This story was originally written in 2015 and was edited a little prior to publication.


"Dark Magician? What the fuck is a Dark Magician?"

One month earlier:

The world is rotten.

The bell rang, signalling the end of yet another underwhelming day. The front doors opened to give way to a stream of altogether uninteresting teenagers. At just about the middle of the outpouring, between gaggles of chattering students, walked a rare point of interest. He looked all together average, a young Japanese man with short brown hair, a little lighter than most of his peers, though not quite the bleached blond of those who had bothered to affect the stylized appearance. His hair was not the most interesting thing about him.

Light Yagami walked home at a pace that wasn't quite leisurely, but didn't quite reflect a sense of purpose. Inside, he went straight to his room and closed the door behind him. He had a date in an hour. He gave the calendar on his wall a cursory glance in perfunctory deference to its purpose. He had noted the date in the appropriate square on the day it had been arranged, but he did not forget things, certainly not anything remotely important enough to be worth noting down.

Another date. It barely qualified as sufficiently noteworthy and he had little doubt it would soon be forgotten. It was a shame that his time was inevitably wasted on such frivolities. He was brilliant and fully aware of the fact. A mind such as his should have enabled him to do more than waste his intellect on nonsense as the world crumbled around him.

But enough of that, his date was waiting.

He waited at the bus stop for fifteen minutes before she arrived. He had considered turning around when he arrived precisely on time and she was nowhere in sight, but waiting was no more a waste of his time than any other way he could spend it.

He greeted her with a smile when she finally did appear, running toward the bus stop as though doing so might excuse or even prevent her tardiness. They exchanged banal greetings and proceeded to an - if possible - even more meaningless conversation. The bus soon arrived to take them to their destination.

Said destination was a surprisingly run down neighborhood, complete with boarded up shop-windows and ill kept loiterers. At least it had no pretensions of purity. His date grabbed him by the hand and led him through the winding streets until at last she allowed him to stop and catch his breath in front of a dirty little antique store.

She led the way inside the cramped, dusty one-room shop. The walls were lined with trinkets that were even more useless now than they had been when they were new. He scanned each shelf from top to bottom in a half-hearted effort to do something other than count the seconds he was wasting. He had made his way to the back of the room and was about to begin the trek back to the exit and its vain promise of freedom when a glint of gold caught his eye.

He had passed over many other things that shone or glimmered with a glassy stare, and he had disregarded many more that had once been shiny. The gold box, as he realized it was when he got a closer look at it, was not particularly remarkable among the glitzy artifacts of even more wasteful ages. The markings that decorated its surface appeared to be hieroglyphics, identifying it as of Egyptian origin, or more likely, an emulation of Haunted Egyptian style. The gold was probably just paint.

He didn't know what the characters read. Part of him regretted the fact, but he doubted the inscription was truly worth understanding. Chances were, they didn't mean anything at all, it was just decorative, a stylistic flare. A waste of time.

He lifted the strangely heavy cover to peer inside. It contained several chunks of gold configured into shapes that were undoubtedly purposeful - it was a puzzle that when put together must have resembled a pyramid, given the five distinct vertices. He fished out a piece to examine it closer. It was gold - or fake gold as was probably the case, but too substantial to have been plastic. The smooth metal, with sharp corners, was barely worn from the time that it had purportedly endured.

Another piece, similar to the first, but not identical. He examined one in one hand and the other in the other. They did not fit together.

He idly wondered how much it cost, not to buy it, but for curiosity's sake. Did the owner think it was real or a fake?

"I knew you'd find something cool here, I always do," his date remarked, he wondered if she had murdered the silence brutally enough to warrant an investigation led by his father - Chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, whose jurisdiction was all of Japan - "What's that?"

"That," the old shopkeeper interrupted, she paused for unwarranted dramatic effect, "Is from the Valley of the Kings, dug up from the tomb of a Pharaoh. The man I bought it from said it was made of solid gold."

"That's impressive," Light said, though it didn't even count as an impressive lie, "If it's true."

The shopkeeper laughed, "For such a handsome young customer, I'll give you a special price."

The price she gave him was expensive for a fake, but it certainly wasn't priced like the genuine artifact.

"Are you going to get it, Yagami-kun?" his date asked.

"It is very cool, but unfortunately out of my budget. Someone else will have to uncover the mysteries of the Haunted Egyptian puzzle."

In that instant he knew he couldn't let that puzzle fall into anyone else's hands.


It was silly, absurd really. It was a fake. It had to be. There was no other reasonable explanation.

But what if it wasn't?

There was something about that puzzle that sparked Light's interest.

He had translated the symbols on it to the best of his ability - they were real hieroglyphics, he would give the forger that. The inscription on one side of the box roughly translated to "this treasure can be seen, but you haven't seen it," another said, "to the one who controls me, I will give dark wisdom and strength," and he had gathered from the third side that whoever solved the puzzle would be granted one wish.

It was a joke, a whole lot of nonsense. He supposed it could have been a replica of some actual artifact, but even that he seriously doubted.

The solution to the riddle was obvious, it was referring to the puzzle itself. It could be seen when put together, but if someone was reading the box, especially for the first time, they wouldn't have seen the complete puzzle yet.

The bus came to a stop and he stepped out onto the run down street for the second time that day. It was nearly dark out, maybe the antique store was closed already and that would put an end to his mission - for that day, at least.

He had plenty of money saved up and it wasn't like he was spending it on anything anyway. The puzzle struck him as interesting, so he would solve it and then dispose of it. On occasion people had suggested he find a hobby. As loathe as he was to listen to their suggestion that he waste time, the puzzle seemed sufficiently innocuous and at the same time less of a waste than most other pursuits his classmates engaged in.

He did not collect trinkets and so he concluded that this puzzle would be no trinket.

The shop was still open. The puzzle had been moved to the front, by the desk where the old woman stood as though she were waiting for him.

"I had a feeling you would return for it."


Light awoke with a painful groan. Everything was painful.

What happened last night?

The last thing he remembered...

The act of thinking was beyond onerous. Had he been drugged?

What was the last thing he remembered? He had to remember something from the previous night!

... He had been sitting at his desk, it was late, he had been angry about... about those men he had seen earlier that day...

That he remembered clearly, at least, though a whole lot of good that did anyone. He saw them harassing a woman on the street while he was out shopping and he was helpless to do anything about it. Every day there were countless crimes like the one he had seen, or worse, and all he could do was go through his pointless routine, wasting his time and intelligence that could be put to such better use-

He had solved the puzzle. He had been thinking about the woman and the men who had attacked her and how little he could do about them or anyone else and the puzzle had just come together. That was the last thing he remembered from the previous night! He had put the puzzle together and then...

And then... nothing.

What had he done next? What happened next?

He had not just fallen asleep at his desk, that didn't explain the pain.

Was he going insane? No! He could not be going insane. His mind was his and his alone, it could not betray him like this. He had been drugged! He had been drugged and then what?

He slowly hauled himself out of bed. A sharp pain stabbed through his aching muscles and bones with every move he made.

He sat up and his head spun. A weight hung heavy around his neck. A sharp edge burrowed into his upper chest, barely dulled by his thin shirt.

He looked down-

What was the puzzle doing around his neck? He had been right, it was complete.

He considered removing it, but the way his arms hung at his sides, painful and heavy, convinced him otherwise.

So it continued to hang there, gaudy, gold, and painful. He must have been drugged to think it was a good idea to put it on - he shuddered at the thought of what he could have done unconstrained by his careful deliberation - unless someone else had put it on him... But why...?

His head ached with the effort it took to think. He felt sick, worse than sick.

Knock. Knock. The sharp sound was painful in his ears, or maybe that was just the sides of his head.

What had happened to him? What had he done?

Was this what it felt like to wake up after drinking? He had been a puppet controlled by the part of himself that was never supposed to see the light of day, controlled by unconscious whims like everyone else. He was supposed to be in control, deliberate, there were things no one was supposed to see... Even his mind was no longer his own.

"Light, is everything okay in there?" It was his mother, her voice thick with concern.

He had to stand. She couldn't know what had happened - or that he didn't know. No one could ever know. The thought provided enough leverage to horse him to his feet over the sharp pangs.

His fingers fumbled with the cord that tied the puzzle around his neck. He pulled at the knot until his fingers burned. Finally the puzzle fell to the ground at his feet with a thud.

He rolled his neck, suddenly a pound lighter, to stretch out the tension.

Knock.

"Light, what was that? Are you alright? You're almost late for school-" it was his mother again.

"Don't worry about me, I just stubbed my toe. I'm almost ready to go," Light answered in the lightest tone he could muster.

Everything had to continue as usual.

His mother accepted his explanation and he heard her footsteps receding from the other side of the door.

Nothing was wrong. His body ached and he did not remember why, but life would continue as usual. Light Yagami had never been late to school in his life and being drugged and beaten would not stop him now. If nothing else, he could guarantee that.

As soon as his mother's footsteps had faded to the point where she would be out of sight, he slipped from his room, into the bathroom for his morning shower.

He fumbled with the buttons of yesterday's shirt. It was covered in dirt and spattered with blood at least some of which was his own. The mirror reflected back his own body, covered in bruises, scratches, and scrapes. He had never been in a fight before, but he had little doubt that this was what the outcome of one looked - and felt - like.

The cold water of his shower jolted him into a shaky awareness. It stung as it ran through the open wounds and did little to assuage the aching bruises. That would show whatever side of him- whoever had taken control of him the previous night, maybe make them think before doing whatever he had done.

Who had drugged him? The thought echoed in his mind as he walked to school - he arrived just in time.

Was it something he had eaten? He tried to remember as the teacher droned on at the front of the classroom.

The last thing he remembered was finishing the puzzle, that couldn't be a coincidence. Maybe it was something he had inhaled, a drug kept in the puzzle box that affected the mind over extended exposure...

What had he done? He picked at his lunch to spare an aching stomach, lost in thought.

Classes continued unheeded. Who had he gotten in a fight with? Why? Did they recognize him?

He stared into the void, the gap in his memory that he could not repair. He only knew that anything had happened because of the state he had woken up in. Was this the only gap in his memory or were there more that he had somehow missed? No matter how careful he was, he could never be sure.

He would record everything. That way, he would forget nothing. If he ingrained the habit deeply enough, then even when he was drugged and out of control or half-conscious, he would remember to write and if there was a gap, he would know it.

He purchased a plain black composition notebook on his way home from school.

When he arrived, that day's paper, which he hadn't had time to read in the morning was still sitting on the table. He took it up to his room with him to read it. Buried in the local crime section was an article with the headline:

"Suspected Rapist, Takuo Shibuimaru, Found Brutally Injured"

That was the man Light had seen assaulting that woman the day before, the one he couldn't stop. Light would have recognized that face anywhere, mutilated as it was. He had been found in an abandoned warehouse. No one had seen his assailant.

There was no way… Could it have possibly been him? Could he have done this? There was no evidence, nothing connecting him to the scene of that crime, but a few mysterious bruises, there was lots of signs that he had gotten them fighting Takuo Shibuimaru…

He felt sick to his stomach.

He pushed it down. That man deserved every gash, every scream of pain he had no doubt let loose as he was being attacked by whoever had done it. The culprit… the culprit may have been another criminal, no better than Shibuimaru himself, deserving of the same fate. There were so many people who deserved Shibuimaru's fate and worse.

If Light was the one who had done it… No. Even if it had been Light's hands - which it hadn't - he hadn't been there, not consciously, it was someone else in control of his body doing inexcusable things…

… Inexcusable things like giving Shibuimaru the justice he deserved for what he had done, for poisoning this world.

What Light Yagami would give to destroy all the people who were poisoning the world… Was this the wish the puzzle box had promised?

His arms- his whole body was shaking, he wrapped his arms around his chest to stop himself as he let out a wild, unbalanced scream of a laugh.


For the first time in his life, Light Yagami was late to school. He would have been mortified were he not so exhausted. That morning his mother had finally jarred him into awareness with her incessant knocking at his bedroom door. He woke up battered and bruised, but not bloody - an improvement.

Awake was an overstatement. Functional was barely accurate. The very act of thinking - something that was supposed to come more naturally to him than breathing - was almost too difficult to be sustainable. But at least he still had the presence of mind to answer with a deflection when everyone asked him if he was okay.

He was drugged. It was getting worse. Light Yagami did not fall apart…

… Unless he was being drugged by a puzzle pretending to be an Egyptian artifact that he must have been "under the influence" to purchase in the first place.

His head ached.

He dozed off in class.

Everything ached.

His classes were all beyond meaningless anyway.

He tried to drag up memories of the previous afternoon, but the last thing he remembered was opening the puzzle box to write another entry in his notebook…

He needed to stop going into the puzzle box... He needed to stop exposing himself to whatever it was… Maybe it was too late…

In that morning's paper, there was an article whose headline read, "Escaped Criminal Jiro Jorogumo Burned Alive in Fast Food Restaurant."

Light remembered Jorogumo, he had been in the news the day before, he had escaped from prison, killing three guards in the process. Light had been thinking about Jorogumo the previous day as he opened the puzzle box to write his final entry in the notebook and now… Now Jorogumo was dead.

The world was a better place without him-

And Light was covered in bruises.

The article said there was evidence of a fight.

This puzzle, whatever drug it - or its box - contained had stripped away Light's careful controls and brought out…

A monster?

A savior?

There was no proof. There was no evidence that he was the culprit. He had blacked out a few times and had a couple rough nights, it was enough of a problem on its own. There was no connection between him and what had happened to Shibuimaru and now Jorogumo.

He had wanted that man dead-

There had to be countless others who wanted Jorogumo dead after hearing about what he had done.

Jorogumo wasn't the only one who deserved...

There was no entry in his notebook for the previous day to deliver a definitive answer as to what he had or had not done. While drugged he clearly required a reminder to write.

Very well, he would make it painfully clear what he was supposed to do so that no matter what state he was in, he would be able to understand the instructions. He left the notebook open to a page that read in red ink:

Stop.

Are you wearing the puzzle? Circle one: Yes No

What are you doing?

What have you done?

What do you intend to do next?


"Dark Magician? What the fuck is a Dark Magician?"

First he had found the puzzle hanging from his bed post and now this.

Inside the puzzle box, on top of his notebook, there was a whole stack of what Light vaguely recognized as childrens' playing cards. Upon further research, the cards were Duel Monsters cards, a children's card game created by the eccentric billionaire, Maximillion Pegasus. Light vaguely remembered seeing his classmates playing with them back in junior high school, but why had someone - himself or anyone else - put the cards in the puzzle box?

He had found the puzzle box sitting neatly on his desk, front and center. He did not remember putting it there. The door had been locked all night, he was the only one who could have put those cards there. He certainly hadn't wished for them to appear as his reward for solving the puzzle.

What was the last thing he remembered? Last night, what had he done?

He remembered taking out the box to write in the notebook, and then… nothing.

He was losing his mind- No! He had been drugged again. That was yet another strike against the puzzle, further proof that the puzzle or its box were the source of some contaminant that was making him forget, making him do things.

Things like brutally-

What had he done that he couldn't remember this time?

Who had he-

He had bought childrens' playing cards apparently. If he had gotten into another fight, if he had killed-

There was no evidence of it.

What did the notebook have to say?

A knock on the door stopped him short of looking into it.

"Light, you're almost late for school, are you sure everything is alright?" his mother asked from the other side of the door.

"Coming," Light said, he would have to continue his investigation later.

Later came that afternoon.

He got home and returned to his room to read his final entry in the notebook. Beneath the "questionnaire" for his drugged-self, he did not remember scrawling:

What is the meaning of this? You are my vessel, do you protest this arrangement?

Light stared at the words on the page as if they could answer all the questions buzzing around in his mind not quite articulated...

… The handwriting was strikingly similar to his own, but different enough to be unique.

… "my vessel" - who did he think he was? Was he having psychotic episodes? Dissociative identity disorder?

No! His mind was his own!

"What is the meaning of this?" did not answer his questions.

What had he done?

He responded to the question his drugged-self had left in the notebook:

Who are you?

Answer the questions.

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder, a little bit worse.

For the second day in a row, Light Yagami woke up to the sound of his mother knocking at the door. He arrived at school late and spent the day practically sleep-walking. And amidst it all, a chant from a summer camp he had gone to as a child, which he thought he had managed to wipe from his memory entirely, floated in and out of his mind, exacerbating his already aching head.

His whole body was full of pain. Somehow he had convinced his blurred mind and aching body to stand in front of the mirror after school, so he could inventory the damage. Amidst the old, there were some fresh bruises and scrapes.

Yonegoro Nusumi, who had been acquitted of rape for lack of evidence, was found in a coma in an isolated location. There was evidence of a fight. The cause of the coma was as of yet unexplained. Jorogumo was dead. Shibuimaru was still in the hospital, recovering from his injuries.

Every day the world gets a little bit better…

No, there was a serial… sometimes-killer on the loose. Whoever it was, they were going after criminals, but who knew how long that would last. They were unknown, uncontrollable, dangerous.

As much as their victims deserved it...

The last thing Light remembered was writing in the notebook.

Below his note from the previous day was one he did not remember writing:

I am Pharaoh Yami. The Millennium Puzzle is mine. The world is out of balance, I am restoring it.

He was the culprit.

Whether he called himself Light Yagami or "Pharaoh," it was he who was going after the criminals.

Or he subconsciously wanted to believe that it was him and the drug was making him think that he had…

No!

He needed to know for certain.

All of the other criminals had been ripped from the headlines, he needed someone only he would know about. Someone whose case had never been publicised would suffice, an old case, stowed away in some folder on his father's computer. A murderer who had evaded the police would do nicely.

He deserved to die - or failing that, be put into a coma…

He was found in a coma in time for the next news cycle.

That settled it. This was Light's own work. When he blacked out, he became this "Pharaoh" and attacked criminals.

Finally… Finally, he was more than just helpless bystander. Finally, he could put his intelligence to good use. He could bring justice to a world in desperate need of it. He could eliminate the rot that poisoned the world.

He opened the puzzle box to write again in his notebook.

Let me sleep.

Light had lost count of the days he had traversed as if in a daze. He had lost count of the number of times he was late to school. His grades were falling, people were past wondering if something was wrong - they knew. He couldn't let them know…

Criminals were being put into comas, at least one a night, but if he was caught now it would all be over.


What do you do to the criminals? How do you put them into comas?

I crush their minds.

How?

I defeat them in a duel.

What variety of duel?

I defeat them at Duel Monsters and then I can use the power of the Millennium Puzzle to crush their minds.

Why play Duel Monsters at all? Can you crush their minds without first defeating them in a duel?

What is the Millennium Puzzle? What are the full range of its abilities?

Only when I have defeated someone in a duel can I reach into their soul and deliver judgement onto them.

The Millennium Puzzle contains my soul, I do not know its origin or the extent of its power.

Why Duel Monsters?

It is familiar to me. I believe I played something like it a very long time ago. Perhaps it has some connection to the Millennium Puzzle. Do you know where it is from?

America. It was invented by Maximillion Pegasus.


One morning's headline read, "Criminals in Comas, Crime Boss to Blame?"

The ungrateful fools! Light cleaned up the mess that the police left behind and this was the thanks he got? They mistook him for a crime boss and swore to hunt him down. He would show them the wrath of a god!

How dare you wish for me to strike down a horse for justice?

She called us criminals, this is the thanks you get for your work.

You claim to uphold the cosmic order, but she is good and has not earned our wrath.

We are the cosmic order. You call yourself Pharaoh Yami, to go against the Pharaoh is as much a violation as the rest of the criminals.

Along with his entry for the day, Light left a newspaper clipping bearing the headline, "'Ball Cap Bandit' Strikes Again."

Who are you that you claim to command such authority? And yet you wish for me to pursue a petty thief. How does a mere bandit warrant our intervention?

We are justice. As limited as your powers are, they can be used to remove those who are destroying the world. We can create a new world, free of evil, and we will be Pharaoh.

As for the thief, he is a criminal, he has made the choice to break the law and so he will face the consequences of his actions.

The thief's punishment does not fit his crime.

I am not just a vigilante, merely punishing criminals one at a time is not enough! We can turn his crime into a public good to serve as an example to discourage others from committing crimes, bringing us closer to an ideal world.

How does crushing the mind of a petty thief 'bring us closer to an ideal world'?

He has volunteered to serve as an example for what happens to people who do evil, make an example of him.

I am not your servant and you are no Pharaoh. I will not subvert justice to your whims. Again you claim to uphold the cosmic order, but petty theft does not qualify as evil.


A package for Light Yagami from Industrial Illusions. Somehow Maximillion Pegasus had traced a single Duel Monsters card found up the sleeve of a comatose gang leader back to Light. There could be no other explanation.

Leaving a card at the scene of the crime had been a foolish mistake on the puzzle's part, but the police had made little of it and were of course unable to tie it back to Light. They had yet to launch a proper investigation - he had been keeping an even closer eye on his father's computer than usual. The coverage of his actions was overall underwhelming, even local police barely acknowledged the comatose criminals, far from the gratitude they owed him.

Somehow, Mr. Pegasus had figured it out all on his own and decided to contact Light. How had he figured it out? Did he want to challenge him or work with him? Or perhaps it was a plea for Light to spare him despite some past wrongdoing - it was about time, not that he would spare anyone who defiled the world.

Inside the package was a gauntlet with a bulky metallic cuff embossed with stars at even intervals. Accompanying it was a pair of golden stars that fit perfectly into the impressions and a VHS tape.

This was the puzzle's fault and the so-called pharaoh would have to answer for it. He removed the puzzle's box from its hiding place and slipped the tape into the appropriate slot in his television.

A man with long white hair, wearing a dark pink suit with a ruffled collar, appeared on the screen. "Greetings, Raito-boy."

Raito-boy? The words echoed in Light's mind as a sneer. If Mr. Pegasus wanted to underestimate Light, who was he to complain - it would make it that much more satisfying to crush him beneath his boot.

"I am Maximillion Pegasus. I have heard some terribly interesting things about you, Light. Your impressive defeat of that gang boss has intrigued me so much, I decided to investigate you personally."

"Fool! You can investigate me all you like! It will only bring you closer to your own demise!"

Pegasus smirked as if he could hear Light's challenge through the screen and answered it with disdain, "Right here, right now, we shall hold a special duel. We'll play with a strict time limit of fifteen minutes, and when time is up, the player with the highest life points will be the winner. Are you ready?"

"You think you can defeat me?" Light let out a dry chuckle.

The world began to waver and shudder around them as a sharp light burst from Pegasus's left eye - the one concealed by his long hair. Light's room seemed to fade into the distance until everything but he, Pegasus and the puzzle were gone, consumed by shadows and an unnatural chill.

"We're no longer in the world you know, but I shall return you after our game."

He reached for the deck of cards and felt his hands shuffling them as the world faded to black.

"Light!"

Sayu? What was she doing in the television?

"Yes, we will duel again, Light. How else will you ever reclaim your sister's soul?" Pegasus laughed as the image on the screen faded to static.

Where did that camp fool think he was going? What had become of their game? Why had the puzzle not put him into a coma like all the rest?

Sayu's body slumped to the ground in the doorway - where she had been frozen the instant she foolishly entered his room, begging for help with her work, no doubt. Pegasus had taken her soul to the "shadow realm" - which was where their duel had taken place, all according to Pegasus, at least.

Light remembered it. For the first time he actually remembered what had passed. He faintly recalled the so-called pharaoh in the puzzle dueling Pegasus, using those Duel Monsters cards. And he had lost.

Of course the puzzle had lost, Light was unsurprised by its incompetence. But there had been something unusual about how Pegasus had dueled, something important about that eye. Somehow, the Millennium Eye gave Pegasus the power to read his mind, or to suggest things into it. Either way, it was a powerful object.

That was how Pegasus knew of his actions. Such a powerful relic could not be safe in anyone else's hands. It was too dangerous, too powerful. And in Light's hands... The puzzle had proven that it was not enough for the creation of a new, peaceful world. He had no choice, but to take the Eye.

Pegasus had mentioned hosting a tournament and invited Light to join, that was why he had received the package in the first place, that was why Pegasus had taken Sayu. She was supposed to serve as an incentive to horse him into joining the tournament and it seemed the pharaoh had taken the bait, but Light found the Millennium Eye to be a much more worthy objective.

Maximillion Pegasus was a fool who had brought about his own demise, which Light would be more than happy to deliver.


Dear Mom and Dad,

I don't know what happened to Sayu, but I'm going to find out so we can help her. Don't worry about me, I'll be careful, I just need to do this. I'm Sayu's older brother, I should have been able to protect her, but I didn't and now she's gone, maybe forever. I have to do now what I couldn't do then.

I'll be back soon, and when I return we will be able to wake up Sayu, so we can all be together again.

Your son,

-Light