A/N: New chapter!!!! Enjoy!!!! And please review. Thanks to those of you who have reviewed. I really appreciate your commentary. I decided to publish this one early for you. Also, if you have any good plot ideas for other characters or stories, be sure to tell me. I need them, because I'm stuck.

Disclaimer: It's torture to have to keep repeating this but, I still do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. The genius behind it is Kazuki Takahashi.


Happiness is like jam - you can't spread even a little without getting some on yourself. – Unknown


There really isn't any specific reason as to why, but as soon as Judai met Johan, something just clicked. Something just fell into Judai's gut and never left it. Ever. Maybe, like Manjoume, it was because of the duel spirits only they could see. After all it was nice to see someone who liked having his duel spirit, just liked Judai liked having Winged Kuriboh. Johan really did love Ruby. Maybe it was their personalities. They both loved dueling, their friends, games, trouble, being lazy. They were so alike that all their friends did say they were twins. But there was one thing. One thing that made them two different people.

It was his hope.

Judai had that once. But he lost it, coming face to face with the realities of the world. But Johan had too and that never seemed to stop him. Through everything, that hope had stayed. He wouldn't have been Johan without it. Even the Kaiser had admitted that he was the only one other than Judai who he had gotten a real thrill out of dueling. Maybe that was why the Jewel Beasts had picked him as their master. In their first duel, he'd taken hit after hit, and still smiled. He wasn't insulting of Judai's Neo-Spacians, he was fascinated by them. Just as much as Judai was of his Jewel Beasts. He had clearly loved them, and they had clearly loved him. When Giese Hunt had taken his Pegasus, the look in his eye had clearly said he would go to the end of the world to get his back. Even at a near loss, he was still hopeful. Something that never left him was hope.

Except once.

The second that Judai had realized that it had been Johan who was standing before that gate, he'd broken. It turned out that even Johan was suspectible to the horrors of reality. He hadn't looked anything like himself. He looked dark, horrifying, dangerous, evil and… not Johan. Without him, everything that Johan represented would be gone and Judai couldn't let that or him die. Judai couldn't let that part of him die, the only part of Judai that was left like that. And Johan was a part of Judai. A very large part. He was the one that had brought Johan into this, and he was the one who would bring him out. It was funny that that had been Judai's purpose of coming back to that dimension all along, to bring him back. It was funny that Judai hadn't really realized it till then.

And months later, when that was all said and done, he really should have figured out sooner that it was Johan he'd been fighting in front of the Kaiba Corp. building, not Trueman. After all, the Jewel Beasts wouldn't listen to anyone else. He'd seen that. And after all that Judai had gone through just then, it was good to see a friend again. As he helped Judai up, he had smiled. Judai had missed that smile. He still did now. When did he not smile? Judai really did wonder. He had come to think that being happy was just a natural part of him. Maybe that was why. Johan symbolized everything that Judai had once been. Before he had let the world sink in on him.

So they had become best friends, almost like brothers. And for the rest of his life Judai would remember him, and wish he had stayed the way Johan had.


" A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."- Arabian Proverb