After Crow shouting 'leave the kids!' the Security handcuffed everyone and shut then in the big, black colored bus. And leave the kids as they were.
# The Prison Bus
The bus rattled over cracked pavement, the two long benches inside facing each other. Shinji and a few of his people sat on one side. Yuya and others sat on other.
"How did they even get here?" Shinji muttered, glaring across the aisle. "They must had followed you."
People in front of him didn't speak anything.
"If all you're going to do by helping is make things worse, don't call it helping," Shinji shot back.
"We made sure no one followed us," Yume said, meeting his glare without flinching. "Sawatari, did anyone see you?"
"No, no one. I stayed low the whole time. There's no way anyone spotted me." Sawatari said, his gaze becoming sharp. "But since we're pointing fingers, what about you? I saw you show up right before those bike riders did. You sure no one tailed you instead?"
Shinji's jaw tightened, and for a second it looked like he might actually swing at him, but Crow's hand landed firm on his shoulder before it went any further.
The bus rumbled on in tense silence, it felt like time had stopped. For what was like ten full minutes before Sawatari finally cracked.
"Oi, don't you know who my papa is?! You have no idea who you're messing with—" he tried to shout at the people in driver's seat.
The bus jolted to a stop.
Sawatari's mouth snapped shut so fast he nearly bit his own tongue.
The doors hissed open, and guards in uniforms filed in, cuffing wrists one by one and hauling everyone out onto the pavement without a word of explanation.
"Oi, where are you taking her?" Yume called out, watching as two guards pulled Celina toward a separate way. She twisted against their grip, but the cuffs held.
"She goes on the other side," one guard said, already dragging her away.
Another guard shouted back toward the group. "Tell Armstrong the boy's been caught! He's finally going to answer for it!"
Confusion rippled through the row of guards. A few exchanged uneasy glances.
"Wait — why are there two?" One of them said, stepping closer to study Yuya and then, a beat later, Yume, turning to study someone standing further down the line.
The guard checked one boy first — red-and-green hair, sharp red eyes and a normal red t-shirt and brown pants. Then he turned to the other — deep teal-blue hair streaked with bright white along the sides, eyes an icy-white, a white hooded jacket layered over a black shirt underneath.
"They look alike," the guard said slowly, "but not the same. Not exactly."
"What are you talking about? Are they playing us for fools?" Another guard snapped, storming over.
"Wait!" Yuya said. "We don't understand what you mean by any of this."
"You two think this is some kind of look-alike game?" The first guard demanded. Furious.
"Not even a full day ago," the second guard said, voice hardening, "someone who looked exactly like one of you walked straight into the Facility and took down one of our strongest prison guards. And on top of that—"
Yuya lunged forward despite the cuffs, grabbing the guard's collar with both bound hands.
"What do you mean, 'someone who looks like me?' Tell me!" He wasn't in rage.
The guard stumbled back, startled. "H-hey—!"
The rest of the guards swarmed in immediately, wrestling Yuya down to the pavement — but even pinned, his eyes stayed locked on the man, sharp enough that the guard kept talking anyway, almost without meaning to.
"He suddenly came, on his own. Talked strange, calm, like none of it fazed him. Kept insisting he had never fought any Security officer, Duel Chaser before. Had the nerve to say it wasn't him."
"That's enough out of you," a senior-looking guard barked, stepping in. "Load them all up. And someone get word to Roget-sama. Tell him the boy's been captured."
The others hauled Yuya and Crow's group away without another word.
"How could he know that..." Yuya thought numbly, "unless he actually heard it from whoever it really was? Was that guard lying? If there really was someone who looked like me, then why they deny about defeating Security officer? Were they lying? Or..."
# Roget
In a big monitoring room that was all white, with lights. In middle, in a majestic chair sat a Roget.
Roget moved a single pawn across the chessboard, unhurried, and watched the white queen cornered, the king was trapped with nowhere left to run.
"Check," he said quietly, to no one at all.
He liked chess for exactly this reason — the moment an opponent realized, too late, that every move they'd made in the last ten turns had already been decided for them the instant they touched their first piece.
A soft chime sounded from the screen beside him. He tapped it without looking away from the board.
"Report."
"Armstrong reporting." The voice on the other end was thick, clipped, formal. "The boy who defeated Duel Chaser 227 — the one wanted for the assault at the Prison Facility — has been captured and brought in."
"Good work," Roget said, sliding another black piece forward, making a new game, considering his next three moves in the same breath.
"There's something else," Armstrong continued. "There appear to be two of them."
Roget's hand paused over the board. "Two?"
"I saw the one who infiltrated the Facility myself. These two look identical But are not similar. Different enough that I thought it worth mentioning."
"Set that aside for now." Roget completely set his new chess game. "And the girl?"
"Captured as well, sir. Though I wanted to confirm. But shy should she be placed kept separate? Not the general female holding? And in a private chamber arranged specially for her? Proper meals."
"Your task is to capture and contain. To follow my instructions. Not to question them. And the girl shouldn't have any harm on her. No one should know about her and those people you have captured."
A pause. "...Understood, sir."
The line cut.
Roget set the screen sway and returned his full attention to the board, starting by moving one white horse purely out of habit, though the game had already been decided several turns ago.
"Identical," he murmured to himself. "How very interesting." He allowed himself the faintest, thin smile. "Every board eventually shows you more pieces than you expected to find on it. The question is only ever which of them are actually worth keeping in play." He put his hand on his face. "Looks like I am more lucky than Professor."
He reset the board without finishing the game, resetting every piece to its starting square, and folded his hands. Commanding the people monitoring and obstructing the City.
# The Rooftops, Tops District
A shadow moved across the rooftops in a single fluid blur, faster than anything should have been able to move carrying another person's full weight.
It came to a stop atop a high tower overlooking the glittering skyline of the upper city, and only then did Tsukikage set Riley down gently on his feet.
"I apologize, Riley-dono," Tsukikage said, dropping to one knee. "For taking you so suddenly. It was necessary."
"...Tsukikage?" Riley blinked, still catching his breath. It took him a moment to place the voice, though some quieter part of him had already known, almost from the instant he'd been swept off by Tsukikage.
"How did you find me?" Riley asked.
"I was searching the whole upper city, than was terrified you and the others might have landed somewhere in the lower city instead. Searching just took long," Tsukikage said simply. "I was fortunate enough to catch the sound of the Security vehicles."
"Thank you." Riley's expression shifted, urgency breaking through the relief. "But we have to help the others! Some kind of officers took Yuya and everyone else away!"
"I know," Tsukikage said. "I was lucky enough to notice the disturbance in time to see it happen. But don't worry. They'll be looked after."
Riley glanced past him, toward the shadow of the rooftop entrance, where a figure stood leaning against the doorframe. Sunlight caught him a moment later, revealing bright red eyes and pale silver hair.
"Ryo-nii—" Riley started.
"Tsukikage," Ryo said, stepping forward. "Did you receive the signal I sent?"
"Yes, Ryo-dono. Your theory held."
"Theory?" Riley asked.
"The one thing I was certain of before we crossed over," Ryo said, "was that we'd likely get separated the moment we arrived. Telling everyone that outright beforehand would have just scared people off from coming at all — no one wants to hear they might be dropped alone into a unknown world with no one else nearby. So instead, I focused on one thing: finding a way to reach people again once that happened.
"I noticed the Synchro duelist's motorbike back at championship," Ryo continued. "Machines built that advanced meant this dimension must be very advanced and almost certainly had some kind of long-range communication signal running underneath everything else.
"So I used my Duel Disk to search for it. Our Disks were already modified to stay connected to each other before we left — but the moment we crossed dimensions, that link broke completely. Too much distance, too much interference from whatever's running through this world's own signals.
"But the connection wasn't gone completely," Ryo said. "Just buried. Once I found this dimension's local signal frequency, I used it to boost our own Disks' range again, and started scanning block by block, district by district, for anything that matched our original connection.
"That's how I found you," he said, looking at Riley. "Once me and Tsukikage landed in lower city, we came here because the signals are far more strong here than below. It took a lot of time, so Tsukikage was searching all by himself. And after finally trying, I told Tsukikage where you people were same way, using the signals of this place. And it turned out he was already close by, searching the same district. Timing was good. But I'm hoping some of them are together already. Reiji, especially"
"Nii-san... I see." Riley murmured, something easing in his chest for the first time since they'd arrived. Riley said, steadying himself. "But those people took Yuya and everyone with them! I want to help them!"
"Don't worry," Ryo said. He placed his hand gently on Riley's head. "We've already made contact with this city's government." He turned, motioning for them to follow. "Come with me."