Ten years ago, Ryoken saves Yusaku and runs away with him to save him from his own father. Now, Yusaku is part of the Hanoi and becomes Revolver's most trusted subordinate who hunts down all renegades, and more importantly, the Ignis. But there is someone capturing the lost incident kids and the Knights of Hanoi must save them while figuring out the Lightning's plans.
Re:Coded is a Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS is an Alternate Universe fanfic written by Jczala, exploring a For Want Of A Nail retelling of the Lost Incident where Ryoken frees Yusaku and escapes with him.
The fic is complete at 26 chapters and can be found on AO3 here.
It also has a Valentine's Day Episode, set before the events of the story.
The fic has no relation to the Kingdom Hearts coded remake also called Re:coded.
Re:Coded provides the following tropes:
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
- Yusaku is a close childhood friend of Ryoken and Spectre, and is close with the other members of the Knights of Hanoi, unlike in canon where they are enemies.
- Emma adopts and becomes the trio's big sister figure/caretaker and later, a spy for the Knights of Hanoi. She also has a relationship with Kusanagi.
- Yusaku and Kusanagi have less of a partnership here than in canon, and Takeru takes Yusaku's place helping out Kusanagi.
- Ryoken's relationship with his father is almost antagonistic in this fic, choosing to save the Lost Incident kids and fighting his father for their freedom. In canon, Ryoken's loyalty to his father runs up to a fault even after the latter's death.
- All the Ignis struck a close partnership with their origins. In canon, only Yusaku and Takeru were able to do so, and Aqua partners up with Aoi instead of Miyu.
- Adaptational Heroism: The Knights of Hanoi aren't as villainous in hunting down the Ignis compared to their canon counterparts, even protecting LINK VRAINS from behind the scenes.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- Lightning, while still having the same attitude in canon, only desires in order to protect his origin Jin. Once Queen usurps him to be the Big Bad, he teams up with the Knights of Hanoi to save his partner.
- Spectre loses his Faux Affably Evil nature and sadistic tendencies from canon, in here, he's very friendly to his allies and is Vitriolic Best Buds with Yusaku.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Aqua in canon chose to join the humans. Here, they join forces with Lightning in his quest and enslaved Miyu into doing her bidding. But she's not as extreme as him and gave the Knights of Hanoi vital clues on their whereabouts once she feels like he's crossing the line.
- The other three lost incident victims (Miyu, Jin, and Zephyr) fall into the rogue Ignis's control and oppose the Knights of Hanoi and SOL Technologies at the start of the story.
- Dr. Kogami, unlike his Anti-Villain canon counterpart, has no remorse in using kids for his experiments, even outright calls Yusaku by his designation number instead of his name once they meet again.
- Adapted Out: Go Onizuka isn't mentioned anywhere in the story even when Charisma duelists are mentioned to exist. Bohman doesn't exist as his predecessor Haru has more impact in the story.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Aoi skips her Blue Angel avatar and is using her Blue Girl alias at the start of the story.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Lightning takes over SOL Technologies, knocks everyone inside unconscious, and forcefully logging in duelists to LINK VRAINS and trapping them to draw out the Knights of Hanoi.
- Alternate Universe: An alternate telling where Ryoken runs away with Yusaku instead of calling the police.
- Attempted Rape: An imitation of Revolver created by the Maze of Simulation took advantage of Yusaku's trust and began ravishing him, but Yusaku figures out he's a fake since Revolver wouldn't do anything that would compromise the mission. The real Revolver is not pleased after finding out what happened.
- Berserk Button: Hurting Yusaku will earn the Revolver's wrath, as his father and the Imitation Knight found out the hard way. He will also react the same way when the other origins are injured.
- Beta Couple: Spectre and Aoi serve as a foil for Yusaku and Ryoken. While the latter knew each other ever since childhood and are borderline Sickening Sweethearts, Spectre met Aoi later in life and the two share the opposite dynamic as Specter made it his mission to tease and court her and Aoi confused with her feelings before getting together in the epilogue.
- Big Bad: Lightning reveals himself as the one who kidnapped the three missing Lost Incident kids. Queen, with the help of the Laplace, takes center stage in the second half after Yusaku and Ryoken defeat Lightning.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- In chapter 8, Soulburner makes his debut in a fiery tornado and challenges Windy to let Spectre and Playmaker pursue their target. In the same chapter, Emma saves the latter two and Blue Girl from Aqua and lightning.
- Just as Yusaku is about to pass out from being choked in chapter 10, Revolver dynamically appears and attacks the culprit.
- A revived Ai arrives just as Yusaku was about to give up in his fight against Queen and encourages him to continue the duel.
- Catapult Nightmare: Yusaku experiences this many times in the story, most of his nightmares are related to his Dark and Troubled Past but some dreams are actually his Link Sense acting up. Ryoken experiences one after Yusaku was heavily injured in a mission.
- The Corruption: The Laplace corrupts any program or person it encodes itself to, making them villainous or turning them into self-aware puppets. Ghost Girl and Blood Shepherd fall under Laplace's control after a botched operation and are forced to fight their allies, Queen is hinted to have fallen into Sanity Slippage after linking her mind to it, and Revolver is also corrupted by it after Queen's attempt to turn him into her knight and would have turned bloodthirsty and destroyed everything if he wasn't stopped.
- Divide and Conquer: After the heroes started the raid to the Cyberse World, Lightning quickly split them apart before forcing them to fight their captured friends to weaken their resolve, as he explains to Revolver.
- Doorstopper: The fic sits at 248845 words and 26 chapters, passes the 250,000 threshold if you count the Valentine short story.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Yusaku and Ryoken are able to confess their feelings and get together, but not before going through the wringer after that almost got one of them killed. The Ignis find a way to survive with their origins without using the Neuron Link Program, and everyone else lives happily. Finally, Queen is detained and the Laplace, while still inside Ryoken, is dormant with hints of it being dismantled.
- Everyone Can See It: Nearly everyone can see just how close Yusaku and Ryoken really are, no matter how they deny it. Takeru and Kiku even think they are a couple just after meeting them in their hometown and Kusanagi says they're more than friends and less than lovers.
- Evil Knockoff: Windy's domain can feed the intruder its most desired thing or person to trick them, creating the Imitation Knight that looks like a maskless version of Revolver.
- Finale Title Drop: Ai drops the title as the second last line of the fic as another way to describe the miracle that happened in the climax of the story.
- Foreshadowing:
- There are some hints scattered in the story where the three kidnapped origins still have their free will intact. Then it turns out that the lost incident kids were never brainwashed and followed their Ignis partners willingly.
- Yusaku's dream in Laplace is Ryoken saying goodbye and leaving him behind. After Queen was captured and everything settling down, Ryoken did say goodbye to him in a dream and disappeared without warning.
- For Want Of A Nail: Revolver's decision to run away with Yusaku in tow instead of calling the police has drastic changes to everyone in the story.
- The Gadfly: Spectre loves to tease Yusaku for his inept ability to read the signs and Aoi, who he has a crush on. Emma also joins in teasing the former to a certain extent.
- Godzilla Threshold:
- The Neuron Link Program is created by Dr. Kogami as a last-ditch attempt to kill the Ignis by combining the Ignis' and origin's minds, killing the Ignis wherever they are but also leave the origins braindead. This is such a big deal that Lightning is desperate for its location and Ai is willing to die so Yusaku and the others won't die from it.
- As the Laplace is corrupting his mind into madness and kill everyone he loves, Revolver activates the Tower of Hanoi and links it to his mind in a desperate Suicide by Cop gambit to stop the Laplace inside him.
- Heroic Suicide:
- Ai asks Ryoken to inject a virus in him just in case, and activates it after his battle with Lightning to protect Yusaku. It's only thanks to Ryoken somewhat breaking their promise by creating Pandor that he's brought back to life.
- Ryoken attempts a Suicide by Cop by creating the Tower of Hanoi to destroy the old LINK VRAINS and himself, preventing the Laplace from taking over his mind and destroying everything.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
- Spectre fights a mind-controlled Blue Girl and ups his taunt game to slowly break the control. It works, but she still fades away, or would have if it wasn't for Aqua's intervention.
- At the same time, Soulburner reluctantly fights his childhood friend Kiku who was kidnapped and controlled by Windy. He successfully snaps her out of it then she encourages him to attack her since she has a card that can end the duel in a tie but is actually a lie so he can survive.
- In Medias Res: Every chapter starts with a flashback from Yusaku and Ryoken's past, before moving forward to the present timeline.
- In Spite of a Nail: The Tower of Hanoi still appears even if the Knights of Hanoi never destroy LINK VRAINS.
- Mythology Gag:
- Soulburner's Big Entrance against Blood Shepherd is similar to his debut in the show proper.
- The Tower of Hanoi makes its appearance in the final chapters, only this time it was able to activate.
- Ryoken's markings after his corruption is described as looking like a duel gazer tattoo.
- Named by the Adaptation: Windy's unnamed origin is named Zephyr in this fic.
- Not Brainwashed: When it's revealed that Miyu, Jin, and Zephyr fight alongside their Ignis, everyone thought that all the rogue Ignis have fully taken control of their partners and worked for ways to save them. It's revealed they are not, and the three lost incident victims willingly joined their Ignis partners for different reasons.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Kusanagi admits that if he's given the chance, he would have a chance of making the same decisions as Lightning. This helps the latter realize his errors and promises to take his partner back to make up for his mistakes.
- People Puppets: Queen's Laplace can control anyone she defeats, as she forces Emma and Blood Shepherd to fight their allies while still aware and unable to fight back from the inside.
- Psychological Torment Zone:
- A variant with Windy's domain. It is programmed to read the intruder's heart and feeds them what they desire to get their guard down; manifesting a fake Revolver for Playmaker who took advantage of him.
- The Laplace can feed anyone trapped in its realm their worst nightmares, as Playmaker painfully found out after Queen traps him and Revolver inside it.
- Psycho Prototype: The Laplace is actually created from Lightning, who becomes too intelligent for his own good and caused so many malfunctions that Dr. Kogami restructured Lightning to remove this part of his programming. Unfortunately, this part of him survived and Queen managed to extract it from Lightning to use it for her own ends.
- The Reveal:
- Lightning uncovers that Ai is hiding the fact he has a second origin, Ryoken himself. His interactions with Yusaku in his captivity created another source code, and explains why Ai is different from the other Ignis.
- Just before he's decompiled, Ai explains he hid the Neuron Link program in his body and is the reason why he's running away from Lightning at the start of the story.
- In chapter 15, a video file reveals that Queen tricked and experimented on Lightning to for her own ends which is the reason why Lightning is sour towards humanity. Later, it's revealed she extracted the Laplace and merged her mind with it.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Everyone knows that Yusaku and Ryoken only have eyes for each other as soon as they hit their teens, yet still deny their feelings when asked. Meanwhile, Spectre states many times he is only interested in Aoi after he met her on a mission.
- Shout-Out:
- Ryoken describes Yusaku's Playmaker avatar as a a drifting cloud that protects the Knights of Hanoi from an independent standpoint.
- Yusaku threatens to turn Ai into a Tentomon after one too many teasing.
- Haru compares the effects of the Laplace to a fear toxin.
- Aqua's hideout is reminiscent of the interior of Elsa's frozen castle. Ai even gives this a lampshade.'Someone’s been watching Frozen,' Ai commented, whistling in awe.
- Sleep Cute: Twice in the story Yusaku catches Ryoken asleep and thinks he is cute. Ai teases them a lot about this, and Ryoken even jokingly tells Ai that they take naps together in kindergarten.
- Taking the Bullet:
- In chapter 13, Revolver shields Playmaker from Haru's sword attack and gets skewered in his stomach for his troubles.
- Jin protects Lightning from a strong attack from Cyberse Clock Dragon's attacks, revealing that he was never under Lightning's control the whole time and only pretended to do so to make it easier to fool everyone.
- Their First Time: Just after a harrowing ordeal that sent Revolver to a coma for three chapters, finally admitting their feelings for each other, and a foreboding nightmare, Yusaku visits Ryoken a night before the final battle and consummates their relationship in Chapter 17.
- There Are No Therapists: Unlike his canon counterpart, Yusaku didn't get any help for his trauma because they were hiding from the Knights of Hanoi. Like Yusaku, Takeru became a Hikikomori and has a lot of issues when Yusaku and Ryoken visited him in his hometown. They both learn how to cope with the trauma and live normally again after the Lost Incident with the help of friends and newfound family. The only one who did get into therapy is Jin, who was catatonic until Lightning recruited him.
- Trickster Mentor: Emma. Her three charges mention many times they're used of her using them as baits in missions, and Soulburner gets a taste of this in his first mission where she set him up against Blood Shepherd, who is unhappy once he learns of her machinations.
