"Where are they?" Yuki asked as she and Kuuga looked into the window, some onlookers looking at them oddly. Weirdly though when Zach had jumped in there no one seemed to bat a eye. Speaking of which, Zach and the other two riders seemed to have gone to some back alley where their overhead view couldn't see. Yuki soon got her answer as both her and Kuuga were taken by surprise as Zach, his long haired counterpart, and his auburn skinned friend hopped out of the window. Ryuki and Sam looked around at their surroundings a little irritated
"Oh come on I was suppose to pop back into my room" he said as he still held Sam
"Decade must've come in after you" Sam said in response as Ryuki looked over to Yuki and Kuuga, starring at them for a few moments. Sam tried to look over at them but his neck hurt too much from his fight "What are you looking at?" He asked as Ryuki stopped looking and hitched Sam more securely on his shoulder.
"Don't look there's a third of me" he said as Sam chuckled
"Great" he said as Ryuki started hauling him away
"Zach..?" Yuki asked as Zach looked at her
"We gotta follow him come on" he said as he started for Ryuki. Yuki and Kuuga standing for a moment before following him, both looking at Ryuki and Sam. Sam was in both of their universes, in Kuuga's he was Zach's best friend but he'd lost contact with him when he moved away because of college. For Zach and Yuki it was a similar story except they didn't lose contact, Zach saw Sam every once and awhile whenever he wanted a night on the town with his bro. "Need some help?" Zach asked Ryuki, seeing that he was dragging Sam's feet on the pavement
"I got him don't worry" he said as Sam groaned before looking up at Ryuki
"Dude come on I don't want my shoes getting torn up" he said as Ryuki rolled his eyes as Sam looked over at Zach "Please pick me up again" he said as Zach grabbed his arm again. "Thanks"
"No problem" he said as he looked over at Ryuki, who was looking over at Kuuga and Yuki before noticing that Zach was looking at him.
"What?"
"Nothing, it's just kind of weird to see me with long hair" he answered
"Well the feelings mutual. I've had this look for so long I can't remember my last hair cut" he said as Sam shook his head while chuckling under his breath
"On more than one occasion that's come to bite him in the ass" he said as Ryuki rolled his shoulder almost making it seem like he was going to drop him in response. "Geez I was kidding!"
"Sure you were" he said as Yuki and Kuuga got closer to them from behind, the people passing by them just going around their large group.
"Did he tell you about us?" Yuki asked Ryuki
"He" gesturing to Zach "told me he's from another world, but he didn't tell me about the third me or the version of you that actually gets out of the house once in a while"
"What?" Yuki asked, puzzled by what he said. She was in no way a house hermit, always doing something with friends in her world.
"So he left out all the fun parts of the story" Kuuga said as Zach rolled his eyes
"Mind if I ask about your story?" Zach asked, Ryuki looking at him oddly
"What?"
"Well how'd you get your powers?" Zach asked as Ryuki looked back in front of himself
"Take the next left then it's a straight shot to my house" he said as Zach was a little off that Ryuki had shoved off his question. But when they turned he began to speak again "It was Seven years ago, I was helping set up a new mirror in the bathroom. I was too close to the shower and slipped, I thought I was going to get a big face of glass."
"But you didn't did you?" Yuki said as Ryuki nodded to her.
"Slipped right into it, like going through a narrow window. The mirror shattered but I had arrived in the Advent Parallel"
"The what?" Kuuga asked
"Advent parallel, it's the name of that mirrored world we jumped out of" Sam said as Zach pressed Ryuki to go on.
"We found that out later from another rider, Odin. But that's later, what happened then came as a shock to me. Give me credit for a 13 year old boy I didn't lose my cool too much at first. The world doesn't have people in it but it has every building, blade of grass, and mirrors that real world has. But the one thing that world has that we don't is advent contractors."
"I'm going to guess that's where you get your powers" Zach said as Ryuki looked over at him
"How'd you guess?" he said semi-sarcastically
"I got my powers kind of like you, I ran into a different world and then someone just presented my belt to me"
"That all to it?" Sam asked as Zach chuckled
"No there's more details, but what are advent contractors?" Zach asked as Ryuki pointed with his free hand
"Third house on the left, that's our stop" he said before jostling Sam's arm on his shoulder to make sure he was on him firmly. "Advent contractors are huge monsters, and in the Advent Parallel there are only 13 of them. Again something we found out later from Odin, but something me and Sam were told when we approached one of these monsters was and is the reason we keep going back into that world" he said as they approached his front door, his house not the same as Kuuga's or Kiva's. As he opened the door, Zach let go of Sam so he and Ryuki could fit through the door as he and company followed suit. "Yuki!" Ryuki called out as he set Sam on a chair in his living room, he sneering when his feet hit the ground.
"Zach? What's wrong?" They heard his Yuki call out, Yuki of course finding it odd hearing her voice not coming from her own lips.
"First aid kit" he said
"Oh god Zach!"
"It's not me!" Ryuki slightly barked back as Zach, Yuki, and Kuuga began for the couch next to the chair and sat down. Sam grabbed onto Ryuki's arm, he looking down at him
"Dude…" he said disapproving as he shook his head, Ryuki taking a breath before looking back at the stairs where Yuki's voice had been heard,
"It's Sam he's hurt, can you please come down" he said as audible sigh was heard up stairs
"Be down soon"
"Don't be surprised but I have other people here too"
"They're not hurt too are they?" she asked as Zach shook his head
"No they aren't, just Sam. Come on down"
"Okay" she said as Ryuki sighed and looked to his couch to see all the spots were taken, rubbing his neck he wished he could sit but opted for leaning on the wall next to the draped window sill. The trio clearly caught something in the way he spoke to Yuki, not much but enough for Yuki to ask
"Is something up between you and your sister?" Ryuki looked at her, hesitant to say anything mainly because it came from her.
"It's complicated…" he said, Sam shifting in his seat as if to some discomfort but his face illustrating some kind of frustration. Taking a breath Ryuki looked at the three on the couch "so back to the Advent Contractors, I was being chased by one till it got me cornered. I thought I was done, like it was going to eat me, but then It spoke to me. That's when it told me that I was special that not every human could pass through into the Advent Parallel. It also proposed an offer to me, I could leave the world right then and never come back just needing to be careful around mirrors. Or I could enter a contract with him where I would fight off other Advent contractors to keep him safe" he said as Sam shifted in his seat
"Mine gave me the same speech" he said as Yuki interjected
"Do you get something out of this?" Ryuki and Sam went silent for a moment before answering.
"Our contractors said that if we succeed in taking out every other Advent Contractor they would be able to gain the power to give us one wish, no catches"
"Anything we want" Sam said as Zach and company took that in for a moment.
"Whoa" Kuuga said
"That's… certainly a good trade off" Yuki said as Zach still stayed quiet for them to finish the story. Ryuki shrugged off the wall, looking toward the stairs before looking back at Zach who he saw seemed the most interested in the story.
"My Contractor is a red dragon and Sam's is a bat. After I agreed my Contractor gave me this" He said as he put out his hand, an object forming in it. Yuki and Kuuga starring at it when it finished while Zach looked at it but had less of interest in the rectangular object with a dragon symbol on it since he had seen it in the fight. "This is an advent deck, once I slide it into my belt I can transform into Ryuki. After that I found my way out of the Advent parallel but as you can guess I kept going back. Eventually Sam found out, it was a little hard to explain how he saw his best friend jump into his bedroom mirror" he said as Sam chuckled
"That use to be on the top of my weirdest day list. Now it's not even in the top 10" he said as Ryuki chuckled. Then the sound of wood creaking alerted everyone to this worlds Yuki coming. Everyone braced themselves, not knowing how she would react or any way of preparing her for this. When she got to the bottom of the stairs she was looking into the first aid kit she had in hand. This worlds Yuki was again somewhat of a jump from Zach's Yuki, she had her hair in a bun that looked a little messy but not enough to say that her hair was unruly. Her skin was a little pastier than their Yuki but she had around the same slim figure that she had. The big difference between her and the other Yukis that Zach had seen beforehand was that this one had glasses, not thickly framed but big enough to clearly be seen that she needed them to see.
"Okay what hurts…" she asked looking up, trailing off in her sentence when she saw the extra pair Zachs and the other her. She looked confused but didn't immediately freak out, instead looking over to her Zach who stayed silent for a moment or two before speaking.
"Hey" he said simply
"Should I ask…?" she asked him gesturing to them on the couch, clearly she must've gone through weirder things like her brother.
"Do you want to?" Ryuki responded, the oddity of how calm the two of them were not being ignored by Zach and Yuki on the couch. She shook her head slightly
"Not really" she said before looking at Sam then kneeling down to him "What hurts?"
"Left foot" he said as Yuki started to take off his shoe. There was a sense of awkwardness in the room that Zach tried to break
"Um hi I'm…" Zach started towards the other Yuki, Ryuki and Sam shaking their heads to tell him no
"Not interested" she said as Zach was left midsentence before he closed his mouth again. He looked over to Ryuki who shrugged as if to say sorry or I told you so. This Yuki was rude or didn't want to be part of this.
Hooray 10th chapter, I wish I could make a bigger deal of it but I can't, were not at anything really meaty yet. I will say that since it is the 10th chapter it will take possibly a little bit longer before chapter 11 is out. The reason being that usually around the 10th chapter of any story I go back and fix the previous chapter of any error or continuity problems so the story flows together. Anyway to my fans thanks for reading so far I very much appreciate it. Remember at any point if you want to say anything leave a review I do take criticism seriously and read every one that gets posted. Have a lovely day and see you next time as we continue the journey through the decade.