Eyyyy, after a few long months, I'm back. And I got more creative juices flowing—or, I hope I do, at any rate.

This chapter starts what I really, really hope is where things start to pick up, action-wise, at least. I know I've said this many a time in previous chapters, I absolutely suck at writing duels. Don't ask me why, but I just find the things really, really tedious to write. I play the card game myself, and the gameplay isn't the problem…so much as the execution. There's something about writing a duel out in prose that turns it from a fun game into an utterly mind-numbing slog. Don't get me wrong, I like playing the game and I love Yu-Gi-Oh, I just don't like writing duels XP.

That being said, don't expect a whole lot of dueling in the coming chapters. I won't cut them out completely—this is Yu-Gi-Oh after all, and there is a tournament on—but I won't be writing every. Single. Duel. It'd just turn this fic into one giant slog through the muck and turn my brain into Jell-O, and my brain is goopy enough as it is.

I'm going to try my very hardest to have a chapter at least every other month, as well as the once-monthly schedule for my other fics as well. I just have absolutely no idea how many more chapters this fic is going to be in total, despite knowing what the ending is.

Thanks this month go to Followers and Favoriteers cheetibecky, hcharper131, UltimatebadassOVERLORDsayan, and Crystal Luna Saiai; and to the reviewers:

cheetibecky; Glad to hear you like what you're reading ^^

Zeladious; I'm really glad you understand, really ^^;. Nevertheless, I'll try and keep up to a more, er, timely schedule than once or twice a year, ehe ^^;;.

PsychicEevee0103; :D. Evil is what I do best! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

As usual, the disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, or any of the rest of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. It's the property of Kazuki Takahashi and NAS/TV Tokyo, and I am most certainly neither of them. I just run around in the world and stir up trouble.

Chapter 21

Rips and Tears

Yuma pressed his hand down harder on his knee, trying to stop his leg bouncing. He hadn't been this tense in a long time; not since he'd been hunting down Numbers, at any rate.

It wasn't successful. His knee kept on bouncing.

Yuma rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger; he felt exhausted. Not from the duels; the first round had gone smoothly, after that first duel against Faker's goons. He and Kaito had won their next duel handily, ensuring their place in the next round. As for the team of Shark and Thomas, the pair seemed to be taking their time.

Either that or they were just too busy arguing with each other to find any other teams to challenge.

No, the tournament hadn't been what was exhausting him. It was worry. He was worried.

Okay, so he'd been worrying at some level since he learned that Astral wasn't dead, and that duel with Damien meant someone else out there was after the Key, but seeing the blood drain from Kaito's face upon reading that message had thrown that concern up several notches into "we're in deep shit" territory.

Unless Kaito had had a major change of heart over the past years—and if the recent months were anything to go by, he hadn't—not much rattled the Numbers Hunter like that. He didn't scare easily.

He'd been more than just rattled. The look on his face had been closer to fear. Plain old outright fear.

Kaito was afraid.

And when Kaito was afraid of something, that meant it was very, very serious.

Yuma reached up and ran a finger along the Emperor's Key. Damien was working for someone, and that someone was after the Key. Faker was also after the Key, and Kaito; the old loony had even sent goons to Neo Domino to bring him back to Heartland. Christopher and Thomas Arklight had come to tell him Astral was still alive.

A quiet voice in the back of his mind told him that all of it—Damien's employer, Faker, and the Arklight brothers—were connected, if not all on the same side.

And that little voice sounded a lot like Astral did, when he'd been helping Yuma work out a problem.

The crazy-haired duelist shook his head, pulling himself out of that depressing line of thought. Two of those things were connected, if tenuously; Chris and Tom had Varian abilities. So did Kaito, and according to the Numbers Hunter Faker was hosting a Varian—or at least had been at the time of the WDC—similar to how Yuma had been a host for Astral.

Granted, being host to Astral hadn't driven Yuma over the edge and around the bend into Looneyville, but it didn't seem all that different…mostly. Maybe.

When he'd mentioned this to the others, Shark had pointed out that Yuma had probably been living in Looneyville since before Astral had shown up, so if anyone's brain had gotten scrambled, it had been Astral's.

Yuma had replied with a chicken strip.

Which had quickly turned lunch into a food fight that the teachers had had to break up.

Yuma groaned. He hadn't gotten this many detentions in one semester since junior high….

The crazy-haired duelist shook his head. Back on topic; the message Faker sent was a list of names—some of them familiar to him, and that alone freaked him out—and a note that didn't make a lot of sense to Yuma, but it had apparently been crystal clear to Kaito. What Yuma wanted to know was why it was getting him so worked up.

Running won't end this, Kaito. It will only delay the inevitable. Whether you return to Heartland or not, what started four years ago will succeed.

Yuma ran a hand down his face and checked his watch; nine-thirty. The others should be getting done with their duels anytime, now. Or, at least, sometime within the next half hour. Or hour. Depending on how long it took Shark and Thomas to stop bickering for long enough to find some opponents.

He looked to Kaito; the Numbers Hunter was still fidgeting. Okay, so Yuma knew that he was worried about Haruto; he couldn't blame the guy, really. Hell, seeing the names of his friends and family on that list with Haruto and Orbital-7 had sent chills down Yuma's spine.

It made an icy cold lump in his gut, settling there and freezing his insides solid. A lump of worry about what he'd managed to get himself into.

And that's not even starting on the dreams. Those were another bag of crazy altogether.

So far they hadn't taken over every night, but it was a lot. In each one he'd been in a room that was either so big he couldn't see the walls or ceiling, or they were all obscured by the dark mist swirling around the place. He could hear whispers, all around him, talking about something but he couldn't make out the words, and a set of gates standing alone on the other side of the room. But whenever he started towards the gates, while the whispering words grew more intense, the gates themselves kept on receding. And then, every time, he'd hear a scream, turn around…and then wake up, the sigil on his chest tingling.

It was…weird. Really, really weird.

Yuma frowned. It was also a familiar sense of weird; similar to when he'd first opened another set of gates four years ago, and become linked with Astral.

The difference was that at least then, the weird had gotten to the point. This time it seemed to be content to take it's damn time and play games with him.

Why can't wacky supernatural shit just be straightforward?

He turned to Kaito, intending to ask him what about that message had gotten him so worked up. Instead, he ended up blurting, "Kaito, have you been having strange dreams?"

Kaito stopped pacing. "What?"

Okay, so it hadn't been what Yuma had been intending to ask, but there it was anyway. "Have you been having weird dreams lately? And I don't mean after clam day at lunch. I mean…weird. As in the 'something's trying to tell me something' weird."

Kaito peered at him for several long moments before nodding, slowly. "…Yeah." He said slowly, giving him a suspicious look. "You too?"

Yuma nodded. "There's a gate, whispery voices, and a lot of fog." He said. "It feels kind of like another dream I had years ago; when I used the Emperor's Key to unlock the gates that started the whole thing with Astral and the Numbers."

Kaito grunted. "Think they're related?"

Yuma shrugged. "Maybe. But I can never figure out what any of the voices are saying and I wake up before I get to the gates."

"When someone screams?" Kaito asked. Yuma nodded. Kaito grunted again. "Same's been happening to me, too. And then my sigil is tingling."

"If they're not connected I'll eat my deck," Yuma snorted. "You know, it'd be really nice if whatever's going on would be a little bit more straightforward. I'm pretty sure someone somewhere's trying to get a point across, but would it kill them to be a bit more direct about it?"

Kaito opened his mouth to reply, when a screech split the air. At the same time, the Key around Yuma's neck flared hot. One look at Kaito told him that the Numbers Hunter had heard it too, and neither boy needed any prompting to head in the direction the screech had come from.

So fast it had to be by instinct, the sigil on Yuma's chest sent a ripple of electricity through his body and the world lit up in yellows and golds, throwing his sight into the same mode as when he'd run into Captain Crunch earlier in the semester. He sensed more than saw Kaito next to him, half a stride behind. Glancing over, he saw the Numbers Hunter surrounded by a crimson nimbus, his eyes glowing red, indicating that the world probably looked much the same to him.

His attention was drawn away again when Kaito pointed up. "Tsukumo, look!" He called, the other boy's voice sounding…different, to Yuma's ears. "What the hell is that?!"

Yuma let his attention be drawn to what Kaito was indicating, and he almost stopped in his tracks. His breath hitched, and he felt his heart skip several beats.

It looked like something had torn a hole in the sky, ripping a deep wound into reality itself. Looking at the gaping tear physically hurt, making Yuma feel sick and giving him a pounding headache that had nothing to do with the weird sort of sight from his sigil.

No, the tear in reality was just wrong. A sense he didn't know he had was screaming at him that it didn't belong, that it was violating existence just by being there.

Despite the clear wrongness of the rip in reality, the people Yuma and Kaito passed seemed oblivious. A few glanced at them and some grumbled as they passed, but none of them noticed the giant fucking hole in the sky. "What the fuck is that? Why aren't people running and screaming?"

"My theory? They can't see it." Ah. Now he knew why Kaito's voice sounded different; he was hearing it in his head, as well as with his ears. Freaky. "Tsukumo, I think we're the only ones who know there's a big fat rip in reality spewing out who-knows-what."

That would make sense. "You think Shark can see it?"

Kaito grunted. "Probably. That's not what I'm so worried about though."

Yuma frowned. "What, then?"

"Look at where that rip is. What's right below it. Isn't that the area Mizuki said she and Rio would be dueling?"

This time, Yuma really did stop. His blood turned cold, despite the pulsing warmth from his sigil.

Oh…

Ohhh. Shit.

That tear was bad news. He didn't need his spectral-sense to tell him that.

And Kotori was right in the middle of it.

000

I forgot how easily Tsukumo can get wound up when it comes to his friends. It's gonna come back and bite him one of these days, I swear.

Kaito didn't want to admit that he was feeling just a little bit tense himself about it. A feeling which got made even worse when they reached where the duel had been taking place.

He was pretty sure Mizuki and Rio had managed to finish their duel before the giant effing rift in the sky opened. The last dregs of the crowd of spectators were dispersing, and there weren't any signs that their opponents were still hanging around.

Oh, and the light green mist drifting around Mizuki. And the look on her face at the tear in the sky.

Wait a second….

Do not tell me….

Mizuki's eyes locked on him, and then went wide. "Kaito! Look out!"

He felt his own eyes widen as he heard a hiss behind him. Not bothering to look, Kaito dove to the ground, throwing up a wall of iridescent fire as he rolled away from whatever was attacking him.

The flames dispersed, allowing Kaito a better look at whatever was attacking. This particular monster wasn't the long-armed, short-legged, gorrila-esque thing that had put him into the hospital a couple months prior. This one looked…well, like a mutated snake-person. It had a too-long neck, two sets of too-long arms with long-fingered, clawed hands, and a snakelike body from the chest down. And like the gorilla-thing, he didn't see the creature itself so much as an outline filled with swirling blackness.

And it made him feel just as cold.

Another screech rent the air, and he hared Tsukumo curse as the smell of ozone filled the air. He felt more than heard the discharge of electricity as he drove off the familiar gorilla-looking monster.

"Kaito, tell me that you and Yuma know what's going on." Kotori said. Kaito hadn't seen it before, but now he saw that Mizuki was standing guard over Rio—who was all but unconscious, the girl's eyes rolled up into her head. She didn't have one of the mists hanging around her like his and Tsukumo's and Mizuki's, but it looked like she'd still been affected by the tear in the sky. Or at least, by what was pouring out of it; to Kaito, it felt disturbingly familiar. "What the hell is that?!"

Kaito shook his head. "My guess, wherever these monsters are coming from." He said as Tsukumo disengaged and joined him. The runes etched along the crazy-haired duelist's skin were pulsing faintly in time with his heartbeat. For the first time, he looked up, directly at the rip in the world.

And felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Oh, god. Ohhh, god. I hope that isn't what I think it is. Hell, I hope it's anything but what I think it is.

But there wasn't any mistaking it. The tear in the world slashed across the sky was opening directly into the Varian World. He wished he was seeing things, he wished he was dreaming. But the painful thrumming in his chest wasn't lying.

His implanted Varian abilities were resonating with the energy pouring from the tear. He felt the runes and lines along his arms burning with every heartbeat. He heard the distant echoes from within the other side of the tear.

"Oh, shit…." Tsukumo's statement didn't come anywhere close to describing it. Kaito didn't reply; all he could was nod dumbly.

Did you pull this off, Faker? And how?

Kaito was afraid of the answer.

YESSSSS ANOTHER EVIL CLIFFHANGER! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!

I've already got a start on the next chapter of this fic, which will bring in yet another familiar face-as well as our sixth and final attribute power. I'll leave it to you guys to guess...and curse my name as I leave you with yet another cliffhanger to enjoy ^^~

As always; read, rate, and review (if you like)!

~Hikari Hellspawn (Formerly, Hikari Hellion)