Disclaimer! All fictional entities featured in this story belong to Kazuki Takahashi, except Sara Scinner and Silpheed, who are mine. This has been beta-read by ChazzyLuverGurl.

Awright, the sequel! Any comments and/ or constructive criticism you have is immensely appreciated. From this point on, the story revolves around the events of episodes 163 through 166.

Act One

Snap!

"Aw, donuts!" Sara squinted at the broken pencil tip as she held it up to her nose. Her hand trembled with what felt like the worst bout of writer's cramp she had ever experienced, mostly since she never actually worked that hard before on schoolwork. What other way to pass the time than do homework or extra credit? They forbade ducking around in detention hall, and her marks really could use the boost.

Professor Sartyr, her supervisor for her sentence, snapped his fingers. "Hey, hey! No cursing in detention hall."

Sara looked up. "I wasn't cursing. 'Donuts' is not a curse word, is it?" She shuffled out of her seat. "I broke my pencil."

"Again?" sighed the head of the Ra dorm. "All right, come down here to use the sharpener."

As she ambled down the empty classroom to the teacher's desk, she held out the pencil at arm's length, while her cramping hand twitched at her side. With a wince, she wondered out loud: "Has it been four weeks yet?"

Professor Sartyr shook his head. "It's only been four days, Senorita. I'm sorry," he replied with a sympathetic smile. When she handed him the pencil, he pushed it into the sharpener. Sara knew why he was doing this rather than she do it herself. She had a slight habit of keeping the pencil in the sharpener so it would get shorter and shorter until there'd be nothing left but a useless nub. She liked how the vibrations felt in her palm, almost like a massage. A message was sure something she could've used at the moment.

Rrrrrrrr…

While Sartyr preoccupied himself with the device, Sara noticed the steaming mug of tea on the far corner of the desk. Shoving her tongue into her left cheek, she asked, "Can I borrow that drink?"

"You mean, my tea? Well, I suppose if you're thirsty, you may have a sip." He didn't look up from the sharpener as he pushed the utensil back in there to sharpen the point. This gave Sara the chance to not drink from the mug, but dip her sore hand into it. Hot water was supposed to remedy any cramp, right? Tea was hot water with color and flavor.

Sara flashed a relieved smile; the lukewarm tea did help to soothe the ache in her joints. In what little space she had, she wiggled her fingertips. "Ahhhhh…"

But just as she was getting comfortable, Sartyr popped up with the freshly sharp pencil. "There you are, Senorita: good as new."

Right when he spoke up, Sara yanked out her hand, sprinkling a trail of dark droplets all over the desk. She wiped her hand dry on the seat of her skirt as her other hand plucked the pencil out of the teacher's. "Grace-eyes, Sarty, you're a peach!" She turned around to go back to her seat, feeling much better, while he reached for his mug to take a sip.

Professor Sartyr smacked his lips. "Strange, my tea tastes like sweat and eraser bits."

Silpheed threw Sara a sly look from the inside of her jacket. There were two places in school where Silpheed was forbidden: detention and class. But Sara had always smuggled him in her jacket, so long as he kept his voice barely above a whisper and spoke only when no one else was looking. His reward was a Silpheed Snack every time.

"Dirty girl, rawk."

"What? My hand was cramping up real bad," Sara blushed. "He said I could."

Rrrrrrm!

The floor suddenly began to tremble underneath their feet! Though it lasted only for four seconds, Sara clung to the edge of her seat for dear life, hugging Silpheed close. "Yiiiaaah, it's happening again! The aliens are back!"

"The day the Earth stood still! RAWK!"

Professor Sartyr didn't scream in terror, but he looked as white as a snowflake. "What in the world--!?"

Just then, Dimitri popped his spiky head through the door. Floods of students and teachers were rushing behind him. "Professor, come outside! Something's happened!"

"Ay carumba!" Sartyr jumped right out of his seat and left the room, and though it wasn't allowed to leave detention hall before being officially dismissed, Sara and Silpheed followed closely behind.

The hullaballoo was not just that brief earthquake, but that someone had seen a bolt of white light strike somewhere out in the woods at about the same time. Fearing that another inter-dimensional incident would happen, everyone in school had to drop what they were doing and race to the sight. The trek took them all to the ancient ruins in the heart of the forest, where they found amongst the hills of smoke and vines and rubble a cluster of beings. No, not aliens--thank goodness--but fellow Duel Academy students, the more prominent ones who had been missing for several days, plus Dr. Crowler and Aster Phoenix and three of the exchange students.

Everyone choked with speechlessness at the sight before them, like they had seen a transfiguration. Being at the back of the crowd, Sara and Silpheed squeezed through them all to see what the matter was. When they did, their jaws fell off their hinges.

"Mother of Mirth, where the heck have you guys been?!"

At first, none of them answered; considering everything they had been through, they were about too tired to. Jesse Andersen was practically hanging over a tittering Dr. Crowler like a dead goose (and what a peculiar black costume he had on; he looked like a bondage slave!). Alexis and Atticus Rhodes clung to each other for support, Aster was on one knee, and Jim, Axel, and Chazz managed to find their footing, though the glazed look in their eyes betrayed their weariness. Syrus and Hassleberry were at the far back: Hassleberry turned to Syrus, Syrus towards the sky. He seemed to be quivering, possibly from cold, as Sara guessed by the robe he was wearing.

While everyone else rushed onward to greet their heroes, Sara and Silpheed moved up to Aster, who was dusting himself off. The hardened look on his face expressed some sort of anxiety, as though something had been lost. "Aster, hey, Aster! Where'd you fellas run off to? You've been missing for days!"

He looked at her as though she were a moron. "…That's not really your business, is it?" he said flatly.

Sara paused to lean in and sniff at his jacket, causing Aster to grimace. "You smell like dust. I dunno what it is, but it's not Earth-dust. Smell it, Silpheed?"

"Oh gosh, how can you tell?" Aster mumbled.

With her tongue in her cheek, she cocked her head to the side. Something didn't feel kosher, and that wasn't just because they weren't Jewish.

"Where's Ziti? He was with you, the last time we saw him. Did he go with you? Where is he? Come to think of it, where's Jaden? And the guy that sells car insurance?"

Aster shrugged, "How should I know? I was disintegrated before I could see anything." He stepped around her without another word.

Her head sprang up like a catapult at a sudden thought. "Non-Earth-dust…missing people…disintegration…Silpheed, you don't think those guys went back to combat the alien robot vampire werecats so they wouldn't come back to bother us Earthlings again, do ya? I mean, where the heck else could they have vamoosed to? That'd explain a lot…"

Syrus hadn't moved an inch from his spot. He was Ziti's little brother; maybe he'd know something? So, the two crept over to the poor boy to discover tears rolling down his cheeks like water out of a leaking dam, his bottom lip trembling.

Sara never liked seeing people cry. People who cried looked hurt and shriveled; just watching them do it made her shrivel up in a way. Scooting in front of the lad, she asked, "You all right, little guy?"

When he opened his eyes, his face suddenly became as stiff as a mask, though the tears didn't stop. "All right? All right? How can I be all right," he answered in a voice that was almost too soft to hear, "when my best friend's gone?"

Gone?

Though Sara still didn't know what was going on, she placed a hand on his shoulder and worked up a smile. "You mean Jaden? M-Maybe he just took a wrong turn on the way home? Kinda like the time at Pegasus World when I went home with the wrong--"

Syrus wouldn't hear it; he tore away from her grasp and ran off in the opposite direction before she could say "family," or even ask about his brother. He must've been suffering from shell shock from the alien combat.

Before long, everyone else had escorted the heroes back to the campus, bombarding them with questions about where they'd been, and why Jaden hadn't come back. Sara was left behind with no answers, no clues, only her own guessing.

"…Silpheed, you don't think Jaden and Ziti and the Geico kid are, like, dead, do ya? I mean, Aster said he got disintegrated, and look at him."

Silpheed bobbed up and down. "RAWK! Dead man walking!"

"Yeah. Maybe they really did take a wrong turn? But they'll find their way back. I found my way back to our family…though the cops had to get involved. You don't think they got cops out there, do you?"

"RAWK! Dunno, dunno! You?"

Sara glanced up at the cloudless skies. "To be honest…I dunno, either. But we can hope, right?"

______________

A week had passed since then, and neither Jaden nor Zane had appeared (though it seemed that the student body was much more concerned about missing Jaden). For an entire week, a gloomy fog had descended over the school, even though the sun shined. And for that entire week, Sara and Silpheed spent it either in detention doing extra credit or around campus, attempting to lift the spirits of their fellow peers.

In class, Sara "farted" one too many times by getting up and sitting down on her whoopee cushion every ten minutes. Professor Mimicry wound up kicking her out in the middle of his lecture, but to go to the bathroom. He never found out that she'd been pooting through a cushion.

"Come back when you've got it all out of your system," he ordered.

"Attention whore," someone muttered as she made her way to the door. For some reason, hearing that made Sara wince.

As the door shut behind them, Silpheed peeked out from the collar of her jacket. "Hoe!"

"Now Silpheed, if she were a hoe, she would live in the tool shed and have weeds tangled up in her hair. Actually, no, she wouldn't have hair; just weeds. 'Cause her head would be shaped like a spade."

Sara slunk along the bleak white wall on the way to the bathroom, her finger trailing over it, drawing imaginary loop-de-loops and squiggles. Man, how did Jaden do it? He cracked everyone up when he let one rip, even the teachers. But maybe that's because he didn't use a cushion. That guy could toot on a dime, bless his soul.

"It's taking the boys an awful long time to get home," she muttered.

"Men don't ask directions, RAWK!"

"Yeah, that's true, but it took Daddy three days to find Pegasus World. It's been a whole danged week, now. A whole sad week…like the lamp's gone out, and we can't find a new bulb. Hmm…" She crammed her tongue in her cheek.

Just as they entered the bathroom door, that light bulb she was looking for—BOING!—clicked on in her head, as she flipped the switch to turn the lights on.

She snapped her fingers. "A pajama party! That's it! There's no way anyone could still be mopey after a good ol'-fashioned slumber shindig!"

Silpheed's crest feathers grew erect at Sara's suggestion. "RAWK! With chicks?"

"Yes, Silpheed, with chicks, and dudes. There's nothing wrong with unisexity, is there?" She counted everything in an ideal slumber party on her fingers. "And popcorn, and karaoke, and soda, and lots of pillows and flashlights, and lots of space to dance around in our socks!"

"RAWK! And a closet! Seven Minutes in Heaven, baby!"

"And we could host it in the gym, so everyone can come. That should keep the pep alive until they finally come back."

Sara had had quite enough of writing for the moment, but she still had her voice. Thus, during the lunch period, she and Silpheed climbed on top of the counter, cupped her hands around her mouth, and addressed everyone in the cafeteria at the same time:

"PJ PARTY AT THE GYM! TONIGHT!

"CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES, COME ON! RAWK!"

The only one that responded to the invitation was Sadie, a girl that helped Miss Dorothy around her shop. Even so, all she said was, "Excuse me, but could you please get off the counter? I just cleaned it off."

Sara turned her head and grinned, "You're invited, too! Everyone is invited! Ooh-ooh! Ooh-ooh!"

Dimitri passed by the counter, not neglecting to shoot a scowl in the pair's direction. "A PJ party? What do we look like, ten years old?"

Sara leapt off the counter and landed on her feet, while Silpheed leapt off and landed on her shoulder. "But it'll be fun, something that we need, right now. There'll be karaoke and dancing and junk food, and we could play games like Truth or Dare or Hide the Pickle in the Sandwich--"

Everyone in the cafeteria turned white with horror, except Silpheed, who bobbed up and down and basically went cuckoo. Sara looked all over the room, never the kind to enjoy silence.

She shrugged, "What? It's just a game I made up. You take a little slice of pickle and hide it in one of three sandwiches. Then you have to guess which sandwich has the pickle. What'd you think I was talking about?"

At the news, Silpheed drooped like a vulture, his crest feathers falling back on his head. "RAAAAAWK, that's it?

"That is so not funny, girl!" Jasmine scolded from the back of the room.

"Yeah! You need to grow up!" added her companion, Mindy.

And just like that, the crowd dispersed; they had pretty much lost their appetites by then. Soon, the only ones left were Sara, Silpheed, and Sadie, who had gotten so red in the face that she might as well have been Bob the Tomato's cousin. She shielded her face with her hands.

Sara cocked her head. "So…I guess we'll see you all tonight, then? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: B.Y.O.P., people! Bring your own pillow!"

_____________

Nobody B.Y.O.P-ed. Nobody R.S.V.P-ed, either. At nine-fifteen that night in the dimly illuminated gym, the only two at the party were Silpheed and Sara, who was dressed in her best yellow PJs with Sonic Ducks running all over them. The two of them sat on a pillow with a large bowl of popcorn between them, watching the entrances for their guests. No karaoke machines were available; they had opted for an old, smelly mat from the supply closet and a boom box, instead. They set up a broad circle of soda bottles around them, because at slumber parties, everything was supposed to be on the floor.

Sara drummed her fingers on the floor. "What do you think's taking them so long? It's been two hours."

Silpheed fluffed out his feathers, cross from the lack of action. "RAWK! Lame! Where're all the chicks?"

Suddenly, it hit her. "D'oh!" She knocked her forehead with the bottom of her hand. "I just realized something: we never told the guys when the party started! Hahahaha, woo! Oh, boy, come on, Silpheed; let's go round 'em up!" Jumping on her slippers, she picked up Silpheed in one arm and her pillow in another. With one arm outstretched, she raced out of the gym to look for her friends.

On the way to the girls' dorm, Sara glanced up at the night sky, which was relatively clear except for a few smudges of clouds; the perfect night for a pajama party. What few stars were out looked like tiny grains of sugar…except for one. This one was much larger than the others, and redder, and brighter, like a cherry-flavored jawbreaker. To make it even more special, it slashed through the vault of blue like scissors through wrapping paper.

Her heart jumped into her throat as soon as she noticed it. "Sweet Mother of Mirth, a shooting star! You know what this means, right, Silpheed?"

"…The end of the world?"

"No, we get to make our wishes! Hurry, before it fizzles out!" Folding her hands towards her chest, Sara squeezed her eyes shut. Under her breath, she recited the traditional rhyme that usually accompanied any wish-making on a star:

"Star light, Star bright,

First Star we see tonight,

We wish we may, we wish we might

Have the wishes we wish tonight.

"I wish the boys would come home. I dunno what's going on with them, but if you can put up a neon sign that'll point them home or something, Star, that'd be awesome-nity. The kids would be really happy if they came back...and so would I. Thanks, Star!"

Silpheed's wish was much more concise: "RAWK! I wish I'd score!"

In the middle of their wishing, they never saw the bold red star bolt downwards, towards the tree-line in the far west. By the time it vanished, the two opened their eyes. "Gosh, it's too bad that the kids missed that star," sighed Sara. "That could've been the crowning moment to the party."

"Easy come, easy go," squawked Silpheed with a flap of his wings.

"Yeah…but maybe this means Jaden and Ziti will come back? Ooh, I can't wait 'til tomorrow!" She hugged her pillow tight at the thought of seeing those two again, as jumpy as anyone on the night before Christmas. When the two continued on their way to find their guests, there was an extra bounce in her step.

______________

"I can't believe we got more detention," moaned Sara as the doors shut behind her. They'd had to stay in detention hall for an extra hour, in addition to four more days added to their sentence. Just when they thought they were halfway through it!

She held up her cramping hand in front of her face, supporting it by the wrist with her good hand. She couldn't even twitch her fingers without gritting her teeth. Now she knew how her grandma felt when she complained about her arthritis.

"'For disturbing the peace and not being in bed.' I don't get it: how could everyone completely forget about the PJ party? I thought we were pretty hard to miss yesterday."

Silpheed poked his head out of her jacket. "Need more cowbell, RAWK!"

"Cowbell does grab attention, doesn't it?"

As the two left the school building, a gaggle of girls huddled around in the middle of the schoolyard. Sara could recognize them to be Mindy, Jasmine and Blair, who seemed to be hanging out with the Obelisk girls quite often nowadays. Judging by the way they waved their hands around and how they giggled, they must've been joking about something.

Sara grinned. If there was a joke going around, she wanted to be part of it. Lifting a finger to her lips to silence Silpheed, she crept up to the group on her tiptoes. Her boots squeaked ever so slightly against the linoleum, like two blind mice.

"…I knew that he'd come back someday," cheered Blair. "That Jaden: always full of surprises!"

Hearing the news made Sara blow her cover immediately. "JADEN'S BACK?!"

All three girls gave a simultaneous squeal. When they regained their senses, they turned their heads. "Oh, it's just the 'Pickle-in-the-Sandwich' girl," gasped Jasmine with a hand over her chest.

"Don't you know it's rude to butt in on conversations that don't involve you?" said Mindy.

"You said that Jaden was back. Is he, or is that a joke?"

Blair folded her arms. "Why on Earth would we joke about that?"

Suddenly, Sara's cramp didn't hurt half as much. In fact, she felt so light with joy that she jumped in the air and clicked her heels (and gave Silpheed a bit of jolt in the process). "Did you hear that, Silpheed? Our wish brought Jaden home! AWESOME-NITY!" Without warning, she grabbed Blair by the hands and started to twirl her around.

"Your wish! Still didn't score, RAWK!"

"Wh-What are you talking about? J-J-Jaden got home on his own terms," protested Blair as Sara let her go bumping into the other two girls. Her eyes were spinning in all directions.

"No, really! Last night, at the PJ party--the one that you guys seemed to forget about--we saw a shooting star. And we wished for the boys to come home! Oh, speaking of which, Ziti came back, too, right?"

The three stared at her as though she had a booger hanging out of her nose. "Who's Ziti?"

Sara stopped dancing in place. "You know, Ziti? He used to go to school here? He's in the Pro League and he came over to help get you guys back home? Also, he likes to play dress-up?"

The girls exchanged strange looks between each other. "Sorry, doesn't ring a bell," Blair answered after a minute. "But even if it did, I seriously doubt that a stupid wish brought him back. Don't go taking credit where it isn't due, Mary Sue."

That made Sara hang her head. Was Blair implying that she was being selfish? Just what was selfish about wishing one's friends back?

"And who jumps up to click their heels anymore? That is so fifties!" exclaimed Mindy. Having had enough, the three walked away and left Sara and Silpheed behind.

"...Come on, Silph; we gotta see Jaden. He's usually off fishing with his friends when he's not dueling, right?"

_______________

Sure enough, they found the Slifer sitting on a rock at the bottom of the cliff where the Red dorm perched. He hadn't seemed to have lost any extremities from battling the aliens; in fact, he looked exactly the way he did, the last time she'd seen him. When they trotted down to get a closer look at him, however, somehow…he seemed different. He had the fishing pole in his hands and everything, but he was all alone.

Sara nestled into a spot about a foot away from him, her tongue into her cheek. "Hey, Silpheed, does Jaden look, I dunno, different to you, somehow?" she whispered to her cockatoo. "I can't quite put my finger on it…"

Jaden turned his head to face them, his lips pursed into a thin line, rather than curled into an amiable smile, as she was accustomed to. Even the shape of his eyes seemed different; instead of two big, round eyes twinkling of wonder, this Jaden's eyes looked more angular and glazed with an aura of detachment. Nothing hostile or haughty; just plain aloof.

Though the way he looked at them did make her feel a little strange, Sara waved at him. "Ah, weeelcome back, J-meister! Where've you been for the past couple of weeks?"

He gave a nonchalant shrug. "Out of school, thanks," was his laconic reply. Even his tone was different. He sounded so…grown-upish, almost like some guru up in the mountains.

"Say, did you get a haircut? You don't look like the Jaden we remember."

"RAWK! Sleep with any she-aliens?" asked Silpheed.

"Oh, that's right! How did it go, Jaden? What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"The battle with the alien robot vampire werecats, that's what. Did you win? What took you so long to get back? Did you pluck off the leader's whiskers and take them back with ya as a souvenir? And where's Ziti?"

Even with his new persona, Jaden passed them a funny look, but it wasn't the traditional Jaden brand of funny. "…We won, but we didn't fight aliens; Duel monsters, really. It's a long story, and a little complicated…"

Sara scratched the top of Silpheed's head. Real live Duel monsters? "What do you mean? You're saying that the school was abducted by Duel monsters?"

"I suppose you could say that. But you'd have to have been there to really understand."

Sara had no idea what to think about that. It sounded nuts, even for her. She decided not to ask any further about it. Instead, while one hand clutched the side of her head, she asked again, "So, then…where's Ziti?"

"They probably have some in the cafeteria." He didn't say that in the chipper and curious kind of way that he used to.

Sara drummed her fingers against the rock. "Nooo, I mean Ziti! You guys were rivals or something, weren't you?"

Jaden was quiet for a tad longer than he should have been. He scratched his chin as he glanced up at the sky. "Oh. Zane, you mean? I'm not sure…"

Sara's heart sank; not in the quick, plummeting kind of way, like a stone, but more in the slow, floating kind of way, like a loose feather, until it sat on her diaphragm. In fact, she felt a small hiccup threaten to escape to escape her throat.

"Wh-What'cha mean by—hic!—that?"

"Last time I saw him was when I watched him in one of the most spectacular duels I'd ever seen. Sorry." Jaden's gaze shifted back to the still waters, searching for any sign of movement from his bobber.

Silpheed peeked up at his friend. "Sara?"

"…Oh. O-Okay. Thanks; sorry for bugging ya. H-Happy fishing, Jaden. Keep smiling." She strained to get back on her feet before starting the climb back.

Without looking back at her, Jaden asked, "Something the matter?"

"Ah, no, no, no-sir-ee! Just got a teensy case of the—hic!—cups. Heh-heh-heh!" She flashed him a thumbs-up before she slipped around the corner. She felt a bit crummy for chuckling like that, because laughter only felt good when it was genuine. And she suddenly didn't feel quite as cheerful as before.

"…Wow. I dunno how or why, but Jaden's come back all different-like, and Ziti didn't come back at all. Guess I didn't get a lot of bang for my buck, did I?" she whispered to Silpheed.

"RAWK! I got no bang at all."

Neither of them spoke another word until they reached the top of the cliff. With her tongue jammed in her cheek, she wondered how this could be. Maybe Jaden looked the way he did because that was what happened to people who traveled through space, like in the cartoons? But that didn't explain why Ziti hadn't returned...

Or was it because of the way she had worded the wish? When she mulled the memory of the night before over, she couldn't find anything wrong with it, except perhaps one tidbit...

"I wish...I would be happy, too."

A shiver danced down her backbone, causing her to bite her bottom lip. She may not have been the most intelligent kid in school, but something in her knotted gut told her that she may be stuck in a loop. A "selfish shellfish" loop.

"Silpheed...you don't think that my shellfishness screwed up the whole wish, do you?"

The cockatoo hung his head and shut his eyes. "RAAAWK, this again?"

"I'm serious, Silpheed! I don't wanna be selfish, but ever since Ziti pointed it out, all the signs point to the same thing. Oh, Lord of Laughter, have I...have I been like that all my life?" She hid her face in her hand.

Silpheed groaned under his breath. If they ever, ever met that Ziti character again, he'd make sure to give him an ultra-wicked purple nurple.

"Ohhh...I don't think I've ever--hic!--been so confused..."

No, make that two purple nurples.

TO BE CONTINUED…