- 6 months after the battle with Diva. 6 months after sealing the Quantum Cube in Kaiba’s impossible space station. Yugi feels more than a bit lost and restless. The grief is still raw and renewed. The Shadows are supposed to be locked to all but a few, until Yugi stumbles upon a Game by chance. Two brothers hold the Magic, their key to survival. And as he trains and raises them, the question stands; could more of the next generation hold their Magic as well?—The Summary
Next Generation of Shadows
is a Yu-Gi-Oh! & Yu-Gi-Oh! GX crossover fanfiction written by PhoenixstarKina.
Six months after the end of Yu Gi Oh The Darkside Of Dimensions, Yugi goes for a walk when he encounters a Cyber Dragon—previously one of three gone missing—curled protectively around two very young children in an alleyway, who are being threatened by a man with a gun who's hell-bent on selling them into human trafficking. After killing the man, Yugi takes the children home and eventually adopts them.
Next Generation of Shadows contains the following tropes:
- Adaptational Nationality:
- Zane and Syrus are half-Russian/half-Japanese.
- Seto and Mokuba are of Japanese, Russian, and German heritage.
- Jaden is half-Japanese/half-American (the latter on his father's side).
- Adoptive Name Change: Zane and Syrus Marufuji are given the surname Mutou when Yugi adopts them.
- Age Lift: Mai is stated as having been seventeen when she participated in Duelist Kingdom, in contrast to her canon age of twenty-four.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Rafael has feelings for Yugi, but they are unrequited due to Yugi being in love with and married to Atem.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Jaden's biological parents get charged with child endangerment, child abandonment, attempted murder (for the times Jaden was out in extreme weather conditions) and an unpaid parking ticket.
- Big Eater: Yugi reminisces about when he and Joey could go through five pizzas in one sitting, noting that Joey can still go through five pizzas in one sitting.
- Cast Full of Gay: It's easier to list the people who are in male/female relationships than it is to list the amount of male/male relationships.
- Children Raise You: Adopting Zane and Syrus gets Yugi out of his depressive funk that he's been stuck in since the incident with Diva.
- Disguised in Drag: Yugi and Seto have to do this at one point in order to sneak into an all-female village of duel spirits.
- Don't Split Us Up: One of the reasons why Yugi adopted Zane and Syrus is so they would't go into foster care or an orphanage, lest they be split apart.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: After Shadow-traveling himself and his sons away from Raviel, Yugi blacks out and has a dream of Zane, Syrus, Jaden, Alexis, and Atticus at Duel Academy talking about how they re-sealed the Sacred Beasts.
- Friend to All Children: Mana (The Dark Magician Girl) is good with kids, a fact Yugi notes upon observing Mana's initial interactions with Syrus and Zane.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Joey refers to Jaden as "Jaden Alexander Yuki" at one point.
- Happily Adopted:
- Zane and Syrus by Yugi.
- Jaden by Seto and Joey.
- Homeschooled Kids: Syrus, Zane, and Jaden end up being homeschooled until they're old enough to go to Duel Academy because of a number of reasons, the biggest being that it's impossible to explain to the faculty of public and private schools alike about the dragons that Zane keeps involuntarily summoning.
- Kid Fic: Has a strong focus on being this (especially in the earlier chapters), but isn't without its own fair share of action.
- One-Steve Limit: According to the author, the dub names were used in order to prevent the confusion that would arise from there being both a "Ryou Bakura" and a "Ryo(u) Moto".
- Original Character: Amanda Princeton, the mother of Slade, Jagger, and Chazz Princeton.
- Patchwork Fic:
- The fic takes place in a universe where the events of both The Dark Side of Dimensions and Bonds Beyond Time happened, as well as the events of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light.
- Although all the characters have their dub names (with the notable exception of Malik), the story is set in Japan and Yubel is referred to by They/Them pronouns.
- Prematurely Grey-Haired: As Yugi points out at the start of the fic, Pegasus is "thirty-two years old and already gray."
- Promotion to Parent:
- Before being adopted by Yugi, Zane was the one looking after Syrus.
- Nineteen-year-old Yugi finds himself the adoptive parent of two children.
- Related in the Adaptation: In canon, Yugi, Zane, Syrus, Jaden, Seto, and Joey were unrelated to each other and only Jaden ever had any sort of meaningful interaction with the previous generation when Yugi gave Jaden his Winged Kuriboh card. Here, Yugi is the adoptive father of Zane and Syrus, while Seto and Joey are the adoptive parents of Jaden.
- The Reveal: The reason why Zane and Syrus can use magic and summon Duel Monsters is because their mother possessed the soul of a Duel Spirit (like Kisara), and when she died she was reincarnated into Silent Magician.
- Seen It All: Considering the kinds of things Yugi and his friends have gone through over the past few years, Joey takes the news that Yugi has adopted two children pretty well, pointing out that it's the tamest thing Yugi's done.
- Shopping Montage: The day after adopting his sons, Yugi, Joey, Mokuba, Zane and Syrus go on an all-expenses-paid shopping spree courtesy of KaibaCorp to buy stuff that Zane and Syrus will need as two new members of Yugi's family.
- Shout-Out: When faced with the problem of how to get into an all-female village of duel spirits, Joey tells Yugi that he has to "Dress in drag and do the Hula."
- Trademark Favorite Food: Syrus loves strawberries, and Jaden loves shrimp (as in canon).
