I'm so sorry, this is like my first chapter story for Zexal, and the plot's not even an original one. No Mirai Nikki characters in this, just had to label this as a crossover so that people could see there's two animes mentioned in one story.

Warnings: None. This is subject to change with each new chapter.

… nd… ead en…

… Dead End…

… What the hell is going on?

Yuma found himself running. He was surrounded by nothing but a black world, void of color and life, but filled to the brim with sounds, many sounds. He could hear his footsteps, the pounding of his heart in his ears, and the many voices that reverberated in the empty space. Screams proceeded words, cries for help after sobs, and—his stomach lurched at the sound of blood spilling and splattering on the floor (even though there was none). He lifted his hands to cover his ears in hopes of at least muffling the noises, but to no avail.

Dead End… Dead End…

Was he running in the wrong direction? He skidded to a stop and looked around himself, looking for some sort of light in the dark.

More voices could be heard, all sounding different from each other. Yuma gazed around, jaws clenched tightly in fear.

"There's nowhere to run!"

"Stay out of my way."

"I'm sorry…"

They were talking to him. The words swam in his head, going into one ear and out the other. He squeezed his eyes shut, the voices eerie and unrelenting.

"Until the next life…"

"I'll kill you!"

"There's no guaranteed victory."

"You can't trust anyone."

"What's the point?"

Yuma falls to his knees and curls up, shaking. He could feel his blood running cold, his teeth chattering. "Please," he begged, hands gripping onto his hair, "don't hurt me…"

"Don't think, act!"

"I don't want to die here…"

"I'll become the next God!"

…

All was silent. The dead end chants, the screaming voices, the blood splattering, everything disappeared. All Yuma heard was his hard breathing and his beating heart. Thank God for that too. Had he been forced to listen to more, he probably would have broken down in tears. To think he would be surrounded by something so grotesque and sickening… it was a terrifying thought.

To make things worse… he felt like he heard it all before. It seemed so familiar to him, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it.

He lowered his hands and stood back up, brushing himself off as though there was dirt and gazed around. The world which was once black was now entirely white. Ground and sky were still one, but everything was a different color now, which was nice, in that Yuma could finally look down and see himself again, but it was almost no different than before. There was still no life. Nothing spine-chilling, which was good, but it was still nothing.

He continued looking around, tempted to call out anyone's name, to yell something random, just to see what would happen. As soon as he opened his mouth, though…

"Yuma."

… He closed it again and spun around, looking up. There was a figure looming before, a purplish black figure, face shrouded in light. There was something glistening in his hand, and it took him a while to realize what it was, but when he did, his face paled.

... Was that a knife?

Yuma opened his mouth to shriek, trying to back away from the silhouette, but failed. He couldn't move, couldn't make a sound, and couldn't get away. He was stuck in his place, and all he could do was clamp his eyes shut and brace for the pain.

...

"Yuma!"

Yuma's eyes snapped open at the sound of his name, crying out in surprise as he fell off his hammock and onto the floor with a loud thud. He laid there for a moment, groaning in pain and rubbing his chin, only to look up and notice Astral floating above him. "Oww… what, Astral?"

His glowing companion hovered closer to Yuma, seeming to look him over in what the boy assumed was concern. "You were talking and yelling in your sleep. What were you dreaming about?"

Yuma blinked, forcing himself to sit up. "Huh? I was talking in my sleep? What did I say?"

"You kept saying 'please don't hurt me.' What happened?"

The boy frowned, lowering his gaze. "Not much, really... I was just in a world of black, and there were all these voices saying strange things, but I couldn't see anybody, and-"

Astral folded his arms over his chest. "What did these voices say?"

"I don't know, random things!" Yuma exclaimed, leaning back to look his friend in the eye. "They kept saying stuff like 'I'll kill you,' and 'there's nowhere to run,' and 'I don't want to die here,' and more stuff like that." He could see Astral's eyes widen slightly, perhaps in slight surprise, and his heart sank in dread. "The voices sounded familiar, like I've heard them before. But I couldn't tell who was speaking."

Astral remained silent for a few seconds before replying. "Is that all?"

Yuma shook his head. "No, there was something else... One other thing..." He paused for a moment; "... The voices stopped at some point, and then when I opened my eyes, the black turned into white. I heard someone calling my name, but when I turned around, there was this dark shadowy figure standing above me with a knife, or something like that, ready to kill me. And then..." he shuddered, glancing away again, "that's when you woke me up."

Astral looked Yuma over, wondering if there was some way he could comfort the boy. He was terrified, but what could he do? Sadly, Astral wasn't the best at understanding a human's emotions and behavior, and all he could do was just continue talking, in hopes of finding a way to make Yuma smile again. "It appears to be a good thing I did. Your face is lacking in color, and your body is trembling. It would not have been wise to let you continue sleeping."

"Yeah, thanks," Yuma gave him a halfhearted smile, reaching up to massage the back of his neck. He looked outside the window, only to see the sky was still pitch black. "What time is it? The sun's not even up yet."

Astral's gaze shifted towards the sky as well. "It is still dark. Perhaps you should go back to sleep."

Yuma stood up with a yawn. "Nuh-uh. I am not going back to sleep. Not after a creepy dream like that." He walked to his bed and climbed back on it, staring blankly at the ceiling. "I don't think I can go to sleep anymore."

Astral maneuvered closer to Yuma and stayed beside him, eyes still out the window. "I see... Do you think maybe that dream was trying to tell you something?"

Yuma laughed a bit. "I sure hope not, or I'm in trouble!" He turned onto his side to grin at his friend, holding the side of his head in his hand. "People get nightmares all the time, but they're usually not true, unless it's about failing a test in school, or having to get scolded big time by your older sister."

Astral peeled his gaze away from the outside to make eye contact with Yuma. "Nightmares are the dreams similar to the one you had, yes?"

"Yeah, that's what they're called."

Astral gave him a small nod, and Yuma lied back down on his bed, stretching his arms over his head before letting them fall at his sides. His stare returned to the ceiling, too awake to go back to sleep. So, what now? Does he just stay up and wait till morning? But how long would that be? There seemed to be no sign of the sun anywhere, so does that mean it would take hours for it to rise? Great… that was the last thing he wanted. He sighed, glancing off to the side to look up at the stars out the window.

"Yuma," Astral said, catching the boy's attention again, "there is something I must ask you."

Yuma blinked and turned back to him again. "Yeah? What's up?"

Astral appeared hesitant to ask, but he responded anyway. "Did you hear anything in your dream, besides the voices saying various things?"

Yuma slightly frowned. Did he hear something else? He stopped to think for a while. Besides the crazy number of voices… what else did he hear?

Dead end…

"… Yeah, I heard something else," he said finally, a chill racing down his spine. He shivered and curled up a bit. "Why do you ask?"

Astral reached up to stroke his chin with his hand, appearing to be lost in thought. "While you were sleeping, I heard someone whispering something to me a number of times. It only stopped when I woke you up."

Yuma blinked. "Huh? What do you mean it stopped when you woke me up? There's no one else around here but us. What did you hear?"

"I heard someone saying 'Dead End' over and over again."

The boy could have sworn he felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach, and it was suddenly difficult to breathe and swallow. How did Astral know this? How did he know that that was what he was dreaming about? It seemed too unreal, and it made Yuma's head hurt trying to put two and two together. "Yeah. That was in my dream too."

Astral lowered his head a bit. "Just as I feared. I'm afraid there's more to your dream than we think."

"Don't say that," Yuma shook his head, turning over on his side again, except this time he was facing away from Astral. "I don't want to believe that. It's just a dream."

"We can't be too sure about that anymore, Yuma."

"What does it even mean?" The boy sighed, hand absently fiddling with his necklace. "What do they mean by dead end? What's a dead end?"

Astral turned his head to look back out the window. "I don't know. However, it looks like we'll be finding out soon enough."

He had just about enough of Astral speaking as though the dream was only a prelude as to what was to come. It was scary. The voices in his dream talking so strangely, the words 'dead end' echoing over and over again, the dark silhouette holding what he thought was a knife… he was practically praying that that was the end of it, and he would never have to see or hear of such a scary thing ever again. Yuma clamped his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, trying to sound more annoyed than scared. "Alright, thanks, now shush. I'm going back to sleep."

Astral frowned, tilting his head. "I thought you said you couldn't sleep anymore."

"Yeah, but that's your fault!" Yuma curled up even more, denying his voice slightly quivered in fear. "Please, just go away, Astral. I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Are you scared, Yuma?"

He paused. Astral didn't ask him out of mockery, or of condescension. It was of pure concern. And even though Yuma felt pathetic for answering the way he was going to, he couldn't deny it. No matter how much he wanted to just shrug the entire thing off, he wasn't able to, and the fact that Astral may be right, in that there may be more to this eerie dream than they think, terrifies him even more. He nodded a bit, voice shrinking. "… Yeah. I am."

Astral could tell by the boy's refusal to face him that he was ashamed of his insecurity, and again, he found himself despising the fact that he couldn't console his friend in his time of need. He hovered closer to Yuma's side, extending a hand out to stroke Yuma's hair. Though he wasn't able to move any strands, he could feel him, and he watched as Yuma turned over to look at Astral. He was being comforted by this gesture, he concluded, and tried to offer him his most reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Yuma. I will do all that I can to protect you."

Yuma only stared at his friend, almost unable to react. "Really? You will?"

"You put your life on the line countless times for me. It's only fair that I return the favor."

Yuma couldn't help but smile, and he lifted a hand to hold over Astral's, closing his eyes again. "Thanks, Astral."

"Now get some sleep," Astral advised. "I'll be here with you in the morning."

Yuma chuckled softly. "When are you not here? Ah well… it's good to know that I'm never alone." He yawned and curled his fingers around Astral's hand, slowly drifting off to sleep again. Hopefully this time, he wouldn't be plagued with a nightmare. "Anyway, g'night."

"Good night, Yuma."

End of chapter notes! I wanted to mention this at the beginning, but eh, it's better to rant at the end when everyone's read the chapter anyway.

I hope you don't mind when I say this [[UNPOPULAR OPINION TIIIIME~]], but the anime Mirai Nikki did a less-than-satisfactory job at executing their plot. For one thing, some of the characters had no back story/character to them at all (look at Third and Tenth for example, and some of Yukiteru's friends), and Yukiteru's development overall was... odd, to say the least. He goes from a softhearted kid to a heartless murderer in such a short time that it raises eyebrows and elicits a "huh?" out of us (well, me, at least).

The plot is a really great one, though, and I thought maybe I could do a thing or two with it using the Zexal characters. So yes, the plot is unoriginal, but it'll be far from disappointing.

Hope you all like it anyway! ^^