Welcome to Gaia! ::

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It all happened so fast, no one really knew hat hit them before it was too late. The… epidemic -- if that’s what you wanted to call it -- had taken over the city in a matter of days. With all the Duel Monsters wandering around, you couldn’t really blame people for pointing speculations towards Kaiba Corporation.

In the beginning, they marveled at how real they looked; they breathed, moved, looked and even smelled real. It was phenomenal. Kaiba was paving the way for future technology. The company was light years ahead of it’s time.

And then people were attacked.

The Duel Monsters turned violent. People were being killed on their way to work, school, the movie theatre, and their homes. The town went crazy, accusing Kaiba Corporation of terrorist acts. They turned in a matter of days; their hero turning into a mass-murderer. The strange thing was, Kaiba Corp. said nothing. No press conference, no media statement. Nothing. That only seemed to fuel peoples anger.

A weeks in, with no word from Kaiba Corp, and no explanation from the government… then things started getting worse. The few cases of people who had survived a monster attack started acting strange. Most doctors signed it off as trauma build up. By the time people knew what was happening, it was too late. Another week later, and the dead started rising. It wasn’t until then that people finally understood what was going on.

After that, all that really mattered was surviving. Something Jounouchi was struggling with just like everyone else who hadn’t been picked off yet. That sounded harsh, but the truth hurt sometime. It was something no one in the world had encountered before, and in all fairness, no one knew exactly what measures to take. The people still alive had learned what not to do by those who where on longer… human, or if they were lucky, dead.

You didn’t go out at night, you didn’t make loud noises, and you always double checked the area. Though the question was if you should travel in groups or not. Personally, Jounouchi thought it safer to travel in groups. You had someone to watch your back. Not to mention, Jou would always be there for his friends. Finding out they were all still alive was a huge weight off his shoulders.

They had all been through a lot with one another. Saving the world multiple times, having their souls taken, being hunted down by an ancient psychopath killer… well there had been a few of those… what was a few angry flesh-hungry Duel Monsters along with their zombie minions?

He’d played his fair share of zombie games. There wasn’t much too it. Don’t get bitten or killed. How hard could that be?

Harder than one would think, it turned out.

Before he ran into Honda and Yuugi, Katsuya was all for it. Excited even. If he could handle himself in a videogame, why couldn’t he do it in real life? The only problem with real life, was he had no access to guns, and even if he did have a gun he had the problem of not knowing how to use it. After that realization, things weren’t so fun anymore.

But, he was Jounouchi Katsuya, and had one of the best runs of lucky anyone could think of. He hadn’t once had a bad run in with trouble. Instead, he ended up finding his friends. After that, while it still wasn’t fun, he at least had some hope that they’d make it through things. He’d have a few close run ins when looking for food and supplies for everyone, but they always managed to sneak past without too much trouble.

They had come up with a good system. Travel in pairs, and they rotated who went out with what. It wasn’t like they needed much other than food. But every now and then they needed soap, or other luxuries. Especially with Anzu around. Who would have guessed how much stuff a girl needed: soap, mascara, foundation, eye lash curler, lip stick… Who knew a girl had to look gorgeous for flesh eating creatures. Then again, Anzu was pretty superficial like that.

After almost getting their heads cut off by a Celtic Warrior, they decided if Anzu wanted more than food, she could get it herself. If it benefited the group, then the next scavenger group did what they could to get it. If it was a personal item, then you were on your own. It was only fair.

That wasn’t why they were out now though. If only. Jou would have loved to be out looking for food. Unfortunately, they were looking for a new location to call home. The Game Shop wasn’t safe anymore. Not with a Spear Dragon burrowing next door. And so, Jounouchi now found himself staring up at the roofs of the city buildings. The alley way was clear, but that didn’t mean something couldn’t drop down at them.

“”Oi, Honda. Man where are we even going?” He wasn’t sure why he asked. It was obvious Honda didn’t have a clue. But that didn’t really stop him from asking. The silence was starting to get to him.

“How would I know? Somewhere without Duel Monsters trying to kill us.” They turned a corner and wandered down the alley a bit more before they could see the road.

“Because that’s possible to do.”

The brunet rolled his eyes, “Ya know what I mean! Don‘t go being such a smart a**.”

Jou had every intention of smart-assing right back, but having a shot gun shoved in his face was a good silencer. “You! You monsters!” Amber eyes blinked at the barrel aimed at him. “You think you can get me huh? You can’t get me! I won’t let you scrawny little animals kill me without a fight!”

“[color-forestgreen]Ma’am?” It wasn’t everyday he was being threatened by a normal human being. It seemed the stress had finally-- “Ma’am, you’re bleeding…” Her right arm was entirely red. Had she been shot? It would explain why she was acting crazy…. Realization dawned a bit too late. “s**t.” She’d been bitten.

The lady continued to babble on, rifle waving but still aimed at the slowly retreating blonde. Maybe if he kept backing up slowly, she wouldn’t shoot. Honda seemed to have the same idea. That didn’t seem to soften the crazy look in her off blue eyes.

The growl that echoed down the street didn’t seem to help her nerves. “Stop moving!” She shrieked, and the two boys went still. It wasn’t until a Man Eater Bug came out of the ally that she turned her attention away from them. A shot ran out and the two boys shot down the road. A hungry bug, and a crazy lady with a shot gun didn’t sound like a safe place to be. With all the noises going on, it was sure to attract bigger Monsters.

Another shot rang out, and for a split second Katsuya saw white. With a hiss, he caught his footing. "No....no...help me! Help!" Jou stopped, turned around in time to see the bug devouring his food. “Jou! Come on!”

“We can’t just leave her…” In the back of his mind he realized it was too late, the blood splattered over the pavement and the bug’s mouth was proof of that. Not to mention if she had been bitten, it only would have been a matter of time.

The blond felt a hand on his shoulder, “Jou, we gotta move!” Honda pulled the blond away from the eating bug as another bellow was let out. The two made it down the road, and shot into a building. “Christ, Jou! What were you thinking, stopping back there? Are you crazy?”

Katsuya shook his head, “I just thought maybe we could help her….” He gripped the metal pole he’d been carrying with one hand, the other resting on his side. “She was just watching out for herself….” Jou blinked, looking around their surroundings. “When did we get to the school?” The growling outside the building had the two wandering around the school.

“Seems safe enough.” Honda shrugged, putting his stolen police baton on the holder on his back. “Who would have thought I’d be so happy to see this place.” he shook his head, opening the cafeteria door. “Damn. Can you imagine living here?” The brunet shook his head, laughing about the irony of it being the last safe place on earth. “Hay! You alright?”

Jou blinked, before looking down at his side. “Just nicked me. I’ll be fine.” He smiled at his friend, nodding as the brunet went on and on about something else he found ironic. It wasn’t until the crash and the growl that the amber eyed teen turned around. “Honda!!!!”

More blood. It seemed to spew from his friends neck like the fountain in the middle of Domino Park. The blond stood frozen, eyes locked with the green wolf and it’s teeth which were firmly locked in his struggling friends neck. What seemed like years past before Honda’s thrashing stopped.

It was only then that Jounouchi’s flight instinct kicked in. Before he knew it, he was down the hall and dashing up a flight of stairs. He still gripped his unused metal pole with his hands, though what good it would do him, he didn’t know.

The blond let out a yelp as he hit the ground, sliding across the floor having tripped over the last stair. He barely had time to roll to his back before White Fang leapt on top of him. It’s razor, and blood covered teeth snapping at him as it tried to get around the pole Jou was desperately clinging to, though with the weight of the wolf, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold up. His arms were already tied, and his size was already on fire long before the wolfs paws dug into it.

He finally got the green furred animal off him long enough to stand up. That thing had killed Honda! The reality of which he didn’t think had set in all the way yet. “Oh Jounouchi. You should have kept running.” The words didn’t have time to process before Katsuya felt himself being hurled into the lockers opposite the stairs. “Tisk tisk tisk. You think you would have learned by now.”

Honey colored eyes stared in horror at the hunched over and sneering face of his former friend. “Honda…” He had to remember that wasn’t his friend. That couldn’t be. His friend never had a twisted up face, and empty colored eyes. It couldn’t be… and yet, there he stood, blood dripping from the missing part of his neck. He didn’t think the wound on his side was that bad, but with all the running and the weight of the wolf on top of him, maybe he’d lost a little too much blood. He’d seen Honda’s throat ripped out right before his eyes.

“Get up, Jounouchi. Let’s have a little fun.“ Katsuya had barely gotten to his feet, before the forgotten wolf made another jump at him.

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Jounouchi wasn’t sure what was going on. One minute his friend was there with him, laughing and making fun of him. One minute they were running for their lives the next they were safe in the school. One minute his friend was alive, the next there was blood gushing from his neck. One minute he was running from a dog, the next he was being thrown into lockers, his dead best friend laughing at him. Then, suddenly the dog was gone, and his friend had a grip around his throat. Then, Honda was dead. There was a gun shot. And Honda was bleeding on the floor again. And Jou was on the floor coughing, and gasping for breath.

There was a voice that he oddly recognized, and someone was helping him to stand up. Chocolate eyes blinked, once… twice… three times….. “K-Kaiba?” Was he surprised? Yes! Everyone thought the CEO of Kaiba Corporation had died. Yet there the brunet stood, tall and arrogant as ever. Somewhere in his mind, Jounouchi couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved that the brunet was alive and well… though it didn’t last long as the taller male continued to talk.

He stood there stumped as he felt himself being checked over. Kaiba was alive? So did Kaiba Corperation have an answer to… well to this? He turned and looked down and the bloodied body of his deceased friend. Blood was gushing from the holes in Honda’s head, and the missing chunk out of his neck. Jou felt his stomach turn at the site of the mangled body. Honda was gone…. Dead. He was killed, turned into a zombie, then killed again.

Katsuya blinked again, and looked down at the cold heavy metal object that had been placed in his hands. ‘A gun?’ His brow furrowed in confusion. What was this for? He didn’t know how to work a gun? Why would he need to? His metal pole had worked fine for him. Not to mention he didn’t want to kill anything, even if they were flesh craving monsters….

Chocolate brown eyes couldn’t help but shift back down to his dead friend. He was gone… for good…. Honda wasn’t coming back; Not now, not ever. And it was his fault. If only he had been paying more attention to what was going on instead of lingering on that old woman –who shot him, he might add. He shouldn’t have been so concerned for a lady who had been bitten, and who had shot him. He should have been paying closer attention to Honda and himself! This world was a place where you had to fight for survival.

Boots clicking against the ground had the blond looking up at Kaiba’s retreating form. Oh no he didn’t! Kaiba wasn’t getting away from him that easily! “Hey--” Their pack would be there soon? Jou tilted his head in confusion, before a distant howl echoed into the school….. ‘Wait a minute… Stray!?!?!!’ He felt a familiar anger boil inside him, before he stormed after the brunet, ignoring the pain in his side.

“I see the only thing that’s changed is ya’ve becoming a bigger p***k than ya used ta be!” Yes, he was getting angry now, and storming after the brunet wasn’t helping his frustration. Why was he having such trouble catching up? And… when did the room start to spin? “.... Who… Who are you to tell me how to live my life? It’s gotten me this far, hasn’t…… hasn’t it….” He was panting, and he couldn’t understand why. He was physically fit. A simple power walk should have been nothing…. But, he found himself reaching out with his arm, and holding onto the wall. He was hunched over, staring down at his shoes and wondering why they were blurry.

Then he felt gravity. He felt it pushing him down, and he could feel the floor rushing up on him. The wound in his side was screaming at him. Stupid old lady with her shot gun…. He was trying to push himself up. He was trying to move, but it didn’t seem like his limbs wanted to cooperate, his entire body didn’t seem to want to work for that matter. Jounouchi let out a soft groan from the pain in his side. His mind clinging to his consciousness desperately.

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The world was foggy; it kept going in and out. He kept falling between hazes of blackness. Jounouchi wasn’t sure what was a dream and what was real anymore. One minute he was laying on the ground the far off feeling of his warm blood pooling around his side, and the next he could feel himself slung over something. Reality was slipping through his fingers; the only thing he was constantly aware of was the shooting pain in his side. That dull throb was constant, even in the darkness that over took him he could feel the pain.

He was vaguely aware of his head knocking against something as his body was set somewhere. Jou let out a soft groan, eyelashes flickering against his cheek as chocolate eyes tried to open. Blurs. Everything melded together in a mesh of unforced color. Something moved; a blur moving among all the other blurs. Jou felt the need to say something, what, he didn’t know. Though the question, “What happened?” did enter his mind.

And then the blackness swallowed him up again. That blackness that swallowed him up; where his body floated effortlessly despite the continuous pain in his side. It felt like that strange limbo; where his mind was shut off yet he still was aware, in an odd sense of the word. It was kind of like he was floating within himself, yet not himself. He wasn’t a philosopher, he didn’t understand it. In his current state, he didn’t have any desire to know.

Then the pain was there. It was shooting through his body; amplified past the point it had been when it first happened. It felt like he was being sucked into something, before he was bad in his body; back into the world of blurs and stabs of pain. Katsuya let out a pained cry, trying to sit up and crawl away from the pain coming from his side, though the pressure on his side kept him from moving much. The blond’s hands clenched into the fabric of an arm, his face twisted up into pain as he felt the probing in his side. There was blood, he could see it and he could smell it. He could see how it oozed out of the hole in the side of his abdomen as the bullet was pulled out of him.

The world spun around him, and he felt his grasp on his consciousness slipping again. Jou let out a noise of protest, desperately trying to stay awake. After the mutation, you couldn’t afford to black out without knowing your surroundings; without having people you knew to sharing a watch schedule. But it was too late. He could feel his heavy eyelids closing, and the weight of his limbs increasing as he slipped back into darkness.

And he was out like a light. There was no pain. There was nothing. Jou didn’t feel the pain in his side, or the small sting of having the whole sewn up or the alcohol being used to clean his skin. He was just out. The lithe blond wasn’t sure how long he had been out, but eventually the feeling in his limbs started coming back to him, and the dull throb in his side was back.

That damn old lady and her shot gun. All Jou had ever done was try and help, and what did he get in return? A bullet lodged in his side. See if he ever tried to help little old ladies ever again. Parents told their kids to help old people cross the street, or carry their groceries. Well what parents don’t say, is that some of those old people have bites from infected duel monsters and that they’ll shoot you in a heartbeat after they’ve lost their minds.

Yeah, definitely not helping old ladies again.

Jounouchi let out a groan, his eyelids cracking open with a slight wince. Amber eyes blinked, trying to clear the blurs from his vision. Everything was dark, and it was difficult to make out anything in the room from what little light was filtering into the room. Jou’s hand drifted to his side, lightly running over the bandage. The wound still hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. He’d been patched up, but how – Kaiba! He’d been fighting with the useless p***k when…. But why did….

He moved to sit up, trying to get a better view of the room which was still a bit too dark for his liking. Katsuya let out a hiss, his hand coming to his side as he let himself relax back onto the floor. Okay, so sitting up hurt like hell. Anyway, the floor was comfortable enough… kind of.

And then he heard the sniffing behind the door, and scratches of claws against the door. Despite the throb of protest from his side, Jounouchi still pushed himself back away from the door. The blond couldn’t help the slight jump when his head hit something soft. He jerked his head back, looking up to make out the form of another person. “Gees. s**t.” Jou’s body relaxed back onto the floor, his hand grabbing his side which wasn’t too happy at him for sliding across the floor and then jumping out of his skin. Leave it to Kaiba to scare the s**t out of him by just sitting there.

He didn’t know how long he was out, and he didn’t know what exactly had happened – or why Kaiba had even bothered to bandage him up – but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious. “What the hell happened?” Katsuya grinded his teeth, biting back the painful yelp that wanted to leave his lips as he forced himself to sit up. The blond pivoted so his back was able to lean heavily against the wall, his hand holding his patched up side.