HAH! And I bet NONE of you thought I was EVER coming back to this story!

Neither did I, for a while there. But apparently a five-day weekend and ungodly amounts of REALLY good turkey do work miracles after all!

...Not that I believe for a second that my next update will come any sooner than a month from now...(sigh)...college is gonna kill me one of these days!

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Disclaimer: Yugioh and Black&White are so not mine

Claimer: Plot, fic, and stuff I invented all belong to me!

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"Why's it co-colder, if we're going s-south?" Joey wondered a few islands later, shivering in the snow.

"You do know there's su-such a thing as a South P-Pole, right?" Malik retorted, shivering even worse than the other blonde.

"Hey, we might be going s-south, but we're not that far s-south," Joey shot back, although he didn't sound as confident of his answer as he could have been.

((It's not that bad,)) Jake piped up, ((What's with you people and not having proper fur, anyway? Are you SURE your species is dominant back in your dimension?))

"For the last time, YES," Malik retorted, sounding cranky, "And b-by the way, where I come from, it's incredibly h-hot. All the time. So excuse m-me if I'm a little unprepared for the f-freezing cold weather here!"

'Yeesh, somebody needs a nap,' Joey thought as he watched Malik suffer crankily.

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The island they had just arrived at was much larger than any of the others they'd been to before. That was a little frightening when you thought about how those had been pretty damn big themselves. They'd landed inside a ring of mountains at the island's far northern edge, and the mountains went almost all the way along the outside of the island from what Joey could see.

That jerk with the evil, stinky-looking wolf, Dekos, had pointed this island out as the one with the most interesting 'stuff'. So now they were all here…looking up, Joey could see the big red ball that was Yami bobbing back and forth, zipping around kinda like an excited fly.

"We're c-closer, right?" Joey called up when Yami made a close pass to Jake's head.

"He's close," Yami replied, hovering in one place but still sounding distracted, "Something's wrong, though. I should be able to hear him from this distance…"

Joey had absolutely no idea what that meant, so he shrugged it off. It sounded like Egyptian mystical mumbo-jumbo anyway.

((Humans can have a low tolerance for cold,)) Baboom piped up from where she was showing Kabammo what snow was, ((If we're looking for some human, we should search now, right?))

((Pickled radishes,)) Kabammo said.

"I think someone lives down at the other end," Layweh the hyper blue goddess said next, "C'mon, let's go check it out!"

And so they all flew and tromped down the length of the island. It wasn't too bad, Joey decided. Jake's fur was pretty cushy, making for a comfortable, if a little drafty, ride. Malik just shivered harder.

…

Yaetz tried not to laugh too loudly. The idiots had come right to his Influence! It was amazing how STUPID some people could be!

Yuugioh was clearly following the trail of his little look-alike, but Yaetz's temple was specially warded with power ripped from his devoted slaves. Even though Yuugioh would know which direction to go, he wouldn't know what sort of trap he was running headlong into until it was too late. Then - CRUNCH!

It was all such a marvelous plan! Yaetz really felt like giving himself a pat on the back for this one. Whirling around from his perch, where he was watching the idiot brigade walk towards their demises, Yaetz barked at order at his Creature.

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The only idea of the HighGod's that Yaetz had liked was the 'multiple Creature' plan, even if his plan wasn't going to be quite the same as that old bastard HighGod had ever intended things to be. On a nearby island, Yaetz had stockpiled enough things and slaves to raise and train over a dozen Creatures with at once.

Once he had an army of monstrous Creatures, Yaetz was going to go out and do a little exterminating of those fools who would be annoyances. At the moment, though, Yaetz didn't want the business of training too many Creatures at once to interfere with his plan to deal with those closest to the HighGod. So the only Creature he had that was useful for detail work was his old one, a devilish polar bear Yaetz had tenderly named Gutshredder.

Watching Gutshredder march off, Yaetz found himself laughing again. If he had been in Humanform, he would be rubbing his hands together in eager anticipation. Oh, what a massacre this was going to be!

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At the moment, Yugi was feeling particularly unlucky.

First he'd gotten accidentally separated from Joey and Malik when they were all crossing over, then he'd landed in some snowy cold place, only to be found by a giant bear-monster and its big, glowing master, who had thrown him into what had to be some kind of prison.

Something else weird had been going on, too. The exact second Yugi had felt himself come all the way over into this dimension, a horrible feeling of exhaustion had overcome him. If the bear-monster that had found him had tried to eat him, Yugi wouldn't have had enough energy even to struggle. Only recently had that disturbing exhaustion started to fade.

Yugi could have been more pleased about it if he wasn't convinced that something really bad was about to happen. Not long ago, the exhaustion faded completely, and in its wake Yugi had finally started to feel his Yami again. However, the connection seemed muffled, and all Yugi could tell was that his Yami was searching for him urgently, and was getting closer every minute.

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Every fiber of Yugi's being was trying to pull him out of his cell, out to where the other half of his soul was waiting for him, but being unable to escape was frustrating. The feeling only got worse when the bear-monster from before pulled him out of the cell, carried him outside, and took him somewhere. Yugi had no idea where he was, or where he was being taken, but he somehow knew that he was going further away from his Yami, not closer.

Eventually, the bear-monster put him down, right in front of a big, windowless hut-type building. This area wasn't as cold as the area before, but before Yugi could even take a look, the bear had shoved him into the building and thrust a huge boulder in front of the door, sealing Yugi inside.

With a serious sense of déjà vu, Yugi tried to find a way out of the windowless, almost lightless hut. The walls seemed to be made of stone as well, and the boulder was packed down tightly. The only relief was when Yugi found a tiny source of light for the hut: a narrow crack in the wall, right beside the door. It was much too small for even Yugi to escape through, but he could still look outside.

Yugi could see the giant bear-monster - its job completed, it was walking away along a low strip of land with water on each side. It was heading for a much larger area with was filled with snowy mountains. Yugi was just starting to wonder if that was the cold area he remembered being found in before a blur of motion blocked his view.

The new thing that had just appeared was even bigger than the bear-monster, not to mention skinner and a deeper shade of green. Whatever it was, it was standing in front of the hut, dripping water. Then it shook itself off: it sounded like it was raining outside as the water went everywhere.

Just as Yugi decided that this could get no stranger, it did. The humongous giant green thing knelt down, pressing its face close to the ground where it could look into the very crack Yugi was looking out of. It had long hair, a horn sticking out of its forehead, and fangs protruded from it's jaw. Blinking its solitary eye, the weird giant green monster suddenly grinned. Apparently it could see him! Before Yugi could even wonder if panicking might be a good idea, the green thing spoke.

((Hello, little man! Me very pleased to meet you!))

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