Fishy, fishy, fishy, come swim in my sea.

Chapter 10: Half way to forever

In the weeks that followed the Showcase nothing significant happened. Yuma and Shark openly showed their affection for each other proudly. This didn't bother their friends, except Vector, who would glare at them mostly. Vector's staring did bother Yuma, but nowhere near as much as Shark, who would glare back at Vector threateningly. Vector didn't do anything else to the couple, or go near Yuma's house because he had had the fear god put into him by Rio, Kari and Yuma's mother Mira. What the three ladies threatened to do to him was unspeakable. This meant that Vector got no end of torment from Alito and Girag for being afraid of three girls, more specifically the two human women.

Yuma and Shark did have to put up with plenty on homophobic comments and abuse, but cared very little for it, since they had the support of their friends, and they were happy as long as they had each other, growing closer with every pacing day. But they didn't spend every waking moment with each other, knowing that they did need to spend time with other people too, to maintain a healthy relationship. However, they did miss each other when they were apart.

Shark had told Yuma that Duman and Mizar were looking into why he had been able to hurt Vector, and the reasons behind it. Yuma had recalled that the will of Astral world, a being by the name of Elphias, had told him that he contained a chaos spark, hoping it would be helpful. It wasn't. Duman and Mizar couldn't seem to find anything, causing Mizar to give up. But Duman was determined to find the answers so kept on looking, with occasional help from both Shark and Rio.

At the start of June, Yuma and Shark, along with Kite, entered a duel monsters tournament. Kazuma and Mira watched Yuma's matches on the internet since they were had left in May on a six month expedition to dig up so ruins that had been discovered by using LIDAR scans and crop marks. The final was between Kite and Yuma. Yuma having to defeat a visiting friend called Anna Kaboom, who had an explosive personality and pink and orange hair, to get there. Shark had lost in a very close match against Kite, but he was privately glad he had lost, because he didn't want to duel Yuma unless it was a friendly casual match up.

The duel between Yuma and Kite had the crowd on the edge of their seats, most torn between who to support as the match was very close. Each duellist able come back from set backs turn after turn. By turn 10 both Yuma and Kite were down to 500 hundred life points a piece and each had a face down trap on the field. It was Yuma's turn and it just so happened he had drawn into Mystical Space Typhoon, which he used to clear the way and attack Kite with Gagaga Magician, which he normal summoned from his hand.

Going into July, and therefore the start of the summer break, Yuma was seemingly clear of any lingering emotional pain concerning Astral. In fact if you were to look at him, you wouldn't have known that just 15 months ago he was someone who had been depressed and even considered suicided. Shark of course knew the scars of Astral would remain, like cracks on a fixed china cup.

There had also been no developments in the looming danger that was coming, despite Yuma still having his strange nightmare, with the light and dark anomalies. This led them to conclude it was nothing and might have been Yuma's unconscious mind playing ticks on him. That was until Rio had started warning them about a coming destructive power and which triggered Yuma's dreams to become more intense, but no new information was forth coming. So they didn't know what they were looking or waiting for. But that all changed on the first day of August.

Shark had invited Yuma over to his place, since Rio was having a sleep over at Tori's and the other Barian's were in Barian world for their vacation. It'd had been a week since they had been alone together since Yuma had been grounded by Haru for breaking one of her favourite ornate plates. It had been and accident.

"I just glad your Grandma is letting you out of the house again." Shark said joining Yuma on the large, comfortable sofa in his font room, after returning from the kitchen with a tray with a jug of juice and two glasses on it, that he'd insisted on carrying.