, and deck box? " he muttered to himself as he checked the pockets of his dark green cargo shorts. He really didn't need to mention the Duel apparel but he did so out of habit anyway. As he left the apartment in Park Slope, he locked the door, flew down the flight of stairs, and trekked to the subway into the Main City Hub.

Jace stepped into the city hall station with a few eyes staring at him. Glancing his surveyors, they all seemed to have duel disks. They wore torn leather jackets and frayed blue jeans. Tattoos danced along their arms depicting fire and dragons. He kept at a leisurely pace, as not to draw attention to himself, as he navigated through the bumbling tourists and other duelists he saw the thugs he saw before started trailing him as he made his way to District 2.. As he turned onto one of the side streets to the card store, Jace broke out into a run. He reached the storefront sooner than they did, thanks to much weaving in and out of traffic, residents, and tourists.

As it would have him, they were open at Noon on a Saturday. Must be an event of some sort he thought He opened the door as if nothing happened, swaggered in and saw Aijan behind the counter.

'Hey Aijan, how goes it?" Jace said with a fake smile. Aijan held out his large, hairy hand with a card in it to Jace. "What's this dude?" Jace could not hide his puzzled look to the man.

"Oh it's an invite. You'd probably be interested." Aijan smiled as Jace took the card and looked it over. "Don't tell anyone but it is a Sub-rider event." Jace could only chuckle.

"Now I know why the thugs are looking for me" Jace commented. "They wanted to duel for the event. " Jace thought for a moment. "You need to stop registering me for these events without my knowledge. " Jace reached behind the counter and slapped him upside the head.

"Anyway, you remember how this event works right? Or do you need me to explain it for you?"

"Do it for the readers" Jace mused

"Ok then. The basic premise is it's cardgames on motorcycles but much more dangerous, as you will be riding on the active subways of the 5 major city hubs. And if you're wondering if this can be dangerous, yes it is. Notice how i said active subway tracks, that means the trains will be starting and stopping regularly. The platforms you will be dueling on do not however, so if you're not careful you could see yourself on the back of the train as reverse roadkill. Gameplay is a normal duel, but when you take damage you get to switch the path the platform takes. I'll be helping you determine what tracks don't have trains on them at that moment." Aijan thought for a second about what he just said.

"Yeah I should ask before entering you to these things" Aijan agreed.

"Sometimes I debate firing you. Anyway what time is it?" Jace pointed to the clock above. It clearly read 12:05, but both of knew better.

"Somewhere around 8. Maybe you should run Dragons today?" Jace nodded. As much as he disliked this man, he wasn't stupid. In reality what bugged Jace was not his personality, but the fact that he had a nasty habit of entering Jace into events that could kill him.

"I only have Evols on me, do you have the Dragons with you?" Aijan reached behind him and tossed the deck to Jace. He opened the box to check its contents.

"Yup, all there." Jace said as he handed the Evol deck over to Aijan. A tapping alerted them to the group of men for the sub rider event. The biggest one, standing over 7 feet tall, had his duel disk active. Jace grabbed up the dragon deck from the box and slid it into his duel disk with the extra going into the extra deck compartment. Poking his head out from the door he said, "I'll be out with you in a minute. As you can see I'm talking with my manager" Jace slid in his head from the door and turned to Aijan with a whisper. "Com 1 buddy"

As Jace exited the shop the door thudded behind him. He was facing the brute before him, and as he did he could smell his rancid breath on him. He tried to remain as composed as possible, and not flinch in front of the guy who could easily crush him. He introduced himself as Jace.

"I know who you are, Sculptor. Everyone does now after the last 4 events." He spat on Jace's shoes before turning around and leading the way to the subway entrance. "I'm A Thug Named Hardback"

"Yeah sure, real original name you got right there" Jace remarked sarcastically.

Eventually they made their way down to the subway. Jace looked to his left and then his right. He spied the platform on the end of the railway. They both ran to it and hopped on. It roared to life when both of their duel disks were confirmed active. The platform signaled Jace had the first move.

Jace drew his opening hand of Charge of the light brigade x2, double solar recharge, Lightpulsar and Red-eyes darkness metal dragon.

"First i'll activate my charge of the light brigade, milling 3 cards to add ryko lightsworn hunter to my hand. Then i'll activate a second to add lyla lightsworn sorceress. Right now i have 3 card troopers in my grave along with 2 eclipse wyvern and a tour-guide. Now the effects of my wyvern trigger. So i'll banish out my Dark Armed dragon and a Red-eyes from my deck. Then I"ll activate solar recharge discarding my lyla to draw 2.then mill two. Hey lookie two more tour-guides from the underworld. I'll set 1 facedown monster and end my turn."

After that long-winded explanation Jace looked behind him. The platform was taking them down on the F line, which if he had his bearings straight, had a train coming up towards them in 5 minutes. Plenty of time to win.

"You're dead now kid!" Hardback exclaimed with passionate fury. He drew his opening hand and summoned a Thunder king Rai-oh. "Nothing can beat the powerful thunder king." He then set 5 other cards and passed the turn. "Your move"

"Yeah as I thought" Jace was smiling as he looked at his hand. He drew his card and looked at it. Yup didn't matter anyway. "I'll start off my turn by activating Harpie's feather duster. Hardback dropped his jaw. "Then I'll flip summon my ryko destroying your thunderking. and milling 3 more cards." Jace milled a sangan, monster reborn and dark hole. "Then I'll summon Light pulsar dragon by banishing an eclipse wyvern and a sangan from my grave. Then I'll add my Dark Armed dragon to my hand." Hardback knew it was over, but in his pride decided to take it like a man. "Then I'll tribute both my monsters to normal summon a Red-eyes Darkness Metal Dragon from my hand. Then I'll use its effect to summon the light pulsar from my graveyard. I now have 3 Dark monsters in my grave, so I'll go ahead and summon the dark armed dragon from my hand." Jace stared down his opponent and remarked, "2800 + 2800 + 2500 is 8100."

Jace attacked, and as Hardback's life points dropped to zero, the platform veered into the next station stop, which happened to be free. Hardback and Jace stepped off the platform. The imposing thug spat to the side on the cracked tile floor and glared down at Jace. He stood his ground and looked right back at him. Hardback reached in his tattered jeans to give Jace seven player invites.

"I'm still pissed that I lost. But I know it means I just have to believe in the heart of the cards more like you did." Hardback admitted.

"Heart of the cards or not, I won because my skill is superb, not because of random chance and the random number god." Jace scolded. "I can run nearly any card i so chose to, so I'm going to run the best cards available to me. Doing any different would be stupid and put me through unnecessary drama.

"Hmph. Anyway, here are the invites from the other players that I beat. You won the event fair and square, after all."

Jace decided to take the long walk back to the card store. After the Sub-rider event he worked through the Main City Hub to the Office of Prize Collection. The building was in a neighborhood that was brightly colored and full of various floral arrangements from the flower shop down the street. He entered the office and was greeted by the receptionist, Lilly. Lilly was a dark haired woman with ample bosom and always wore purple lace. Her skin was a nice tan, which made Jace wonder where she was from. "She's totally from Italy! Or maybe Spain?" Jace pondered in his head. Lilly broke him from his trance when she stood up from her chair.

"If you're doing what all the guys who come through here, then I wonder why Aijan took you as his client. He typically doesn't take anyone on y'know." She scolded as she leaned into his face. Jace tried to hide a fierce blush. "Especially ones that can't keep their fantasies in their pants. Anyway do you have the invites?"

"Right here ma'am." Jace handed her the 8 invites to the event. Lilly handed him a check, to which Jace gasped as she held it out in front of his face. "Holy shit! I knew that Aijan liked to maximize profit but I didn't know it was this big."

"Yup, 20,000 dollars. Same as the other major events Industrial Illusions puts out. Granted you only dueled one duel, but still. I heard your duel was pretty damn sacky." Lilly remarked.

"It's chaos dragons, what else would you expect? But no, there was a banlist for that event if I recall correctly. Most sub-rider events have them." Jace warned. Lilly nodded in agreement.

"Yeah the only change from the last event you played in was +1 Charge of the Light Brigade and +1 Harpie's Feather Duster." Lilly relayed. "Don't you have to call Aijan or something" Jace cursed under his breath.

"I was supposed to do that mid game, well better late than never." Jace reasoned. He picked up his cell and dialed the number for what Aijan referred to as the Com system. It was a secure line that when a cell phone dialed it, would block out the snoop bots used on the majority of servers that Kaiba Corp. owns. The phone picked up almost instantaneously.

"What the hell happened to you" Aijan shouted into the mouthpiece. "You were supposed to call when you stepped on the platform!" Jace winced from the sudden shock to his ear.

"Chill Aijan, its not like the end of the world happened. I'm fine, I won the damn duel." Jace reported. "What the hell is your issue with me not calling when the duel starts anyway? You were pretty damn anal about it when I hired you."

"I wanted you to stay under the radar. You were doing so well at it too. Anyway Industrial illusions said you qualify for their Open Grand Prix. You're going, too." Aijan said. "This needs to resolve itself" Jace couldn't help but feel concerned about those words.

"Yeah sure, I'll go. I still don't get why though. It isn't worth my time to play a bunch of scrubs." He laughed at how bad they could be at times. "Did you hear the catchphrase of the last winner of the Prix series? "I'm going to put the billy brakes on this train'." Jace couldn't help but laugh at the man when he saw him on television.

"Yeah well, there's no banlist so you should be able to dominate them with something broken. I'm thinking exchange of the spirit FTK. " Aijan suggested. "Just promise me 1 thing"

"Yeah sure, what is it?" Jace mentioned,

"Don't listen to industrial illusions when you win." He warned. "i'll leave the deck in the lock box under the counter."

"What does that mean" Jace was even more puzzled than he normally was with his manager. Aijan hung up, which left Jace to his own devices. "He hung up on me, Lilly." Lilly frowned and sighed.

"I guess its time you heard the story" Lilly admitted.

End chapter.