Timeline: Sometime after Yuma and Astral's duel but before they had to the Astral World.

Pairing: HolyIceshipping (Durbe x Rio/Merag), implied Stolenshipping (Kaito x Yuma x Shark)


Study Matters


Kamishiro Rio huffed as she stared at her open history book.

You'd think that being an former empress and priestess and princess would make studying this particular subject easier for her, but you'd be wrong. She never was all that much into war affairs as much as her brother and Durbe had been and the next week's tests topic was exactly that. Now, normally, she would ask her brother to help her (since he had a perfect grade and the sensei loved him) but the problem was that he had promised Yuma and Kaito to spend some time with them after having studied for the past week for the same test. Naturally, Rio had refused to study with him at the time on the grounds that there was still 'some time' left before the test and, of course, she was now eating her words. And she knew that even if she did call him over the D-Gazer (which they now used only as a phone), all he'd do is laugh at her and sing "I told you so!".

Her glaring should have burned up the book in front of her, and it probably would have, if it hadn't been for the soft hand which snatched the book and closed it.

"Hey!..." Rio blinked as she stared at Durbe, who was now sitting across from her in their school's library. She barely noticed that they were the only ones there. "Durbe? What are you doing here?"

"Nasch called me to help you with your studying." he said simply, fixing his glasses. She blinked at him, stunned, thinking she had heard him wrong. Her brother, the Kamishiro Ryoga, the Shark, would never let any boy (aside from Yuma and Kaito) be near her. But she also knew that, typically, Durbe doesn't lie.

"He did?" she asked instead, staring at him. She calmly noted the light flush on his cheeks.

"No." Durbe hid behind her book and began to study with her. Holding back a laugh at the thought of what would be Ryoga's reaction to this, Rio decided to pay attention as she smiled.

Life was certainly interesting for the former Barian empress. Interesting indeed.