((A/N: Those of you who know the horribly long story behind fanfic, you know the story. Those who don't, you don't need to. All you need to know is that this is a massive crossover thing, and that it'll be one hell of a ride, I assure you. *those who don't know any of these series (Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Duel Masters, and Yu-Gi-Oh!), please ignore the comments at the end. The story should be able to be read by those who don't know anything just fine... I hope.*

((On with the story~))

The Gibsellent Diaries:: Book I: Darkness:: Prologue: In Eden

In Eden I sit. Sprawling gardens of lush, green fields full of cherry trees and rose bushes lie before me. I sit on the warm grass, admiring the landscape. Curious, I look to the sky, hoping to find the sun glaring back down on me, punishing my eyes for peering in on its heavenly affairs, but find only a black nothingness above. There are no stars, no planets, no comets. It's not the roof of my wordly home I see, but rather the piercing emptiness of a dream.

In Eden I wait. I am waiting for someone. I have met this someone before, but only in my dreams. The man with the silvery white hair and the polite-looking suit, the one who reminds me of the man I knew before, the man I swore never to see again and yet longed to meet once more. But I don't know why he is here, when he is coming, or even what his name is. Nor the name of his twin, the one who sticks pins into those little dolls of his, a new one every time. I don't know why he sticks the pins in, but I do know that he doesn't do it for pleasure.

In Eden I sigh. I look around at my surroundings. Behind me is an open pathway leading to a circular court with a goliath tree at its center. Compelled, I lift the ruffles of my dress, stand, and stride toward the court.

The closer I get to the court, the more my feet seem to drag as though attached to lead weights. The struggle becomes more and more noticeable as the court becomes clearer to me. I can see now that the tree in the court's center is a fruit-bearing tree, and a ferociously tall one at that. It nearly touches the darkness of the heavens. Or perhaps it does; perhaps it has been lost within them, forever stretching on into oblivion. Perhaps it is the largest tree that anyone has ever seen, and that anyone will ever come to know. And perhaps I am the only one to see it.

My head returns to Eden around me. The court is directly in front of me. I limp along toward it, moving at a pace a slug could outrun.

Finally I reach the court, and immediately sit down on a giant root of the monstrously large tree, exhausted.

"Powerful, isn't it?"

My head snaps to where the voice is coming from behind me. And there he is, silvery hair shimmering in the brilliance of the paradise before us. I see his face for the first time. His smile is warm, and all too welcoming. But his eyes... his eyes are painfully void of emotion. Taken aback, I stutter before returning his question, "Y-yes... it is." I nod shakily, breaking from his glance.

Behind him I see his twin. I call to him, "Hey, you!" And he turns round to look back at me. His twin nods in acknowledgment, then returns to his voodoo. The doll he has today has hair of pink, black, and gold that stands on end. He sticks a particularly long pin clean through the center of its forehead, through a painted-on golden eye. I wince. What if this is causing pain to the doll's likeness?

I cough. "Where... where is this place?" I ask.

"Eden, of course," replies the empty-eyed man matter-of-factly.

"Of course..." I begin, but am too disturbed to reply. These two are nothing like I imagined they'd be from the dreams I've had in the past.

The voodoo boy picks up a black case from beside him that I haven't seen before, puts his dolls and pins away in it, and looks up at the black sky. He sighs. He seems to be looking for someone in the darkness, but finds no one.

"Do you know why you're here?" Asks the other man.

"Huh?" I ask, turning to him. "Oh, no. Can you tell me why?"

The man smiles sadly. "I'm afraid I can't. But Ryou over there might be able to," he nods to the voodoo boy.

At the sound of what must be his name, the boy's head rises. The other man asks the boy if he knows why I am here. He responds, "We're not sure. She is expected, but we don't know why." I don't know if he's reffering to himself as "we" because he's royalty, or because of a personality issue.

"Pity," says the other man. I look to him. "I'm White, by the way," he adds, extending his hand.

"Alice," I reply, and shake his hand.

"Alice? The Queen of Wonderland?" He asks.

The question catches me off-guard. No one's ever addressed me as that; but I suppose if this is a dream and anything can happen, then it shouldn't be a surprise if one should find a fictional character like her lying around. "Um, no," I stammer, "I believe that Alice was a blond." (I'm a redhead) "I'm Alice Gehabich, granddaughter of Michael Gehabich, the great scientist."

White frowns. "I've never heard of him," he says.

"Really?"

"No."

I frown as well. Most people have heard of him. "Where are you from?" I ask.

"Japan," he replies.

"Well, I am Russian, but his influence has spread there plenty already." It troubles me that he doesn't know him.

"I'm probably just not from your planet," he shrugs. He says it as if it's no big deal.

All I can say is, "... Huh?"

He shakes his head. "Never mind. Anyway," he gestures to the other boy, who is now sitting on the root behind me with his legs crossed and the black case in his lap, "this is Ryou Bakura. He's my partner, a master of darkness, while I specialize in light."

Ryou waves. I wave back. "Hi," I offer.

"Hi," he returns. "What's your name?" He asks.

"Alice Gehabich," I offer my hand as well.

He takes it. "Nice to meet you."

I like the look of Ryou's eyes much better than White's. Ryou's are warm and brown, like the brownies Runo used to bake for us. Runo...

"Good to see we're all acquainted," says White. I look round and see that his smile is a bit more genuine now. Seems he's hard to earn the trust of, though he must be warming up to me by now.

Then there are White's eyes. Pale, harsh, and unforgiving, they seem like the kind of eyes a mercinary might wear. And yet, like a double-edged sword, there also seemed to be a hidden kindness among them, as though he might be an invaluable friend if I could ever make one of him.

I smile. "It is."

Ryou smiles, too. I like his the best. It's sweet and that naked kind of compassionate that you only get from a person who's had something horrible happen to him that's made him horribly thankfully of every little mercy he can come across.

"Well then," says White, "I may as well explain the tree, right?" With a suit like his, I figured he'd have a more polite speech pattern. But no, he was far more casual than I'd expected.

"We're curious, too," says Ryou. Again with the "we". I'd have to ask about that later.

As though reading my mind, White says out of the blue, "Oh, don't worry about that, he addresses himself as 'we' out of habit is all."

Shocked, I stutter, "H-how can you read my mind?"

White blinks, as though this has never occured to him to be a strange thing. "Ah, sorry about that, probably should've warned you. Certain thoughts I can read. But don't worry, I-"

"I don't trust people who have to tell me twice not to worry about one thing or another," I say defensively.

"Alice doesn't like us?" Ryou asks.

"I've barely met the two of you," I reply. I can't admit that I want to trust him more, even though it's just based off what I think of their eyes.

"Eyes, huh?" White asks, smiling smugly as though he's been let in on a great secret.

"Stop that!" I shout. I feel my face growing redder. What else has he heard?

He laughs a bit under his breath. "Sorry about that. I can stop if you want?"

"I don't trust you to listen to me," I growl.

He shrugs. "Oh well. Your choice. I already know more than you want me to."

My flush spreads. "You're bluffing... you have to be!"

He smiles evilly. It's a horrible smile that chills me to the bone. "'Fraid not, deary." He leans in close to me, puts his finger under my chin, and lifts my head up to face him. "I could read your whole mind if I wanted to. Your deepest secrets, your darkest memories...

"... But that'd be boring." He releases me and turns around in one motion. "Anyway. The tree releases the worst in us. The tree of sin, so to speak. It looks different to everyone. To me, it looks like a regular apple tree, floating above the Earth. To you it looks like something different, but I can't tell what."

I grumble something nasty about him while he's not looking. I think he may've heard it anyway.

"So?" He asks, turning around, acting like he didn't hear what I'd said. "What does it look like to you, m'Lady Alice?"

I sneer. "I see a goliath tree in a vast garden, but no sky above us, even though there's plenty of light. The sky is black, no stars, no sun, no nothing." I answer.

"Hmm," White says. He mumbles something probably about what it means about my character. "And you, Ryou?"

The boy doesn't look up at first. "We... we see a forest half-covered in darkness. At the meeting point is this giant tree, in full-bloom, not yet ready to bear fruit. The darkness is cruel, but the light is blinding. We can choose neither."

White says nothing. I look round at him, and he is frowning, eyes melancholic, unable to do much but sympathize. He knows what it means, and I know it as well. Poor thing. The strange part is, it's happened to me, as well. A long time ago...

"Well," says White, "it's almost morning on the other side."

"How do you know?" I ask.

He smiles a bit and taps his head. "Mind-reader."

Before I can wonder about who's mind he's reading, He fades out into a burst of colorful light. I turn to ask Ryou what's going on, but he's gone as well. And before I know it...

... I woke.

Prologue End

((A/N2: Please look to the artist's comments on the deviantART prologue page at .com/art/GD-Prologue-In-Eden-172192195 for more information on the statuses of the characters in the storyline. For now, assume that this is all AU, but that normal canon to a point is allowed.

((Now then. How's about a little preview for your time? :)

Preview of Chapter I: (still Alice's POV)

I woke in a cold sweat. "What was that dream about...?" I asked myself, rubbing my eyes.

A yawn shook me from the memories of the odd night. The alarm clock blared beside me. I slammed it off, crawled out of bed, got dressed. I tried to remember what I was dreaming about, but when I couldn't figure it out quick enough I shrugged it off and proceeded to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Never could I get used to the dank, dark-gray walls of my room in Bakugan Interspace. How strange it was, now that I thought about it, that I was even here. It seemed like one day we were all innocent little kids playing our innocent little game, until one day the adults said we should have a special day where everyone from all over the world should come and play together... but they tricked us. They locked us in here. And we still don't know why...

((A/N3: Some basic stuff about the series I'm using.

((For Bakugan, only the original and NV have happened, and Bakugan Interspace is up and running, but something has gone wrong... Two years have passed since NV, so Alice is 19, Dan is 17, Marucho is 16, etc.

((For DM, I'm using the manga, but for now let's just say that DM, DM Charge, and DM Cross have happened. Since most people haven't read the manga, so I'll be explaining in great detail with lots of metaphors relating to pheonixes and dragons and all that jazz. You'll know it when you see it. And yes, Haku-chan's hair is indeed white in the manga. Seven years have passed since the beginning of the story, so Shoubu is 18, Hakuoh/Whitey Boy is 20, Mimi is 17, Kokujou is ~22ish, Yuu is ~16, Zakira is ~23 (I know, Mimi was 10? Zakira was 17? But they're canon, so oh well ), etc.

((For YGO, I'm going by the manga, to the dot. I'm not playing around with any details, although I am applying a lot of theories, so watch out for those. About a year has passed since Yuugi and co. graduated High School, so Ryou-kun here is about 19. He didn't go to college, though. He stayed behind to help his father with the museum and has a small kiosk in Domino Mall where he sells keychains and little sculptures that he makes part-time :) Unfortunately, though, the Spirit of the Millenium Ring didn't just leave him alone kindly like he should've...

((And that's about all I can spoil for now. See you next chapter!~

((~Elly))