AN: This chapter's a tad disjointed towards the end. It's intentional. If any of it needs clarification, let me know.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

After Lisa arrived home, she went into her charm making room. The second she got there, she looked at the mirror which, as she knew it would be, was warping. Sighing in resignation, she walked over to it. She had known that there would be consequences for her 'duel' today. She just hadn't expected them to happen so quickly.

"Found me out already, brother?"

"What did you think you were doing? What could have possibly possessed you to do that? You didn't just use your sight in a duel. You used it against a non-psychic. What's worse, you completely humiliated him. Now I know you've been given a lot of leeway with using your gift as you're advertising it in your little business. But this? You broke the cardinal rule, Lisa! If what you were doing wasn't so critical, you'd be shipped back here and had your deck taken from you. That might still happen after your assignment's done. So why did you do something so foolish?"

"My opponent was advertising himself as a psychic," Lisa said quietly. "What's more, I was hoping that proof of my skills, something that couldn't be refuted, would convince Kaiba that I'm not lying about any of this. I'm not proud of what I did. And Wingweaver already gave me a lecture. But I needed Kaiba to be a believer. I needed him here. Instead, I'll have to make do with my charms. The veil needs repaired. Whether or not I have a buffer doesn't change that my job is to help fix it. Mine and the other card-speakers." She barked out a mirthless laugh. "The school board might not have a chance to discipline me. That should be a comfort to them."

"Lisa..." Ray's voice was pained. He knew what his sister was referring to, and understood exactly the desperation that led her to do something so drastic as break the cardinal rule of not flaunting her gift and especially not using it to humiliate others. Everyone knew the dangers of doing that. It was such flaunting and humiliating that led to the infamous Salem Witch Hunts. They only reason psychics were tolerated now is because they were largely believed to be frauds. Or perhaps delusional. Risks such as the one Lisa took weren't tolerated. It was too dangerous for them.

Ray also knew that his kid sister fully embraced the rules about not flaunting her powers. He knew, better than even other card-speakers, the risk that Lisa was taking. And the desperation that motivated her actions. For card-speakers, the threat of having your deck taken from you was the cruelest thing imaginable. It was largely what made Lisa so careful in not flaunting her gifts. She loved her cards too much to risk them. She was also about to risk something far greater than possession of her deck. He couldn't stomach the thought of letting her take that risk. Not without at least trying to do something.

"Is there anything I can do? We're siblings. Surely that-"

"You know better, Ray," Lisa interrupted. "This is the one thing that our blood bond can't do. Besides, you've already got someone you're loaning energy to. You cannot have a second. Besides, it might not be so bad. The accidental connection forged when Kaiba's secondary power awoke means that he might notice and just... react without thinking."

"We are talking about the same person, right? Seto Kaiba? Most famous skeptic known to the psychic world? That Kaiba?"

"You know as well as I that it's the subconscious mind that holds and controls our gift. The conscious mind lets us tap into it, but it's the subconscious that does all the work. And it's the subconscious that reacts when it senses something that can be handled, or needs to be handled, psychically. It's why his secondary power reached out to me, after all. His subconscious recognized a fellow psychic that could help. So, yes. We are talking about the same person. Seto Kaiba. Most famous skeptic psychic known to the psychic world."

"I'm going to do something, Lisa," Ray promised. "I don't know what, yet, but I'm going to do something. If I have to, I will drag Kaiba to you kicking and screaming."

"Don't you dare," Lisa snapped. "I made a promise."

"I'm not bound by your oaths," Ray said with a smirk. "Besides, maybe my primary will convince him. I can do more than talk to people through mirrors, you know." Lisa rolled her eyes and sighed in resignation in response.

"Well, I can't stop you, if you choose to bother him. But don't do anything rash. We still need him willingly using his gifts. Besides," she added with a smirk you should have at least some faith in my charms. You're wearing one, after all."

"Of course I have faith in your charms," Ray said. "But the planes are dangerous places to spend time in. Especially without a buffer."

"Wingweaver will protect me," Lisa said quietly. "With her and my charms working together, I have no worries. Now get going and let me do my job." Ray looked long and hard at his sister. She really wasn't a good liar, and he could see right through her mask of confidence. She was worried. And that worried him.

"All right. Be careful, okay?"

"When aren't I?" Lisa watched as the reflection of her brother warped and faded, until it was only her reflection she saw in the glass. Well, not quite only her own reflection.

"Am I getting a lecture on how dangerous this is from you as well?" she asked her soul-card. She had asked her teachers about this before, since it was unusual for her cards essences to appear in mirrors as they did sometimes. For mirror-gazing card-speakers it wasn't unheard of, but as she was a card-speaking charm-maker, it shouldn't be possible. They suspected that, like Lisa did on occasion, her cards tapped into what little of the mirror-gazing plane they could, piggy-backing off of Ray's gift which, to a small extent, was available to her, in order to communicate with Lisa without her ascending into the planes.

"Not this time, no," Wingweaver answered. "I am merely doing my job and watching over you. You've never undertaken something like this before. I want to be certain that you really can handle the strain."

"Wingweaver, my friend" Lisa said with a smile, "there has yet to be a challenge that we cannot overcome. But I really do need peace to make my charms." Wingweaver nodded in assent and faded from the mirror.

Lisa sighed and, clearing her mind of all worry, focused on the charm she needed to make.

Kaiba was impressed. He was convinced that nothing would stop Lisa's attempts at brainwashing him into believing that he was 'psychic.' And yet four days had gone by and he hadn't seen or heard from her. A freak accident at the school had caused it to be closed for several days now, but it should be repaired within the week. Something had caused multiple pipes to burst, and by the time the water had been drained (which took surprisingly long), mold had started to form, so it was deemed unsafe for anyone to be in.

Not that it mattered to him. It just meant he had time to work for once. He caught his reflection in his computer screen and glared at it. For Mokuba's sake, he was still wearing that stupid pendant. His little brother tended to get anxious if he went anywhere without it. He hated the fact that he was stuck with this constant reminder of Lisa and her idiotic ideas.

Shaking his head, he had just started to get back to work when,

"Seto Kaiba!" Kaiba whirled around to the source of the noise. How could anyone have sneaked past him? His desk was facing the door. Whoever it was was going to... his train of thought was broken when he saw the source of the voice. It was coming from a mirror that he'd gotten as a gift some years ago. He didn't even know why he'd kept it. Specifically it was coming from the face insid the mirror. A face that he knew.

"Ray, wasn't it? And here I was just thinking that maybe Lisa was someone who's word could be trusted. I should have known that someone as obviously psychotic as her would-"

"Insult my sister again and you'll learn where the phrase 'spontaneous combustion' came from," Ray spat, glaring daggers at Kaiba with flames just visible around him.

"Lisa didn't ask me to talk to you. In fact she asked me not to do so. But as it happens, I'm not bound by my little sister's promises, just as she is not bound by mine. And now you and I are going to have a nice long chat."

"I'm not sure how you're doing this," Kaiba said. "But if you think I'm going to talk to a mirror, you're sadly mistaken."

"I don't," Ray said. To Kaiba's shock, the mirror warped, and slowly but surely Ray started leaving his mirror and the next thing Kaiba knew, Ray was standing in his office. An office that Kaiba knew for a fact had only one door.

"Hope you don't mind the imposition," Ray said with a cheerful smile. "But I didn't want you walking off on me. In one of the higher mirror-gazing planes, you can walk through mirrors. You just have to be able to see where you're going. It is, admittedly, extremely rude of me to just drop in on you uninvited, but desperate times, and all that.

"Come to think of it... you must think I'm a terrible person. You've seen me twice, and both times I've been rather rude. Well, nothing for it. Hopefully you'll change your mind eventually."

"What are you doing here?" Kaiba asked, collapsing to his chair in shock. He was a veritable prisoner in his own office. He couldn't call security because he knew there was no way to explain how Ray could have gotten into his office. The security cameras would show that Ray hadn't entered through the door, and he didn't need the trouble of trying to explain his presence.

"We'll get to that. But first, could you put your... phone thing in your ear?" Ray asked, indicating the small bluetooth on Kaiba's desk. "That way it looks like you're on a conference call, since I'm very conveniently not in view of your camera up there." He indicated the security camera above Kaiba's door. Kaiba quickly calculated the angles and determined that Ray was right. He'd managed to appear just outside of the camera's frame. "It's better for you to do that, anyway. Otherwise you look crazy, talking to thin air like this. A little slight of hand, and a quick change of direction, and it will just look like the... phone thing... was in your ear the entire time but it just wasn't visible on the camera." Kaiba hated to admit it, but Ray was right, and within moments the bluetooth was in his ear.

"Thank you. Now as for why I'm here... I'll get to that in a minute. First, I think you should know a little bit of mine and Lisa's history." Ray snapped his fingers and the mirror warped yet again.

"The highest plane of mirror-gazers lets us show people images as if they were recorded," Ray said in explanation.

A woman was in the glass, obviously Lisa and Ray's mother considering how closely they resembled her.

"Our mother was a psychic," Ray said. "She died without telling our father or us about her gift. Cancer. She died slowly and painfully. Lisa was too young to really remember it. But I wasn't so lucky." He grinned in amusement at Kaiba's surprise. "I'm much older than I look. I take after our father in that respect. He tends to look several years younger than he actually is. But I digress. Our mother could see into the future. She was one of the rare psychics who didn't have a secondary gift. But that made her lone gift that much stronger."

"Wait a second. Lisa said that both your parents traveled on business," Kaiba interrupted.

"Stepmother. As young as Lisa was when our mother died, she's generally able to think of our stepmother as her birth mother. But again, I digress." Again, the mirror warped, and two small children were playing a card game.

"My sister and I were always uncannily lucky with card games. Do you know the game Hi Lo?" A glance at Kaiba showed the affirmative nod. "Well, we could almost always guess correctly if the face-down card was higher or lower. We were good at other card games, too. To the point where no one would play against us because we would almost always win. Then the people from the school came. They told us about our mother. And then said that I was on the verge of awakening into my own gifts. Not knowing what they would be, all of the possible ones were explained." Ray laughed a little.

"I admit, when I heard about card-speakers, I was certain that I would be one. I just knew it. It had to be why I was so good at card games. And the way it was described. To always have a friend and companion nearby, to have that closeness. I wanted that. When it was discovered that no, I was not a card-speaker, I was disappointed. You can imagine how angry I was when Lisa fractured. She had stolen 'my' gift. She was the one who could speak with cards. I had been piggy-backing off of her gift the entire time. It's still a source of bitterness, even though she's been a fully awakened psychic for several years now."

Lisa was as ready as she could be. She had made several protection charms and strengthening charms. Closing her eyes, she quietly relaxed her mind, only absently aware that around her, her charms were starting to glow in response to her gathering her psychic energy.

Slowly, Lisa entered the first plane of card-speakers. Hovering there for a moment, she felt the beginning connections with her cards form. Moving just as slowly, she rose up into the second plane. This slow movement until she was at the border between the fifth and sixth planes. Once there, she stopped. Opening her eyes, she could barely even see the room she was sitting in. all around her were her cards, and essences of cards near by. And, in the distance, essences of cards she wasn't connected with personally, but could still feel the presence of. What she didn't feel, however, were her fellow card-speakers. Her task was dangerous enough without trying to do this solo. She waited.

"Lisa tells me she only told you a little bit about the planes," Ray said. Kaiba nodded in assent, pretending to write something down to keep up the illusion of a lengthy conference call.

"Well, I don't pretend to know her planes, but I can tell you that what she's doing requires being in them. It also requires a buffer. Which she needed you to be."

"A what?"

"A buffer. Basically someone to psychically connect with her and give her energy when she needed it. You're to young a psychic to actually do the manual labor of repairing the barrier. But you can loan energy. Without you, she's going to find herself in a dangerous position. But she's still doing her duty."

"So why aren't you being her buffer if you care so much about her?" Kaiba demanded sardonically.

"Because I can't. You can only be a buffer to one person, and it has to be someone who shares either your primary or secondary gifts. I'm a buffer to a mirror-gazing card-speaker. I left her to plead with you to at least loan her energy should she need it. I don't know what all this is going to entail, but I do know that it's dangerous. I'm only risking being here right now because when I left, the girl I'm buffering wasn't even close to being ready to try and repair the barrier. And the other card-speakers at the school didn't seem to be, either."

Lisa felt and psychically acknowledged other card-speakers as they entered. By communication through the cards they were so close to, they had decided that the primaries would take on the task first, and the secondaries would support them if needed.

It was a bit of a thrill to feel the presence of so many other card-speakers, even the seriousness of the task at hand didn't dampen the joy it was to be with her own kind after so long away from the school. Greetings were called out and returned as they waited for the few stragglers to appear.

"I don't know what you thought to accomplish by coming here, but you haven't succeeded," Kaiba said. "Now I'll thank you to leave."

"Fine," Ray said bitterly, glaring at Kaiba. "I'll leave. But know this. If my sister dies because you weren't there to buffer her and she ran out of energy, I will hold you personally responsible for her death. Her blood will be on your hands." Focusing on the mirror, he again entered it. After a few moments, the glass was again pristine and Kaiba took the bluetooth out of his ear.

"Ridiculous. He actually thought that anything he said or did could convince me that there's some great danger." But no matter how he argued it, he couldn't get around the fact that Ray had entered a room with only one door without actually using said door. And he had seemed so sincere in his arguments...

Ray appeared in Amy's room, obviously agitated.

"I take it it didn't go well?" The girl he was going to buffer asked.

"Terribly. I'm glad you're not ready to fix the barrier yet," Ray answered. "It'll give me time to calm down."

"I thought you knew," Amy said in surprise. "The barrier is in the process of being repaired now. Or at least it's about to be. The primary card-speakers decided to focus on it first. That way us secondary card-speakers wouldn't have the strain of using a secondary gift for long. If any primaries aren't in the fifth plane yet, which is where they're going to be meeting, they will be soon."

Ray collapsed onto Amy's bed, paralyzed with shock and fear. He hadn't known. He knew how quickly Lisa could make charms. He knew she had several at her disposal. He was also terrified it wouldn't be enough.

The last of the primaries had finally arrived. They were ready. As one, they all ascended into the sixth plane. There were mass feelings of exultation as they merged with their soul-cards, a necessary precaution, even with the buffers. As one, they human-cards rose to the very edge of the sixth plane. Higher than they would dare go alone.

There! The barrier. So weak and threadbare it was a wonder cards hadn't been manifesting long before now.

Was the barrier always this massive? For a moment, they wavered, the immensity of their task hitting them for the first time. Then they pushed aside everything but their gift and focused on repairing the dangerously broken barrier.

Outside the sixth plane, four of Lisa's protection charms and eight of her strengthening ones glowed more brightly than ever. She really should have asked a primary to make them so she could rest more.

Kaiba let out an enraged snarl and stood up, storming towards his doors and stalking out of the building. If nothing else, he was going to give Lisa the yelling of her life for her interfering with his private affairs.

Ray stood up from the toilet that he had darted to shakily. His terror had made him physically ill. They were repairing the barrier. Lisa was alone. And if anything went wrong he couldn't be there. He needed to stay with Amy.

They had underestimated how difficult this would be. Cries of pain were starting to be heard.

Tiffany-Mystic Box (Tiffany was one of the rare card-speakers that was bonded to a card that wasn't a monster card) dropped out. The human had been ill recently. No one was surprised that she couldn't maintain the energies for long. And no one blamed her.

Moments later, Amy-Kuriboh, with Ray's presence felt as a shadow, appeared.

Unnoticed by even their maker, hairline cracks started to appear in Lisa's charms.

Kaiba was almost to Lisa's store. He was livid. But behind the anger, there was a pressure in his skull. He had a flash of Lisa, sitting in her library looking abnormally pale. Then it was gone. Wondering what it was, and despite himself feeling worry that maybe Ray's prattling was true, he quickened his step slightly.

The first of Lisa's charms shattered, some of the crystal cutting into Lisa's skin as it flew in all directions. All around her, her charms were glowing intensely, some of them resonating with energy. A few of them starting to show cracks.

Brad-Summoned Skull dropped out. Rebecca-Divine Dragon Ragnarok appeared in his place. Primaries were dropping almost more quickly than secondaries could replace them.

Lisa-Wingweaver started to waver in strength. Gritting their teeth with effort, they called on more charms, noting for the first time that the buffer they were providing was less than when they had entered the sixth plane. Setting the problem aside for the more important one at hand, they called up the energy they provided, and redoubled their efforts on the barrier.

It was working. Slowly. So slowly. The barrier was being repeaired.

Lisa-Wingweaver wavered again. The hated Psychic Kappa, that wretched lizard that the human girl kept needing to call upon because the soul-card could not provide the psychic strength needed, appeared to offer its aid. They sent it away. This was something for human and soul-card to handle. No others were needed.

Kaiba stopped two blocks away. Sweating and panting as if he had just run a marathon. The pressure in his head was getting worse. And more and more flashes were visible.

Six charms shattered. Lisa was now bleeding from several shallow cuts, and a handful of relatively deep ones.

Lisa-Wingweaver wavered yet again. Their charms were now almost non-existent. The hated Kappa was there again. They had no choice. They allowed him to loan his energy. It wouldn't be able to last for long.

Kaiba was gritting his teeth in pain. The closer he got to Lisa's store, the worse it got. It felt like something was trying to burst from him.

The rest of Lisa's charms went.

Lisa-Wingweaver screamed in pain. While others had dropped out, they disappeared. The shock disrupted the efforts of the barrier for a moment.

Ray's shadow was gone, Lisa's brother had passed out when he felt his sister's energy explode and then vanish. Amy-Kuriboh dropped out, the pressure being too great without the buffer.

The effort had failed for today. There weren't enough psychics left to safely try and repair the barrier further today. One by one the psychics dropped out. They were upset that they hadn't completed the repairs, but were trying to be content with what they had managed to do.

Now the only question was if they could do it again.

Kaiba all but screamed in pain, bolting inside the house he had finally reached. Trying the door, he found it locked. Reaching with shaking hands into his pocket, he fumbled the key into the lock, finally managing to make it work.

Quickly entering, only closing and locking the door as a slow afterthought, he darted into the one room he knew she would be in. Her sanctuary.

Lisa was unconscious on the floor, looking deathly pale and bleeding from multiple places.

"Lisa!" Kaiba exclaimed, quickly crossing the distance to her. Checking for a pulse, he found that it was weak, but present.

What happened? Kaiba looked around the room, hoping to discover why Lisa was unconscious. He could discover nothing. There was only one way to find out. He would have to use his so-called 'gift.'

Trying to relax, he attempted to enter the... what had Lisa called it? Right. The fifth plane.

He opened his eyes and...

Nothing. No monsters. No heightened reality. Nothing.

"I should have known it was a trick," Kaiba muttered.

"Perhaps you should have more faith in your skills. My human wouldn't have spent so much effort on you if you weren't truly a psychic."

For the second time that day, Kaiba whirled around in shock at a voice behind him. There was a woman crouched behind Lisa, looking at her with love and concern in equal measures. He'd seen her before. Once as a shadow, and once as a picture on a card.

It was Wingweaver.

AN: Sorry I took so long to get this out. Major writer's block. Hope you enjoyed it.