Chapter 7: Test of friendship

"Hurry!" Sakura yelled to Hilary, Meilin and Li who were running with her.

"It's so crowded," Hilary complained as she tried to squeeze pass some people.

"I can sense it, down here," Li said, pointing straight ahead.

They ran to a place which looked like a dock. They could smell the salty sea air and hear the waves crashing against the protective wall barrier along the shoreline. They kept running until they finally saw Tomoyo and Max. Max had his beyblade ad launcher aimed at Tomoyo who cowered in fear.

"Hey man what are doing!" Li yelled at Max. Max turned his head over his shoulder. They gasped; they could see that he wasn't himself. Something about him was definitely different; his eyes were empty and merciless. Sakura didn't even think twice she grabbed her beyblade and launcher and aimed it at Max who instinctively released his beyblade as well.

"Cerberus!" Sakura yelled. Her guardian obeyed and showed itself from the blade.

"Watery!" Max yelled, and Sakura's card showed itself from the blade as well.

Their blades attacked each other fiercely, Sakura's slashed Max's at an angle while Max kept on grinding his blade into Sakura's. The noise the battle made was deafening.

"Tomoyo are you ok?" Hilary asked as she went over to help Tomoyo.

"Max, I don't know what happened to him, there was this dark mist.." Tomoyo muttered, with tears in her eyes.

"What do you want?" Sakura asked sternly at the unknown that was controlling Max.

"Didn't I tell you?" he snickered. "I want to eliminate you are your friends, so that I may have control over all of your worlds," it said

"Did you bring us here?" Li asked.

"Yes I did, by taking you out of your original worlds it causes your abilities to weaken, including your guardians if it's in another state,"

Everyone gasped.

"I'm sorry but I cannot allow any of you to leave, until I get what I want," It crackled again.

"Sheesh that thing is even more of a brat than Meilin," Hilary commented.

"Shut up!" Meilin snapped.

"Well I can't allow you to do that, you'll never get what you want! Get out of Max's body now!" Sakura demanded.

"Never!" it yelled and then it went back to concentrating on the bey-battle. It commanded watery to swam Sakura's blade with water. Sakura's blade seemed to weaken as it was being pounded by the other blade. Soon the rotation of her lade was slower and it moved around awkwardly.

" Oh no!" Sakura cried.

"This isn't good, Cerberus's element is fire there is no way it'll be able to beat this element" Li said.

"Max please stop this please," Tomoyo yelled again. She ran over to him and grabbed him around the waist yelling over and over again.

"Tomoyo get away! It isn't Max anymore, it's something else" Hilary yelled.

Max tried to shrug Tomoyo off as hard as he could but she just kept holding on, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Please, Max I know you're there! Try and fight off the presence, you can do it, fight it" Tomoyo yelled again and again.

Suddenly Max's beyblade appeared to had stopped its assault on Cerberus. Max groaned and held his head.

"Come on Max, I'm going to be here for you always, please don't hurt my friends" Tomoyo sobbed.

Max grunted and groaned and yelled as he held his head, trying to fight off whatever was inside of him.

"You can't fight it, give in to you destiny you will eliminate Sakura and her friends," he said to himself. " No.. I… can't… I won't let you.. do this…" Max groaned to himself again.

As he fought with himself his beyblade seemed to have grown weak and the spinning had slowed down.

"Sakura now's your chance!" Hilary yelled.

"Ok Cerberus! Attack!" Sakura commanded. Immediately her blade made finally blow that sent Max's blade flying, it hit the ground and stopped.

"Yes! I did it!" Sakura cried triumphantly.

"Arrrgg you got lucky, but I will kill you, I will kill you all, you will all die without mercy at my hands"

With that the dark apparition had floated out of Max's body in a dark, misty smog and dissipated into the air. Max crumpled to the ground.

"Max! Max! Are you ok?" Tomoyo cried cradling him her arms. "Please say something,"

'The Watery' that was trapped within Max's blade revealed itself again, turned into its original card state and floated back into Sakura's possession.

Max stirred a bit.

"Max," Tomoyo repeated again and hugged him closely. "I was so scared."

"Wha.. what happened.." he muttered.

"Oh you wanna know what happened! I'll tell you what happened you attacked Sakura and Tomoyo." Meilin said bluntly.

"Meilin, come on he didn't know what he was doing" Hilary shouted back.

"I did what?" Max asked weakly again.

"It's ok Max, you were being controlled by the darkness," Sakura explained.

Everyone was present at the agreed time and place. The Domino park which was pretty hard to miss because it was a lovely green spot in the middle of Domino city. The trees were a lush green and the bushes had flowers blooming in them. Sidewalks were clean and it was a great escape from the city itself. They met along this cement wall that was built some way along the inner sidewalks. It only a few feet high so they sat along it.

"And then it just disappeared again," Sakura said finishing off her explanation to Yugi and his friends.

"Aww man I missed that for Math," Joey joked.

Everyone was quiet for awhile, contemplating on what their next move.

"This is really scary, it said it was coming for all of us," Hilary said.

"You know what I think," Kenny said with his hand under his chin.

"What?"

"First this happened to Kai and now Max, Don't you guys see some kind of pattern?"

"Yes he's right," Tyson agreed. "All beybreakers, maybe Rei and I are next,"

Rei shuddered at that thought.

"What are we going to about this?" Yugi asked.

"The best we can do is probably wait around and face up to whatever challenges it throws at us" Kai said some distance away from the group. He was leaning against a nearby tree his arms folded and his head turned elsewhere, anti-social as usual.

"He's right, we have no idea what we are dealing with," Li said.

"So much for enjoying ourselves," Meilin commented rolling he eyes.

"In that case, Sakura you and I are going to have to practice!" Tyson said getting up.

"Wha.. what?" she stuttered.

"You heard me, Rei and I are probably going to be next and you need to be ready," Tyson said.

Sakura looked around at everyone with a bewildered look, everyone was quiet. She looked at Yugi who was standing a few feet from her, he just shrugged.

"I think that may be our only choice, for now, until we know exactly was going on," Kenny said.

"What about our bitbeasts trapped in the duel monsters cards," Rei asked.

"We can't worry about that now, we need to worry about Sakura," Hilary said. "The darkness attacked her twice.

"Or maybe that's what it wants us to think?" Li queried.

"Whatever, come on Sakura you and I are going to do some training," Tyson said tugging on Sakura's arm and bringing her to another part of the park.

"Sakura?" Tomoyo said as Sakura was dragged past her and Max by Tyson.

"It's alright Tomoyo I'll be back," Sakura said waving at her best friend.

Tomoyo smiled at Sakura then turned to Max who was sitting next to her. He didn't say anything after the incident especially to her, he was humiliated, humiliated at what he had done to Tomoyo. She was having some trouble getting around because her ankle was still sore.

The gang chatted a bit till dusk, during that time Tyson was teaching the Sakura the tricks and rules of beyblading. When hey came back Yugi and his friends had to go home.

"What are we going to do now? This is our second night here and I'm sure not even Tomoyo can keep up all this rapid spending for all of us," Meilin said flipping her hair behind her again.

"Yea.. maybe we could just stay here in the park," Rei shrugged.

"Are you serious, no way," Meilin scoffed

"Do we have a choice? Plus everyone should keep a look out on Tyson and I incase anything happens, we should stick together if we could," Rei said.

Meilin just groaned in dismay.

"Oh well I hope you guys make out ok, we got ta go home now," Joey said.

"Yea if anything happens give us a call," Tea said. She gave them a contact number for each them.

"Be careful," Yugi said worriedly, mostly at Sakura. She just smiled.

"We will Yugi," Sakura said. They all said goodbye to them, and they were on their own all 10 of them.

It was a noisy night, they could hear the cars and noises of the street. They were out in the open, no shelter nothing. Luckily the night wasn't very cold and it didn't rain. The park was pretty big, so they all huddled together somewhere in the center where no one would notice or bother them.

"You know Max it's not you're fault," Tomoyo whispered to him. She was sitting under a tree and he was on the other side.

"I know but, I hurt you I should have controlled myself," he whispered back.

"I'm so glad that you weren't hurt though," Tomoyo whispered back.

Max just sighed to himself.

On the other side Sakura was next to Hilary. Sakura was examining her beyblade with Kero trapped in it.

"Don't worry Kero I' going to get you out of there," she said whispering to the plastic object. She didn't know how it was possible but she was very sure that Kero could hear her.

"Hey Sakura," Hilary whispered.

"Yea?"

"Are you scared?"

"A little bit, but it's ok to be scared because afterwards, when you get through whatever you're scared of, it seems like nothing." Sakura smiled.

"Night Sakura," Hilary said.

"Night Hilary" Sakura said.

Yugi felt bad, here he was all snuggled up in his warm bed and the strangers were out in the city somewhere. He turned to check his alarm clock, it was 9:45pm. He sighed and stared at the ceiling, he thought about that pretty brunette girl. Not Tea, but that new girl Sakura. Was it the fact they were basically the same height? She was 5 years younger than he was but so what, she was beautiful. His daydreams were soon disrupted when he heard a buzzing noise in his room. He sat up immediately in his bed. He looked keenly around the room but the noise kept growing louder and louder.

"What's that?" he asked aloud.

Fwee end of chappie 7 :3 I feel so better using shorter chapters. :o maybe now I'll get some reviews xD I've already written 9000 words and only 2 reviews.Thank you ghostymangarockerfor being my only faithful reviewer. ww losta love for you. BTW my most popular story had only 7000 words in total.. 16 chapters and 100+ reviews xD. Oh well reviews arne't everything I'm happy writing the story anyways.