This is set between episodes 137 and 141, with the focus on Zane and Aster. Eventual Proshipping.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Prologue

In a world like this, it was a given that you had to take the company of anyone you could trust, whether you actually liked them or not. Now, the two of them may not have been very close, but they did understand that they each wanted the same thing: to find their other friends and then to find a way back home. Therefore, from this common knowledge sprung an uneasy alliance.

At first there were arguments; lots of them. Both of them were proud men and both possessed certain qualities which made them rivals for who got to be in charge and make the decisions. A leader would have been natural among a larger group, but considering there were only the two of them, at least for the time being, they just played it by ear and neither one was officially the decision maker. The main advantage of this was that whenever they ran into a rogue group of monsters, the blame could be equally shared; neither of them was immature enough to try and blame their own misfortunes of the other in a world such as this one.

And so, as they found themselves more and more lost in an unfamiliar dimension, they argued less and less, until light teasing was as bad as conversation between them really got. It was an uneasy friendship, if it could really be called that; neither of them understood their relationship, to say the least, considering that they had started out as not liking each other much at all. Now, though, they had been forced to spend time together and more importantly to work together; whether they liked one another or not, neither could say any longer that they did not trust the other.

Dark World was proving – more and more so as time wore on – to be incredibly dangerous. Bands of monsters would encounter them every so often, and while the smaller ones were easily crushed, it was generally easier to just evade the larger groups that could contain up to fifty or sixty monsters. They were both strong duellists, but realistically there were only two of them, and only one had a fully functioning heart.

At first they had wandered, but for the time being – until they understood whether or not the Supreme King was truly Jaden Yuki or not, for the idea seemed logical but so unlikely – they waited in this large house.

The house they were currently occupying was large, old-fashioned (by their standards, not by Dark World's) and for the most part pretty empty. It had been Zane who had located it; considering that it was abandoned and, judging by its state of cleanliness, had been for some time, they hadn't thought it too rude of them to more or less move in. After all, it was very much a temporary measure; they had been there for all of two days.

However, there was no telling how long they would have to remain there.

Now that the Supreme King had come, the monsters had become far more organised; gone were the small and poorly organised groups, replaced now by the King's dark army. He had structured them into a deadly force, one that even two such duellists as themselves couldn't realistically fight against on their own. And since they had no idea where their friends could be found, they were on their own and ill-equipped to fight an entire army. Even if they won each and every duel, they would collapse from exhaustion before they'd battled half the army.

Their best aim, they had decided, was to wait for a smaller scout group to find them. They had located one such group before they'd come here, which had consisted of just two goblins which had been easily defeated, but that was before they'd understood more about the Supreme King, so they hadn't thought to question the goblins further.

Now, they lay in wait for another scouting group to come their way – and for sure they would, while there were remaining duellists somewhere in this world – so that they could obtain the information they needed, before they decided on their course of action.

Needless to say, just waiting for the King's scouts to come to them made them restless, irritable and edgy. It was risky for them to venture out, and so they did so only very rarely; only when supplies were needed. The house had obviously been abandoned for some time, there being no food or water inside, and the furniture dusty or stained. It meant that, besides improving their decks, there was very little to do; both of them grew bored and irritated.

Or more accurately, Aster got bored and Zane got irritated.

Zane often muttered to himself about running out of time, although Aster didn't know what he meant by this and never got a straight answer if he bothered to ask. Though Aster did suspect it had something to do with Zane's heart, since he had learned that the other's heart was weakened – not that Zane told him why this was the case – and that it caused him pain. Once he'd been told this, he recognised it as the truth, considering how frequently Zane would clutch at his chest following running or duelling or other such strenuous activities.

However, even though Aster realised that Zane's heart was pretty unhealthy, it never became a topic in any of their conversations; besides that, Zane didn't want to talk about it and Aster didn't want to hear about it. For the most part, they talked about the world they were in, about the ways to go about finding their friends and about the likeliness of Jaden truly being the evil King; neither of them wanted to believe it even though they both feared it was the truth.

And so, because fate – destiny, one of them might have said the previous year – had decided that the two of them would be alone together in the dangerous world in an abandoned old house, Zane Truesdale and Aster Phoenix were thrust into an uneasy friendship formed on a foundation of necessity and safety in numbers.

And this is where our story begins.

Please R&R