Now, as I said before, we now skip forward about…a month. The epilogue of the 2nd round.

And Andrew, Justin, I know you guys haven't had much, but I have a plan for you two. *laughs evilly*

Atem: you know, the evil laugh is very annoying.

Meh, it keeps me sane.

Atem: riiight.

Chapter 11

I'm on a boat

What lies ahead

After the events involving Glenda and James transpired in the same day, I found myself doing one main thing: I questioned myself, my beliefs and what I knew. Glenda's revelation rocked me, seeing as I remember something different to her. But seeing James…hearing what he'd done…

I don't know how I can even think him as my brother anymore.

What kind of brother would do that? I know this is just a tournament, but still…

As we packed our luggage, leaving behind a successful month of winning, Elendil and I looked at our room, thinking of the state we were leaving it in. I wonder if this is how Jaden felt all those…episodes ago. Confused, scared, and worried of what his powers brought him. I myself found myself feeling a mixed bag of the three, wondering what was going to happen now that I had these powers.

Elendil seemed to sense my unease, putting her hand on my shoulder and nothing else. I looked at her, smiling through my struggles. Throughout all of this, she seems to have been the one constant. The rock that will support me. Not saying that Andrew Justin and the rest haven't done the same, but we've always stuck together through this.

"Are you ok?" she asked me. I nodded, walking to our D-Wheels.

"Never better" I lied, even faking the optimistic sound in my voice. "Come on…we have a long ride ahead of us"

She looked at me oddly as I shoved my helmet on, then putting her own on. The plan we had before coming here was to go together, leave here as a team…but with recent rifts and 'accidents' we decided it would be best to go in two groups. James taking everyone without a D-wheel, with me leading the others. This basically boiled down to Simon and Elendil with myself, and Andrew, Justin and Ryan sticking with James. (Ryan's skateboard was…erm…how to put it nicely…smashed to oblivion)

Simon rode by, stopping at the path near us. I started my bike, setting everything up half heartedly. I'll be honest, Hawaii was kinda my place. The weather was beautiful and I'm sure that I could live here in peace. Eventually, we set off, headed to the boat the same way we came.

I turned on the TV station, just for a bit of noise apart from the bikes. Just so happens I flicked straight onto duel central. They were covering the tourney.

"…And with that, we now have our finalists" the newsreader, a young blond girl, finished, pacing around the studio. "Ryan and Simon from England, Justin and Andrew from America, and two other duellists, both of whom are assumed to be from the Canada reaches" isn't that the far north of Canada…wait, we're not from Canada. "Who among these 6 will carry on and fight the king, only time will tell"

"And in other news, Craig Appleby, an up and coming contender for the crown, along with Elendil Malchiott, have both vanished. The police are baffled in this case, as they can't understand how the pair could both disappear. I for one reckon that they just ran off together for a bit of fun…if you catch my drift" yes I do, and no we didn't. then again, I didn't see any police officers. "We wish the parents of these kids the best and good luck in finding them"

So J.W will still assume we're gone…perfect. So we can surprise him in the finals with a dramatic entrance with things go well. I thought about the winners, smiling as I realised one thing: James, who had J.W to help him, didn't get through.

THAT'S karma.

The road was fine; we made it onto the boat intact and on time as the ferry left. We were below decks when it started, making it up the stairs to wave good bye to Duel academy.

"I have to do this now, or I'm gonna regret it" I told them, smiling. "You know what needs to be said here, right?" they nodded. "On three…one, two…three"

"I'M ON A BOAT!!!!!" we all shouted, getting it out the way now so that it wouldn't bother us later. If you don't get it, it's something by the lonely island that started some kind of meme.

Now, going from this to our room was not really too hard. Elendil and Simon took the lead, keeping an eye out for J.W. I wanted to surprise him in the finals with a sudden appearance, and with a vague media, this was a more realistic goal then you would have thought. Then, it said we were from Canada for crying out loud; who get's that simple fact wrong? I'm English, she's American.

We eventually made it to our quarters, dumping our things inside and looking around. These rooms were different. They were set up for one person, with a nice closet, a balcony (which may be useless in the middle of the ocean), a single king-size bed (EACH) a bathroom outfitted with everything you'd need, a TV, a computer, complete with internet, a few nice chairs and a family friendly minibar…family friendly as in no alcohol…bummer. I was hoping for at least a cider.

I set up in mine quickly; getting everything placed somewhere it would be easy to get, turning the computer on and placing my deck next to it. I grabbed the chair, the computer coming to life and finishing loading. Silmea appeared, watching the machine.

"What is that piece of witchcraft?" he asked. I looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

"You don't know?" I asked him, taking my disk off my arm.

"If you do so remember, Sir Dark" I'm shooting the next person who calls me that. "I've dwelled in the other plane, if thou doest remember" good point.

"Forgot about that..." how does one explain a computer to an other worldly being. "Just assume it does what it's meant to"

"But Sir Dark…"

"I'll be honest; it would sound too incomprehensible to explain to you, so just pick things up as we go along, alright?"

He nodded, grunting. I turned back to the computer, the other duel spirits appearing as I started working. Let's see, what was the URL again? Oh yeah, . I'm thankful the guys set this up for these tournaments.

Basically, it works like google maps or google earth, whichever you fancy. It displays the location of every duel disk in the world, and tells you the owner along with registration number, like an IP.

The search functions allow for searches of numbers and location. But you can change the date to check where someone was on a certain date. Perfect if you want to keep tabs on someone. The annoying thing with this is that you can't check who is who.

That's where part B of the plan comes in, as Elendil walks in with Simon. I brought up another website, URL (where everyone has a profile, with most of their info about their disk) let's see…well, I need my disk details. I typed in my disk number (019573749 3265) then entering the date of my duel with J.W.

It loaded up, showing my placement when fighting J.W. Simon got what I was doing, as did Elendil.

"Hunting down where he was isn't going to help us" he told me.

"Why not?" I asked him, jotting down J.W.'s number on Notepad (67642087 9282) and copying it.

"For one, how do we prove that he did anything?"

"We find the ones who disappeared and get them back" Elendil told him.

"If only it were that easy" I told her. I brought up a third page, hoping to find the dates that the duellists disappeared. "From what I've been told by him, in order to find them, we have to bring back the dead or find them in that other world"

"And how can we do either of them?"

"Planar dives" Lightblade told us. We all looked at him, wondering what he was on about. "You go into an area of the plane you wish to find someone in, you get about 10 minutes, and then you get pulled out with whatever you're holding if it doesn't belong"

"That doesn't exactly help us bring back the dead"

"Well, seeing as Sir Dark…" I mentally held myself back. "…was sent to another world, they might not be dead"

"So if we can find out who vanished going against J.W…"

"We can make a list of who to save" I told him, I found the list of dates, feeding them into the search engine and finding out what was what.

50 names…a lot of people by a tourney standard. The average number of people disappearing per year in Hawaii is somewhere around 3 or 4, normally. This is before the tourneys even began.

Now it's 10 per year.

Yeah, scary huh?

I took the lists down, recording when people vanished and if they were duelling J.W. I looked at the list as I went along. Marcia du Vertchay, Joshua Jehenna, Markey du Makka…one came up that I didn't write down…

Selina Malchiott… I'm guessing related to Elendil…disappeared…2004

When J.W was just rising up in the ranks…

With her sister in the same company as me right now, you can see why I left the name out. I kept it in my mind, making a note to tell the others afterwards.

After about 10 minutes of searching, with some numbers being quite obscure, we found them all.

All in all, out of 50 reported missing…we found 89.

89 people J.W duelled unofficially, who have since disappeared.

39 more then we knew about…maybe some homeless kids or people others won't care about.

But, and I know I keep going over this point, 89 people in 3 years.

That's about 30 a year. (If you want to be really picky, the calculator has it at 29.666666…) a scary figure in any place.

We would have been 91 and 92…except Elendil didn't duel him…I'm thankful for that….we're not 90 due to Selina.

I sat back in the chair, looking at the long list once more. Elendil and Simon did the same behind me, with the duel spirits getting a good look as well. Even Elendil's spirits and Elencia (one of Simon's) looking.

"So he's been busy" Elendil remarked. That seems bleedin' obvious.

"And you could have been among them" Simon stated.

"I know…" I told him. I scrolled through the list. "…and each one of these is a reason to keep fighting"

"THESE are your reason for being here now?" Simon asked. I nodded.

"That and vengeance" I looked at him. "You can understand that right?"

"Well…kinda" he scratched his head.

"That doesn't seem the noblest thing to do sir Dark" Elencia told me.

"Well…nobility seems to have gone out of the window" can't you see why? "That and nobility means nothing on the battlefield as someone I know would say"

"You know me too well" Lightblade remarked, he got smacked on the back of the head by Glenda.

"How much have you changed whilst I was gone?" Glenda asked, half annoyed half seriously. Lightblade scratched the back of his head.

"Depends how long you were gone" he honestly answered. He does have a point.

"Getting back to the point, we have a plan" Darkblade told us. Silveneste nodded.

"Get these guys back and beat J.W" she told us.

"This isn't going to be easy" I told them. "I mean, who knows what's ahead"