"Me too," called back Honda. They stood together as the virtual pods lit up again, and the transparent shells lifted. Mokuba, Jounouchi, and Yuugi sat up, blinking and looking bewildered. Mai came running in from the other room. "It was true," she whispered.

"Anzu, Honda," cried Yuugi, memories rushing back. "You don't look a day older!"

Anzu raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about? Neither do you. You've only been in there for twenty-four hours."

Yuugi looked around. Indeed, Mokuba was eleven again, and he and Jounouchi sixteen. Seto burst in suddenly. They all stared at each other for a moment, silent as death. "It was all just a game," Seto said quietly.

*

He worked for weeks afterwards, trying to get into the game without losing the data. It was all in vain, though. To go back into the virtual world would restart everything, erasing all they had built before.

"I don't get it," said Honda one day, helping Kaiba carry in boxes of tools. "Why is this so important? It's all just electronic data."

Seto didn't have an answer for that.

*

A month later, the five who had been in the game gathered at Jounouchi's house.

"I was never unplugged," started Seto with what happened to be on his mind. "I don't understand why I couldn't go back."

"I wonder if there was a rule that said everyone had to come back together," mused Yuugi.

"Maybe."

Seto glanced at Jounouchi, a glimmer of anger born from sorrow in his eyes. "I don't see why you're so depressed," he snapped. "It's not as if you lost your wife."

"Just because I still have Mai doesn't mean I haven't lost anything," said Jounouchi softly.

"We lost our children, both of them. We'll never see them again, never listen to their innocent laughter," finished Mai with a slight sob.

"I wasn't in love or anything," put in Yuugi, "but I had a lot of close friends."

There was a flash of light, and Yami sat in Yuugi's place, pale with grief. "It's just like when I was released from the Puzzle," he said with a tremor in his voice. "I wake up to find so many of those close to me gone beyond retrieval and a world so different I cannot bring myself to call it home."

Seto remained rigid in his seat, his face emotionless except for the tear that streaked from his right eye. "Nagusami," was all he said, though his mind was also on their unborn child.

"I miss Adina," admitted Mokuba. "She was the only girl I ever liked." He was still in shock from being suddenly snapped back from his early twenties to the girls-have-cooties stage in life.

Jounouchi sighed. "The thing is, we're stuck here, but we don't belong."

"What do you mean?" asked Seto. "We came from here."

"But it's not our world any more," said Jounouchi, rising and walking to one of the kitchen drawers. He pulled out a small, sharp knife and returned to his place. "Watch," he said. Carefully, he cut a shallow wound in his forearm. Everyone leaned forward to see what he intended to accomplish by this. Then Mokuba gave a little gasp, summing up the feeling for everyone. Jounouchi nodded gravely. "We're all like this."

The wound was not bleeding, but they could see instead that within him flowed streams of zeros and ones.

Owari