A/N: Thank you to everybody who reviewed!!! Y'all rock and have given me some awesome ideas! I am SO SORRY that I haven't updated in… well the precise amount of time is just too depressing to even think about so I'll just say a really long time! My life's been chaotic to say the least! Now – on with the story!

Chapter 6: Out of Breath

From his perch high in the branches of a particularly tall tree, Bastion scanned the area for any telltale signs of approaching fan girls. Dusk was settling like a thick blanket over the Island and blurring shapes and colors together, but it seemed safe enough to say that there were no fan girls in the near vicinity. With a sigh the exhausted Ra Yellow student leaned back against the trunk of the tree and stretched his shoulders. In the morning he'd have to come up with another formula for avoiding Lena, Allie, and Noire but now what he needed was sleep – which was going to be awkward considering Bastion was going to be doing it in a tree.

As he shifted to try and find a more comfortable position, Bastion was nearly startled off of his branch as he heard several of the lower limbs jostling. No! They couldn't have found him! …Could they?

"There you are!" Bastion froze and then blinked in confusion. Hold on, that hadn't sounded like any of the maniacs who were after him and that comment didn't seem to have been directed at him. In fact, it had almost sounded like… no…

Bastion peered down through the semi-dark and caught sight of a pale hand tugging at the edge of what looked like a card which was wedged beside a bird's nest. The rest of Sartorius soon joined his hand on the branch as the former leader of the Society of Light mumbled a series of foul curses aimed at birds and unnecessarily tall trees. About half a deck of rather battered looking taro cards were protruding from the pocket of his blazer. Sartorius let out a sigh of relief as the card finally came free and Bastion raised an eyebrow.

"What, exactly, are you doing?" Sartorius jumped guiltily and there was a brief whirling of limbs as he hastily tried to regain his balance, ending up with Sartorius hanging upside down with his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the branch above him. He gave Bastion a sheepish grin.

"Well, I know I said I wasn't going to try to predict the future anymore but, well, after running for several hours I started thinking that it would be nice to know where they were going to be ahead of time and… so far I've found nearly half my deck…." He trailed off looking uncomfortable. Bastion thought this over for a moment, then an idea sprang into his head and began jumping up and down to get his attention. The Ra student's face brightened noticeably.

"Listen, if I help you find the rest of your cards, will you predict where my fan girls are going to be, too?"

"If you'd like."

Bastion began to scramble down from his perch.

"Well don't just hang there! It's almost dark and we've got cards to find!"

(on the path back to the Red Dorm from the main building, just outside the Slifer building)

Alexis strolled down the path towards the Slifer Dorm on her way back from the main Academy building a pair of binoculars bouncing around her neck. Yes, it was true – Alexis Rhodes was taking every possible advantage of the situation. Her defense was that at least she wasn't taking pictures like Jasmine and Mindie were. All in all, other than the one fan guy who had shown up her door, this was turning out to be quite enjoyable!

Not really paying attention to her surroundings, Alexis pulled opened her dorm room door and stopped, blinking in surprise. I spoke too soon.

Her entire room was filled with bouquet upon bouquet of dark red roses. There had to be seven dozen roses at least. How the heck had someone smuggled seven dozen roses onto Duel Academy Island? Not even Chazz had managed that before and Alexis was fairly sure that he had tried.

In the center of it all on a chair by Alexis's bed sat a fan boy with bright green eyes and black hair. There was a guitar balanced on his knee and as Alexis opened the door he strummed a few chords, quickly making it apparent that the last time the instrument had been tuned had been around 1802, before starting to sing almost equally out of tune,

"L, is for the way you lo-"

(approximately twenty seconds later outside of Alexis Rhodes's dorm room window)

There was huge smash as the fan guy sailed through the window landing on the grass below in a shower of glass. He sat up blinking and rubbing his head in confusion, apparently unable to grasp what he had done wrong. His guitar faithfully followed him out of the window about five seconds later and smacked into his head with a resounding THWANG as several strings snapped.

Alexis leaned back from the window dusting her hand off, a very uncharacteristic and satisfied smirk on her face. She hadn't felt like opening the window… it had been extremely enjoyable. What was this? Alexis Rhodes? Sadistic? Never!

Glancing thoughtfully at the roses, she sat down on the edge of her bed, her chin in one hand elbow resting on her knee. The roses… the roses could stay. Alexis like roses.

A/N: Sorry about how short this chapter is! At this point I'm just trying to get it posted! I'll try to fill all fangirl requests in the next chapter! Seek peak chapter title: Chapter 7: Never Fear, North Academy is Here! Thanks for reading!