Reaper of Despair
03-11-2005, 03:18 PM
Episode 38: Rise of the Magicians
The strange Union monsters hovered above the field menacingly as Tsuyoijin placed another card face down and ended his turn. Jason drew from his deck, looking for something to at least defend himself with. He looked at the card and sighed at his hand.
“Well, there’s nothing here to help me against that thing, so I’ll have to increase my options. That Reparations of Mortals and Ghosts that I discarded a while ago has two effects. The Reparations of Mortals, which allows me to activate it as a normal spell card and draw one card, and the Reparations of Ghosts, which allows me to remove it from the graveyard and draw three cards if it wasn’t activated by its first effect. So here I go.”
Jason ejected the card from the graveyard slot and slipped it into his pocket, then, he quickly pulled three cards from the top of his deck, bringing his hand back to a full six cards. Assessing his options, he realized that taking down Aitsu was going to be harder than he thought. “One monster in defense mode and two cards face down. That’s all from me.”
Yowaijin drew with a smirk plastered onto his small face. “I summon Union Rider #2 (700/300) in attack mode!” In a flash of sparks, there appeared a tall man in a leather jacket. He wore a helmet with long horns sticking out of it, and two beady yellow eyes stuck out from under the helmet. He had all the looks of a biker punk. “My monster has a special ability that allows it to be equipped with any Union monster and gain their abilities.”
Suddenly, Tsuyoijin activated a trap card. “Now I activate my trap card, Soul of Unity! It’s basically a continuous version of the Formation Union trap, meaning that I can bring together, or split apart any Unioned monsters at any time I want!”
It only took Atem and Jason a little under a nanosecond to comprehend the danger. Not only could Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin attack on each of their turns, but they could also do it with a monster that was even stronger than a Blue Eyes White Dragon.
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Joey walked down the street, overlooking the various duels that were going on. The blonde duelist was still slightly shaken up over Amana’s death after their duel, but after running with a street gang for so long, Joey had a way of dealing with such situations so they wouldn’t weigh on his conscience.
Joey had already won several duels before, but they were against mostly chumps and/or amateurs that posed no threat. He needed a proper challenge in order to make his way to the finals, because he’s Joey Wheeler, one of the best duelists out there.
“Excuse me?” came the female voice that snapped Joey out of his usual ‘best there is’ daydream. He turned to face a redheaded girl about his age. “I’m just curious, do you know Yugi Mutou?”
Joey was slightly taken aback by the question, but he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know Yugi. Why do you ask?”
The girl let her eyelids slump down slightly over her bright green eyes and activated her DD2, then, she pulled a deck out of her jeans pocket and began shuffling it. “I want to know because I want to see how I can do against the runner-up at Duelist Kingdom and a Battle City finalist. So, are you ready, Joey Wheeler?”
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Atem and Jason grimaced as the blue Union monster floated away from its partner and next to the Union Rider #2, who jumped onto the large paper airplane. Both duelists only had one monster and one card face down, but Yugi’s monster was face up and in attack mode, so choosing between them wasn’t hard. “Union Rider #2, attack the Dark Magician Girl!”
The odd couple of monsters began twirling around, then, shot out at the female mage. At the last moment, before the Spellcaster would have been diced into pieces, a large silk hat with a question mark appeared over her, then, three more hats split out from it. The tandem monster sliced through a hat, only to find it completely empty. “What kind of trickery is this?!” Yowaijin yelled out.
“This is no trick. It’s my trap card, Magical Hats!” Atem called out from his side of the field. “You’ll have to find my Dark Magician Girl if you want to destroy her.”
Jason glanced over and noticed that the hats extended to his side of the field as well, covering his face down monster with one of the three remaining hats. Yowaijin grimaced at the situation before him. “Fine. I’ll just place a card face down and end my turn.”
Atem sighed and drew from his deck, hoping for a more permanent solution to the problem. With three hats, and two monsters under them, his opponents had roughly a 66% chance of hitting a monster. He hoped Jason’s monster was strong or at least had a good effect. “I’ll place one card face down, under one of the hats, and end my turn.”
A brown backed hologram appeared, and a vacant hat slid over it. Then, the three remaining hats began to spin, faster and faster, shuffling themselves to confuse the enemy. When they stopped, Tsuyoijin drew from his deck for his turn.
“Now, I’ll activate the effect of my Soul of Unity trap card to de-union Koitsu and Union Rider #2, and I’ll bring Aitsu and Koitsu together again.” The Union Rider #2 jumped off of the airplane and Koitsu rejoined his original partner. “Now Aitsu, attack the hat on the right!”
The monsters spun toward the designated hat, and Atem grimaced. “It seems you’ve chosen correctly; my Dark Magician Girl was in that hat.” Tsuyoijin smirked as the tandem monsters sliced through the hat and revealed the female mage. But she appeared to be holding a large red cylinder of some kind. “But she wasn’t alone in that hat! My trap card was there with her!” Atem declared.
Another cylinder of the same color and appearance materialized in front of Tsuyoijin and unleashed a shockwave of energy that knocked the muscular duelist to the ground.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 5900) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 2200)
“Close, but no cigar on that one, Tsuyoijin. It would seem that your ultimate monster did nothing more than screw you out of 3100 life points on account of my partner’s Magic Cylinder trap card,” Jason teased from his side of the field.
The muscular duelist got up and glared at Jason. But he simply ended his turn after that. Jason drew, and looked down at the card. “Well, I’ll just place one card face down and end my turn. Let’s see what you can do.” ‘And let’s see you make the play I know you’ll foolishly make,’ Jason thought as Yowaijin drew.
“I’ll summon Freezing Beast (1500/1000) in attack mode!” In a blast of artic wind a four-legged monster that appeared to be made of nothing but spiked ice appeared. “Next, I’ll use the effect of my Union Rider #2. Merge with Koitsu once again!”
The strange blue creature started to split from Aitsu and move over to Yowaijin’s side of the field, but a bolt of golden lightning shot from the sky and obliterated Union Rider #2 before it could. As Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin started to complain, Jason’s laughter filled their ears. They looked over in time to spot Jason’s flipped up trap card.
“You ran right into my trap; a mistake that incurred a Divine Wrath. In fact, that’s the name of my trap card. Divine Wrath activates when you try to use a monster’s effect. It negates the effect and destroys the monster at the cost of a simple discard from my hand.”
Yowaijin growled at the destruction of his monster, but continued with his play. “Fine. Freezing Beast, attack the Magical Hat on the left!” The creature opened its mouth and unleashed a blast of wind laced with flecks of ice that shattered the hat, but revealed nothing. “I end my turn, then.”
Since there was only one hat left, it dissolved, revealing Jason’s face down monster, which moved back to his side of the field. Atem drew, praying for a way around Aitsu-Koitsu. ‘I could blow away Freezing Beast with my Dark Magician Girl, but that would just give Yowaijin more fodder for Spectral Defender. I’d better play it safe.’ “I’ll switch Dark Magician Girl to defense mode, place one card face down, and summon a monster in defense mode. That ends my turn.”
Tsuyoijin drew, then, laughed out loud and glared at Atem and Jason. “Aitsu, attack the Dark Magician Girl!” With that, the monsters were off spinning again and they slashed through Atem’s Spellcaster, shattering her. But the beeping that came from the pharaoh’s DD3 was more than enough to force Atem and Jason to realize that Aitsu was more dangerous than they originally thought.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 4500) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 2200)
“It appears that the two of you have just become acquainted with the special ability that Koitsu affords Aitsu; the ability to do damage to your life points, even when your monsters are in defense mode. There is no defense for you to hide behind. The power of This Guy and That Guy will overwhelm you! So with that said, I end my turn.”
Jason quickly realized the danger he was in, since his face down monster had such a low defense power. He drew from his deck and sighed at his draw. “Well, at least I can defend myself if need be. I’ll place a card face down and end my turn.”
Yowaijin snapped the top card off of his deck and quickly capitalized on the advantage left to him by his partner. “I activate the spell card, Mystical Space Typhoon! This card will destroy your face down card, Yugi!”
The pharaoh reeled back as the twister kicked up and raged toward his face down card. Suddenly, Jason began laughing. “Well, it seems that you’ve done my work for me. I was going to use this card to defend myself should an attack come, but I think it will do better now. So I activate my face down card, Chain of Trap Revival!”
His face down card flipped up, and a thick black chain shot out of it and buried itself in the ground at the middle of the field. “Bring back whatever you want, it won’t matter!” Tsuyoijin barked.
“Well wait till you see what it snagged,” Jason finished. “Then, I’ll sure that you’ll change your opinion.” The chain began to retract, and it dragged a trap card with it. It was a trap card that made Yowaijin and Tsuyoijin freeze in their tracks. “With this effect, I bring back Yowaijin’s Shift, and I’ll turn Mystical Space Typhoon back on Tsuyoijin’s United Force trap card!”
The Union duelists reeled back as the twister turned course and engulfed the muscular duelist’s trap, sweeping it up with a burst of wind and shattering it with a bolt of lightning. Yowaijin clenched his fists tightly and yelled his command. “Freezing Beast, attack Yugi’s defense monster!” The monster unleashed its attack on the pharaoh’s monster.
The brown backed hologram flipped, and a massive beast made of granite rose, small pebbles crumbling from its hulking form as it did so. Atem smirked as the monster stood through the assault as if though it were nothing. “Your attack did nothing more than reveal my Giant Soldier of Stone (1300/2000), who is strong enough to repel your monster.”
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 1700)
Yowaijin scowled at the pharaoh and ended his turn. Atem chuckled and drew, then, stared at the Union duelists with a look that has spelled doom for many duelists before them.
“I must thank Jason, because he has opened the path for the finishing blow that will end this duel! Reveal face down card, Brain Control!” A large brain appeared on the field in front of Atem and a pair of transparent claws shot out from the brain and grabbed Aitsu, dropping him back on Atem’s side of the field, much to the shock and fear of Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin.
Atem held up a card in his hand and Jason caught the glimmer in the pharaoh’s eyes. “It’s time to show them why they call you call you the King of Games!”
Atem nodded and made his play. “I’ll sacrifice both Aitsu-Koitsu and my stone solder to summon the ultimate monster of your defeat!” Atem slapped the card down on the DD3 and the three monsters were swallowed whole by a twister of magical energy that signaled the coming of one monster in all of the pharaoh’s deck.
“Dark Magician, arise and give them a taste of your power!” The purple clad Spellcaster shot up from the ground and crossed his arms, letting his green staff rest on his shoulder. The pharaoh stared into the eyes of Tsuyoijin with ice-cold intent, letting the muscular man know that he would be the first to go. “Dark Magician, attack Tsuyoijin directly with Dark Magic Attack!”
The wizard leaped up and snapped his staff out, unleashing a blast of energy that caused the field around Tsuyoijin to invert colors for a few seconds, before the man dropped to the ground, defeated.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 0/Yowaijin: 1700)
The pharaoh dusted off his hands and ended his turn. Jason smirked as he reached for his deck. “Since you’re all alone in this duel, with no partner, I guess that makes it my turn, so here goes.” Jason drew, then, laughed. “I summon Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer (1800/700) in attack mode!” From the ground rose a man in a priest’s robes. Half of his face was covered in a dark mask, and he held a string of beads in one hand as he chanted. “And now, for my face down monster, I flip the Old Vindictive Magician (450/600), whose effect allows me to destroy one monster on the field, and I choose Freezing Beast!”
The face down hologram flipped up and out of it appeared a short, decrepit old man, dressed in long dark wizard’s robes that came down to the ground. He let out a weak moan as he tried to stand since his back was curved almost completely over, giving him the posture of a jumbo shrimp. The old man feebly raised his scepter and pointed it at Yowaijin’s monster. Jason’s monster spoke an incantation and the Freezing Beast shattered by a mysterious force. Yowaijin simply laughed at the play.
“You are a fool. Have you forgotten about my Spectral Defender trap? Sending Freezing Beast to the graveyard gave me another monster to defend myself with!”
Jason only snorted and looked at Kycoo. “Kycoo, seal his graveyard!” The priest chanted again and pulled an ofuda from under his robes. He threw it at Yowaijin’s DD2 and it landed on the graveyard slot, covering it with a veil of dark energy.
“What’s going on here?! What did your monster do to my graveyard?! Tell me!” Yowaijin yelled with increasing panic.
“It’s simple. Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer specializes in ghosts and apparitions, sending them to the land of the dead, or preventing them from leaving this plane, which is what he did to your ghosts.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying! What do ghosts have to do with my graveyard being sealed?”
Jason only shook his head, and Atem smirked slightly at Yowaijin’s dismay. “It means that Kycoo prevents you from removing any monsters from either graveyard. So with that out of the way, allow me to reintroduce you to a little friend of mine. I activate Monster Reborn!”
The large glowing ankh appeared on the field, then, exploded in a flash of dazzling light. When the light died down, Jason’s Chaos Magician stood on the field in all his glory. His cloak fluttered slightly in the wind and he kept his focus solely on Yowaijin, who panicked at the sight of the monster. “No, this can’t be! I can’t lose, or Master Malik will be furious!”
Jason laughed again, then, pointed at Yowaijin. “He’s the least of your problems, because Chaos Magician will attack your life points directly! End it, my mage!”
The Spellcaster held his staff straight out and pointed it at Yowaijin, then, unleashed a powerful wave of energy that sent the short duelist tumbling end-over-end until he came to a rest in a heap near a dirt mound.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 0/Yowaijin: 0)
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Joey reeled back slightly as the girl shoved her deck into her DD2 and took up a dueling position across from him. “Wait, how did you know my name? Who are you?”
The girl flipped some of her red and blonde hair over her shoulder and smirked. “Don’t worry about that. You’ll get answers at the end of this duel, I promise. But for now, let’s just worry about the duel.”
Joey became concerned about his new opponent, and soon, he came to a realization that made him shudder, but he opened his mouth and spoke. “Do you know anything about the Shadow Realm?”
The girl froze in place with a stoic look on her face; one that reminded Joey of the look Atem had sometimes during a duel. Then she closed her eyes and smirked again. “I suppose you could say that I know more about it than any normal person should know. So are we dueling or not?” Joey cringed as he heard those words. He didn’t want to have to cause this girl to lose her soul. She noticed the look of dismay on Joey’s face and sighed. “No, this won’t be a Shadow Game, and even if it were, I wouldn’t inflict Game Penalty on you. Now, can we duel?”
“Just one more thing I need to know. What is your name? Can you at least tell me that so you will be more than a stranger?”
The girl’s face brightened up a little as she spoke. “Yeah, I can tell you that. My friends like to call me ‘Firestarter’, but my real name is Niesha. Niesha Blaze.”
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Jason dropped Tsuyoijin harshly to the ground after he came to from the attack. The man opened his eyes and looked up at Jason. “Alright, now tell me who you work for and why you’re targeting the pharaoh.”
Tsuyoijin simply stared up at the sky with a blank look on his face, as if though he were sleeping with his eyes open. Suddenly, the Eye of Horus glowed even brighter on his forehead, and he started to scream. “No, please master Malik! Don’t be upset with me! Give me another chance to…”
He was cut off by the deafening scream that issued forth from his mouth. He rolled on the ground and held his head in agony. Yowaijin was doing the same thing where he landed after the Chaos Magician’s attack. Suddenly, Tsuyoijin stopped screaming, and stood up. When he turned around, his eyes were rolled into the back of his skull. “So, it seems that fate has drawn us to battle once again, pharaoh,” Tsuyoijin said in a much deeper voice.
“Ok, this guy has lost whatever he had left of his mind. And how does he know that you’re a pharaoh?” Jason asked as he stared down the muscular duelist.
“He is under the control of Malik, who is using a Millennium Item,” Atem said as he glared daggers at Tsuyoijin.
“This freak has a Millennium Item that can control people’s minds?!” Jason exclaimed, hoping that he wouldn’t be next to become a mind slave.
“I have much more than just a Millennium Item,” came the exact same dark voice from behind Jason and Atem. They turned around to face Yowaijin, who was in the same zombie-like condition as his partner. He pointed at Jason as he spoke. “You couldn’t possibly comprehend what is taking place here boy, so stand aside.”
A vein formed on the side of Jason’s forehead as he narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists. “Boy?! First of all, I am NOT a boy, and second of all, I don’t know who you are, but you need to stop hiding behind your puppets and step up like a man.”
Before Jason could take any further action, Atem stepped forward and stared down the larger duelist before him. “Malik, I’ve defeated you before, and I’ll do it again, so just name the place and I’ll duel you, and I’ll win!”
Malik laughed at the idea of Atem’s challenge, and Yowaijin walked over to stand next to the possessed Tsuyoijin. Then, the two began laughing once again, which annoyed Jason to no end. “Pharaoh, we shall meet in the finals. There, you will climb the Stairway to Destiny, before you descend into Hell,” both men spoke in the same voice.
The two continued to laugh and Jason started to speak, but a strange whirring from above caused him to snap his head up, just in time to see what happened…and to push Atem out of the way before a massive girder dropped from above, crushing Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin with a loud ‘ping’, followed by a sickening ‘splat’. Both duelists looked up to catch the man standing by the crane above, before he jumped off to his death by the will of the Millennium Rod.
“So…what now, Atem? I mean, we’ve seen the true face of the enemy, and let me tell you, he is insane and supremely evil,” Jason said as he looked at the bloody carnage before him.
Atem glanced down at the broken bodies and was reminded of just how evil Malik could be. He silently prayed that no one would be hurt, or worse, killed in the upcoming rematch between light and darkness. “I don’t know, Jason. But I do know that Malik will stop at nothing to see me suffer, so please, be careful.”
Jason smirked and crossed his arms in a confident manner. “Pharaoh, it’s me we’re talking about here. I’m too strong for that mind control crap, and from the looks of it, I could duel circles around Malik and his lackeys with one hand tied behind my back. So I’ll be fine.”
Atem only looked up at the darkening sky and sighed at the coming challenge. He knew that he could defeat Malik, since the dark spirit no longer possessed the god cards, but what concerned Atem was the danger to his friends. He thanked god that Tea was at a dance academy in another state for the summer, Tristan was out of town visiting a relative, and Duke was taking care of some business in America. That only left Joey, but Atem knew that Joey was too strong for Malik’s control.
“I think that it would be best that we went our separate ways for now. It would be better for Malik to target one of us at a time than to go for both of us together.” Jason’s comment shook the pharaoh out of his concern.
“Yes, I think so, too. So I guess this means that we won’t see each other again until the finals.”
“Right. Besides, it’s getting late and I’ve got a lot of dueling to do if I want to catch up with the top ten and qualify for the finals,” Jason said as he casually collected his cards off of the DD3 and shuffled them all together, then, shoved the deck into his pocket.
The two duelists nodded and walked off in opposite directions, towards a city full of opponents, and a darkening horizon.
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And that’s episode 38. For those who don’t watch the show, but read my fic, Yugi has three other friends, Tea, Tristan, and Duke. But in reality, they really don’t do anything to help advance the plot, and I never even thought about them until now. So I had to give a reason for why they weren’t in the story. The next episode will be up soon.
Original Cards:
Jason: Reparations of Mortals and Ghosts, Chain of Trap Revival
Tsuyoijin: Soul of Unity
Yowaijin: Union Rider #2
Anime Cards:
Atem: Brain Control
The strange Union monsters hovered above the field menacingly as Tsuyoijin placed another card face down and ended his turn. Jason drew from his deck, looking for something to at least defend himself with. He looked at the card and sighed at his hand.
“Well, there’s nothing here to help me against that thing, so I’ll have to increase my options. That Reparations of Mortals and Ghosts that I discarded a while ago has two effects. The Reparations of Mortals, which allows me to activate it as a normal spell card and draw one card, and the Reparations of Ghosts, which allows me to remove it from the graveyard and draw three cards if it wasn’t activated by its first effect. So here I go.”
Jason ejected the card from the graveyard slot and slipped it into his pocket, then, he quickly pulled three cards from the top of his deck, bringing his hand back to a full six cards. Assessing his options, he realized that taking down Aitsu was going to be harder than he thought. “One monster in defense mode and two cards face down. That’s all from me.”
Yowaijin drew with a smirk plastered onto his small face. “I summon Union Rider #2 (700/300) in attack mode!” In a flash of sparks, there appeared a tall man in a leather jacket. He wore a helmet with long horns sticking out of it, and two beady yellow eyes stuck out from under the helmet. He had all the looks of a biker punk. “My monster has a special ability that allows it to be equipped with any Union monster and gain their abilities.”
Suddenly, Tsuyoijin activated a trap card. “Now I activate my trap card, Soul of Unity! It’s basically a continuous version of the Formation Union trap, meaning that I can bring together, or split apart any Unioned monsters at any time I want!”
It only took Atem and Jason a little under a nanosecond to comprehend the danger. Not only could Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin attack on each of their turns, but they could also do it with a monster that was even stronger than a Blue Eyes White Dragon.
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Joey walked down the street, overlooking the various duels that were going on. The blonde duelist was still slightly shaken up over Amana’s death after their duel, but after running with a street gang for so long, Joey had a way of dealing with such situations so they wouldn’t weigh on his conscience.
Joey had already won several duels before, but they were against mostly chumps and/or amateurs that posed no threat. He needed a proper challenge in order to make his way to the finals, because he’s Joey Wheeler, one of the best duelists out there.
“Excuse me?” came the female voice that snapped Joey out of his usual ‘best there is’ daydream. He turned to face a redheaded girl about his age. “I’m just curious, do you know Yugi Mutou?”
Joey was slightly taken aback by the question, but he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know Yugi. Why do you ask?”
The girl let her eyelids slump down slightly over her bright green eyes and activated her DD2, then, she pulled a deck out of her jeans pocket and began shuffling it. “I want to know because I want to see how I can do against the runner-up at Duelist Kingdom and a Battle City finalist. So, are you ready, Joey Wheeler?”
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Atem and Jason grimaced as the blue Union monster floated away from its partner and next to the Union Rider #2, who jumped onto the large paper airplane. Both duelists only had one monster and one card face down, but Yugi’s monster was face up and in attack mode, so choosing between them wasn’t hard. “Union Rider #2, attack the Dark Magician Girl!”
The odd couple of monsters began twirling around, then, shot out at the female mage. At the last moment, before the Spellcaster would have been diced into pieces, a large silk hat with a question mark appeared over her, then, three more hats split out from it. The tandem monster sliced through a hat, only to find it completely empty. “What kind of trickery is this?!” Yowaijin yelled out.
“This is no trick. It’s my trap card, Magical Hats!” Atem called out from his side of the field. “You’ll have to find my Dark Magician Girl if you want to destroy her.”
Jason glanced over and noticed that the hats extended to his side of the field as well, covering his face down monster with one of the three remaining hats. Yowaijin grimaced at the situation before him. “Fine. I’ll just place a card face down and end my turn.”
Atem sighed and drew from his deck, hoping for a more permanent solution to the problem. With three hats, and two monsters under them, his opponents had roughly a 66% chance of hitting a monster. He hoped Jason’s monster was strong or at least had a good effect. “I’ll place one card face down, under one of the hats, and end my turn.”
A brown backed hologram appeared, and a vacant hat slid over it. Then, the three remaining hats began to spin, faster and faster, shuffling themselves to confuse the enemy. When they stopped, Tsuyoijin drew from his deck for his turn.
“Now, I’ll activate the effect of my Soul of Unity trap card to de-union Koitsu and Union Rider #2, and I’ll bring Aitsu and Koitsu together again.” The Union Rider #2 jumped off of the airplane and Koitsu rejoined his original partner. “Now Aitsu, attack the hat on the right!”
The monsters spun toward the designated hat, and Atem grimaced. “It seems you’ve chosen correctly; my Dark Magician Girl was in that hat.” Tsuyoijin smirked as the tandem monsters sliced through the hat and revealed the female mage. But she appeared to be holding a large red cylinder of some kind. “But she wasn’t alone in that hat! My trap card was there with her!” Atem declared.
Another cylinder of the same color and appearance materialized in front of Tsuyoijin and unleashed a shockwave of energy that knocked the muscular duelist to the ground.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 5900) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 2200)
“Close, but no cigar on that one, Tsuyoijin. It would seem that your ultimate monster did nothing more than screw you out of 3100 life points on account of my partner’s Magic Cylinder trap card,” Jason teased from his side of the field.
The muscular duelist got up and glared at Jason. But he simply ended his turn after that. Jason drew, and looked down at the card. “Well, I’ll just place one card face down and end my turn. Let’s see what you can do.” ‘And let’s see you make the play I know you’ll foolishly make,’ Jason thought as Yowaijin drew.
“I’ll summon Freezing Beast (1500/1000) in attack mode!” In a blast of artic wind a four-legged monster that appeared to be made of nothing but spiked ice appeared. “Next, I’ll use the effect of my Union Rider #2. Merge with Koitsu once again!”
The strange blue creature started to split from Aitsu and move over to Yowaijin’s side of the field, but a bolt of golden lightning shot from the sky and obliterated Union Rider #2 before it could. As Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin started to complain, Jason’s laughter filled their ears. They looked over in time to spot Jason’s flipped up trap card.
“You ran right into my trap; a mistake that incurred a Divine Wrath. In fact, that’s the name of my trap card. Divine Wrath activates when you try to use a monster’s effect. It negates the effect and destroys the monster at the cost of a simple discard from my hand.”
Yowaijin growled at the destruction of his monster, but continued with his play. “Fine. Freezing Beast, attack the Magical Hat on the left!” The creature opened its mouth and unleashed a blast of wind laced with flecks of ice that shattered the hat, but revealed nothing. “I end my turn, then.”
Since there was only one hat left, it dissolved, revealing Jason’s face down monster, which moved back to his side of the field. Atem drew, praying for a way around Aitsu-Koitsu. ‘I could blow away Freezing Beast with my Dark Magician Girl, but that would just give Yowaijin more fodder for Spectral Defender. I’d better play it safe.’ “I’ll switch Dark Magician Girl to defense mode, place one card face down, and summon a monster in defense mode. That ends my turn.”
Tsuyoijin drew, then, laughed out loud and glared at Atem and Jason. “Aitsu, attack the Dark Magician Girl!” With that, the monsters were off spinning again and they slashed through Atem’s Spellcaster, shattering her. But the beeping that came from the pharaoh’s DD3 was more than enough to force Atem and Jason to realize that Aitsu was more dangerous than they originally thought.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 4500) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 2200)
“It appears that the two of you have just become acquainted with the special ability that Koitsu affords Aitsu; the ability to do damage to your life points, even when your monsters are in defense mode. There is no defense for you to hide behind. The power of This Guy and That Guy will overwhelm you! So with that said, I end my turn.”
Jason quickly realized the danger he was in, since his face down monster had such a low defense power. He drew from his deck and sighed at his draw. “Well, at least I can defend myself if need be. I’ll place a card face down and end my turn.”
Yowaijin snapped the top card off of his deck and quickly capitalized on the advantage left to him by his partner. “I activate the spell card, Mystical Space Typhoon! This card will destroy your face down card, Yugi!”
The pharaoh reeled back as the twister kicked up and raged toward his face down card. Suddenly, Jason began laughing. “Well, it seems that you’ve done my work for me. I was going to use this card to defend myself should an attack come, but I think it will do better now. So I activate my face down card, Chain of Trap Revival!”
His face down card flipped up, and a thick black chain shot out of it and buried itself in the ground at the middle of the field. “Bring back whatever you want, it won’t matter!” Tsuyoijin barked.
“Well wait till you see what it snagged,” Jason finished. “Then, I’ll sure that you’ll change your opinion.” The chain began to retract, and it dragged a trap card with it. It was a trap card that made Yowaijin and Tsuyoijin freeze in their tracks. “With this effect, I bring back Yowaijin’s Shift, and I’ll turn Mystical Space Typhoon back on Tsuyoijin’s United Force trap card!”
The Union duelists reeled back as the twister turned course and engulfed the muscular duelist’s trap, sweeping it up with a burst of wind and shattering it with a bolt of lightning. Yowaijin clenched his fists tightly and yelled his command. “Freezing Beast, attack Yugi’s defense monster!” The monster unleashed its attack on the pharaoh’s monster.
The brown backed hologram flipped, and a massive beast made of granite rose, small pebbles crumbling from its hulking form as it did so. Atem smirked as the monster stood through the assault as if though it were nothing. “Your attack did nothing more than reveal my Giant Soldier of Stone (1300/2000), who is strong enough to repel your monster.”
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 1400/Yowaijin: 1700)
Yowaijin scowled at the pharaoh and ended his turn. Atem chuckled and drew, then, stared at the Union duelists with a look that has spelled doom for many duelists before them.
“I must thank Jason, because he has opened the path for the finishing blow that will end this duel! Reveal face down card, Brain Control!” A large brain appeared on the field in front of Atem and a pair of transparent claws shot out from the brain and grabbed Aitsu, dropping him back on Atem’s side of the field, much to the shock and fear of Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin.
Atem held up a card in his hand and Jason caught the glimmer in the pharaoh’s eyes. “It’s time to show them why they call you call you the King of Games!”
Atem nodded and made his play. “I’ll sacrifice both Aitsu-Koitsu and my stone solder to summon the ultimate monster of your defeat!” Atem slapped the card down on the DD3 and the three monsters were swallowed whole by a twister of magical energy that signaled the coming of one monster in all of the pharaoh’s deck.
“Dark Magician, arise and give them a taste of your power!” The purple clad Spellcaster shot up from the ground and crossed his arms, letting his green staff rest on his shoulder. The pharaoh stared into the eyes of Tsuyoijin with ice-cold intent, letting the muscular man know that he would be the first to go. “Dark Magician, attack Tsuyoijin directly with Dark Magic Attack!”
The wizard leaped up and snapped his staff out, unleashing a blast of energy that caused the field around Tsuyoijin to invert colors for a few seconds, before the man dropped to the ground, defeated.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 0/Yowaijin: 1700)
The pharaoh dusted off his hands and ended his turn. Jason smirked as he reached for his deck. “Since you’re all alone in this duel, with no partner, I guess that makes it my turn, so here goes.” Jason drew, then, laughed. “I summon Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer (1800/700) in attack mode!” From the ground rose a man in a priest’s robes. Half of his face was covered in a dark mask, and he held a string of beads in one hand as he chanted. “And now, for my face down monster, I flip the Old Vindictive Magician (450/600), whose effect allows me to destroy one monster on the field, and I choose Freezing Beast!”
The face down hologram flipped up and out of it appeared a short, decrepit old man, dressed in long dark wizard’s robes that came down to the ground. He let out a weak moan as he tried to stand since his back was curved almost completely over, giving him the posture of a jumbo shrimp. The old man feebly raised his scepter and pointed it at Yowaijin’s monster. Jason’s monster spoke an incantation and the Freezing Beast shattered by a mysterious force. Yowaijin simply laughed at the play.
“You are a fool. Have you forgotten about my Spectral Defender trap? Sending Freezing Beast to the graveyard gave me another monster to defend myself with!”
Jason only snorted and looked at Kycoo. “Kycoo, seal his graveyard!” The priest chanted again and pulled an ofuda from under his robes. He threw it at Yowaijin’s DD2 and it landed on the graveyard slot, covering it with a veil of dark energy.
“What’s going on here?! What did your monster do to my graveyard?! Tell me!” Yowaijin yelled with increasing panic.
“It’s simple. Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer specializes in ghosts and apparitions, sending them to the land of the dead, or preventing them from leaving this plane, which is what he did to your ghosts.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying! What do ghosts have to do with my graveyard being sealed?”
Jason only shook his head, and Atem smirked slightly at Yowaijin’s dismay. “It means that Kycoo prevents you from removing any monsters from either graveyard. So with that out of the way, allow me to reintroduce you to a little friend of mine. I activate Monster Reborn!”
The large glowing ankh appeared on the field, then, exploded in a flash of dazzling light. When the light died down, Jason’s Chaos Magician stood on the field in all his glory. His cloak fluttered slightly in the wind and he kept his focus solely on Yowaijin, who panicked at the sight of the monster. “No, this can’t be! I can’t lose, or Master Malik will be furious!”
Jason laughed again, then, pointed at Yowaijin. “He’s the least of your problems, because Chaos Magician will attack your life points directly! End it, my mage!”
The Spellcaster held his staff straight out and pointed it at Yowaijin, then, unleashed a powerful wave of energy that sent the short duelist tumbling end-over-end until he came to a rest in a heap near a dirt mound.
(Jason: 5800/Atem: 3000) (Tsuyoijin: 0/Yowaijin: 0)
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Joey reeled back slightly as the girl shoved her deck into her DD2 and took up a dueling position across from him. “Wait, how did you know my name? Who are you?”
The girl flipped some of her red and blonde hair over her shoulder and smirked. “Don’t worry about that. You’ll get answers at the end of this duel, I promise. But for now, let’s just worry about the duel.”
Joey became concerned about his new opponent, and soon, he came to a realization that made him shudder, but he opened his mouth and spoke. “Do you know anything about the Shadow Realm?”
The girl froze in place with a stoic look on her face; one that reminded Joey of the look Atem had sometimes during a duel. Then she closed her eyes and smirked again. “I suppose you could say that I know more about it than any normal person should know. So are we dueling or not?” Joey cringed as he heard those words. He didn’t want to have to cause this girl to lose her soul. She noticed the look of dismay on Joey’s face and sighed. “No, this won’t be a Shadow Game, and even if it were, I wouldn’t inflict Game Penalty on you. Now, can we duel?”
“Just one more thing I need to know. What is your name? Can you at least tell me that so you will be more than a stranger?”
The girl’s face brightened up a little as she spoke. “Yeah, I can tell you that. My friends like to call me ‘Firestarter’, but my real name is Niesha. Niesha Blaze.”
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Jason dropped Tsuyoijin harshly to the ground after he came to from the attack. The man opened his eyes and looked up at Jason. “Alright, now tell me who you work for and why you’re targeting the pharaoh.”
Tsuyoijin simply stared up at the sky with a blank look on his face, as if though he were sleeping with his eyes open. Suddenly, the Eye of Horus glowed even brighter on his forehead, and he started to scream. “No, please master Malik! Don’t be upset with me! Give me another chance to…”
He was cut off by the deafening scream that issued forth from his mouth. He rolled on the ground and held his head in agony. Yowaijin was doing the same thing where he landed after the Chaos Magician’s attack. Suddenly, Tsuyoijin stopped screaming, and stood up. When he turned around, his eyes were rolled into the back of his skull. “So, it seems that fate has drawn us to battle once again, pharaoh,” Tsuyoijin said in a much deeper voice.
“Ok, this guy has lost whatever he had left of his mind. And how does he know that you’re a pharaoh?” Jason asked as he stared down the muscular duelist.
“He is under the control of Malik, who is using a Millennium Item,” Atem said as he glared daggers at Tsuyoijin.
“This freak has a Millennium Item that can control people’s minds?!” Jason exclaimed, hoping that he wouldn’t be next to become a mind slave.
“I have much more than just a Millennium Item,” came the exact same dark voice from behind Jason and Atem. They turned around to face Yowaijin, who was in the same zombie-like condition as his partner. He pointed at Jason as he spoke. “You couldn’t possibly comprehend what is taking place here boy, so stand aside.”
A vein formed on the side of Jason’s forehead as he narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists. “Boy?! First of all, I am NOT a boy, and second of all, I don’t know who you are, but you need to stop hiding behind your puppets and step up like a man.”
Before Jason could take any further action, Atem stepped forward and stared down the larger duelist before him. “Malik, I’ve defeated you before, and I’ll do it again, so just name the place and I’ll duel you, and I’ll win!”
Malik laughed at the idea of Atem’s challenge, and Yowaijin walked over to stand next to the possessed Tsuyoijin. Then, the two began laughing once again, which annoyed Jason to no end. “Pharaoh, we shall meet in the finals. There, you will climb the Stairway to Destiny, before you descend into Hell,” both men spoke in the same voice.
The two continued to laugh and Jason started to speak, but a strange whirring from above caused him to snap his head up, just in time to see what happened…and to push Atem out of the way before a massive girder dropped from above, crushing Tsuyoijin and Yowaijin with a loud ‘ping’, followed by a sickening ‘splat’. Both duelists looked up to catch the man standing by the crane above, before he jumped off to his death by the will of the Millennium Rod.
“So…what now, Atem? I mean, we’ve seen the true face of the enemy, and let me tell you, he is insane and supremely evil,” Jason said as he looked at the bloody carnage before him.
Atem glanced down at the broken bodies and was reminded of just how evil Malik could be. He silently prayed that no one would be hurt, or worse, killed in the upcoming rematch between light and darkness. “I don’t know, Jason. But I do know that Malik will stop at nothing to see me suffer, so please, be careful.”
Jason smirked and crossed his arms in a confident manner. “Pharaoh, it’s me we’re talking about here. I’m too strong for that mind control crap, and from the looks of it, I could duel circles around Malik and his lackeys with one hand tied behind my back. So I’ll be fine.”
Atem only looked up at the darkening sky and sighed at the coming challenge. He knew that he could defeat Malik, since the dark spirit no longer possessed the god cards, but what concerned Atem was the danger to his friends. He thanked god that Tea was at a dance academy in another state for the summer, Tristan was out of town visiting a relative, and Duke was taking care of some business in America. That only left Joey, but Atem knew that Joey was too strong for Malik’s control.
“I think that it would be best that we went our separate ways for now. It would be better for Malik to target one of us at a time than to go for both of us together.” Jason’s comment shook the pharaoh out of his concern.
“Yes, I think so, too. So I guess this means that we won’t see each other again until the finals.”
“Right. Besides, it’s getting late and I’ve got a lot of dueling to do if I want to catch up with the top ten and qualify for the finals,” Jason said as he casually collected his cards off of the DD3 and shuffled them all together, then, shoved the deck into his pocket.
The two duelists nodded and walked off in opposite directions, towards a city full of opponents, and a darkening horizon.
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And that’s episode 38. For those who don’t watch the show, but read my fic, Yugi has three other friends, Tea, Tristan, and Duke. But in reality, they really don’t do anything to help advance the plot, and I never even thought about them until now. So I had to give a reason for why they weren’t in the story. The next episode will be up soon.
Original Cards:
Jason: Reparations of Mortals and Ghosts, Chain of Trap Revival
Tsuyoijin: Soul of Unity
Yowaijin: Union Rider #2
Anime Cards:
Atem: Brain Control