Disclaimer: All canon-based characters, situations, and plotlines are copyright to their original owners, creators, and designers. I make no profit, nor want any.
Story Title: White Ice Shadows
Chapter Title: Hidden Depths
Characters: Marufuji Ryou
Story Word Count: 2,237
Chapter Word Count: 2,237
Genre: Friendship, Drama
Rated: PG-13
Status: 1 of 60 chapters
Timeline: Wednesday, October 5, 2005
Notes: This is a sequel to Dangerous Black Ice. It would probably be best if you read that first to understand why some things are different and what's going on.
Summary: Hell Kaiser begins his second year at Duel Academia after his return from the shadows. However, there can be no Darkness without Light, and this year, both seek the souls of the students.

Hell Kaiser had a very small whimsical streak. He tended to attribute it to spending too much time around Fubuki. But no matter the source, he still enjoyed watching people flinch away from his cold for the first time. It was beginning to be easy to see who was new in the Obelisk dorms and who wasn’t. The second and third year students saw him coming and stayed in their rooms until he passed, or wrapped shawls or blankets around themselves. The first years shivered, stared, and asked if the heat could be turned up.

He walked out of the Obelisk Blue dormitory and considered briefly where to go. Fujiwara had mentioned earlier that he had some personal matters to deal with that day, so he wouldn’t be around until later. Fubuki would be…somewhere around. Even if he’d said he would be somewhere, Fubuki could be easily distracted.

Randomly wandering around the school did nothing for him, so he decided to simply pick a direction and see what he could find there. As much as he enjoyed the frozen embrace of his ice palace, there were still times when he wanted to get out and see people. After all, it was an entirely new crop of students, and not all of them were going to be completely helpless wimps, were they?

When his steps led him towards the Osiris Red dorm, he realized he wasn’t all that surprised. Though his contact with Shou and Juudai had been somewhat limited, due to the trip he and the others had taken, he still wanted to keep something of an eye on them both. He’d heard enough to know that Shou wanted to try to be promoted this year, and after the performance he’d given against Misawa at the end of the previous year, that was quite possible.

There is something different about Juudai as well. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint it, but it was much like the feeling of darkness that he’d almost always felt around the other. It was worth watching out for, to see how it developed.

As he grew closer, he saw Fubuki, Manjoume, Shou, and Tome-san on the edge of the cliff, looking down at something. Fubuki glanced over his shoulder and waved towards him. “Come and look! Juudai’s dueling one of the new kids!”

Well, that promised to be at least mildly entertaining. He strolled over and glanced over the edge of the cliff, automatically putting himself where the ice wouldn’t bother the others too much.

The duelist he saw down there facing Juudai wasn’t one that he recognized off-hand, though something about that silver hair did look familiar. Perhaps I’ve met him before. He wouldn’t be surprised. He’d met a lot of duelists over the years.

“He says that his name is Edo,” Shou said, glaring briefly at Manjoume for a moment as he did. Manjoume just rolled his eyes. Hell Kaiser raised one eyebrow of his own slightly, glancing at Fubuki.

“Oh, when Manjoume heard what his name was, he thought it was funny that Juudai’s dueling against a classical prefecture. Tome-san said that he put his deck together from a few random packs he bought at the store this morning.”

Ryou looked down towards the beach again, a touch more interested this time. What was this Edo person planning? It had to be a plan of some kind. No one was going to start off at Duel Academia with a deck like that.

He watched quietly as the duel unfolded, amused by Manjoume’s reaction to seeing Ojama Yellow in this new person’s deck. This person is better than he wants Juudai, or anyone else, to think. If he could take a random set of cards like that and still be dueling somewhat strongly, then there were hidden depths there.

“Ryou?” Fubuki poked him in the arm. “You’re smiling. Don’t do that, you’re not very good at it, and you’re going to scare people if they see you doing it.”

Hell Kaiser glanced at him for a moment, the corners of his mouth moving upward slightly. He said nothing, only returned his attention to the duel. His eyes narrowed a bit as Edo took some sort of phone call, while everyone else sounded more than a little surprised that he’d done it at all. There is a lot more to him than meets the eye. Ryou liked that in a person.

Once Edo was done with his call, the duel began to shift a little, now becoming more serious. It seemed that when he’d put that deck together, he’d focused on Fairy types, and now they were dueling with the help of the field spell, Sanctuary in the Sky. Ryou kept on watching, cataloging everything that both of them did.

In the back of his mind, as always, was the slowly stirring thought of if he should approach Samejima about the Cyber dojo, and possibly even the Cyber Tail deck. He had kept it from his mind to a degree during the summer, letting all of it lie fallow and waiting until the right moment should turn around. That moment still hadn’t quite come, but it was closer than it had been.

Hell Kaiser didn’t take his eyes off of Edo. He couldn’t see his hand from how high up he was, but he was increasingly certain that Edo already knew how the duel was going to come out: or believed he knew. There was a particular set of his head, the confident way that he played…he might be a first year, he might be young, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t new to this game.

Even when Juudai wiped out Edo’s life points and with Juudai so very obviously being a second year and able to hand out what he must have considered sage advice, Ryou was certain Edo had known all along.

“Wait a second!” Shou started to root around in his bag suddenly. “I know where I’ve seen him before!”

He yanked out a magazine and threw it open, turning pages this way and that until he got to the one he was looking for. “This is him! Edo Phoenix! He’s a pro league duelist!”

“He is? Really?” Juudai, who had wandered up from the beach by now, bent over to take a look at the picture. “If he can duel me like that…I wonder what he’s like with his real deck?”

I wonder if he could be more than you can handle. Hell Kaiser smiled. Nothing happened without a reason of some kind. He believed that in the deepest part of his heart and soul. There had to be a purpose behind Edo doing this.

He glanced around some, and spied a hint of silver hair through the trees not that far away. I want to talk to him. Making up his mind quickly, he started away, leaving the others to argue over whether or not Juudai really could beat Edo, if Edo were using his true deck.

It was surprisingly harder than he might have thought to follow Edo, given the other’s pale coloring. But soon he saw the other coming out into a clearing ahead of them. There were two people already there, both in Obelisk Blue uniforms. Ryou halted where he could see them all, keeping his icy aura in as best that he could. He’d had a lot of time over the summer to practice that, since Fubuki and Manjoume hadn’t had any protection against his chill. Fujiwara had seemed to adjust the quickest to it, for some reason he couldn’t fathom.

“You were right,” Edo said, speaking to one of them. Ryou shifted around to where he could get a slightly better look. One was male, the other female. The young man looked to be about his own age, while the girl was closer to Edo’s. “He won.”

The other man nodded slightly. “You’ll have another chance. Destiny has said this will be so.” There was a table near him, though Ryou wasn’t certain if he’d seen that table there before, and a spread of cards was on it. They didn’t quite look like Duel Monster cards, not from his vantage point, being somewhat larger, and the backs were different.

“I don’t see how beating Juudai is going to help me grow,” Edo sounded just a bit petulant at that. The girl laughed softly.

“All this time and you still don’t trust Takuma?” She tugged a bit at the skirt she wore and shook her head. “I still don’t see why we have to be here as well, though.”

“Fate’s commands.” The other, Takuma presumably, spoke again. “It will be easier to do what must be done like this.”

Edo grunted slightly. “I should be in the Pros. He won’t be here. This place is nothing but children.”

“You’ll learn what you need to learn here.” Takuma’s voice held far more patience than Ryou would have had in a similar circumstance. Then a hint of humor entered into it. “You might possibly also meet interesting people.”

“Such as Juudai?” Edo snorted lightly. “He’s not all that interesting. He’s just a big kid.”

Takuma turned to look directly at Ryou. Not in his direction, but as certainly at him as if there hadn’t been trees, bushes, and distance in the way. “There are others. Such as Hell Kaiser, who watches us from the darkness even now.”

Edo and the girl both turned towards him, Edo’s eyes narrowing and harder than flint. Hell Kaiser mentally shrugged; he hadn’t had a great deal of investment in remaining hidden anyway. He strode over to where they stood, letting his ice flow outwards as he did. There was no need to hold it back now, after all.

“Hell Kaiser.” Edo looked him up and down frankly. “We’ve heard about you. One of the Seven Stars, a manipulator of ice and snow and cold.”

“Yes.” Hell Kaiser replied. He was what he was. “And I wonder what a pro duelist is doing taking classes here.”

“You do get to the point, don’t you?” Edo asked, raising one eyebrow. “But I don’t think I need to tell you my reasons.”

A slight prickle ran up Ryou’s spine and he turned his gaze slightly to see Takuma was looking directly at Edo. If he hadn’t known better, he might well have thought there was some kind of communication going on there. There was certainly the feel of hidden words being spoken.

“Perhaps introductions are in order,” Takuma said after a moment or two. “You already know of Edo Phoenix, I can see. I am Saiou Takuma. This is my sister, Saiou Mizuchi. I act as Edo’s manager, but will also be taking classes here as a third year student.”

Ryou’s eyes narrowed a bit. He knew that older people could do that, but he’d never met someone who had, especially not someone who was handling a pro level career at the same time. “Why?”

Edo was about to say something else when Saiou shook his head a bit. “We have reasons. You could not blame us for not speaking of them to people that we scarcely know.” The older man smiled just a bit. “We mean absolutely no harm to the students here. If that matters to you.”

“It doesn’t.” Ryou snorted a little. He’d been one of those trying to attack the school less than a year earlier. Protecting them all meant nothing to him. Though certain students were more under his icy protection than others.

“Then why did you follow me?” Edo wanted to know, staring at him with large blue eyes. Some people might have seen only the angel’s innocence within them. Ryou could see something else, and a smile flickered on the edges of his lips. Hidden depths, indeed.

“You were testing Juudai. You weren’t using your real deck in that duel, and I want to know why.” Ryou looked the other up and down appraisingly in his turn. He still wanted to know their reasons, but it was plain they would not speak to him of them.

At least, not just yet.

“I’ll use it in my next duel with him,” Edo said, and a hint of a humorless smile was now on his face. “But if you’d care for a duel against a deck that I didn’t throw together in ten minutes, I might be able to oblige you.”

Ryou considered that. Edo was good. Better than he was? He didn’t know yet. But he decided that he did want to find out.

“Yes.” He started to reach for his own disk when Saiou shook his head, and Hell Kaiser found himself dropping his arm without even being fully aware of why.

“One week,” he said. “Let us get more used to this place, and perhaps this duel of yours should take place with an audience as well. Something more than the two of us.”

Edo snorted a bit, but nodded. “Fine. A week from now, we’ll duel.” He stepped away from Hell Kaiser, closer to Saiou and the silent sister. “See you then.”

The dismissal couldn’t have been more clearly obvious if Edo had waved a sign. But Hell Kaiser had learned what he could for now. With a slight bending of his head, he headed away. He had much to think about now.

What an interesting year this will be.

To Be Continued

Note: So, here we are at the start of year two. If you’re new to the story, hi. If you’re not, then hi as well. There’s so much I wish I could say about what I have planned, but I won’t give out spoilers. Let’s hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it!