Bridging the Void

Note: I'm sorry for taking so long… I got a bit caught up in my other story, Darkness Within. But now chapter 4 is finally here! Please R&R!

Chapter Four: Revenge and Psychos

After our little outing, I managed to convince Chris that his girlfriend was safe with us, and that neither Seto nor Marik would try and steal her from him. I wished, somehow, that someone would. Chris was bad news.

"Alright, so what's our plan in full?" Steph asked, to make sure that I had the story down.

"Run around like maniacs and pray that it all works out?"

"No, Lily. Remember, they're my cousins. And we're staying with you guys while my house, where they were staying, is being renovated. Okay?"

"Okay… but I have this bad feeling. Are you sure everything's alright with you, Steph? I mean… Chris seems… I don't know… sort of… possessive. Is he pressuring you, or hurting you or anything?"

"I told you, I'm fine. And we aren't best friends anymore, Lily. We're just doing this thing for the guys, and to save our own skin, okay. After this… we go back to the norm."

She just didn't seem to get that nothing in my life would ever be normal again. Not as long as I was in love with Seto. For me, if they went back… if he was gone again… then I would fall back into my slump of write, eat, write, eat, and the occasional fitful sleep. But at that moment I felt so vibrant… so much like I might have been if I'd chosen a different path in my life. I needed my BFF, but she had been replaced by a thin, bruised girl with fear in her eyes.

"But… Okay. Only, how are we going to get them back?"

Steph gave me a thin smile. "Girl, we always find a way. And this time, I have years of study on my side! Let's go return some guys to their dimension!"

I felt my heart sink. Just like that, he was going to be taken away from me again. But I couldn't let him disappear or whatever. Not in the slightest. Suddenly, my eyes caught on something familiar.

"Oh, Stephs, look at this," I whispered, picking up the tattered paper.

"Steph and Lil… best friends until the end, so hereby promise to never let one another do anything stupid or dangerous to themselves or to people who don't deserve it," Steph read with a faint grin.

Underneath those words, we had scrawled our signatures, and I had written my usual pre-falling in love with Seto "Joey is hot" heart. I recalled the box of important things that we had and rushed to pick it up. Inside was a torn up photo of Drake, and on top of it rested a nice, clean picture of Seto. Whether it was Steph's or mine was difficult to tell, but upon finding an older picture beneath those, I determined that it was mine. And there, at the very bottom, was a picture of the two of us smiling as we held signed copies of Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant (which Writergril118 does not own, might I add.) I breathed slowly, amazed by how well our friendship had been documented. It was almost as if we had known that we would need a reminder someday. Thinking on how I had a sense for those things, it didn't surprise me that I'd been such a packrat.

"I had forgotten this," Steph whispered. "It wasn't so long ago, but now… we're different. We're both… just not who we were."

"It shouldn't matter," I mumbled, staring at the sky and remembering the conversation we'd had out first day back.

"Well, we're back."

"It looks so different now, Steph."

"No, we are different, but our world is the same."

"You're still mad about Seto, aren't you?"

"No… I think that it would have only hurt me in the end to be with him. I want a real boyfriend."

"Seto is real!"

"But he isn't here now, is he?"

"You are so impossible."

"Thank you, it's my destiny."

It had been a long time since that day, but it was clearly the day that our friendship first started to crumble. Who said that meeting our favorite Yu-gi-oh hotties was a dream come true? To me, it was more of a nightmare.

"Are you guys coming or are we just going to sit in this poor excuse for a car for the next hour or so?"

I rolled my eyes at Seto and waited for Steph to pound him for saying bad things about her car. But she didn't. She just got in the car and started it up, taking us all up the street to my house.

"So these are Steph's cousins?" My mom asked for the eight time.

All of us nodded, except for Marik, who was watching my little dog run around him in circles, growling. She usually liked anyone who was a human being, but I guessed that Marik was a little creepy looking, and Ginger did have a few issues.

"So, is it okay if they stay here for a few days?"

"I guess… but I don't know that we have room."

"The guys can sleep in the basement and Steph can either chare my room or sleep in the computer room."

Mom shrugged. "Okay, then. But only for a few days."

Steph and I tried to look innocent, but the boys didn't bother. I don't think that trying would've helped much anyway. We quickly piled back into the car and zoomed off down the road to visit Steph's dimensional science professor.

"Fascinating," the short, plump woman murmured for the thousandth time, poking Seto again with her index finger.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him to safety, glaring at Dr. Dimensia (go figure).

"I always though that they would be unable to maintain such a solid form, but it is possible that certain… emotions could make it possible. Are you here for revenge?"

Had I be able, I would have anime sweat dropped at the very thought of someone coming from the Yu-gi-oh world for revenge on sweet little me. But as it was, I couldn't.

Kaiba glared at her and Marik picked up a nearby picture frame, seeming to test its balance and see if it would knock the annoying woman out.

"Well, it doesn't look like it, now does it?"

She poked Marik, earning her a slap in the side of the head. "Don't poke me woman, I am not in a good mood today!"

I snickered and gripped tighter on Seto's arm. The woman was now reading some notes and nodding.

"I see… Yes, yes… so only that then… interesting," she murmered as she flipped through the pages. At last she looked up and when she spoke, it was to Marik and Seto, and in a grave voice that I had not heard her use before. "There are two reasons that you could be here," she declared. "Either your destiny intertwines with that of someone else here or… you have a strong feeling drawing you here… like love or hatred or very, very close friendship… Something like that. I think you can deter why it is that you are here."

Seto nodded and Marik looked slightly flustered. I stared at Steph hard and things started making sense. Maybe, just maybe, I couldn't help her. Maybe that was why Marik was here. Maybe it was his job to get rid of the jerk once and for all. Or maybe I was crazy.

Dr. Dimensia grinned at Seto. "I have good news for you," she sang, double checking a very thick book. "If you are in love with someone here… then you can stay if you so chose. But if it is revenge you seek, or destiny you must fufill," she said, looking at Marik now. "Then you have a week before you are turned to stone, dust, or a spirit of some sort. We aren't sure which."

Marik shrugged and glanced at Steph, who was deep in thought. "I don't get it, what part could Marik possibly play in out lives?"

My heart, which had momentarily swelled with joy, was rapidly deflating now. Of course he should go back; in his world, he was a CEO, and an older brother and he could not be expected to give that up for me.

"How do we send them back?" I asked, giving Seto a mournful look.

"Why my dear, the same way that you got them here, of course. Through your TV set. All that you must do is find a good moment in their show and they must want to go back and poof, they are. No one said it was a difficult science, just weird."

I blinked at her and sighed. There were only reruns now, and those were rare. But they had to go back.

"Oh, and girls, don't be surprised if that television becomes a source of messages from that world. It's been exposed to it twice now, from what Steph had told me. These two could discuss things with their friends or family if they needed to, I believe."

Seto and I sat in the back of the car, and Marik, to his discontent, was seated I the front next to an unhappy Steph, who was whispering into a cell phone as she drove.

"I'm very, very glad to be near you again, Lily," Seto whispered.

I smiled and fingered his necklace. He noticed it and smiled a genuine smile. "You still have that?"

"No, Seto, this is just an astro-projection of it," I said sarcastically, making him laugh. "Of course I still have it. I…I… Oh, Seto, I'm going to miss you when you leave again."

To my slight horror, I found myself crying. I hated the way I looked when I cried, but was slightly consoled when Seto hugged me to his chest.

"I'm not leaving you, Lily. You heard the crazy woman, I can stay."

"B-but your company and… and Mokuba and most of all… well, you just haven't beaten Yugi er, Yami or whichever yet. You can't just leave it all unfinished like that."

His face fell. "How do I choose between that and you?"

"You don't, Seto. You have to go back. Don't worry about me; I have felt for a long time that I am destined to be alone." I looked away from the intensity of his eyes. "And my intuition… is almost, well, magic, really. I just… I'm generally right about these things and-"

Steph veered to the left hard and we were all sent flying out of the car by the jolt. She landed on Marik, who looked less than pleased, and I found myself underneath Kaiba.

"Hey," I said, pushing him off. "Isn't the guy supposed to break the girl's fall?"

"Sorry," he said, offering his hand to help me up.

"What was that, Steph?"

"Chris," she said grimly. "I think… he's here… to make sure that no one stands in the way of what he wants."

"And that is?"

"You."

"ME?" I shouted in outrage at the same time that Seto said "HER?"

"Well well well, despite my warnings, you persist to cling to the past, Steph. Now step aside, this is between the girl and me."

"I think not!" Seto said.

"Lay off it, Seto," I whispered fiercly, my eyes on the fowl man whose crazed eyes had haunted my dreams. "This is between the two of us. The first, and last, thing we'll ever agree on. What does it take to make you go away, Chris?"

He smirked. "Go out with me. Kiss me. Be my girlfriend. Oh, and tell me how much you paid this guy to act like your boyfriend."

I narrowed my eyes. "How dare you insult Seto by even suggesting that he'd do something like that for money! Besides," I said coldly. "He already has more money than you'll see in your entire life."

Chris slapped me in the face, earning himself a punch from Seto, who I then had to pull off of him.

"No. This is not your fight. I am not a damsel in distress, Seto. I'm his worst nightmare."

I got a cold chill and saw a strange, flashed image of Yugi, but disregarded it at once as something my half insane mind had made up. I didn't have visions, I just felt when something was going to happen. This was just one too many diet Sprites.

"I'm gonna tell the cops you've been abusing Steph, Chris! And don't look so surprised; I'm not at all the normal little girl you think I am."

"So? I could have you dead in a ditch in five seconds flat. You wouldn't even have time to scream."

"Oooh, I'm shaking. You are just a filthy little-"

I was interrupted by another slap, which was quickly returned by a hard kick, courtesy of yours truly, to a rather unpleasant spot for Chris.

"Marik!" I called, turning my eyes on him instead of the stumbling Chris. "Get Steph outta here and try to figure out some way of stopping this guy!"

"No way!" Steph said, forcing her way out of Marik's grip. "My place is here. I've let him beat me down for the last time."

I smiled. That was the Steph I knew. "Then let's see… what shall we do to-?"

I broke off and winced in pain as something cold and sharp pierced my back. I looked up, not totally of my own will because my eyes were threatening to loll into the back of my head, and saw those two, dreaded eyes.

"You… coward," I spat, fumbling to pull the knife out of my back. "You're just a lowly, mangy little dog."

"And you're just dead," he retorted, somewhat lamely because I was very well still alive. "It would have been different if you just would have-"

"No," I wheezed. "If I had… been with… you… than I no longer would have… been… something… you…could… not… have. You would have… moved on… to the next," I winced as he pulled the knife out as if hoping that it would shut me up. Seeing all the blood, I nearly fainted, but managed to use some hidden will power within me to stay conscious. "goal," I finished.

My vision blurred, but I saw that Kaiba was now repeated beating the crap out of Chris, and then I watched as Steph took over the job so that he could come and help me. I was decently sure that it was a lost cause, but I wasn't willing to admit it.

"Seto," I gasped, reaching up to touch his cheek. "Is it… bad?"

"Very. In fact, I only know of one doctor who can handle this, and he isn't in this dimension."

"Oh joy," I whispered, feeling faint. "There are three of you."

He laughed weakly and then pulled off his coat and used it to stop the bleeding. I was getting a bit delirious and laughed hazily when I saw his arms. They were muscular.

"Come on, Steph, you're going to kill him at this rate and that won't present a very good case. Put him in the trunk, and then you two sit in the back; I'm driving."

He picked me up and carried me to the car, placing me in the passenger seat, where I promptly forced myself to sit up straight. No cut in the back was making me look weak.

I heard mumbling from the back, but my brain was getting kind of blurry from the blood loss. I mean, Seto had like, four heads, and I couldn't feel my limbs. It was almost cool.

"Seto," I managed, trying to turn my head towards him, but I didn't know which one to look at. "Where are we going?"

"My place," he said grimly. "Where else?"

"But…how?" I asked him as darkness edged my vision. I knew that I was losing consciousness. "Watch out… for… Yu-" and then I passed out.