Duel Monsters I've never seen before … the ruined city in my dream … its people sealed away like Hokuto …
And that word … What's connecting all these things together?
Masumi Kōtsu
The events of the Maiami City Championship have changed the entire world. Duel Monsters used as weapons of war. Innocent children sealed into cards by the soldiers who wage this war. And the Lancers who were created to stop them.
One week later, with Reiji Akaba and the Lancers far from home, things haven't improved for Yaiba and Masumi, the two surviving course representatives of the Leo Duel School. The third representative—their best friend, Hokuto—was one of those who were sealed. Yaiba is still on the mend after his brutal loss in the Championship. And Masumi is being haunted by dreams of a strange figure made of black fire, even stranger Duel Monsters, and strangest of all, a single word of a language she does not recognize.
Determined to find the reason for her nightmares, Masumi seeks out some help, and makes some new friends in doing so—but her efforts have already uncovered a horrifying truth that even Reiji and his Lancers could never have foreseen …
(æ)mæth is the first in a series of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V fics written by Kim Chang-Ra (Spiegel1) known as (æ)viternity, focusing on the LDS trio post-Episode 52. It can be found here
and here. A sequel fic, (æ)lohim, was completed in 2020, and a third entry, (æ)donai, is currently underway.
The stories make use of original Japanese names and nomenclature (e.g. Julia Krystal = Kōtsu Masumi; Baxia, Brightness of the Yang Zing = Gongfu - Dracomet of Brightness).
(æ)mæth provides examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The sequel, (æ)lohim, starts off when a virus inside the LDS supercomputer Q opens a portal that sends a programmer to another dimension. It then gets subverted when it turns out to have been a holographic fantasy that the programmer engineered to fake his disappearance—and then double-subverted when Q admits to triggering it prematurely out of base curiosity.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Masumi poses one to Dr. Grimm:Masumi: "If I can bring back my friend from the grave so that he can help me fight you … then what else can I do with this power?"
- Bald of Evil: Crowley is already balding when he is introduced, but loses more and more hair over the course of the story until he finally goes bald, and shows his true colors as well.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Dr. Gwendolyn "Wendy" Grimm is a student counselor and therapist employed with LDS who likes telling stories whilst sipping her mother's herbal tea. Not only is she also the true face behind Ito, but she's a sadistic Psychic Duelist who can control other people's dreams, Duel in her sleep, and brainwash anyone she defeats into yet more students of Academia.
- Louise Schmidt is the head housemaid of Château Pique-Diamant, Reiji's seldom-used summer retreat. She's also the head of a crack team of elite infiltrators from the Fusion Dimension, capable of physically brutalizing Reiji, of all people, to an inch of his life.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Hotene, the top Junior Fusion Duelist of the Leo Duel School, is a nine-year-old girl who lords over the Dueling arena at a local trampoline park. She behaves a lot like a nine-year-old might be expected to act—right before revealing that she knows Contact Fusion, something Masumi believed was impossible for someone her age to master.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: (æ)lohim has several: first, it's revealed that Dr. Grimm and J.D. Crowley were both working to subvert LDS from within. Then, one Duel later, Crowley downloads Q into his implants, and turns himself into two Duelists sharing the same body.
- Brain/Computer Interface: J.D. Crowley's body has been augmented with an experimental interface that allows him to control Solid Vision outside of a Duel. This comes back to bite him in the ass after it overheats during a Duel, leaving him burned to a crisp and comatose from the pain.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Shen is basically what you get when you cross a teenage Duelist with a Shaolin Warrior Monk.
- Delicate and Sickly: Fuyu was confined to his bed for two years of his childhood due to a combination of sicknesses that left him frail and pale. He gets better after meeting Hokuto—but after hearing he was carded, he sinks into a depression so bad that when Masumi first meets Fuyu a week later, she suspects he's been neglecting his appearance ever since.
- Disability Superpower: (æ)donai introduces a pair of runaway twin psychics from the Fusion Dimension, Kiku and Kikyō. Kikyō, who is deaf and mute, normally relies on tactile telepathy to speak through other people—most often her sister—but she is capable of Dueling without needing to do so, which has the benefit of making her cards more difficult to counter without a decent background in Japanese sign language.
- Foil: Many original characters of the story play off their counterparts in some way. Hotene, while scarily proficient in Fusion Summoning, is also much younger than the more experienced Masumi, and therefore much more prone to impulsive behavior. Shen, Yaiba's practice partner and fellow Synchro Duelist, is older and less hot-headed than he is. Finally, Fuyu, who has very few friends besides his frequent tag-team partner Hokuto, is physically frail and emotionally fragile, leading to inconsistency in many of his Duels.
- Four Is Death: By the third time Masumi has her dream, she notes that the æmæth is later altered to read mæth. For the fourth and final time, she sees mæth has been altered again, to read "m4eth". She calls that a bad sign.
- Homage: (æ)mæth is one to the story of the Golem. Wendy Grimm reveals it to be the origin of the titular Arc Word of Masumi's dream: an ancient term derived from the Hebrew emet, meaning "truth". Later, Masumi's defeat of Dr. Grimm evokes the ending of the tale, in which erasing the first character of the word would leave met, or "death".
- Genre Savvy: Markus Streiter, the initial antagonist of (æ)donai, is shown to use his Gladiator Beasts far more pragmatically than the Battle Beast or even Sanders—the latter of whom is stated to have been his best student—ever did. When fighting in an Action Duel, Markus uses Gladiator Beast Heraklinos' effect to negate Action Cards simply by discarding any Action Cards he finds. Later, when he is forced into a Battle Royale against Masumi, he uses Gladiator Beast Domitianus' effect to turn all of his opponents' attacks against each other. Masumi notes that the result is almost the opposite of an attack lock—instead of preventing them from attacking, Markus opts to force his enemies into attacking anything and everything except the target they actually want.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Dr. Grimm's "Shadow of Fusion" Trap Card allows her Fusion Monsters to attack directly, allowing for her enemies to retain the monsters they control for when she brainwashes them into her allies. She quickly regrets this after Masumi figures out how to undo the brainwashing.
- (æ)lohim repeats this with its villain, who after downloading an entire supercomputer into the cybernetics implanted under his skin, quickly wishes he'd developed a fail-safe and a heat sink to match.
- Living Memory: Masumi unconsciously recreates an echo of Hokuto in her dream before the final Duel. His existence later becomes a Chekhov's Gun when she realizes that she has enough control over her dream to finally turn the tide in her favor.
- Meaningful Name: Every original character:
- Ito, the strange figure in Masumi's dream, takes its name from the Japanese word for "thread", referencing its Shaddoll Deck.
- Hotene Menoko's first and last name are both Ainu; her Ritual Beast Deck makes reference to the Ainu tongue as well.
- Li Shen's given name takes reference from the poet Yang Shen, who compiled a list of the nine children of the Dragon King, upon whom the monsters of the Yang Zing Deck he uses are themed.
- Fuyu Rokkaku is named for the "winter hexagon" asterism, represented by the ace monster of his tellarknight Deck.
- According to
Word of God: Wendy Grimm resembles an older Winda, Priestess of Gusto, (and by extension, El Shaddoll Winda), and has a similar first name. Her last name, Grimm, is taken from the Brothers Grimm, who wrote a variation of the classic tale of the Golem, which in turn lends itself to her nickname: the "Golem of Academia". Amusingly, the initials of her full name, Gwendolyn Grimm, are GG—gaming slang for "good game". - (æ)lohim:
- J.D. Crowley's full name is revealed as Jonathan Damon, which can be read both as the occultist John Dee and "Daemon", with his surname being the same as fellow occultist Aleister Crowley. These are loaded hints towards his Infernoid Deck, and his status as the true antagonist of the story.
- Rika Emina's name is derived from the Ainu language along with her friend Hotene's, setting her up for the Gusto Deck she is shown to use in (æ)donai.
- Q's name starts out simple enough: it's the first letter of the Qli Deck that the supercomputer Duels with. By the end of (æ)lohim, Q changes its gender to female, and its name to Angel-IQ, to reflect its wish to become a protector of the city like Masumi and her friends, while staying true to her synthetic nature.
- (æ)donai:
- Markus Streiter's surname is German for "fighter", referencing both his nickname of "Kämpfer" and his Gladiator Beast Deck.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Masumi's quest to find an answer for her strange dreams leads to her discovering that the monsters in her dreams are real. That culminates in her exposing a dangerous mole inside the Leo Duel School, and also recovering the memories Himika erased prior to the Maiami Championship.
- Mythology Gag: Most every original character uses Decks themed around the archetypes from the third generation of Duel Terminal. Q's character takes this one step further, creating a holographic appearance themed around a Tag Force character who uses Qliphorts.
- People Puppets: Dr. Grimm's Creepy Doll form can generate and control strings that attack their victims by burrowing under their skin, turning them into even more puppets.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Dr. Grimm doesn't stick around long after losing to Masumi.
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Kiku is blind, but shares a telepathic link with her sister that allows Kiku to see through her sister's eyes, allowing her to Duel despite her lack of sight. They can also extend this sense-sharing to other people—even their opponents to get a quick peek at the cards in their hand—though the effect can be disorienting.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Yaiba pulls this on Masumi after watching her lose three Duels in one day—as well as realizing she lied to Fuyu about wanting to unseal Hokuto, knowing full well it was impossible.
- Would Hurt a Child: The nameless Duelist in (æ)donai who forces Himika into Dueling him by training a sniper rifle on her infant daughter.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After Crowley is rendered comatose by Masumi's final attack, a disgusted Dr. Grimm puts him in an indefinite vegetative state and abandons him to the Standard Dimension's authorities. It's implied the former is the same fate that Masumi and her friends could have met in (æ)mæth.
