Episode 43

by TAFKAE

Author's Note: The reason I have for writing this is that I thought Episode 43 (45 in the British and Japanese versions) stunk. It was stupid and I really think Kaiba would have written a better game ending than that. Not to mention I really hate it when Yugi or Yami goes all sappy like that - it's just annoying. So I decided, "I can come up with a better ending than this, and I'm going to!"

The whole episode was planned out in my head by 1:30 AM this morning. I wrote it in its entirety this afternoon and evening and night. And in no part of it do you really need to tell Yugi and Yami apart - you just need to keep track of where he's who, and that's easier than I make it sound.

I have a bad habit of cussing a lot. I am trying to break it. I am pretty sure this story doesn't contain any naughty words at all. Ii desu ne? (Good, don't-cha-think?)

- Sunday, October 27, 2002

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. I do own the ideas I had to make this episode. I like my revised episode very much better than the original, thank you. And Yugi does get way too into his games. He's worse than my kid brothers, and that's saying something.

Princess Edina fought back the surprise that was clutching at her heart. First this ragtag group of heroes had restored the old city of Simlau to its former glory, and then the ground had begun to crack beneath them, and even now something was emerging from the once-petrified layer of dirt there. It had to be the airship - it just had to - !

The three adventurers were knocked off their feet by the disturbance, and Yugi felt a sharp pain in his hands as they shot out behind him to break his fall onto the wooden surface. Wooden. Jou looked around, and everyone realized it at about the same time: through some contrived video game device, they'd found the airship! Jou grinned and jumped up. "All right!! Who's the man? Who's the man? I'm the man!"

"You're the moron," corrected Mai, "but I'll give you some credit... even though Yugi and I have to do all your thinking for you."

"Hey..."

"You did it!" That voice was Edina's, from the sidelines, with a heart-melting smile. "Now that you've got the airship, you can rescue Mokuba!"

"We will, Edina!" Yugi called, leaning over the rail as the ship took off automatically. "Don't worry, we'll be back in no time!"

"I'm driving! I so called driving!" Jou shouted randomly, and he jumped up and ran to the steering wheel. He spun it hard, and the ancient engines on the old wooden airship kicked into high gear. Yugi's fingers dug into the railing; he didn't especially want to know what would happen if he fell off, and he wasn't sure how sturdy the floors were or anything, after a thousand years of neglect... Mai seemed to notice his anxiety and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, kiddo. We're gonna beat this game easy."

A few minutes passed, and then Jou got bored and started speaking. "And now, passengers, if you'll look to your left, you will see a huge cloud of darkness, a giant floating castle, and -" he noticed this part in the middle of his sentence "- a herd of homicidal Duel Monsters?!"

"Oh, smack," said Mai. "Well, that'll be easy enough to take care of. Harpy Ladies, go!"

The two Harpies appeared in midair and started whipping the evil monsters into oblivion. At the same time, Yugi and Jou had summoned the Dark Magician and Fierce Knight, respectively, and the four monsters cut a neat path through the minions in no time. However, there was still a ways to go. "They can't keep it up forever, just the four of them," Yugi remarked, a feeling of dread creeping into his voice.

"Don't sound so pessimistic," Jou replied. "And - HEY, LOOK OUT!"

They all saw it coming. It was only a little fireball, intended for one target. But that one target was the one that the monster throwing it had decided was playing as the main character.

Kaiba was a game programmer. All game programmers are inherently evil. The main player is the one who the evilness tends to get directed at, especially if the programmer has a personal vendetta against him.

Thus, it looked very much as though Yugi was going to get fried. The boy cringed and pulled back, waiting for the attack to hit. It never did.

"Mirror Wall!"

Mai's defense was a permanent trap. Good. It would only protect the airship, but it would do so for long enough that they'd be able to get in. Right about then, Yugi knew it was time to get serious about this; for one thing, the stakes in the game were so high it barely qualified as a game anymore, and for another, he didn't have enough control over the Millennium Puzzle to stop it anyway. This is why it was Yami who told Mai he owed her one.

"Don't worry about it," Mai replied. "You'll probably have paid me back by the time we beat this game anyway."

And then the cloud of monsters was behind them, and they called back their own. Jou smirked and leaned forward over the wheel a bit. "Look at that. No prob!"

It seemed he spoke too soon, because at that point the airship smashed head-on into something that didn't seem to actually be there. It tried to push through, but made slow progress. Jou strained with the wheel and grunted. "What the -?"

"It's the barrier," Yugi said calmly. "If those legends about the airship were true, we should be able to pass through it."

Mai cast him a sideways glance. "Well, of course we will! Yugi, you have to remember that this is a video game, not reality. You get way too into your games, you know."

"Lay off, Mai, that's why he's so good at them," Jou countered, and by the time he had, the airship had forced its way through the barrier and was headed toward the castle.

~*~*~

Meanwhile...

Kaiba wasn't at all surprised to see the Witty Phantom appear out of the floor again. The guy was really good at being annoying, but then, that was how he'd been programmed. His programmer made a mental note to change that at the next chance he got. "What do you want this time?" he asked in exasperation.

"Not much," said the Phantom, donning his hat. "I've just brought you a visitor, that's all." He snapped his fingers, and a net came down from the ceiling, dangling seemingly from nothing, and holding the princess he'd put into the game, just like it was supposed to. "Only, not everything went according to plan..."

"Seto!" the "princess" shouted gleefully, squirming against the net.

"Mokuba?!" asked Kaiba in disbelief. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I came to save you!"

Kaiba just stared. Mokuba was pulled from the net and shackled to the wall even while he was in the middle of saying that sentence. Finally, he spoke up. "Well, you're doing a wonderful job of it."

"Oh, don't give up hope just yet," the Phantom interrupted as he took Kaiba's deck from Mokuba's arm and placed it on a stone table-height platform nearby. "I'm programmed to not sacrifice you and summon the Mystic Dragon until the heroes arrive. That way I can gloat, and the gloat sequence, I think, is one of the best in the game."

At this the programmer was surprised. "Heroes?" He turned to his brother and glared accusingly. "You mean there are other players in the game?"

Mokuba nodded. "Uh-huh. I brought Yugi and some of the others to the game and -"

"You brought Yugi Mutou?" Kaiba's glare intensified. "Mokuba, you know I hate that stupid son of a -"

"Please, boys, there's no need for petty bickering," the Phantom interrupted again before Kaiba could let out the curse. "The heroes are already on their way, and should be here any minute now." He took off his hat and bowed. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some preparations to make, so I'll just give you two some time to catch up." He turned, walked a few steps away, and faded into the air.

There was a moment of silence, and then Kaiba snapped his gaze back toward Mokuba. "Yugi Mutou of all people?!"

Mokuba cringed. Maybe letting himself get taken to the castle hadn't been the best idea after all.

~*~*~

"Uh-oh."

Yugi twitched slightly. "Uh-oh" is not something you want to hear when you're at least a thousand feet off the ground in a rickety, thousand-year-old wooden airship with precious little protecting your hide from oblivion at the hand of either a horde of monsters or an unsurvivable fall. Or both. He turned fast on his heel to face Mai, from whom the comment had come. "'Uh-oh'? What's 'uh-oh'?"

Mai pointed up. "The Mirror Wall - it's fading!"

Jou and Yugi followed her motion with their eyes, and indeed the wall was fading; in fact, it was flickering out of existence entirely. Apparently, even permanent traps weren't really all that permanent. Jou was the first to speak. "Oh, smack."

Then Yugi noticed something on the side of the Castle that they were approaching. "If it could have lasted thirty seconds longer," he began to protest, before Salamandro spit its fire at them. The tongues caught onto the ship's old engines like sparks to matchwood, and that actually wasn't so far off. "Brace yourselves!" he shouted as the ship's momentum carried it straight ahead, toward the castle.

"This is so incredibly not good!" Jou screamed, clinging to the wheel and trying vainly to steer.

Mai didn't bother with words. She just grabbed a railing and screamed.

~*~*~

"I think I see an opening!"

Anzu almost panicked as she saw a big hand protrude through the slight opening in the door, and she immediately brought her fist down on it, which caused it to withdraw like a Whack-A-Mole. "No you don't!" she shouted.

"This isn't working," Honda grunted, pushing something else heavy up against the already huge pile of stuff they had there. "They already know we can't keep them out for much longer."

Anzu glanced back at the pods where the other three boys appeared to be in a quite peaceful sleep. "Yugi..." she whispered, looking in particular at him. If you were only looking at his face, you'd never know that anything bad was going on. There was something calming about looking at that boy while he was sleeping. He was even smiling a little. Darn it, Yugi, how can you smile at a time like this? If I didn't know you any better I'd say you were mocking us! she thought frantically. "I'll give you idiots ten more minutes, at the most!" she muttered toward the pods, "and after that, you're on your own!"

~*~*~

Jou sat up and rubbed his head. "Ow... that was one mother of a crash..."

"It could have been worse," said Yugi firmly, having already gotten to his feet. He was already headed out of the wrecked airship and into the forest surrounding the castle. "Come on, you two, we don't know how much time we have!"

"Why do you always have to be so noble?" Mai whined before jumping up and following him. Jou ended up bringing up the rear.

"Geez, a castle with its own forest," he muttered in between gasps.

"Keep your guard up," Yugi warned. As if on cue, hundreds of bug monsters emerged from the forest and attacked as one. Jou said something incomprehensible under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a curse, but got ready to draw a card. Yugi noticed this and motioned for him not to. "Wait for it..."

"Wait for what?!" Jou moaned. "We're gonna be bug bait!"

"Wait for my trap," Yugi replied simply. Then he drew a single card and held it high. "Mirror Force!"

Any bug attacking them was destroyed. Many flaming insects fell to the ground. "Come on, let's get going," Yugi said, not missing a beat, and the trio started off toward the main keep of the castle again. Unfortunately, there was one thing they hadn't counted on. Mai pointed it out. "Are those Cocoons of Evolution?" she asked nervously.

Yugi just nodded. "Yes, but if we're lucky, they won't -"

CA-RAAAAACK.

Everyone skidded to a halt, and Yugi finished his sentence. "-hatch."

"What's the strongest expletive you know?" Jou asked Mai, who gave him no reply save an odd look.

And then they were staring down four Great Moths instead of four cocoons. Yugi thought for a second, then got an idea. "I know how we can get rid of these things," he said strongly, and pulled two cards from his deck. Soon, there were a Catapult Turtle and a single Kuriboh staring down the four Great Moths.

"A Catapult Turtle and a Kuriboh?" Mai wondered aloud. "What the heck are you gonna do with those?"

"Launch the Kuriboh, of course," said Yugi, and quickly ordered the Turtle to do the same.

"What're you, nuts?!" Jou yelled. "A Kuriboh against a bunch of Great Moths?!"

Yugi calmly drew again. "No, Jou," he replied. "A lot of Kuribohs against a bunch of Great Moths."

Then he threw the Multiply card. "Sit back and watch the fireworks."

Oh, there were some very pretty fireworks indeed. Kuribohs self-destruct upon contact with the enemy. Fast-moving Kuribohs, it would seem, make bigger explosions. Yugi lost 300 life points. But you have no idea how fulfilling he found it to watch the Great Moths fall as fireballs to the forested ground. Weevil Underwood, eat your heart out.

Mai sighed. "I'll never understand how you manage to get so into these games and stay so calm all at the same time, Yugi..."

"We haven't won yet," said Yugi, ignoring her comment entirely. "There's the castle gate!"

And there it was. The three would-be heroes ran up to it. "How do we get it open?" Jou speculated. Even before he had finished asking, Mai walked closer, raised one hand, and pushed the door open like it weighed only ounces. She then bowed and waved him in. "Video game doors are always easy to open. All you need to do is walk up to them," she said.

"I knew that," Jou replied. "I was just testing you."

"Focus," Yugi said dangerously, walking warily in ahead of Mai and Jou. They followed close behind, and Mai remarked inwardly on just how strange Yugi could be if you got him to play a game.

They hadn't gone very far when a voice came out of the shadows. "Psst!"

Yugi whipped around to face it. "Who's there? Show yourself!"

A man's face emerged, not human-looking at all. The skin was a deep brownish-red, and he was wearing a sharply pressed purple suit and Panama hat. "Follow me, adventurers... I can lead you to the ones you seek."

"You know where they are?" Jou exclaimed.

"Right this way," the man said, and broke into a run into the darkness. Jou started after him, but Yugi seized him by the wrist.

"What's the deal? He's gonna show us where Kaiba and Mokuba are at!" Jou protested.

Yugi shook his head. "We're probably better off finding them on our own. He could be leading us into a trap."

"Rest assured, Yugi, you're already trapped," the man's voice laughed, echoing and resounding off every surface in the great hall. "The Mystic Dragon will be revived, and there is no way you can stop me!"

Yugi's eyes narrowed, and he took off down the hall in the direction the Witty Phantom had gone. Jou was confused. "Hey Yugi, I thought you said _not_ to go after him!!"

"Well, if we're trapped already, it doesn't make much difference, does it?"

"Hey, but -"

"Oh, shut up and come on!" Mai shouted, grabbing Jou by the arm and dragging him off after Yugi.

Eventually, the latter reached a small causeway over a bath of boiling lava. At the end of that causeway were the two brothers, chained to the wall, with Kaiba's dueling deck on a table-like projection out of the floor. "Kaiba! Mokuba!" Yugi shouted.

"Yugi, is that you?" Mokuba shouted in reply.

Both still alive. That was good. Yugi started running down the causeway with no apparent worry of falling off, but stopped in his tracks when the Witty Phantom rose out of the floor between the brothers. "You cannot stop me, little Yugi! And now, brought to you by these two poor, unfortunate souls, the Mystic Dragon!"

"No!" said Yugi, and started running again, but it was too late. And it wasn't fun to listen to. Kaiba and Mokuba didn't hesitate to scream as their souls were torn from their bodies. For a moment there was a definite feeling of irony, that all this should happen inside a video game, but only for a moment, and then there was a definite feeling of complete horror as the realization dawned on him that the sacrifice had occurred, and a new threat was about to emerge.

"Smack!"

Yugi didn't quite catch what happened next; it seemed Jou was pretty good at thinking fast himself, when he needed to be. But then the Red-Eyes Black Dragon was there, and there was a scream in the Phantom's voice, and then there wasn't a Phantom, but still -

The walls started to seem to melt, and became parts of a more complete floor; the battlefield was now a silent stone disc floating in the sky. Also thinking fast, Yugi ran to the Kaiba brothers and yelled for the others to follow. He stood between them and the dark, snaking tendrils of the portal from which the Mystic Dragon was to come, ready to draw at a moment's notice. Mai scooped up Mokuba's body, and Jou reluctantly slung Kaiba's over one shoulder, and both were ready to run at a moment's notice.

"Find someplace safe for them," Yugi ordered. "I'm going to need both your help on this."

"Gotcha," said Jou, and he and Mai headed for a small, square building on the very edge of the disc. Yugi couldn't help but be a bit surprised - but then again, he thought, it was a video game and nothing more. He'd almost forgotten in the confusion.

Finally, after much ado, it emerged. The five-headed Mystic Dragon. It was masterless and had a rating of 5500 / 4500. Speaking quite factually, if Yugi couldn't come up with a way to beat it in the next half-minute, he was screwed, and he knew it.

It saw him; it perceived an enemy; it hissed, but the hiss sounded almost like a word. "SSSSSSSSSSUUUUUUU...."

"What?!" he asked incredulously. Oh, great. Kaiba had programmed a _talking_ dragon.

"HHHHHUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG......." It pointed a single talon at Yugi. "TSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUU........"

Oh, great. A gibberish-talking, man-eating dragon. Or at least that was his inference.

He drew and played a single card, the Dark Magician, but was surprised to find it paralyzed - then he noticed the design on the ground. "What? A seal?" Then he glanced up at Jou's Red-Eyes. It didn't seem to be affected... "So only dragon-type monsters can attack here?!"

"TRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUU......." said the dragon's gravelly voice again. True. And his Dark Magician was out in the open. And not a dragon-type. And would easily wipe out all of his life points if attacked by something that strong. And had been sitting there for quite some time. "So why doesn't it attack?" he murmured.

Then he saw something that changed the entire battle...

From outside the little square building nearby, Jou and Mai wondered the same thing Yugi had been wondering just moments before. "It's an interesting standoff, but the dragon could win it in a cinch right now," Mai stated. "Why doesn't it?"

"It's not programmed to kick butt that bad?" Jou suggested.

Yugi then did something no one would have expected - he recalled the Dark Magician and walked toward the Mystic Dragon. "Dragon!" he shouted, forcefully and vehemently enough that he got Mai to flinch. "I know you're feeding off the souls of two of my friends! But I have one request of you!"

"What's he doing?!" Mai almost shouted. "Is he insane?!"

"Return them and take me instead!"

Jou blinked. "Does that answer your question?"

For a moment, the dragon just stared at Yugi, and the object of its attention wished fervently for this to work. Then, the dragon simply said, "DONE," and one of its hands reached out and grabbed Yugi. Its eyes flashed, and Yugi shouted and fell limp. Then it simply tossed away the shell.

Now here is where Jou and Mai had different ideas. Jou made a dash for Yugi, and Mai made a dash for the Kaiba brothers. Jou started shaking Yugi. "Yugi, wake up! Come on, buddy!"

Mai came running back a few seconds later, while Yugi continued to show no semblance of life. "Jou, nothing happened! The dragon's still got the Kaiba brothers!"

And the dragon's attack points rose to 6000.

Jou growled. "Well, I guess this is where it ends, then?" he said with a somber smile on his face.

"It could well be," Mai agreed. "Unless whatever Yugi had in mind works..." She glared at the small boy's motionless face. "Well?! Why've you always got to be so dang noble?!"

"NEXT," the dragon boomed.

Jou stood up and faced the thing head-on. "That thing's gonna have to get through my Red-Eyes to get to any of us!" he proclaimed. On cue, the Red-Eyes landed nearby and stared intensely at the five heads of the Mystic Dragon. But the effort was totally wasted, because at that moment, a red jewel-looking thing began to glow beneath the surface of the Mystic's enormous chest. Mai pointed at it. "What's that?!" she asked.

"I have no idea," Jou replied earnestly, then noticed something else. "Wait a second..."

"Do you think it's powering up an attack or something?"

"No..." He shook his head slightly and squinted more. "Call me crazy, but I think it's being attacked!"

What prompted this conclusion? For one thing, it had stopped its attack completely and all five heads were now roaring in pain instead. But that wasn't the main one. The main reason Jou thought it was being attacked was that he could vaguely see a dim human silhouette with a glowing eye in the center of its forehead in the exact center of the glowing jewel-like thing.

But he could also hear screams, screams of intense pain, screams that some people would rather die than have to hear. There were nine in all, if you counted the Mystic Dragon's heads separately; the other four were those of Kaiba, Mokuba, and Yugi. Two were Yugi.

The dragon began to glow a bright, fluctuating red, and then it broke into a million little pixilated fragments of graphical data, and ceased to be. It was only a few moments later that the relatively small disc underneath them did more or less the same, plunging Jou, Mai, and the three shells into an abyss of digital darkness...

~*~*~

When Jou woke up again, he was back at Edina's palace, sitting on a platform in front of a huge crowd, with Mai not too far away. All the little virtual people were cheering for him. "Our heroes!" "You've saved the kingdom!" Et cetera, et cetera. He got to his feet; Mai did the same at about the same time.

The little Mokuba-princess came running outside. "O heroes of Simlau, you have brought peace back to our kingdom!" she gushed. "The Mystic Dragon shall never more be resurrected, and the people shall live in peace and prosperity!"

Jou glared at her. "Look, Edina, I'm not in the mood! I lost my best friend in that battle!!"

"I lost two friends and a potentially attractive jerkwad," Mai sighed.

Edina laughed. "Lost? That can easily be changed." She looked up to the sky, and her small body glowed a brilliant shade of green. A portal opened up nearby, just above the platform, and spilled out three people. Kaiba and Mokuba landed deftly on their feet; Yugi ended up in a somewhat less ceremonious position. The princess gestured broadly at them. "There are both your friends, and your jerkwad, in case you wanted him back."

Kaiba raised one eyebrow. "Who's the jerkwad?"

Yugi said something along the lines of "ouch" and stood up.

"We need to get back now, though," said Mai, waving her hand for emphasis. "I mean, honestly, there's so much to do, and we don't even know how we're doing back in the real world..."

"That's also easily arranged." Edina traced several large circles in the air with her hands in a complex motion, and another portal appeared, big enough to step through. "One-way tickets back to your homeland!"

Kaiba instantly headed for it. "Come on, Mokuba."

"Hey!" Jou was the one to interrupt. "Jeez, Kaiba, after all we did for you, you could at least say 'thank you' or something!"

"I don't generally say thank you to monkeys," said Kaiba without missing a beat.

"MONKEYS?!"

"On the other hand, Yugi, I do owe you some degree of gratitude," he continued, then turned back toward the gate and started off again.

"We really aren't enemies, Kaiba," Yugi tried hopefully.

"Maybe in whatever little world you live in," said Kaiba coldly, and he stepped through the portal, and was seen no more. Mokuba followed seconds later after unwillingly receiving a kiss from his look-alike princess.

Jou growled. "How do you like that?! All we try to do is be nice to him, and he goes and blows us off like that!"

"He'll come around," said Mai. "Trust me, I can read men like open books. He'll come around."

"I sincerely hope to see you all again," said Edina sadly, "but I suppose for now this is farewell."

"We could try and come back to visit sometime," Yugi reassured her. "See you later!" He waved, and the remaining three stepped through the portal back into the real world.

~*~*~

Honda and Anzu tried vainly to hold the door back, but it finally gave under all the stress and spilled cronies into the room. Honda picked up the closest convenient thing - a metal bar - and started trying to shove the guys back with that. "Anzu, get out of here!" he shouted.

Anzu was just about to obey when she heard the slight hiss of three virtuapods sliding open. Apparently, Kimo and the four other cronies and Honda heard it as well, and so everyone was watching when a very sleepy-looking Yugi, Jou, and Mokuba emerged.

"I could seriously go for a cheeseburger right now," said Jou, before bothering to take in his surroundings.

"Yugi!" Anzu shouted.

"Jeez, don't everybody say hi to me at once," Mokuba added with a grumble.

And then the newcomers noticed Kimo and the grunts. Mokuba saw this with extra interest, and smiled in a way that could almost be interpreted as a smirk. "Boy, I bet my brother's reeeeeal mad at those suits now, and they just sent all their bodyguards down here..."

Kimo and the other grunts figured out what he was talking about simultaneously, and only hesitated a second or two before disappearing out the door, cursing all the way.

"Smooth, Mokuba!" Honda applauded, clapping the boy on the back. "Man, you guys got back just in time. Those guys were about to barge in and unplug your pods! So rude..."

Just then, there was a yawn from the next room, and Mai walked out, stretching a bit. It took her a moment to notice the others. "Well, fancy seeing you guys here," she yawned.

"Oh, hi, Mai," said Yugi, waving. "Who'd have guessed?"

"Yep. Hey, I was just wondering one little thing..."

Yugi gave her the expression that says, in no uncertain terms, Shoot.

Mai correctly took that as her cue and shot. "How exactly did you beat that dragon?"

"Yeah, and don't say it wasn't you, because I saw it, and I swear that was you," Jou added.

Yugi cocked his head to one side a little, somewhat unsure of how to put this. "Well, if you can't destroy a dragon from the outside, you need to get inside it and nail it in the heart." He laughed. "Come to think of it, that's also how hostile corporate takeovers work, too."

"Mention hostile corporate takeovers again and I'll nail you in the heart," Mokuba snapped, shuddering.

For another moment, there was silence, and then Honda spoke up. "Who's up for some ice cream?" Everyone cheered.

~*~*~

Tying up loose ends:

1. I know the Mystic Dragon was a 5000/4000 in the show. I say for every soul it was using it got a 250 point attack and defense bonus. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

2. I don't hate any of the characters here. I just like torturing the ones I love.

3. I found the airship scene kind of boring, so I wasn't paying attention. Call it "artistic license" and stuff it.

4. What happened inside the dragon was more or less, Yami went in, stuck himself in the dragon's "heart", kinda sorta, and blew the latter to tiny bits. This could very easily have killed him. I was originally gonna do that scene, but I couldn't figure out how, and it was getting a little too awkward for my taste. Moving on!

5.The blowing-up-of-dragon thing was incredibly painful to everyone inside the dragon. That's why they were screaming. I think this is kind of obvious, but I see dumb people... (they don't even know they're dumb)

6. I take Visa, MasterCard, and pocky.

Please R+R and tell me this didn't read too much like Pokemon... I have another idea for the game-pod thing, but I want to see if you thought this one was any good! Happy Holidays chapter 2.5 should be out by Christmas, and as the name implies, it is a continuation of chapter 2, as that was getting WAY too long. I am sleepy! Ja mata ne!

(o^.^o) The Artist Formerly Known As Ed