Hello again. I was a bit startled about how quickly this story received a response. I forget sometimes, the things I write -do- generate interest. The decision among the readers thus far seems pretty unanimous. You seem to think this is an interesting idea, (and it was as confusing as I hoped,) and that it seems worth pursuing.

(And to answer your question, sweetyjg, the main priests of Yuugiou will…most likely make a cameo here and there. I mean, I'm not promising major roles or anything just yet as far as plot-development goes, but Mahaad and Seth are fun to have around. Mana and Ishizu, too. Which, since we're on the subject: I wouldn't mind reviewers throwing around pairings for the minor characters that you would like to see. Again, no promises, but we'll see.)

Oh. And, as a pleasant surprise in my reviews, I even got the approval of a few writers I admire. I wonder if I can live up to that expectation. Hmm. Nevertheless, thank you all.

…This story isn't alone, I confess. I've had many plot bunnies gnawing on me, including another AU AE (cruel pharaoh Atemu, captured Yuugi, if it too sounds familiar for a plot line, no need to fear, it's weird enough to be unique) another one where they're business rivals, (the banter has just been too much fun, but I know -nothing- about the world of business) and also one inspired by, quirky as this sounds, the old Jack Frost movie.

Not the living snow man or the serial killer, I mean the one with the snow-flake cutting elves and the whole "mischievous, nose-nipping prince of winter" shtick. Yeah. xD … Don't ask why. My other personalities and I have absolutely no idea.

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As Ra began his steady, age-old ascent over the pyramids the next morning...all hell broke loose.

While all the insignificantly average citizens of Egypt were blissfully unaware that there was anything out of place today, the royal house was in an uproar. The pharaoh of Egypt was furious and every servant, priest, advisor, and otherwise living soul residing in his palace were searching frantically for his most treasured possession: A gold, pyramid-shaped puzzle.

While to the untrained eye, it looked like an absurdly gaudy piece of jewelry, every man, woman, and child in the palace knew that not only was it of great sentimental value to the pharaoh, but it had been carefully crafted by powerful magicians and priests, perhaps in part by the gods themselves, so it possessed an unfathomable amount of magic.

In the wrong hands, its powers could've caused unthinkable disaster.

Not only could someone use it to destroy all of Egypt—the main reason that most of his advisers and priests were reduced to shrieking, panicking, whiny children—but it was his puzzle that could be used to destroy all of Egypt, and someone actually had the nerve to steal it from him.

His eyes narrowed to slits of smoldering embers as he glared out from his balcony. For hours his servants had overturned everything in his palace and there was no sign of his beloved amulet. Not that he had expected anything less. He never misplaced it.

No, if he was not wearing it around his neck by its leather cord, he either had it in his hands, or in a magically reinforced strong box, that had been given to him just after he assembled the puzzle. And that box was always in his room, on the table beside his bed, making him absolutely certain that they were never far apart.

He had not worn the puzzle when he slept last night, so he had to have put it away. And only he should've been able to open that magic box. It was made to open only for him.

But when he awoke and went to put it on, the puzzle was gone. Just completely gone. He could not even sense its presence, which had been a constant comfort to him ever since the day he put it together.

That meant that the thief had to be out there, somewhere, and neither he nor anyone else in the entire palace would rest until his guards had located them and dragged them back into his throne room. "Why didn't it try to warn me…?" He wondered aloud, scowling.

The puzzle was capable of doing many things on its own, such as warning its owner about being stolen. But he had slept soundly last night. It was not until today that he realized it had been spirited away. The puzzle didn't like being away from its owner anymore than its owner enjoyed its absence, so it surely would've done something to prevent the theft.

Yet, his room was perfectly intact. No sign of magic, intruders, or anything unusual at all. The box itself had still been locked, sitting quite innocently in the exact same spot where it always was, every single day. He grew more frustrated and confused with each passing second. 'Even a master thief wouldn't be able to pull this off.' He thought irritably.

Though, indeed, one came to mind.

If it really was that wretched white-haired, pale-faced demon again, then by Ra, there would be hell to pay. Atemu had already been planning new and unusual methods of torture, followed by trying to conjure up some unholy way to send him into Amenta (1), and then after all that came the appeasing image of Ammut, the great eater herself, devouring his tainted soul with her massive crocodilian maw…

…This thought slightly improved Atemu's mood. Slightly.

But he still wanted his puzzle back, and he wanted it NOW.

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Apparently the gods were in good spirits today-or, quite possibly, they were all deathly tired of listening to the priests in Egypt fretting and whining. And, of course, there was the pharaoh's own tirade. Whatever had prompted them to a swift act of kindness, the puzzle was astoundingly recovered that same day.

Atemu was pleasantly surprised his soldiers had found it so quickly and immediately revised his opinion of them being utterly and completely incompetent. When they told him they were bringing back, alive, the thief that had been found with it, Atemu irritably re-revised his opinion.

When the messenger added that the puzzle had not yet even been taken back from said thief, Atemu down-graded his opinion for them to the same grand regard he held for the contents on the floor of his royal stables. He stormed out to meet his men when they returned, furious.

He was stunned when they met him with an unconscious man…no, truthfully, he looked too young to be called a man. His rounded and-shockingly, surely deceptively-innocent looking face made it impossible to call him more than a youth. In fact, Atemu was not completely convinced at first glance that it wasn't a child his soldiers had hauled in.

He was a foreigner though, that was certain, by the paler skin. And perhaps more startling than either his likely age or skin color was the color and style of his hair. It naturally did not look its best, as the youth had been found out in the desert, sleeping in the sand and dirt of Egypt, but it was still eerily familiar. The only other place the pharaoh had seen hair like that recently was in a mirror.

Foreign, younger, smaller, and thinner, but still, there was a resemblance which was well suited to making this entire mess less logical than it had been before and it wasn't logical at all to begin with, because he still couldn't figure out how his puzzle had been stolen.

And of course, there was the wayward trinket itself, cradled in the hand of the pale boy.

Atemu would have demanded to know why his soldiers had not simply taken the puzzle from the boy, but they hastened to explain it themselves, lest they face his wrath. And the answer was even more disconcerting than boy's appearance or the theft itself.

Whenever one of the soldiers attempted to take the shennen puzzle from the boy, the necklace would seem to grow unbearably heavy. Not even the strongest of his men could lift it from the small, pale hand of the youth. When they continued, it felt unbearably hot to the touch, and one of the soldiers revealed a burned hand with the explanation.

Pharaoh Atemu, as its keeper for so many years, was aware that his puzzle had a mind of its own, but why on earth did it refuse to be removed from its thief? It usually desired to be close to him, but was it trying to stay away now?

Did it actually want to be in the boy's possession? Did it want to be taken away? Was that why the youth was inexplicably capable of stealing it out from under the nose of every watchful eye in the palace, his own included? It was absolutely maddening.

Surely it couldn't be true, that the puzzle wanted this? That it had really allowed the theft to occur? But if not, then there was no explanation. How on earth had he done it? A boy, barely more than a child, making off with the pharaoh's greatest treasure? The most important magical artifact in all Egypt?

It was absurd. Impossible. It would've taken the skills of both a master thief and truly great magician to pull it off, at the very least.

A pharaoh surely made many enemies merely by ascending the throne, but only one of them could have even come close to pulling this off, and it clearly wasn't him. The self-appointed king of thieves was many things, but hopelessly stupid was not one of them.

He would never trust his greatest enemy's most prized possession to a defenseless boy.

There were no accomplices to be seen and the boy had been found totally out in the open, outside the city, and otherwise in the middle of nowhere. It was brilliant thievery, surely,

but the end result made no sense. If anyone had the ability to pull off such a thing, why didn't they have the ability to carry it out to its fullest extent? It was utter nonsense.

And it definitely wasn't just the "who" or the "how" that bothered the perturbed Pharaoh.

"Why" was also close to driving him past the brink of insanity amongst the plethora of questions. Yes, it did have monetary value and would appeal to many men. Truly, the puzzle was incredibly valuable, but why would this youth steal it?

Surely a smart thief seeking valuables would not have chosen the shennen puzzle as his target. It was too easily missed, too heavily guarded, too troublesome, and it belonged solely to someone who could've taken the thief's head off at a moment's notice.

That aside, it was made of gold and all, and its size made that impressive, but it was not nearly as intriguing as the thousands of other excessively valuable items in the palace.

The jewel-encrusted ornaments Atemu was required to wear every single day would've fetched a more attractive price from the average, ignorant merchant, but they had been left untouched. In fact, nothing else in his whole room was even remotely out of place. Not a single gem was missed.

No thief went after such an item—so big, bulky, and noticeable, without even touching anything else in the entire palace. It made no sense. So that had to mean that this was more than petty, monetary theft. But why?

The puzzle's true worth lay in its magical abilities, and that was obviously a reason to take it, but it was useless to someone who didn't know how to wield it. Out of everyone in the world, this foreign child seemed one of the least likely to know anything about its dark powers.

True, he was a little unusual, but the Pharaoh couldn't sense any magical prowess in him. Unless he was horribly mistaken—and he never was—this child was no magician. And if this was some sort of trick…no, it was too elaborate. Too senseless. Taking the puzzle would've been a instant victory for his enemies. There was no need to go further.

…So stealing it for power made even less sense than simple thievery.

Atemu was taken from his musings when a soldier got up the courage to, once again, ask him where he wanted the thief to be taken. The place for any criminal was the dungeons, of course, but the only place for the shennen puzzle was either in his private chambers or in his possession. The puzzle was still attached to the boy's hand for the time being, and it would've been fairly stupid to put it amongst the criminals residing in said palace dungeon…

Thus, having no other real option, Atemu very reluctantly ordered that the boy be placed in his own bedroom for interrogation.

And though no one, not even the pharaoh saw it, the shennen puzzle glinted in its approval.

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1: Amenta - The underworld in Egyptian mythology. Ammut, for those of you who don't know from reading too much Yuugi-ou, was an animalistic demoness of the underworld who sat by the scales of judgment (where, in Amenta, they weighed a human's heart to see if they deserved a good afterlife,) and ate the souls of the unworthy. Basically, this is the same as Atemu reveling in the idea of Thief King Bakura rotting in hell.

I'm sorry this chapter is so short, but the next bit is taking a while to work out all of the kinks, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, my word processor's sense of reason and 's capacity to cooperate with me on long chapters is shot to hell anyway, so I figured all you lovely reviewers deserve -some- proof that I didn't totally forget you.

I promise there's actual interaction between Yuugi and Atemu in the next chapter!

Thank you for your comments, compliments, and general interest. It reminds me how much I love to writer for others' entertainment and that's the main reason I'm still here.

Review?