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Johann is an AU/EU (Extended Universe) that doesn't actually "spin off" from canon at any given point, based on TechnicolorNina's unfinished "All That We Are" series. Basically, I wrote the first half of the series and then stuff happened in real life that led to its going on indefinite hiatus (and hopefully coming off sometime soon).

SEVEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO (or possibly eight hundred, or not til next week)

It is a good time. Even the eternally-warring countries of Delain and Terchath within the Arc of Treaty are at peace thanks to the leadership of Delain's king, Jyuudai. The wild wanderers of South Delain, the Yaroni, have pledged their allegiance to the crown in appreciation of his half-Yaroni bride, Yubel, who has finally borne an heir--the young prince, Petram.

Then came the Light, and the world changed.

Reports began from border guards in West Delain began to bring disturbing news: the smell of death, burning, horses running wild for miles within the bounds of Terchath. Then came the boy, captured trying to come across the border with a bow slung over his back and a knife in his belt. Refusing to swear his allegiance for a place in the King's army, he was brought before Jyuudai and Yubel for judgment . . .

. . . when they discovered the raggedy-haired boy was no boy.

Orphaned by a king and army gone mad, the Terch girl named Ceile took clothes from her ruined village, bound her breasts, and made her way across the border, hoping to vanish into the wilderness. Instead she came to the castle, where she was adopted into the royal family--first as Yubel's servant, but increasingly as though she were the daughter of the going-on-elderly king and his dragon queen. This proved to be but a short reprieve--civil war in Terchath led to unrest in Delain, and soon the ragtag remains of a Light-infested Terch battalion--swelled by troops found in the march across Delain--found its way to Amneth, the Dailish capital and home of Jyuudai, Yubel, and their family on the very night of the celebration of Ceile's engagement-contract to a soldier Yubel found fitting.

Ceile, returning a necklace borrowed from Yubel for the celebration, was the first to discover the silenced and captured queen, and was asked to swear her loyalty to the Light. In a flash of inspiration she hid the necklace in her skirt and said she would bring the Queen's son, if they would give her time. Released by the rebels she fled to the servant quarter with Petram and entrusted him and the necklace to a maid, telling her that the gold chain and the precious gems--red firedim, golden topaz, purple heart's fire, beautiful deep greeneye, and blue amethyst and cloudstone all surrounding a capsule of precious amber and said to be long-ago gifts from a great king in another world--would, if parceled out carefully, buy passage to the distant country of Kashimin, where the maid could find a mage to send her and Petram much farther than the bounds of the Arc.

Freed of the boy, she fled to the court magician, Xaquirah, and found him dead--a trap set for her by suspicious servants of the Light. For her loyalty to the Crown and her adopted parents Ceile was beaten unconscious, dragged to a pool near the edge of the woods close to the castle, and drowned, her body cast into the water so it could never be buried.

The kingdom of Delain fell with the deaths of Jyuudai and Yubel at the hands of the mob, and for five hundred years in it there was Darkness to follow the Light.

Petram and his new nursemaid did make the journey to Kashimin, and from there to a strange city called Bremen in a country called Germany, in what its citizens called the year 1361. He died at the age of 21, father to three children, of the plague. All of the children possessed a unique ability to see strange spirits that they claimed to be animals that could talk.

. . . but the end of any story is only the beginning of another . . .

The Year 2005 (or New Year 1441, or Uncounted Time, or a place that is timeless)

A young boy named Johann Anderson has a story to tell. Orphaned at the age of ten under mysterious circumstances (on which he blames his fear of deep water--but will say no more), Johann's only source of happiness is Duel Monsters, a game in which he's indulged by the Bremen orphanage in which he's been placed. From small local tournaments he gets noticed and thrown quickly into the Junior Professional League, where he's noticed by Pegasus J. Crawford--who discovers the young boy with the oddly feminine face has a strange attachment to the deck he's been carrying around in search of an owner.

Pegasus promptly gives him the deck and finds the means to sponsor the boy as his legal ward over the summer so he can stay and study in the castle at Duelist Kingdom. After a series of victorious matches he's able to bring the boy to the attention of Kaiba Seto, and obtains late entry for him to North School--the European branch of the Duel Academia Johann has so longingly wished to attend. So quickly does Johann rise through the ranks of the school that in his second year (the third and final year for most students) he's selected as a transfer student to the main campus.

. . . . where an old friend, and a friend who is now an enemy, are waiting for him . . .

Kidnapped by Yubel in the Sand World, Johann is forced to face the truth: that he, himself was once the girl named Ceile who wore the necklace made of Julius Caesar's precious gems, and that his act in taking it was to take a power that had protected Delain for centuries . . . for the gold in the necklace was supposedly from the legendary Pandora's golden crown. Like a certain jar that should never have been opened, the necklace was never supposed to be broken, for if it was, its power would require a new vessel.

. . . a spirit buried in water is condemned to wander . . .

And so Johann became the human vessel of the Good Light of Hope, a strong power never intended to be wielded by any human being. This power will let him protect those he loves, to fulfil his dream of building bonds, and defend his closest friend and onetime father . . . but as one of Jyuudai's beloved superheroes could tell him, with great power comes great responsibility.

Johann's about to find out just how much.