A/N: Here's my new story that I wrote with my friend Bramblepool (who has no account, sadly)! I hope you like it! Spoilers for Goliath, although later chapters take place during Leviathan.

WARNING: Characters may seem a little Mary-Sueish at beginning. I promise they get better. R&R!

Disclaimer: We don't own Leviathan. All rights go to Scott Westerfeld.

Chapter One

Bethany and Regina had few talents and they knew it.

The two best friends had been failures their whole lives. They got decent grades and had enough friends, but they were clumsy and often tripped over their own feet and were too sarcastic most of the time and most people said they were just plain annoying. It seemed to the girls as if they were always ruining things that were important.

However, they made up for it. Regina, the younger of the two by a couple months, got away with a lot more things than she should've. She didn't know why, but lying was like a second nature to her.

Bethany, the older, was the opposite. She wouldn't let anyone get away with anything. Teachers called her "the walking, talking polygraph machine" for she could tell the amount of truth in a statement just by the way it was said. Although, she couldn't lie herself to save her life.

One other thing each girl excelled in was physical.

Regina's father had started teaching her fencing when she was five. Now, eight years later, he always said that she'd caught on right away…you know, after three years and a whole lot of patience. But Regina definitely understood now. If you ever put a sword in her hand, at least expect to lose the battle, if not your life.

Bethany almost killed herself the one time she tried swordfighting. The blade seemed to just not want to be near her. But an interesting sort of gymnastics/martial arts is her specialty. Sometimes, to avoid falling flat on her face, she'll walk on her hands instead for better balance.

As you can see, the girls were….different, for lack of a better word. With some things, they were best in the country. In other things….not so much.

For awhile, Bethany and Regina weren't even friends. In fact, they absolutely despised each other! Bethany would always rat out Regina when she lied to a teacher. Regina would often sneak a pocket knife into school and "decorate" Bethany's gymnastics uniforms. The two girls had absolutely nothing in common, and frankly, they didn't want to.

Until Leviathan came along.

Regina and Bethany had been having a duel in the parking lot after school- Regina with a sharpish stick she found and Bethany with the Tai Kwon Do she'd, uh…. "learned" from YouTube videos.

It was when Bethany took a book out of her backpack and hit Regina on the head with it that everything changed.

"OW!" Regina exclaimed, dropping her stick weapon and holding her head painfully. Then she noticed what she'd been hit with. "Is that Leviathan?"

"Um… yeah," Bethany replied, sounding surprised. "It's, like, the best book ever!" The girl quickly shut off her excitement and changed her tone to an insult. "Not that you would've read it."

Regina was too interested to recognize the insult, or even to register that this was her archenemy she was talking to.

"Of course I've read it!" Regina exclaimed happily. "It's amazing! Alek is… dreamy," she ended with a sigh.

Bethany snorted. "Alek is lame," she scoffed. "Deryn's the main character.

Regina rolled her eyes. "Deryn's annoying," she countered. "I'd rather have a message lizard as a main character than read a fourth book about her."

Under normal circumstances, Bethany would've been angry at the insult of her favorite character, but she'd been too busy laughing at her happiness.

"Do you really think Scott Westerfeld will write a fourth book?" Bethany asked.

"Duh!" Regina replied; then they both burst out laughing.

Bethany stopped when she realized something.

"Look at us!" she exclaimed. "We're almost acting like….friends!"

Regina laughed out loud again. "We are not friends," she insisted.

Bethany hesitated to agree.

"We could be," she suggested timidly.

Regina didn't answer for a minute. "We've been enemies since we were seven," she whispered.

"Four long years," Bethany added.

"Maybe if you stopped ratting me out we'd be friends," Regina said.

"Maybe if you stopped lying so much," Bethany returned.

Regina rolled her eyes. "That'll happen," she muttered sarcastically.

Bethany sighed. "Right then. Never mind."

"Fine," Regina stopped her. "I promise not to lie too much….. in school, if you promise not to use your freaky karate moves on me. Deal?"

Bethany hesitated, probably making sure Regina wasn't lying; then nodded and shook hands with the other girl. "Deal."

That was two years ago.

Now, the girls are thirteen, they're the best of friends, and Scott Westerfeld still hasn't written a fourth book.

So, the girls have resorted to repeatedly rereading the first three.

And it was when they were reading those three that the real adventure began.

Bethany Richardson was hanging upside down from the low ceiling of her attic bedroom, reading Leviathan for the fifty-thrid time, her dark brown hair reaching about half way to the floor, and her large brown eyes twinkling with the fun of hanging, while Regina Scott was poking Bethany with the dull part of her fencing saber, reading Leviathan for the fifty-fourth time; her lighter brown hair flowing like waves over her shoulder and her blue eyes shining.

You can tell they enjoy Leviathan.

Regina jumped in surprise when her best friend suddenly screamed.

"What? What's wrong?" Regina asked.

"Quick! Turn to page 51, paragraph 7!"

Regina flipped through her book and read, "'The Stormwalker's wireless antenna stretched up above the trees, the archducal flag snapping in the breeze. But Alek had no idea how to lower it. He looked around the cabin, wishing he'd paid more attention to the crewmen when learning how to pilot. But'…" Regina paused. She didn't remember this next part from the first time she'd read the book.

"Keep reading," Bethany urged.

"'But before he could figure it out,'" Regina continued slowly. "The cabin was filled with an ear-splitting BANG as a bullet flew through the half-open viewport. Suddenly, Alek screamed in pain as his vision went dark. "Young master!" he heard Klopp shout. "'Alek was confused. Why did his mechaniks master sound so scared? Why did everything hurt so much? What was that bright light in front of him? Alek heard his voice scream, although he was not conscious of it; then he suddenly heard a voice he hadn't heard in a while. "Alek!" his father called. "Listen to me, Alek; you've got to hold on! You have to stay!" "No! I want to go with you!" Alek yelled back. "No Alek!" the archduke insisted. "You have to listen to me! You have to! You to-"And then he heard nothing.'"

Regina looked up, tears in her eyes. "What the heck?" she exclaimed. "How is this…? I mean, how did this…? They can't kill off Alek! Especially not in the first book! How did it change?"

Bethany shrugged, which looked really weird, since she was still upside down. "At least Deryn's now officially the main character," she said.

Regina frowned, thinking. "There's no way they'd do that. If Alek died, Deryn must die too."

Bethany laughed. "There's no way they'd kill off both main characters!"

Regina quickly flipped through the book again. She'd prove something.

"Aha!" she exclaimed a few moments later. "Here we go! Page 59, paragraph 3."

She then began to read.

"'Deryn clutched the ballast cord, gritting her teeth. She might survive a wind-tossed landing herself, but the shingled rooftops and backyard fences below would shred the creature to pieces. And it would all be Deryn Sharp's fault for not warning the ground men when she'd had the chance. But she didn't have time to think about it right now, for suddenly she heard a loud BANG and smelled the horrid scent of burning hydrogen. Deryn couldn't believe it. Someone had shot the Huxley! The hydrogen inside would be ignited and both she and the beastie would burn to death! Deryn quickly scrambled to unbuckle the pilot's rig, thinking dreadfully how in seconds, she would die just as her da did; then just as she was about to jump away from the flaming Huxley, suddenly BOOM! The creature exploded in a blazing inferno and Deryn couldn't even register pain before she blacked out.' And thus began the adventures of Zippo the message lizard."

"What?" Bethany asked.

"No, I'm kidding," Regina admitted. "I added that last part. But yeah. Deryn's dead.

Regina was aware that she'd sounded much too happy reading about Deryn's demise, but Deryn annoyed her so much that she couldn't really care. Still, the look her best friend gave her was probably twice as sad as Regina's own had been at the death of her sixth fictional boyfriend.

"We've had these books for years! How are they different?" Bethany wondered.

"I don't know. Maybe this is all the Master's evil plan and the Doctor didn't get there in time to save them," Regina suggested.

"Or this is how it always was and the only reason you two read it differently was because you changed it," a voice said.

"Who the heck are you?" the girls asked calmly, Bethany looking farther upside down to get a good look at the stranger.

The mysterious woman was young, only about two or three years older than the girls themselves. Her blonde hair hung about an inch past her knees and shimmered like yellow-tinted moonlight. Her eyes ruined the picture, though. They were as black as a dark, ominous, abyss.

"I'm the pizza guy," Abyss-eyes replied sarcastically. "That'll be $14.95."

"Oh, thanks!" Regina said, pulling her wallet out of her pocket. "We've been waiting for that."

"I'm not actually the pizza guy, you idiot," Abyss-eyes stopped her.

"Oh," Regina sighed. "I thought you were just a really sarcastic pizza guy."

Abyss-eyes (or Abyssia, as Regina shortenedly called her) rolled her eyes and turned to Bethany.

"Is she always this thick?" Abyssia asked, indicating Regina.

"Yep; pretty much," Bethany replied.

"Hey!" Regina exclaimed, whacking Bethany with her saber and causing Bethany to fall from the (thankfully low) ceiling.

Abyssia rolled her eyes again and sighed. "You two are ridiculous," she muttered.

"You're ridiculous," Regina returned, not really understanding why she was saying it.

Abyssia sighed. "Listen, you two. I need you to focus. The books have been sabotaged. You two are going to use an…. invention of mine to be transported to the time and alternate universe of Mr. Westerfeld's novel and then one of you will be assigned to Prince Aleksandar and the other to Mister Sharp and you will have to stop their untimely deaths and bring them together to complete the series. Understand?"

"Dibs on Deryn!" Bethany exclaimed, at the same time as Regina's, "Dibs on Alek!"

Abyssia nodded in satisfaction.

"Grab any essentials you may need," she commanded. "We leave at sunset."

The girls ran off to grab "essentials" and Abyssia sighed.

"Your plan is useless now, Koscheri," she muttered. "With these girls, there's no way you can win.