"Oh daddy, daddy, can I pleeeease get a red ribbon for my hair?" a bouncy young girl pointed with all her strength at the shiny ribbon hanging off the top of the booth, her pink backpack with Gina embroidered just below the zipper bouncing along with her excited rhythm.

"Well, we've already spent a lot today honey, don't you already have a ribbon?" a middle-aged man standing next to her answered, with thinning hair and a tired expression permanently adorning his face.

"But this one is red!" the girl screeched so loudly that the clerk winced and covered her ears.

"No, we really can't, let's go home now," her father grabbed her hand and started walking down the boardwalk, other hand clutching his temple in frustration.

Something glittery caught the little girl's eye as she walked the fairgrounds with her distracted father, his hold on her hand loosening. She slipped out of his grip and ran off toward the distraction.

"Gina! Gina!" the man shouted in her direction, but he was quickly separated from her retreating form by a wall of shoppers.

Gina found a golden necklace, in the vague shape of a key, hanging on an old fence. She gasped, taking a moment to simply admire how beautiful it was, before reaching out to untangle the cord the wires of the fence.

But when she turned around, the shopping boardwalk was gone. The floor fell out and turned into a jagged pathway with both sides falling into a pitch-black, incomprehensibly deep hole. She could barely make out a square shape blocking the path further along, and began running toward it.

The path twisted and turned in empty space, getting so impossibly thin at some points that she had to use all her concentration on not miss-stepping and falling into the infinite abyss. After what seemed like ages she made it to the square shape, which turned out to be a door.

A door with a face on it, staring down at her cruelly. "Whoever opens this door will gain great power, but lose their most precious thing."

Gina stared up at the door stupidly, her mouth hanging open. "Did a door just talk to me?"

"Do you accept my contract?"

Gina looked down at her hands, where the necklace she'd picked up earlier somehow rested. She tried to recall holding onto it, but it escaped her. "How did I get this?"

"Open the door and gain great power."

Her eyes looked once more upon the intimidating door, and its embedded eyes flashed gold. "Okay." She placed the necklace into the door and it exploded with energy, the chains breaking off and revealing a world of flashing turquoise and indigo. Something was flying towards her, impossible to make out. A…person? No, it couldn't… before she could finish her thought, the person-shaped bolt of blue pierced her eye, surrounding her in flashing panels of light. The floor was suddenly gone, and she fell into a sea of light blue, flashing and spinning all around, a voice booming into her, "You are my vessel, my avatar, I shall use you for what must be done," and suddenly she felt nothing anymore, trapped in some strange energetic gel, eyes unfocused.

Her body picked itself up from the ground, eyes an unearthly yellow. The sounds of laughter and happy shoppers made her cringe, her face twisting into a growling grimace. "Disgusting…" she whispered under her breath, her voice pitched to a much lower tone. How dare they live, happy and carefree, when ze barely escaped with zir's life?

Gina's fingers flexed experimentally, strings of blue energy erupting from her fingertips and coalescing into a ball. Her mouth flipped into a smile, and she chuckled deeply. The joy of the shoppers quickly turned to screams as she threw the ball into the crowd and it exploded. Those within 5 feet of the bomb could almost be called fortunate, as they died instantly instead of being burned with blue fire, screaming in agony until the pain was too much as they passed out. The whole district erupted into a panic as firemen rushed to the scene, flailing uselessly against the otherwordly destruction.

"Are you alright?" a uniform-clad man approached Gina in the flames.

"Of course I am," she frowned at him, glaring daggers.

"You sound like you might have smoke inhalation, your voice is scratchy. Come with me," he grabbed her hand –

"Don't touch me, you disgusting creature!" she screamed, her voice even lower. A spear flew out of her hand and she stabbed through the man's stomach. He gurgled as blood poured out of his mouth, Gina stepping over his prone body and leaving the scene.

"Didn't you see the news, Yuma?" Akari has grabbed onto the hood of his jacket, stopping his mad rush from the house.

"Why on earth would I watch the news?"

"Because they shut everything down! They think there might have been a terrorist attack last night, and similar explosions have been cropping up all over the city. Look," she turned on the TV, and manhandled Yuma onto the couch.

Plumes of blue fire filled the television screen, mad scrambling to save people from the destruction in the foreground.

"Why's the fire blue?" Yuma blurted out the first thing he thought, cringing and closing his eyes at a particularly horrific clip. "And can we turn that off? Please?"

Akari shut off the television and turned to Yuma, staring at him intently. "Yuma, this is serious. People are dying. Nobody knows why the fire is blue and why we can't put it out. Do you know anything about what could have happened?"

Yuma frowned up at his sister, "Why would I know anything? Seriously, you're always accusing me of stuff!" his eyes darted to the floor.

That fire looked like something from the Astral World, Yuma. We should go find out what's happening.

"Okay, but we're all staying indoors. No going out to duel, there won't be anyone to duel anyway in this mess," Akari sighed, opening her computer. "I'm going to investigate a bit more."

Yuma quietly went upstairs and opened his window, climbing onto the roof.

"This is a bad idea, Yuma," Astral materialized before him, watching as he strung together bed sheets from the room below his attic space and attached them to his hammock.

"You said that fire was from the Astral World. Whatever is going on, we'll have to deal with it," he shot the door downstairs a dirty look. "No matter what Akari says."

"But what if something happens? I have no idea what's happening. Perhaps if I had more memories I would understand…"

"Let's just go!" Yuma grabbed hold of his makeshift ladder and scooted down the side of his house, perhaps not as smoothly as he would have liked. He landed on the ground with a crash, wincing as he gingerly patted his back. "Okay, can you like, do anything to figure out where to go then?" he looked up at Astral floating above him with a forehead scrunched in concern.

"I honestly do not know. Perhaps we could just look around?"

At each explosion location they visited, they were greeted with the same scene: people in a panic and an ever-expanding wall of energy that was literally eating the city itself. It didn't even look like fire close up, but a shimmering expanse of stars clustered tightly together.

"Yuma," Astral tried to get the boy's attention as he ran to another part of the city. "Yuma!"

"What is it, Astral?" Yuma spun on the spot, stopping in the middle of the pavilion.

"I think…I think the Astral World is absorbing the human one," Astral looked across the city, explosions of blue stardust marking where they had visited already.

"But…why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, it's obvious isn't it?" a voice that modulated from high to low broke into their semi-private conversation. "It's to save our world." Yuma and Astral turned to see a little girl with a dark expression and glinting gold eyes.

"Who are you?" Yuma shouted, the girl's glare piercing his soul.

"How did this boy break you? No matter, I will kill him," she ignored Yuma's words, addressing Astral and creating a knife of astral energy.

"What? No, don't touch him!" Astral moved in front of Yuma, but the girl merely stepped through him and stabbed Yuma in the chest, the astral energy tearing him apart and making a gaping wound. Yuma fell backwards, clutching the hole in his body, struggling to breathe.

"Yuma!" Astral was instantly by his side, "Yuma, no, please don't disappear…" tears fell from his eyes, streaming down his face. Yuma smiled and tried to say something, but his eyes drooped and nothing but a sad cough came out. "Yuma."

Astral desperately tried to clutch to Yuma's body, but was incorporeal as ever. His tears fell through Yuma's body and the floor, presumably falling forever in what would be an interesting observation for Astral to ponder were he not preoccupied with Yuma's freshly killed body below him.

"Now we can reverse whatever he did to you," the girl's creepy, low voice finally reached him.

"He didn't do anything to me," Astral whispered. "He wasn't the thing that made me lose my memories. But he is what made going on worth it."

The girl raised an eyebrow at the spectacle before her, "So you lost your memories? I guess that explains your inability to fulfill your mission here."

"You killed the human I loved!" Astral turned around and lashed out at the girl, vaguely recalling a moment long ago when Yuma tried to punch Astral and fell so very short.

As expected, he also fell through this strange not-quite human, stopping in the air.

The girl turned and gave Astral a scrutinizing glare. "I don't think I can fix you, so I'll put you out of your misery." She held out her hand and it glowed blue. Astral gasped and faded out of the human world.

Wanted an Astral+OC story? HERE YOU GO

It's times like these I wish yugioh had an active kink meme. Because I'm not a fucking fast food joint for fics.

It's not even the fact that they wanted to give me a prompt. I ASK for prompts. I ask my friends to prompt me all the time.

It's the fact that her attitude is one of "look at how great my story idea is I'd write it myself but I'm too lazy and aren't I so FUCKING helpful because I'm letting you have this plot I'm not being bossy but yeah"

Where would you even get the idea that it would be good to ask someone who OBVIOUSLY keyships hardcore to write an astral+oc / skyshipping story?

And seriously

1) I just plain don't like OC's. I know they CAN be good in the hands of someone competent. But the vast majority are godawful.

2) this is me being completely inflexible in my headcanon (and that's perfectly fine tyvm. It's my headcanon). Astral beings do NOT have sexes or genders. I will actually exit out of something I'm READING if Astral is explicitly stated to be male. I'm certainly not going to WRITE something that not only makes Astral male but has a female astral being.