The morning sunlight softly bathed the city skyline, golden rays streaming between high-rises, draping the former Duel Capital in a gossamer haze.
Beneath the Sector Security, the Card Research Institute.
"Director!"
"Director Goodwin!"
Two passing researchers snapped to attention and saluted in the corridors.
Kira—or perhaps now it was better to call him Goodwin—passed by the duo with a casual gesture, motioning for them to carry on.
In this era, the Sector Security was essentially the city's apex authority. The former Director Goodwin had direct control over every major resource in the city, from politics and economy to science and daily life.
Furthermore, the Security didn't answer to politics or the upper echelons—it was, in fact, manipulated from the shadows by a group known as "Iliaster." Goodwin, seemingly the early-series big boss, was just a puppet for Iliaster all along. Iliaster's reach permeated every aspect of this world, with control nearly on par with Doma's from the Duel Monsters era.
In truth, the group was made up of time travelers from the ruined future timeline—Paradox and his group—who traveled back in order to alter history and founded this organization.
While Goodwin was subservient to Iliaster, it was this very situation that put the Sector Security at the pinnacle of power in the city.
One obvious perk of being director of such an institution was the nearly unlimited access to rare resources.
Such as a massive stash of rare Duel Cards.
Ever since the perpetual engine Ener-D's appearance, the city's Duel Monster development had fused with this technology. Synchro monsters and Ener-D were intrinsically linked, and since the Sector Security managed the city's core engine, it naturally formed a partnership with KaibaCorp for a special Card Research Institute.
Yes, KaibaCorp still existed in this time. However, with Seto Kaiba missing, its influence in New Domino City was no longer what Kira remembered from his own dimension. The 5D's anime only mentioned KaibaCorp in the early episodes; it faded from relevance after that.
After spending a whole morning inside the Sector Security's card vault, Kira reaped an enviable haul.
Most notably, he picked up the core sets for the main cast—Yusei Fudo's Synchro Deck, Crow Hogan's Blackwings... Any components he saw, Kira secured copies for himself. These cards weren't particularly rare in-universe, and with enough resources, assembling these competitive decks was fairly easy.
Both were S-tier tournament decks at the height of the Synchro era in real life—one top meta, one world-champion level. Kira still couldn't fathom how "Crab Guy" (Yusei) found such a powerful deck in the city dumps...
But if he can even build perpetual engines from junk, perhaps in this era, junk itself was simply next-level.
Of special interest were some loose "Ice Barrier" cards.
Ice Barrier was also a very active archetype in the Synchro era—but it was the Synchro monsters themselves that were truly iconic, nearly omnipresent as extra-deck options in high-level play.
For example, Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier.
A Level 6 Synchro Monster, summonable with any Tuner plus non-Tuners to hit six stars—at 2300 ATK, it wasn't weak at all. But its effect was devastating: discard any number of cards to bounce an equal number of cards from the field back to their owners' hands.
Yes—there was no "once per turn" limit. You could dump cards and clear the board in one go. This power was, at the time, so broken that the card was eventually banned.
Even now, Brionac, after its "release," was nerfed with a "once per turn, per card name" erratum. Even so, the changing meta meant it never returned to past glory.
But in this era, Brionac remained a monster.
Its counterpart was the fabled "Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier."
A Level 9 Synchro, requiring a Tuner and at least two other monster materials. When Synchro summoned, you could banish one card each from your opponent's hand, field, and graveyard.
Anyone who ever faced three Trishulas in one turn and lost nine cards would never forget that fear.
Unfortunately, Kira found only Brionac—no trace of Trishula, even after a full morning's search.
He consulted the Sector Security's supercomputer, reviewing all known cards in the Security's database, but had to conclude: in this world, Trishula apparently… didn't yet exist.
He frowned.
That didn't make sense. He recalled that, though only briefly, Trishula did appear in the anime, in a random duelist's hand—and was considered a "top-tier rare card."
Was this dimension's canon different from his memory, or perhaps the Ice Barrier developers hadn't yet created Trishula?
He dug up the development team for Brionac and the Ice Barrier cards, and discovered that the lot of them had gone off on tangents, leaving their promising archetype unfinished to develop early-era synchro jank.
Their newest project? "Labradorite Dragon"—a Level 6 vanilla Tuner with no purpose.
Kira fumed at their wasted potential.
He immediately summoned the entire developer team and lashed out at them—calling them out for being lazy and unproductive, for failing to create anything of value for ages.
The experts all stared at each other in confusion.
Since when did the Director care about card development?
They belonged to the Sector Security's research branch, true, but the previous Director had never once intervened in what they did—he could duel, yes, but he had no grasp of card design.
So what was going on today?
To their shock, after the scolding, the Director even offered them a thorough creative proposal: that "Ice Barrier" had immense potential, and they should halt all else and focus on it exclusively.
But this wasn't just a vague vision. The Director described card mechanics and archetype direction in precise detail, even naming specifics for cards that didn't yet exist on the drawing board.
The staff went from skeptical to gradually awestruck.
A general suggestion would be one thing—but how could the Director describe so precisely such a crop of not-yet-conceived cards?
When he sent them off finally, Kira sighed.
Sure enough, card creation is the primary productive force. Even in this new world, if you want something done, you have to print it yourself.
He was already beginning to contemplate—maybe it was time to spread the gospel of card printing to more and more dimensions.
…