" Great Pharaohs of the past, protect us now as danger lurks in every day...."

-Prayer to the Pharaohs

It was coming down to the very end of the duel as Holly ended her turn by summoning a monster in attack mode. She looked at her opponent, but couldn't make out their facial features as they where shrouded in shadows, this felt very odd to her. However, that wasn't her main concern as she knew that she was about to lose this duel. She was down to 300 life points while her opponent still had 4000, she hadn't managed to do that much damage to him at all, which wasn't like her deck, it was built to do as much damage as possible with as little time as possible.

The shadowed opponent summoned a monster from the graveyard, Summoned Skull, it had more attack power then Holly's and with a swift attack, both her monster and her life points were destroyed.

Holly stood there for a moment, feeling very weak as if she had just had her life energy zapped from her, there was something not right with this duel...not right at all.

"Penalty Game." Holly looked up at the sound of her opponent's voice to find them pointing a finger at her.

Suddenly Holly began to fall back without actually falling, that's when she realized that she was not falling, but shrinking at a rapid speed. A few moments later she was laying on her back, wondering what was going on and what was happening to her. She found that she couldn't speak or move, which scared her more then anything else at the moment. Then she saw the shadowy figure of her opponent loom over her, a dark laughter ringing in her ears.

"The Magician's Guardian. When this card is destroyed, remove all Magicians from play. They cannot be special summoned back by any magic, trap, or monster effect at any time." They laughed again, this time louder and more wickedly then before. Then grabbing Holly, who was now the 'Magician's Guardian' card, they held the top of the card with both hands before tearing it in half with a swift flick of the wrist.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Holly sat straight up in her bed, breathing heavily. It took her a few moments to realize where she was and that she had just had a nightmare. Carefully, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stared down at the floor. "What was that all about? and why did I get turned into a card?" she was deep in thought over her dream when a sudden loud knock at the door made her jump out of her skin.

"Holly! Are you alright!?" Came Chris' voice through the door, Holly felt bad as she knew that she must have woken him up.

"I'm good thanks. It was just a bad dream!" She called back to him as she stood up and checked the time on her digital clock. It was 6am, but she knew that she couldn't get back to sleep now, not after that dream.

As she walked across her small room she heard Chris mumble something before retreating back to his room for the remainder of the morning. Holly yawned widely while pulling on her usual garments of a plane black sleeveless slinky top, and black pants. She glanced at her duel disk which was laying on her desk where she had put it the previous night, it seemed normal enough, but she couldn't help but feel a strange shiver down her spine when she thought of how her and her friends acquired the duel disks. With a shrug Holly grabbed her note book and pen and made her way to sit in the kitchen to write in her story.

When she got there, she saw that Ali was already up and reading one of the books she had borrowed from the library. Ali raised her eyes from the book as Holly flopped down on a chair across from her friend.

"How long have you been up?" Holly asked with another yawn as Ali put her book down to reach for her cup of tea.

"About Ten minutes." she replied before sipping her tea and watching a now grinning holly.

"You couldn't sleep either?"

"Who could after that scream you let out?"

"Oh, you heard me?"

"I'd have to be deaf not to have." Ali rubbed her ear as she said this. Holly began giggling madly for some reason, causing Ali to stop and look at her like she had lost her mind,

"Poor Chris. His room's right beside mine."

"Heh, I heard him get up. He didn't sound too pleased."

Holly grinned wider, she then leapt to her feet and opened the cupboard to grab herself a cup for some tea as well. "What do you make of all this?" she asked while pouring sugar and milk into her tea and stirring it rather loudly.

Ali sighed and looked out the balcony window, silent for a moment, before shrugging and returning her gaze to Holly. "I really don't know. Suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens." Ali frowned slightly as she finished the last of her tea, and reopened her book to where she had dog-eared the page she had been on.

Holly stood holding her tea cup in one hand, she watched Ali for a moment before opening the sliding glass door of the balcony and stepping out onto it. It was small, just enough for two people to stand on it, facing the street, she looked down at remembered the four way duel the friends had had just hours before. It was still chilly, but the sun peeked out from some white clouds, making the rain from last night dry up quickly.

Holly was lost in thoughts and didn't notice that she was leaning over the edge of the balcony until someone grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back, surprised Holly dropped her cup.

"What!?" she turned to see that Ali had left her book and had pulled holly back, Ali didn't look too pleased as she had to get up from the table.

"What are you doing!?" she demanded her face slightly pink from the sudden dash from the table to Holly, who was looking down at the street were the broken mug now lay.

"I lost my tea..."

"I think you've lost more then that." Ali sighed, letting go of holly's shoulder. "Now, what were you doing?"

"What, what did it look like I was doing?"

"Like you were about to fall off the balcony."

"I was that far over the railing?"

"Yes!"

Ali and Holly walked back to the kitchen and both sat down with a slight sigh,

"I was just recalling our duel...." Holly said as she looked at the empty tea pot letting out a whimper, causing to Ali roll her eyes and get up to make some more tea.

"Stop being strange." was all Ali said as Holly grinned happily, ignoring the fact that she had been really close to falling over the railing of the balcony and becoming a pancake.

Later that day, after Amber and Chris had both woken up at their own pace, the four were deciding on what to do as tomorrow was the big day, the day of the tournament.

Chris had decided that he would stay home and work on his deck for the remainder of the day as he wasn't sure of the skill level of the people in this city, he assumed even the weakest duellists could be a good challenge.

Ali was going to calm her nerves by returning to the library, she had already finished half the books she had taken out and wanted to take out a few others she had seen, but was unable to borrow due to the fact that she only had a temporary library account, until her card arrived in the mail, so she could only borrow a few books at a time.

Amber grabbed her bag and was going to go get some more Pocky because she was starting to run low and, she had seen a flavour she hadn't tried before.

That left Holly. She told the others that she was just going to wander about for a while, going for long walks always seemed to calm her down, and the fact that she wanted to go to the museum because they had a new Egypt exhibit made her giddy. So the four went their ways, planning to be home before 7pm as they were going to have a large celebratory dinner, and go over any unanswered questions they might have amongst themselves.

Amber was walking down the street, from the corner store where she had picked up more stock of Pocky in various flavours. It was still too early to go home and she wasn't in the mood to go back yet, so she decided she would wander around a bit more and see what she could find.

Pocky stick sticking halfway out of her mouth as she spotted a small arcade building, familiar loud music blaring from inside, she dashed towards it, hoping that her ears heard right and that they had Dance, Dance Revolution.

A crowd was gathered outside, but none of them seemed to be bothered about going inside, curious Amber joined the crowd and tried to see what they were looking at.

"What's going on?" she asked the nearest boy, he looked at her like he had never seen a girl before and returned to whatever was going on.

The rudeness of the boy made amber slightly annoyed, he was younger then her, so she figured he was probably being a normal boy and being a real pain in the neck. Swallowing the pocky stick she turned to another, older boy, who was more around her age, and asked him the same question. This boy looked like he had been in a few fights, but that didn't seem like a reason to not ask her question. He looked her over before grinning at her.

"Ya. There's a boy who's having a dance contest with some girl, and she seems to be kicking his butt."

Amber smiled thanking the boy before she made her way towards the front of the crowd again. She had to see, then maybe she'd challenge the winner. The crowd parted slightly as she get closer to the front, she grinned when the dancers came into her line of sight, that girl mentioned previous was her friend, Holly, who was in the middle of a dance contest with some tall guy.

"Go Holly!" Amber called out, not caring that between the crowd and the loud music that Holly hadn't heard her. The boy Holly was competing against had and said something to Holly, who made a face back at him.

"d'at your friend?" asked a little boy, looking up at Amber. He had chocolate all over his face and held a melting chocolate bar in his little hands.

"Yep." Amber replied smiled at the kid, a happy carefree glow in her eyes.

"She's quite good." came the remark of some other boy. Amber grinned to herself. Before she had come along, Holly had never even thought of playing D.D.R, and it was with her help that Holly had become any good at the game, though Amber was still the best between the two of them. There was a loud noise to signal that the boy had lost, Holly looked thrilled, though she was really red in the face from dancing for so long.

She turned and saw Amber and was about to say something when suddenly the boy swung his arm around and hit Holly, knocking her off of the dance pad and onto the hard cement floor. There was a unified gasp as Holly let out a squeal of pain, the crowd watched in shock for a moment. Amber had gone from hyper to serious faster then the blink of an eye, leaping for the boy.

"Get your mitts off friend you ass!" She shouted angry that this boy had, in frustration of losing to a girl, hit Holly to make himself seem the better of the two. One of the few things that Amber couldn't stand for, watching her friends get bullied or hurt by others.

The boy looked shocked to see Amber coming at him, but his attention was divided as someone else had leapt from the crowd and was coming at him.

"Don't you know its disrespectful to hit a lady!" came the second person's voice, they had a strong accent that didn't really sound Japanese, but that only registered in the back of Ambers mind as she paused her advance still glaring dangerously.

"Get out of this! It doesn't involve you!" the boy from the game yelled.

"You go hurting people for the sake of being a poor loser and it does involve me. Especially if I see you doing it!" came the response.

Amber looked over the situation over, slightly surprised that someone else, some complete stranger, had come out of the crowd to help Holly. Amber stepped over to Holly, who was holding the elbow she had landed on, and helped her to her feet.

The two locked eyes for a moment as they listened to the two boys argue, they seemed to be thinking something along the same lines. 'Why did that voice sound so familiar?' but neither said anything as they turned their attention back to the two boys now yelling at each other overtop the music of the game. The crowd was edging away but was attracting more people,

"Shove off Wheeler!" Both Amber and Holly looked at each other, "Wheeler?" they both said under their breath, glancing over at the fighting boys again. Holly's eyes wide looking like she had just seen a ghost and Amber just blinking a couple of times with that blank look of curiosity on her face. Was the boy who had come to Holly's aid the same Wheeler the two girls were thinking of?