Hey everyone! Glad you liked the last chapter. Here's a new one. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own YuGiOh GX or Jess, she still belongs to ladydream-chan.
Claimer: YAY! This ENTIRE STORY IS MINE! And the one or two or three OCs that show up that aren't Jess are also mine. :)
Remaining Chapters (Excluding this one): 5
xXx
Jaden's POV
The doctor stood at Julie's side, flipping through a few papers on his clipboard. We all stood around the hospital room, watching him. We'd arrived to the hospital about an hour ago and have been kept out of the loop just as long. From the surprised looks on all of the ER doctors' and nurses' faces, this wasn't something they saw often.
"What's the prognosis, Doc?" Joey asked, finally being the first to speak. The doctor sighed and lowered his clipboard.
"Well…have a look at this scan of Miss Carter." He turned around and walked over to the light box on the wall. He placed a scan on the box and turned it on. "Look here." He circled the center of the scan, saying, "This is where the bullet entered Miss Carter's head. From this scan you can clearly see that the bullet passed between the two lobes of her brain."
"Is that even possible?" Akiza asked, looking closely at the scan.
"Of course." The doctor pulled the scan off of the light box. "But it is extremely rare to happen. Miss Carter is extremely lucky."
"How lucky?" Jim asked.
The doctor smiled. "From what I can gather Miss Carter will have no brain damage."
"So she's all right?" Jesse asked, clutching Julie's hand.
"Yes, she's perfectly all right." The doctor scratched his beard, hanging the clipboard on the end of the bed.
"If she's all right then why is she still unconscious?" I asked. The doctor looked back at me then at Julie.
"Miss Carter was struck from behind, right at the base of her skull. She's simply very dazed and tired. I'm sure she'll wake up in a few hours." The doctor glanced around at the machines. "In fact, once she wakes up you can have her discharged and take her home with you."
"Thank you, Doctor," Atem said, hand extended toward him.
"You're quite welcome." He took Atem's hand, shook it, and then left.
"Well…what do we do now?" Crow asked, looking around at everyone. I sighed and walked over to the bed, standing next to Jesse.
He looked up at me, asking, "Do you have a plan?"
I shrugged. "Same one as this morning, only minus a few people." I sighed and looked up at Jim. "Why don't you head back to the mansion, make sure everyone's staying in line?"
He looked at me confused for a moment before nodding. "Okay."
"I'll stay here, in case she wakes up soon," Jesse said, looking up at me.
I nodded, placing my hand on his shoulder and squeezing it. I turned around and looked at Alexis, seeing her standing right behind me. "I want you to stay here too."
She looked at me surprised. "What? No."
I frowned and grabbed her arm, pulling her out of the room. Once the door was shut behind us, I stopped and turned around the face her. "You're staying."
"No. You wanted me to come with you and all of a sudden you want me to stay here." She shook her head slowly. "Honestly, Jaden, I can't keep up with you."
"Honestly, Alexis, I can't keep up with myself." I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. "This situation just keeps getting more and more complicated. Every time I do something, something else happens that makes me think I've made the wrong decision. People get killed and I know there was something I could have done to stop it."
"But you couldn't have known before it happened," she whispered, running her hand down my arm.
I nodded. "You're right, but I want you to stay here. Not because of the reason you're thinking, but because I want someone here for Jesse." I ran my hand over her hair, smoothing out some frayed ends. She sighed and leaned into my hand.
"Fine, you win. But next time you get sucked into a gang war, unless you're one hundred percent positive we can help, leave us at Duel Academy." She was smiling, so I knew she was teasing me, but she was also right.
"There isn't a right or wrong thing, Lex. All I know is that I have to protect you guys." I leaned forward and pressed my lips to hers, keeping my hand lightly on her cheek.
"I know," she whispered, pulling back slightly. "And I know you're doing the best you can." She moved her head forward and pressed her lips back against mine. I pulled away and ran my hand down her arm, grabbing her hand. She squeezed my hand once and gave me a soft smile, causing me to smile back. We walked back into the room; everyone was waiting patiently for us to return.
Crow pointed at Alexis, asking, "She staying?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Well if Alexis is staying here, who's going with you?" Yusei asked, looking at me. I folded my arms across my chest.
"Hm, haven't thought that far ahead," I muttered.
"I'll go with you, Jaden," Tony said. I frowned and looked at him.
"I can go with you instead, Mate," Jim offered quickly but I just shook my head.
"No, I want you to go back to the mansion. Tony's fine coming with me."
He just sighed and nodded, grabbing his coat and leaving the room.
"Are we going back out?" Yusei asked.
"Yeah and we're not meeting back up until all the Skulls are dead." I looked up at everyone. "Let's go."
xXx
Narrative POV
Giese stood under the shade of a few trees, a lit cigarette in his mouth. He saw the gaggle of people he and his fellow Skulls were hunting leaving the hospital. As he watched them from behind his tinted sunglasses, he remembered the call he received just a few minutes ago from his leader.
"Go to Domino City General."
Giese looked around the bar he was sitting in, swirling his glass around. "Why?"
"Julie isn't dead but she is unconscious in the hospital. Jesse is there and he'll be extremely worried and distracted-your prefect chance."
Giese smirked and took a sip of his drink. "Really, very interesting. Did you fail my great leader?"
"She's a great thorn in my side. If you somehow manage to kill the immortal Julie Carter, the reward will be doubled. Not to mention your revenge ensured, as Jesse would have a little tunnel vision with some red around the edges."
Giese smirked wickedly, grinding his cigarette in the tray next to his drink. "Very tempting. I think I'll take that little wager."
"Good."
And the line went dead.
Giese smirked and pulled his cigarette out and dropped it to the ground, grinding it beneath his foot. "Time to die my precious nephew!"
xXx
"Jim wants to know if you want him to bring Maria over," Alexis said, looking at Jesse. He shook his head.
"No. Julie will wake up soon and we'll get back home and everything will be fine." He still clutched her hand in his, his free one smoothing over the bandage on her forehead. Alexis frowned and conveyed the message to Jim, hanging up the phone and returning to her seat opposite of Jesse.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, mostly." He sighed and released Julie's hand, rubbing his face. "Maybe."
"She'll be okay, Jesse. She'll wake up and you'll be okay." She reached up to touch his hand, the one he had resting on Julie's forehead. "You'll both be okay."
He nodded slowly. "Yeah, well." He cleared his throat and pulled his hand out from beneath hers. "I'm going to go talk to the doctor about a few things." He stood up and left the room. Alexis sighed and looked at Julie, grabbing her hand to hold it loosely.
"It's times like this when I wonder if you realize just how incredibly lucky you are," Alexis murmured. Her response was a steady, mechanical beep. "You're smart enough to know that you are in some ways, but not in others." Quickly, Alexis counted through the number of things Julie would most likely say went wrong with her life, beginning with her lost childhood. "I wonder if you regret your decision to join the Bloods." Alexis sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I wonder if any of you guys do."
Alexis ran her fingers through her hair, staring at the calm face before her. "I've only been involved in this gang life for a little more than a year and I've already seen so much, lost too much." She frowned. "But you've lost more, haven't you?"
"The price of this life I'm afraid."
Alexis whirled around, seeing a figure standing the doorway. "Who are you?"
The person chuckled and entered the room. It was a man, tall with brown hair and a pointed goatee of the same shade. His eyes were cold, murderous. "The name's Giese my sweet princess."
Alexis felt all color drain from her face. "Giese? As in…Jesse's…"
Giese smirked. "Uncle, correct. My, look how pretty you are." He took another step forward. Alexis slid back, still in her chair.
"What do you want?" Alexis' hand fumbled around the edge of the bed, looking for the panic button.
Giese pulled a gun out of his inner vest pocket, pointing it at Alexis, who froze. "Place those pretty little hands of yours in your lap, Princess. Don't want anyone rushing in now, do we?"
Slowly Alexis folded her shaking hands in her lap. Giese smiled widely, placing his gun back where he pulled it from. "Excellent. Now as to answer your question, I'm here to do my job. My leader told me about how Julie was here, and my ungrateful bug of a nephew."
"So you're here to kill them both."
"Smart as you are pretty." Giese smiled and took a large step toward Alexis. She tried to back away again, but her chair ended up bumping into the table next to Julie's bed. Giese caught a lock of her hair, raising it to his face and running it beneath his nose. "You really are quite a prize." He smiled widely and dropped the strand of hair he held.
"Jesse isn't here."
"Not in this room, but he will be very shortly." Giese chuckled and pulled his gun back up, pointing it at Julie's heart and releasing the safety. "He'll come running when Julie's precious little beeping turns into the shrieking of a flat line." He looked at Alexis. "I wonder if the immortal Julie Carter can survive a bullet straight through her heart. The vampire couldn't."
Alexis stared at the gun with wide eyes, her heart pounding against her ribs.
"Don't worry, Sunshine. I haven't forgotten about you. Once I've killed Julie and my bug of a nephew, you'll be coming with me."
"Me! Why?" Alexis gasped as Giese grabbed her chin, clutching it tightly.
"For some reason, my leader wants you alive. My guess is he'll use you against that Yuki punk. You are, after all, his only weakness."
"No I'm not," Alexis muttered, trying to jerk her face free from Giese's grip.
"His little sister? Your other friends? His other friends? Please, you're the only one that boy would turn himself over to save. If you were to die, so would his sanity and only reason for living."
Alexis shook her head. "Jaden wouldn't give up living if I died. He still has Jess and everyone else."
Giese got right in Alexis' face, whispering, "Your precious boyfriend nearly went crazy with the death of that rat Syrus, did he not? You know exactly how he'll react if you, his very beating heart, was to die." Giese chuckled and leaned back. "That demon that lives inside him, that monster everyone fears, would consume him as his thirst for revenge would. That man you love would perish right along with you."
"You make it sound like I'm going to die very soon," Alexis whispered, eyeing Giese's gun, which was still pointed at Julie.
"Oh, you will, but Julie and Jesse are a bit closer to that great light." He stopped, pulling the gun back and tapping the barrel against his chin. "Well, maybe."
Alexis' heart stopped as Giese turned toward her.
"Once I shoot this and kill Julie, Jesse will rush in. I'll have to kill him quickly, which won't do at all." A sick smirk slowly spread across Giese's face. "But if I were to kill you then of course he'd rush in, but I'd have more time to torture and kill him." Giese nodded slowly. "Yes, I like that plan a lot better." He pointed the gun at Alexis.
"You'd go against your leader's orders?"
He laughed. "Sweetheart, I only used that sick son-of-a-bitch to track down Jesse. I'm a loose cannon now, one who isn't afraid of the one from the shadows." He released the safety on his gun. "Tell sweet ol' Syrus 'hi' for me."
Alexis' eyes grew wide. 'Jaden, help!'
Just then, a hand clamped tightly onto Giese's shoulder, jerking him back as a fist connected with his face, sending him to the floor. His gun was in new hands, which thankfully kept if from going off. Alexis looked up to see a very pale, but very pissed off looking Jesse.
"Jesse my boy!" Giese jumped onto his feet, wiping blood from his split lip. "Coming between a hunter and his game is never a smart move. Did I teach you nothing?"
"They're not your game! You're not laying one finger on either of them!" Jesse disassembled Giese gun, dropping the bullets and pieces to the ground.
Giese smirked and raised one hand at Jesse, waving his fingers in a 'come here' motion. "Then come and kill me, Boy!"
xXx
INTENSE!
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