After Roget's defeat, Yuya, Sawatari, Gongenzaka, and Kurosaki are drawn into the Xyz Dimension and arrive in Heartland, Kurosaki's home. Kurosaki leaves to contact the Resistance, leaving the others to explore. Yuya tries to call Yuzu on his Duel Disk but cannot get a signal, and presumes she wasn't sent to this dimension. The three see a woman at a fountain and run to her, but she sees the Duel Disks on their arms and flees. The three picks up her supplies and search for her, and find another man getting carded by three lower-ranked Academia duelists. The three continue their search and find the woman hiding with her children, and she begs for them to spare the kids. The three throw their Duel Disks over to her to show they aren't a threat, and Yuya opens a can of food for one of the children.
As the family eats, the woman asks who they are if not from Academia. Yuya explains they're looking for Yuzu and asks about the Resistance, and the woman says the Resistance has been destroyed, and blames dueling for the state of their world. The three Academia duelists find them, and Yuya and his friends prepare to duel them. The students don't recognize their Duel Disk types and wonder where they're from. Yuya explains about the Lancers and that they duel to stop war and bring happiness, and exposits the events of the Synchro arc to the three. Off-screen during the flashbacks, the duel continues and Yuya, Gongenzaka and Sawatari eventually defeat the three.
The students flee and are intercepted and carded by a new duelist - Kaito Tenjou. As Yuya and his friends stare at him, Kaito Tenjou raises his Duel Disk and challenges them.
Meanwhile, Kurosaki looks for the Resistance and finds their base empty. In flashbacks, he remembers fighting alongside Yuto and finding out about Reiji. Forming a plan to use Reiji as a hostage to negotiate with Leo, he travels to Standard to find Reiji. Kurosaki thinks he thought an alliance with Reiji would help him save Ruri, but it got him nowhere.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Clip Show: Yuya narrates the events of the Synchro Arc to three Academia students in this episode's second half.
- Death of a Child: Once again shown with Academia's carding. But it's notable here in that a flashback showed them carding an actual infant.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Duel between Yuya, Gongenzaka, Sawatari, and the three Academia duelists happens entirely offscreen to make room for flashbacks and exposition.
- Title Drop: Played with. The name of Academia's plan to fuse the dimensions is called the "ARC Area Project."
- Viewers Are Goldfish: The Synchro arc flashbacks include things that happened just one episode ago. Especially glaring since this episode and the last were packaged into a one-hour special (only due to
Schedule Slip, but still). - Well-Intentioned Extremist: Academia is implied to be this; a flashback has a student say their plan is to fuse all four dimensions into one that will be a utopia.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Kurosaki's flashbacks explain how he and Yuto went to the Standard Dimension.
