Bonds Beyond Reality

Turn 3 - The path traveled so far

The anxiety could be tasted all over AI Land. Everyone was expecting what was coming next. If this duel was the preamble, then what's about to come has to be something really big. Everyone was caught off guard by how many things happened in that duel, but now that everyone has the chance to calm down and take a breath, the questions started to pump out. What were those pendulum cards? Who was that strange guy? Doesn't Playmaker usually show up to prevent a disaster from happening? Are we in some kind of danger, like the Hanoi Tower or Bohman's neuron link? Playmaker can't really do anything to ease people's concerns; he doesn't have the answers after all. In fact, he was not supposed to be there to begin with. Meeting Yuya was a mere coincidence after all, and if that's the case, what was he doing in AI Land to begin with?

Before the situation keeps scaling, a giant hologram projection appears at the center of AI Land; it is Zaizen himself. Everyone in the place and everyone watching the transmission immediately had their attention shifted to the CEO of Sol Technologies itself. This was an ideal time; after all, this was meant to be an event organized by the company. Even though nothing about what just happened makes much sense, a good speech could handle this situation. In the end, Zaizen may not have the answers himself, but no one would doubt anything he says either way. Zaizen recognized this, and after confirming that the program uploaded by Yuya didn't mean any harm to the people, he decided to play out this situation and turn the tables on his side.

Zaizen immediately greets everyone attending and pays them respect in the most calm and refined way possible, as is expected from a well-trained businessman such as himself. Then he mentions to the audience his hopes that everyone has enjoyed this "exhibition duel" that they had prepared for everyone's entertainment. He mentions how he got in touch with Playmaker despite there being no real threat going on, which was an extremely difficult task, but there's nothing he wouldn't do for the people of his beloved city. Something that was of course a huge load of lies, but Yusaku understands completely that this is the best way to remove every initial worry from people's minds, so he remains silent without disproving anything Zaizen says. Although a slight sense of concern crosses his mind for a second, after all, this kind of makes it seem as if he's associated with Sol in a deeper way than just as occasional allies against common threats. But that will have to wait for another day.

The next point addressed is the first part of the announcement for today, the big update to the master rules used by all of the dueling systems across the world. Something that's not a complete act to cover this mess, as it turns out, was always intended to change these rules as of today. Even Yusaku seems surprised by this. Zaizen explains that in this world, link summoning has evolved to the point where it has become the most powerful mechanic at the duelist's disposal, but it wasn't the first or the only one. It was meant to represent the connection between all of us but at some point became a restriction to people's play styles; after all, as evidenced in the last duel, non-Link summoning-based methods are very hindered by the mechanic. Thus, from today on, every form of dueling would allow Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ monsters to be summoned to either the extra monster zone or any main monster zone, regardless of whether a link monster was present in the field. This was a very exciting announcement for the people around the world; after all, in this day and age, other summoning methods were so rarely seen due to the dependence on link summoning that everyone was impatient to see what amazing strategies could come up with the lifting of this limitation. That was the initial idea of the ruling update; however, it was still necessary to mention the elephant in the room. The Pendulum cards.

Until today, even Zaizen didn't know about this mechanic, but since it was the perfect opportunity to take the credit, he decided to attribute their creation to his company and promote it as Sol Technology's newest innovation in dueling, and that the ruling update was the perfect opportunity to showcase them as well. The reality is that since Yuya added pendulum summoning to Sol systems after the rules were patched, those cards were still subject to the previous version of the rules, and thus Yuya had issues summoning his monsters from the extra deck. But Zazen decided to tell the people that they were always meant to work like that as a memento of the old rulings. He made this decision because, for a second, he imagined how those cards would be at their full potential. and decided that it was way too much, so before going on stage, he made sure that even though Pendulum cards were forcibly introduced to the system, they would remain, but he would use everything in his power to prevent them from working as he imagined they would in Yuya's home land. As expected, the people didn't doubt any of the words from this man and couldn't help themselves from the excitement of playing these new powerful cards.