Good Day Readers and welcome to the sequel to One Last Step! Thanks to all of you for the support and I hope that you all enjoy this latest and final edition of the Hope sisters. Due to certain events that happened at the end of One Last Step, this story will solely be told from Katherine's perspective.

Obviously I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh only Katherine Hope, Yumiko Kazayama, the Hope parents and Kylie Hope along with the unique cards within their decks and whatever other OCs decide to crop up. Also italics symbolise a mind conversation, a flash back or anything spoken in a language that isn't Japanese. I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 3: - Confusion, Confusion

My eyes fluttered open and I let a small sound that seemed to be mixed between a groan and moan slip out of my lips, I pushed myself up and saw that I was wrapped up tightly in the duvet of my bed with my Deck gently resting on the bedside table next to me. I leaned back slightly as I lifted my head up to the ceiling whilst allowing my eyes to drift close as I thought about what I had learned last night.

Something dangerous was coming, that much I definitely knew but I didn't know how to prepare for such a thing especially when I didn't entirely know what the issue was. Opening my eyes, I climbed out of bed, finding that I had on the blouse and jeans from last night whilst my shoes and socks were gently resting on the floor nearby.

I recalled what had happened after I returned to my home and the Duel I had against Yugi before I'd been so tired that I ended up falling asleep during the Duel. A smile came onto my face at the fact that Yugi must have brought me up and set me down after I had collapsed at the table, he was the sweetest person that I knew of and had been ever since I met him.

Standing up, I quickly set about getting myself ready for the day that was to come and I knew that for the moment I would need to focus on school. At the very least I knew that I had to prepare for any potential attacks that might be coming for us and anyone strange that might decide to show up in the process of my preparing.

At my thought of a strange individual, I recalled Aigami since he definitely seemed to be one of the strange people that I should be concerned about, as cruel as it might seem to be suspicious of the boy. But given how all of my instincts of the magical variety had been reacting in the exact same way towards the boy only made me more suspicious about him and the events of last night made me even more worried.

'For now, the best thing for me to do is to be on high alert. I know I told Yugi about what I felt last night but he already knew from dad. I don't want him or any of the others to be involved in this tangled mess.' I decided. I pulled my school uniform on once more and grabbed my bag, I bolted out of my room and after feeding myself, I headed towards the road that would take me to school.

*Yu-Gi-Oh*

Dinner time had rolled around today and I had made a quiet escape to the back of the school, I'd be easily found if I took to hiding at the rooftop or within the library by my friends and for the time being I wanted a bit of peace and quiet. The thoughts and troubles had been plaguing me today as I watched over Aigami was much as possible, he'd done nothing yet and in order to not seem suspicious I decided to break off whenever there wasn't a reason that I needed to be close to him.

In order to try and find a way to relax I had my Chess set out and was currently playing a game against myself, moving the pieces in complex moves and patterns as I tried to calm myself down before I had to go back inside. I set down the white queen's bishop which seized a hold of the black king's knight, I set the captured piece down and lifted my hand to and began to reach for another piece.

However, a hand suddenly snatched up the black king's rook and moved it diagonally towards the just moved bishop, despite the fact that a rook couldn't move in that way. That narrowed it down to only two individuals and my Mana sense confirmed which of the two knuckleheads it was even before I lifted my eyes up to give Jounouchi a deadpan look.

"Rooks can't move that way, Jounouchi. They only move in a straight lines horizontally or vertically," I explained. Jounouchi blinked like an owl before moving the piece back and setting it on the game board once more. "What are you doing here?" I questioned. Jounouchi wasn't the person I'd been expecting to find me first, that would always go to Yugi, but I wasn't surprised someone had come to find me.

"Everyone knew something was messing with you. Yugi took me aside and told me the truth about what you sensed last night. He wasn't too sure about how to approach you regarding it. So, he asked for my help in doing so and guided me to where you were," Jounouchi explained. Smiling was so easy for me whenever Yugi was involved, but that was just how much I loved him. "Love dork," Jounouchi commented.

"Shy idiot," I retorted. Even as I spoke however, I didn't stop smiling as Jounouchi turned bright red at my mention of his feelings for Mai. "As for what happened last night, I don't know what to do about it, I'm so confused and lost right now. I really thought we were done with such threats," I admitted. I even reached my hand up to start massaging my head as the smile fell from my face as I was surrounded by the oppressive thought of more danger coming for us.

"I get that you're worried Kathie. But trust me, worrying so much about something, especially something that so far hasn't troubled us won't help you. You need to relax," Jounouchi commented. He then started to toss the chess piece into the air before catching it and then twirling it around his hand before setting it against the chess board with a rather loud clack. "This guy or girl dipped into the Shadow Realm, but panicking about it will only stress you out," Jounouchi stated.

"What do you suggest?" I asked. The boy was being unexpectedly wise, but he did have his moments no matter how few and far between they might actually be; Jounouchi grinned at me, looking like a crazy fool which caused me to laugh slightly at the expression on his face, but I just couldn't understand what the boy was thinking at the moment.

"Relax. Why don't we all hang out later, take your mind off the issue at hand," Jounouchi suggested. Footsteps reached my ears before I could respond to the boy, I looked over and saw that Honda, Bakura and Anzu had suddenly shown up and all of them looked concerned as they walked over to where me and Jounouchi were. "Yo, Guys. What's up?" Jounouchi asked.

"Katherine-san are you ok? We heard Jounouchi say that you needed to relax," Bakura spoke up. Honda and Anzu nodded their heads, I was touched by how worried they were about me and felt a warmth spread over me at the worry they felt towards me causing a smile to appear on my face, but I decided not to tell them the truth about what I had sensed.

"Yeah, I've just been a bit stressed recently," I admitted. Not technically a lie since I was stressed by last night's incident; immediately the trio started to make plans as to where the lot of us could go once the weekend rolled around in order to help me relax properly, lots of things were discussed as I laughed lightly at their enthusiasm to help me.

However, that laughter was cut off slightly when I felt a pair of arms twine around my waist and a warmth began to spread through me, I leaned back into the embrace as Yugi tightened his grip around my waste. Snickers could be heard so I retaliated by flicking out a couple small orbs of magic which smacked into Honda and Jounouchi's heads as retaliation.

"We'll make sure you can relax Katherine, I promise," Yugi spoke through our bond. I grinned properly at the words that Yugi had spoken to me, comforted by the embrace that he was giving to me as I looked over at the rapidly discussing friends in front of me. "How come you didn't tell the others the truth about your stress?" Yugi wondered.

"They don't need to know that. The fear that plagued them as they watched us engage in such dangerous Duel doesn't need to be revisited upon them. Jounouchi can handle it, but the others can't. Please keep this quiet," I responded. Yugi nodded his head in agreement and I was relieved about this, although I worried about if I could continue to involve either Yugi or Jounouchi in this chaos.

*Yu-Gi-Oh*

A few days later and all of us had gathered at the café that Otogi had set up within the shopping centre, which wasn't all that far from where Jounouchi part-timed as a mascot which made him wear a dog costume – at least it wasn't a monkey – which got a few jokes from Honda when we first saw it. At the moment Honda was fiddling around with Jounouchi's Duel Disk which caused Otogi to claim that there was no repairing the beat up old thing… it wasn't that old.

"Tell me about it. He's so damn reckless with his stuff," Honda commented. I lifted up my handbag and proceeded to open it, I then pulled out a small red leather bound notebook which I placed near Honda who stopped working on the Duel Disk to look at it with wide blinking eyes. "What's this Kathie?" Honda questioned. I wasn't surprised that he was confused by the object since only a few

"It's Kylie's notebook on the Duel Disk. It should be able to help you fix up Jounouchi's Duel Disk. Fortunately, she wrote in both Japanese and English. I've bookmarked the Japanese section for you," I explained. Honda was stunned by the notebook, but our attention was pulled away when Yugi who had been looking over the newspaper which talked about the disappearance of five students that happened to attend Domino High School.

"Hey, those are the guys from the other day," Anzu realised. That was honestly the creepiest thing, that the five students who happened to have disappeared also happened to be the five goons that we'd encountered bullying Aigami yesterday, Yugi confirmed that they'd all gone missing. "No word from any of them?" Anzu questioned. The brunette had gone slightly pale in the face upon hearing that, probably due to her extensive and unfortunate exposure to dangerous magic that makes people vanish.

"Plus, there have been incidents similar to this happening all over the world as of late," Yugi added on. That was an extraordinarily worrying scenario as it essentially meant that people had been taken with seemingly no connection to each other or profile of types; the fact that there had been five students that disappeared unnerved me since it lined up with what I had discovered in the warehouse when I detected the initial burst of power in Japan.

"I checked it out on the net myself. Said something about over fifty people all disappearing at once," Otogi revealed. This new information unnerved me since it showed that the situation was much worse than I had expected, how many incidents had occurred and how many people had been hurt because of this person or persons messing with things that they didn't understand; whilst talking to us Otogi had started to spin his empty tray atop his left index finger.

"If this was two years ago, I'd have said Shadow Realm. But who, where, why, what and how," I commented. Otogi had left us by this point and Honda was busy fixing Jounouchi's Duel Disk which seemed to be pretty easy to do once he started to confer with what Kylie had put in her notebook; Honda seemed good with electronics and it might be an idea to test how good, I could potentially get him a job at Hope Industries then.

Thinking of my family, I turned to look at Yumiko who'd I'd brought with me, she was munching on her ice cream whilst admiring a fountain and the rainbow light it created as the water bubbled about; I didn't want our adventures getting out to the young girl since she'd seen so little of our crazy adventures, Bakura didn't make things any better by stating that he felt like someone had been following him recently.

"You sure that's not just from the girls from the Bakura fam club? Look there," Anzu pointed out. A smile was blossoming on her face as she looked behind the white haired boy and pointed in that direction, I had also spotted the little horde of followers Bakura had inadvertently collected; this caused all of the boys to turn around to see what was happening back there and we saw Bakura's fan club was standing there and they proceeded to wave at him once they spotted him looking at them.

Despite the light atmosphere that had been granted to us at the moment it couldn't completely distract me from the creeping shadows that were attempting to claw their way back into our lives after two years of total peace, sometimes I wondered why the universe couldn't leave my family alone and pester someone else to save the world.

Suddenly a sharp sound echoed over the mall shattering my thought, it sounded similar to the kind of sound that came from a microphone's feedback when it was being spoken too close to which caused Yumiko to whine loudly at the intrusive sound. I flinched as the sound punched its' way into my ears and I looked around for the source of the sound, yet I couldn't see anything that might indicate what had caused the painful sound.

"Attention Domino City, no…," A familiar voice called. Everyone proceeded to look back at the voice's source and found that after months of seclusion we finally learned that Seto was actually still alive. "Duelists around the world! The Kaiba Corporation has successfully developed the latest generation Duel Disc. In a few days, all will become clear," Seto announced. As he did the CEO lifted up the newest Duel Disk which was attached to the arm completely and black in colour with an piece of metal around his eye.

"Well at least he's alive and still cocky," I commented. However, despite my cheerful words, my lips proceeded to thin as I looked at the newest Duel Disk, I hadn't heard a damned thing about the design which meant that I knew nothing about it and dad most likely didn't either, Yugi seemed to be impressed by the object whilst Jounouchi had rushed over to our side and proceeded to pull the dog mask from his head.

"The latest Duel Disk?" Jounouchi exclaimed. Yugi whispered the name he used to refer to my friend and I looked at him seeing and feeling the uncertainty and worry that flowed within him, but it had nothing to do with the Duel Disk Seto mentioned; instead it had everything to do with the fact that it had been an age since any of us had seen him "No way…," Jounouchi whined. I turned my attention to the blonde who looked completely down in the dumps at the moment. "So, that's just going to make all the Duel Disks up until now obsolete then?" Jounouchi added on.

"Don't worry Jounouchi, I can buy you one if you really want," I offered. Jounouchi seemed unsure about accepting my offer which allowed Honda proceeded to tease the blonde boy about having to work some overtime here. "Until then, I think Honda fixed your Duel Disk," I added on. Jounouchi snatched it back quite grateful that Honda had been able to fix the object so quickly.

"Thank Kathie. She gave me Kylie's notes to work from," Honda stated. He then handed the notebook back to me and I proceeded to slip the object back into my handbag and sealed it up; I'd probably have to start learning this stuff myself if I truly wanted to be able to continue to successfully run Hope Industries, perhaps I should call Rebecca in order to arrange for some lessons about this stuff.

Suddenly a cold feeling washed over me causing a shiver to wrack through my body in response to it, I looked around wondering where that sudden and rather shocking chilling sensation had come from. Yet there was nothing calling my attention to it, as I looked around, I reached up to my hands to my upper arms and began to rub them in order to get some warmth back into them.

A coat appeared around my arms causing me to look up at the worried face of my beloved boyfriend, I forced a shallow smile onto my face still worried about the cold feeling and what it might have meant. Seto's face had been displayed on a holographic viewing screen which had disappeared at some point making it known that his announcement was done for the moment.

"I think it'd be best if we went home now," I commented. That unsettling feeling had put me off any more time that I wanted to spend out here, I wanted to reach a place that would provide me with some comfort and attempt to bat away this cold feeling that had seized a hold of me so unexpectedly; we turned and proceeded to leave the shopping centre.

The day was lovely and peaceful as we walked with everyone chatting about one thing or another, after the strangeness that had happened a few days ago it was nice to get back to something more normal although the conversation was filled primarily with discussions about Seto's newest Duel Disk especially between myself and Yugi, the both of us were excited about the prospect of Dueling using the new design.

Yet as we kept walking, I began to feel woozy, I lifted my left hand up to press against my head as I attempted to sort through my thoughts which were slowly being clouded by whatever sensation was falling over me. I came to a stop and leaned against a nearby wall as I rapidly blinked my eyelids whilst trying to clear up my thoughts as the cloudiness stubbornly persistent.

"Katherine," Yugi called. However, his voice sounded so distant and far away that it was difficult to focus on it, I began to feel my legs weaken as I tried to remain standing, but it was impossible and I slipped downwards. "KATHERINE!" Yugi screamed.

That was the last thing I heard before I completely blacked out.