Predictions and Observations:
Inter-Dimension Detention

Okay, an updated edition of “Where the heck are they?” I have reason to believe that they’re in the same dimension that Jaden, Alexis, Syrus, and Banner got zapped to in Grave Risk I and II; Jaden, Syrus, and Alexis probably just haven’t made the connection. Pity Atticus isn’t around (probably graduated), ‘cause he’s probably been here before more and he’d recognize it. Speaking of which, we’re still waiting for someone to tell him Yazmin’s message.
Anyway, if any of our heroes could risk a ten-mile hike up to the ruins (which, being attacked left and right and being the only people who can defend everyone else from the same, and only having a week’s worth of food, they can’t), they’d probably meet up with the Gravekeeper Chief. Either that or there’s more than one dimension that can support corporeal duel spirits, or spatial distances don’t work the same way here (more than likely. Bastion could probably shed some light on that, because he somehow ended up on Duel Academy’s doorstep after about a semester of travel (we haven’t seen him since It’s All Relative, but no one remembers their summer break so time is rather flexible), so he must’ve known where he was going). However, inside the main building of the Academy, everything seems fairly the same. This isn’t the Shadow Realm (or at least, I don’t think so), so that makes at least two dimensions, I suppose, that support corporeal duel spirits.
I’d hypothesized before that the corporeality of duel spirits is directly proportional to the amount of Neo-Space in the area, so I’d call this place saturated. That would make it *easier* for the eyeball to exist independently, making me wonder why it needed to go after Marcel. In addition, Neo-Space is created from a balance of opposing forces; three suns makes me somewhat nervous, because for there to be a balance it would take a lot of darkness somewhere or other. By the way, I’ve got a wacky new theory just now in realizing that the Shadow Realm is not a model of balance. Duel monsters can exist there because their duelists’ will makes it so; the duelist brings the light to the equation, therefore the drain on them imposed by the Shadow Realm.
So, back on track with regard to sand-land. Hold on. Viper chose a specific spot, found it with that compass thingy, to put down roots on Academy Island. I’d wondered about that, and my current theory is that the same energy that transferred them here has always been present on Academy Island; the eyeball just tapped into it. That explains how people in *this* dimension (if it’s the same as the Gravekeeper’s) *also* know Atticus. Why they’d build a school on top of a hive of bizarre magical energy is anyone’s guess; Academy Island has spontaneous and semi-dormant portals to both the Shadow Realm and whatever dimension this is, along with an *active* *volcano*, by the way. Maybe it has something to do with the Sacred Beast Cards; Sheppard said, way back when, that Duel Academy was built there, in part, to protect them. What if their presence stirs up all this wacky energy, or if all this wacky energy makes this somehow the best place to keep them, or if the “in part” refers to all this wacky energy being the *other* part? But then why appoint someone as inexperienced with wacky magic as Sheppard is to the post of chancellor? Unless that’s why KaibaCorp has Pegasus on call for Duel-Academy-related issues? Pegasus *would* be one of *the* most experienced with wacky magic on the face of the Earth: He’s wielded a Millennium Item, he’s played shadow games, he’s *initiated* shadow games, he’s seen Kaiba blow apart a Blue-Eyes White Dragon *with* *his* *mind*, he’s created cards that would have destroyed him utterly given half the chance, he’s been Orichalcosed, he’s dealt with a rogue fake-EG, he’s observed a ‘white hole’ in action, he knows *all about* duel spirits (we’re surprised?), and he’s seen a card pick its duelist several times. I digress. But still, Yugi has most of that experience and by now Kaiba himself knows what to expect when dark purplish clouds start forming around your duel, and Kaiba *hates* Pegasus, remember?! Unless something has drastically changed since last we saw them speak, and there are a few clues scattered throughout GX that something has. Even so, why would Kaiba call *Pegasus* of all people instead of coming himself, unless something even bigger is going down at KaibaCorp or something, or unless he’s already there? How much time has passed in the real world since Duel Academy disappeared, when Sheppard arrives? Since Pegasus was called for this and Echo already knew that Adrian had vanished, it could be a couple hours, maybe a day, at the least.
So—to summarize this meandering yarn, I think that they’re on the same dimension that they visited when they met the Gravekeeper Chief and his followers. Wherever they are, it’s a dimension where duel spirits exist corporeally, which, if past crazy theories have any truth to them whatsoever, means that it contains a large amount of Neo-Space, which means a powerful balance. The light from the three suns indicates that, for there to be a balance, there’s also a lot of darkness there. Since this is the second time they’ve been transported here from Duel Academy, and the third time canon that anyone has, it seems likely to me that Academy Island is a portal to this place, which makes me wonder, yet again, who in their right mind would build a school here. I’m also wondering why appoint Sheppard, who has no expertise in matters of strange magic, to lead it, and wondering if that’s why Pegasus seems to be on-call to help out with Duel-Academy-related matters. But why on earth would Kaiba rely on *Pegasus*?! I conclude by having it occur to me that it’s possible that more time than we think has passed on Academy Island since the school vanished, because time has every right to move differently between dimensions.

As was said: “Harpie Lady?! I have *definitely* seen *her* before!” (Joey, Legendary Heroes II) What symbolism could be taken from *that*? They could have picked any duel monster designed in fifteen years or so, and they picked Mai’s signature creature? What’s Harpie Lady doing *there*? Then again, Harpie Lady isn’t a duel spirit to Mai, just a monster, so it’s possible that there’s no relation, but come on! I dearly hope, and have been for a while now, that, after ten years or so, Mai is not still having trouble coping with the issues we left her with in, oh, Rise of the Great Beast II, at the end of the Orichalcos saga. I hope that she’s worked it all out and come back and met up with her friends in Domino City again. However, Harpie’s presence far from the duelist that grew up considering her her only friend does not bode well, and I’m sad to see it.

A hundred students…how many, and which ones, are missing, and why? Right now, among known characters, we know the whereabouts of: Jaden, Syrus, Hassleberry, Alexis, Chazz, Jesse, Axel, Adrian, Jim, Blair, Marcel, Bastion, Crowler, Bonaparte, Dorothy, Fontaine, the eyeball, Sheppard, Echo, Pegasus. The ones we don’t know, that I’d sure like to know, most of which I’d like to know because of this current situation (but not all), are: Jasmine, Mindy, Aster, Kaiba, Yugi, Atticus (so did he graduate or what?!), Belowski, Damon, Viper, Mai, the Gravekeeper Chief, Eisenstein, Pharaoh, and Zane.
Is there anyone left on the island? Who, and how are they coping?
What dictated which ones ended up in another dimension? Was it just the ones who were in the main building at the time? What were any of them doing at the main building in the middle of the night? D’you suppose there are any optional classes that happen in the evening? Just how late *was* it, by the way? My opening guess is nine o’clock at night or so, because they entered the biodome in late morning or early afternoon, and in past experience, one duel takes a couple hours, making it not *that* late, but it’s gotten dark, which, at this time of year (anywhere from the middle of summer to early fall), means nine or so. How big a percentage is ‘one hundred’? I like the head-counts we’ve been getting recently (eighty at Duel For Jewels, one hundred here), but would it kill them to mention how many students Duel Academy has, total? Looks like a fairly even mixture of Obelisks, Ras, and Slifers, though Blair and Alexis are the only girls we’ve so far seen in the group. With an equal number of ambitious straight-A Obelisks and slacking Slifers, or about equal, it sheds some doubt on the “later classes” theory, unless some of them are darn easy and give generous credit. Hold on. Never mind; I feel dumb now. If they turned the gym into an infirmary, of *course* there are more than the usual number of people there! But didn’t they turn the Obelisk dorm into an infirmary instead? Whatev. Therefore, now my questions are: what kinda duelists are those they ended up with? How many just got out of bed? Do any know much about duel spirits? Or first aid? Or alternate dimensions? With only Jaden, Jesse, possibly Chazz, and possibly Hassleberry as defenders against any monsters that come to call, and Jaden and Jesse both still pretty tired, I’d say they have a bit of a problem.

I’m not the only one who calls it a giant lava lamp. Heeheehee.

“These’re things we all learned through dueling!” Too right! Or at least, we hope we did, but this *is* Duel Academy we’re talking about. If they haven’t learned it through dueling yet, they haven’t dueled for real, and they *will* learn it now!

Pinch me, I must be dreaming. It’s Bastion. At first I thought it was Damon (and wondered for a moment when, then, Belowski would also turn up), but can you really blame me for the mistake? Wow. I had wondered if Bastion hadn’t, say, run off into the forest raving or something, or if we just hadn’t run into him around Duel Academy yet. Bastion’s a bit tightly-wound, which makes him one of the most outrageous characters in the show from time to time. He’s changed a lot in a couple years, and I very much doubt he’s where he’d expected to be in his life. Anyway, how long has he been traveling, how did he know which way to go? How did he lose his Ra Yellow duel blazer and is there any symbolism attached to that (he’s now mostly wearing green)? Oh, oh—here’s a good one. It’s a wasteland—where did he get the cape, canteen, goggles, and staff/club? That tan suggests that people should probably put on sunscreen before venturing outdoors or those three suns will scorch them good. What else? Oh—is this Bastion’s new look, or, now that he can, will he go back to yellow blazer and short hair? How much does he know about the properties and so forth of this dimension and, with technology available at Duel Academy, could he possibly get them home?

Twelve dimensions. Okay. Which one is this?

Soooo…properties of dueling in the dusty dimension. Reminds me quite a bit of virtual world, to be honest, so I’m going off that. One notable *difference*: no lifepoint counters. The damage done here is real, evident from Adrian’s Harpie wounds. Is the damage done monster-to-monster also real, and will injured monsters need time to heal? Will destroyed monsters come back? How can a duelist help to heal his/her monsters, or can they? If any of this is true, how long can Jesse and the Crystal Beasts last, defending Duel Academy on their own? Luckily, monsters soaring through seems to be a bit uncommon; they’re in the middle of a dusty wasteland and most monsters that *could* come after them don’t even know they’re there. So, other properties: monsters can cast spells, and probably so can duelists. Can monsters only cast spells that pertain specifically to them (such as the Harpie’s Elegant Egotist and Cyber Shield), or can they play generic ones like Monster Reborn or De-Spell? Since monsters don’t seem to have decks, what dictates which cards they can “play”? How, if dueling here is based on the card game, which it is, do the graveyard, being removed from play, and so forth work? Are there turns, and can a duelist only summon one monster at a time as usual unless he/she has a special card that says otherwise? If a duelist were to play, say, Dimensional Fissure, would jumping through it take them home? Lol. Sorry, dumb question. How do continuous effects work? What about traps? Do spells/traps appear in some form or another, or do you just have to remember their effects are active? How do ‘lifepoints’ work in terms of paying them for a card’s effect? Couldn’t they play, say, a Gravity Bind or similar to keep most powerful monsters off of them? If a C-B is destroyed, where and how does the crystal appear? There are many more questions, of course, and I’m sure we’ll find the answers very soon. But another very pressing one is: how much fighting constitutes a drainable ‘duel’? Jaden and Jesse didn’t get whacked when Winged Kuriboh and Sapphire Pegasus chased the Harpie off before.

Echo, Chancellor Sheppard, and Pegasus. I somehow get the feeling that this will make an interesting team, once Echo stops trying to attack them and explains what the heck she’s doing there.

“…Including Jaden Yuki and his gaggle of friends…” Pegasus specifically mentioned them. Well, Jaden does have a knack for attracting bizarre and serious kinds of mystical trouble, just like Yugi before him. If Jaden’s involved, Pegasus knows it’s probably a big deal. Also, Jaden and his group are the only Duel Academy students Pegasus has ever really met before and spoken with; they’re pals.

“Where to start digging?” What does Pegasus refer to, besides, ‘start with the place where something should be but isn’t’?

A message from KaibaCorp to Industrial Illusions about their own academy? *Why* is Kaiba not coming himself, and why on *Earth* is he instead relying on PEGASUS, of all people?! It makes no sense whatsoever, unless there’s something we don’t know! I sure hope Pegasus ends up enlightening us at some point—this is getting annoying.

All this evil magic in the library…first the dumb Obelisks in sheets summoning dangerous spirits with stolen bath candles, now Adrian and his pod of goo.

“Hey, is Adrian okay?” Is Jesse talking about Adrian’s Harpie wounds, or does he notice something suspicious about him? This is Jesse we’re talking about, so there’s possibility of the second one.

So Marcel *is* a boy. Sorry about that.

A ‘dark soul’? Marcel? Why? Does it have anything to do with Marcel’s not eating? Is Marcel evil, or just vulnerable and confused? And as a final note, Bonaparte’s not going to like this…

Where does Blair want to go on this walk down the hallway? She’s *blushing*. To the infirmary to check on Jaden, maybe?

That’s quite a scratch. It’s *glowing.* What got into that scratch besides a bit of bacteria, and how do they get it out? Will Blair be adversely affected/possessed/etc. as a result of this?

So Chazz isn’t much use fighting things off here, even though he has duel spirits? The Ojamas have zero attack points, so I guess they wouldn’t be much use. However, one thing I noted was that attack points aren’t everything even in monster-on-monster battles, in this dimension. Topaz Tiger destroyed that Harpie with the element of surprise; it was way weaker than the Harpie. I’m not sure if Chazz is out of the fight just yet, because he understands the properties of duel spirits fairly well and is often several steps ahead of the game with regard to how to deal with them, and there are several other weak duel spirits on the island that hold him in very high regard and would gladly fight for him. Depending on whether any of them managed to come with, Chazz could be a formidable fighter indeed, with swarms and swarms to send after any monsters that try to attack Duel Academy, and like I said before, attack points don’t determine who wins.

In the previously, I noticed that the eyeball (who is no longer just an eyeball) was saying that the “power is flowing freely”, as the big beam of light grew brighter and brighter. I sorta went, ‘huh?’ and decided it was worth mentioning.

Where has Sheppard been, and why is he coming back now?

I’ve noticed that Jesse seems to be favoring Sapphire Pegasus lately. If memory serves, Sapphire has the most outright attack points and therefore would be handy in a quick skirmish like these seem to be. In addition, Sapphire seems very protective, both of Jesse and the other Crystal Beasts, so he’d be the first to step up when they’re threatened; that’s how Trapper captured him—he knocked Topaz out of the way of the trap.

So, that’s about it for now. It’s Sunday—I can’t believe I’m already done! I must’ve forgotten something! Well, anyway, next week is Sub-Desert Duel. ‘Til then! -Clio