Yu-Gi-Oh! The Puzzle's New Friend

"Night-night Kassia, sleep tight." Wendy blew a kiss to her daughter before shutting the bedroom door half way, as to let in some light, and walked down the hall to check on the newborn in the nursery at the end of the hall.

The little girl, no older than five years, rolled over on the lower of two bunk beds to face the body length pillow that separated her from the wall.

Searching carefully under the pink covered pillow, she located a small red flashlight, which she quickly flicked on and began to search under the pillow again, this time more cautiously. Before long her hand fell on something smooth and thin. The girl plucked her favorite card from its hiding place and examined it, for what may have been the thousandth time, in the dim light.

'The Change of Heart' She read the name of the card twice before allowing her eyes to gaze at the split picture of half angel, and half demon, held together by the same person and a similarly split heart.

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Carl Jacoby and Adam Wood were playing yet another Yu-Gi-Oh! card game at recess, having a grand time by the look of things.

"I play my 'Cyber Commander' in attack mode!" Carl exclaimed, then added, "And I kill your 'Kuriboh'!"

"Aww!!! You killed me!" Adam moaned sadly.

Kassia quietly walked up to the two boys. "Wow! Real Yu-Gi-Oh! cards!" she gasped. "May I play?" She asked courteously.

"No." Carl responded coldly. "You're a stupid girl, and girls ain't allowed to play boy's games!"

"Yeah no girls!" Adam agreed, just a cruel.

"B-but I have my own cards!" She searched her coat pockets. "See?" the girl pulled out a small deck of her own.

"Pfft! You're a girl! You probably took 'em from someone!" Carl accused.

"Yeah!" Adam readily agreed. "Stealer! Stealer!"

"I bet you don't even know how to play." Carl mocked.

"But I do! I do know how! And I can win too!" The girl claimed.

"Fine! Why don't you play Carl? We'll see who wins." Adam challenged.

The two sat down, shuffled one another's decks, and wrote the starting amount of life points (2,000) on a scrap piece of paper. Before long they were both prepared and ready to go; the game began.

They both drew 5 cards from their decks. Kassia smiled warmly. "You can go first Carl." She offered.

Carl huffed, "I don't have to go first, you'll need all the luck you can get! You go first!"

Kassia was a little taken aback by Carl's animosity. "O-okay..." She accepted and placed one monster card and two spell cards face down in their respective places on the field. (dancing Fairy, Solar Ray)

"You're supposed to say what you do!" Carl rolled his eyes exasperated. "I thought you said you knew how to play!"

"I do!" Kassia snapped back. "That's all I'm doing for my turn. Your move." she added, less hostile than before.

Carl made an angry face, then said loudly, "FINE! I play the 'Future Samurai' in attack mode! And I use it to attack your face down monster card!" he proclaimed, flipping over Kassia's face down card 'Dancing Fairy'.

"Your monster looses." Kassia said promptly.

"What?! No it doesn't! It has 1600 attack points; your girly monster has only 1000 defense points!" Carl rebuked.

"Yes, but I activate my trap card 'Dark Mirror Force'." Kassia explained. "So your monster goes to the grave yard with no damage done."

"That's stupid!" Carl raged.

"...Sorry, that's how you play the game..." Kassia apologized.

"What ever just take your turn!" Adam yelled, growing impatient.

"Okay." Kassia muttered, somewhat put out. "Well I change my 'Dancing Fairy' to defense mode. Then I summon 'Spirit of the Breeze' and place her in attack mode." She finished.

"'Spirit of the Breeze'?" Adam somehow sounded more stupefied than usual.

"That stupid thing doesn't have any attack points!" Carl raged.

"So....?" the girl asked meekly. Even for her stature, Kassia suddenly felt very small.

"I'll kill it easily!" Carl whooped. "I play 'Destiny Hero – Doom Lord' in attack mode! Kill her 'Spirit of the Breeze'!" He ended his turn with a loud mocking laugh.

"..." Kassia couldn't find the words.

"Why aren't you taking it off the field!?" Carl yelled impatiently.

"...Because 'Destiny Hero' has 100 attack points less than my 'Spirit of the Breeze' has defense points..." Kassia pointed out. "You just paid attention to the 0 attack points and not the defense... you loose 100 life points."

Carl's face darkened three shades of red. "What!? No! Your monster was supposed to die!"

"That's how the game works though..."

"I'm not counting it then." Adam announced, rising to Carl's defense.

"...But he--" Kassia tried to protest.

"No! You're stupid!" Carl cut her off.

Adam, of bloody course, agreed. "Yeah!"

"Take your stupid turn, stupid!"

Kassia wondered dejectedly if the only word they knew was 'stupid'. '<small>Well, they're the stupid ones. I'll win this match.</small>' The girl took a deep breath after reassuring herself, and continued the game. "Well then next I play 'Winged Kuriboh' in defense mode, and place this trap card face down. And by the way, I gained 2000 life points during my standby phase from my two cards." she informed, doing her best to hide her growing smirk.

"That's even stupider!" Carl whined.

"'Stupider' isn't a word Carl." Kassia corrected him out of instinct. Her mother was always correcting everything she said, especially when she started off a sentence with; "This person and me-".

"Shut up stupid. I'm gonna kill your stupid 'Kuriboh' thing now." Carl said more calmly than anything else he had already said. "I put 'Destiny Hero – Dogma' on the field!" He went right back to yelling. "And use it to kill your stupid 'Kuriboh'!"

Kassia couldn't help but give a small smirk. "You triggered my 'Magic Cylinder' trap card."

This time Adam yelled for Carl. "WHAT?!"

" I said: 'You triggered my 'Magic Cylinder' trap card.'" the girl repeated. "So your attack is aimed back at your life points. So you now only have-" Kassia thought for a second, "-300 life points left. Because you didn't count the first 100 you lost. And I now have 8000 life points."

"YOU SUCK!" Carl screamed.

"...No I don't..." Kassia said barely above a whisper.

"Just take your stupid turn! You take forever!!!" Adam yelled at her.

By this time, with all the yelling they were doing, a few kids were beginning to gather around their childish game. Other Yu-Gi-Oh! fans were trying to figure out what was happening in the duel. While the rest just wanted to watch Kassia get her butt kicked into next year.

Regaining her senses about her, Kassia decided not to revel her original plan to kill the rest of his life points with "I play 'Soul of Purity and Light' in attack mode." she said quietly trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. "Then I combine it with the spell card 'Lightning Blade' to boost its attack points to 2,400. The same as your 'Destiny Hero''s attack points."  Kassia explained in as little words as possible so that she could just get on with it already. "I use it to demolish your monster, both our monsters are destroyed with no damage done to either of our life points."

"Dude... she just killed your strongest card Carl!" Adam said in a hushed awe.

Carl was speechless.

"Your turn Carl." Kassia invited.

"I-I play 'Hero Kid' in attack mode and use it to attack your 'Dancing Fairy'!" Carl exclaimed triumphantly.

"...You just killed your self..." It was Kassia's turn to be stupefied. Was he really that idiotic? Did he seriously just use that low level monster to destroy the rest of his life points? '<small>Why am I still sitting here playing!?</small>' Kassia wondered absently while Carl yelled on and on about how her cards were "stupid" and that his "cool boy cards" were "better" than hers.

"This is stupid! You're stupid! I win! You loose!" Carl ranted on an on.

Kassia quickly gathered up her cards. '<small>That was the easiest duel I ever played...</small>' She thought to herself as she got up from her seat.

Lost in her own thoughts, Kassia was completely oblivious to Carl's building rage. '<small>Wow I did really well. I had over 9,000 life points before I beat him!</small>' a shadow of a smile crept over her features. '<small>Job well done Kasstle Berry!</small>' as she congratulated herself mentally, Carl came up behind her and, as hard as physically possible, pushed her to the ground.

"Ah!" She cried as she hit the black top. "Wha-why-?!" She didn't have time for many explanations since Carl was now towering over her.

"You're so stupid! You can't play games! You can't do anything right! You can't even fight me!" He yelled at her, blood rising to his face.

Trying to scurry away, Kassia noticed that her knees stung something fearsome. Glancing down she caught sight of a trail of red slowly winding its way down her leg. "B-blo-"

Kassia wasn't given the chance to finish that frightened thought before she saw Carl making a grab for her thin deck of cards. "I'll rip every single one of these till you admit you're stupid!" Carl threatened.

No sooner had the word "Rip" left his mouth, Kassia let something of her own rip; a huge ear shattering screech that caused both Carl and Adam to cover their ears. Then, fast as a bolt of lightning, Kassia snatched her cards from the table and thought as hard as she could about her favorite speedy hedgehog, to take her mind off of the sharp stinging in her legs.

'<small>Mrs. Hardesty will know what to do!</small>' She thought desperately, dashing away towards room K22, where her favorite teacher resided.

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Feeling tired from thinking about running, Kassia rolled over and, after putting her beloved card away, drifted off into a hectic night.

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Everything hurt. That was all Kassia could think of as she stood up and limed out of the dark ally she had woken up in. '<small>How did I get here?</small>' she questioned. '<small>I just remember seeing a light... then... nothing.</small>' Hard as she may have tried, she couldn't remember for the life of her how on earth she came to be knocked out in an ally. Carefully she stood up and began to pick her way out of the ally.

Kassia's thoughts trailed off one subject and onto another. '<small>Why are those boys over there staring at me?</small>' She wondered at their half hidden faces, concealed in shadow.

Not liking the feeling that slowly rose in her chest as she looked at the young men, she took a sharp turn into another ally then broke into a run. Bad move. Her legs, which already hurt from some unknown previous injury, almost buckled when she was a quarter of the way through the ally.

Night was falling all around Kassia now, making it harder and harder to see the different obstacles blocking her way. Now slowing down, after nearly face planting  over a trash bag, as well as lack of energy, she saw that it really was getting late. The sun was now completely on the other side of the horizon.

'<small>At least the moon might give me some light.</small>' she hoped optimistically, still trying to navigate the ally.

But, much to her dismay, she saw the moon was nothing but a crescent tonight.  A few minutes later, Kassia was finally out of ally and back to open streets, and was met by the same group of boys she had seen earlier.

"Hey little girl, you want some candy?" One of them asked in a tempting voice.

"N-no thank you, I just ate dinner." Kassia's father had trained her well not to accept things from strangers.

"Well can we help you get home?" another asked.

"Yeah where do you live?" Asked the third.

"Uh... Back that a-way." Kassia pointed vaguely towards the ally she came out of.

"Really? We've never seen you before." The first one said.

"Oh, well... I stay inside a lot." she improvised.

"Where are you going?" The third asked.

"Yeah, you're not a run away are you?" the second one joined in.

"To a friends house, and she said that if I'm not there before dark her daddy would come looking for me." Kassia made up trying to get away. "So I should be going."

"But we just got o know you." The second one tried to reason.

"Yeah, can't  we at least walk you there?" the third tried.

"Thank you for offering but I'm okay." Kassia attempted to doge them and be on her way.

"Well then why don't you come with us." Th first one said more as an order than a suggestion.

Kassia shook her head and tried to turn and run again, but the guy made a grab for her braid. This was one of the few times that Kassia regretted having hair down to her waist. Already having a tender scalp didn't make it feel any better when the guy yanked her back by it causing Kassia to cry out in pain.

"Don't worry little girl we're gonna have a lot of fun." He and his friends laughed evilly, as he pulled her so close to him Kassia could smell the cigarettes on his breath.

"HEY! LEAVE HER ALONE!" A young boy's voice called from down the street.

Kassia looked down the street to see a short boy with a small package under his arm, now walking steadily towards them.

"Get out of here kid!" the third man called.

"Yeah! Can't yo see we're busy?!" The one holding Kassia hissed, making her flinch.

"Yu-Yu-Yu." Kassia stuttered her mind whirling in circles from an extreme sense of 'Deja-vu' "H-help!" She wailed in fear.

The boy with the black and red violet spiked hair ran down the street,package still clenched tightly under his arm.

Yugi saw one of the men make for a grab at the young girl. "Oh no you don't!" He held the box tightly and slammed it down on the other man's head.

Kassia gasped upon seeing this. Not because of the shear violence, living with her younger brother she was incredibly used to that kind of thing, but because the boy she had seen running to her defense, was no longer the same person when he knocked the man in front of her unconscious.   He seemed taller now, and older by a margin of years. There was also a define look of confidence in his features, where as before he looked incredibly innocent and naive.

The man barely made a sound as he crumbled to his knees and face planted to the ground. The other two , who had been in shock till this point, retaliated.

"You just K.O.'ed Mark! You bastard!" The one with red hair yelled pulling out a knife.

Now beginning to regain awareness of what what was going on, rather than being numb with fear, Kassia did what she could to grab her braid and yank it out of the goon who was still holding her.

Of course, her hopes of freedom were crushed when she quickly realized the fact that she being five, was no where near as strong as the much bigger, muscle ridden man holding her.

"Try and get away will you?" The man teased, then smacked the girl across the face as punishment.

Kassia howled in pain and gave her best effort to keep from crying.

Yugi's face curled up as if he had just smelled something foul. "So cowardly you'd it a young girl." he mumbled to himself in anger. He then gave his own answer by jamming the box into the red headed captor's face. Then turned and smacked the knife out of the third man's hand.

Kassia, now free, had no clue what to do, accept shrink away from the two knocked out men and the cowering third one.

"Who the hell are you?!" the last man tried to, metaphorically speaking, fight his way out of a trash can.

The only answer he got was his knife being clicked closed and placed in the right pocket of its new owner.

Stupid enough to think this was his chance to beat the snot out of Yugi, the man launched himself at him. However the attacker's face was quickly met by Yugi's elbow.

"Cowards." Kassia's savior looked like he was about ready to spit on the men he had dispatched, but quickly thought better of it. Kassia noted his voice was far deeper than it had been previously when he had been running to her rescue.

"Are you alright?" He asked eloquently, kneeling down to her height.

"I-I...Ya...Yu-" Kassia felt hot tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "Th-Thank you!" She cried, flinging herself to hug her savior.

And just like that, he was the same kid Kassia had first seen at the top of the road. "Um... No problem." He gave her a pat on the back, signaling for Kassia to release him. "Are you sure you're alright? That guy hit you fairly hard." The boy repeated concerned.

Kassia's hand instinctively went to her cheek, which was still throbbing. Though it still hurt, and she was still incredibly scared, Kassia nodded.

"My name is Yugi, what's yours?" Yugi decided to get introductions out of the way.

"I-I'm Kassia Bell." The girl answered timidly.

"Well Kassia, Let's get you out of here." The boy stood up and offered her his hand, which Kassia readily took, finding comfort in being with someone rather than being alone. "Do you live near here?" Yugi asked as they began to walk hurriedly away from the -now groaning- men.

Kassia could only shake her head as an answer. "I don't live here at all..." She said bewildered glancing frightfully about.

"Did those men kidnap you!?" He asked, an edge of hostility overshadowing his innocent voice.

Kassia shook her head again. "I...I've never seen this place before... I don't know...I-I just don't know." she hung her head, wishing she could give Yugi a better answer.

"Do you know where you were before you saw those guys?" Yugi asked, now some what worried.

She thought for a moment. "I remember saying good night to my Mommy-Bear, and after I put my cards away I fell asleep." Kassia quietly glanced back. "Then I woke up in that ally and...um met you."

A very confused look crossed over Yugi's features as the two continued down the road. "Would you like to come back to my house for tonight? I don't think I'll be able to get you home before nightfall." he offered.

"I'm not aloud to go to strangers houses." Kassia answered firmly. "And it's already night time." She pointed to the winking stars in the sky.

"Very smart." Yugi remarked, "You shouldn't go to people-you-don't-know's homes." he agreed, then bent down to her level again. "I, Yugi Motto," -here he pointed to himself- "swear I will not let any harm come to you, Kassia," -now he pointed to the girl before him- "while you are in my presence." Yugi made an 'X' over his heart to seal the promise.

Kassia's mood lightened a bit. "You sound like a knight." she tried hard not to giggle. "Okay. I'd rather be with you than a bad person."

"Alright." Yugi nodded standing back up. "Well, lets get going." He offered her his hand again.

Kassia happily took it, feeling safer immediately in the dark night.
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