WARNING: Contains bloody gore at the end. Do not read on if you're squeamish.

Chapter 4

It was the New Year, but not everyone was celebrating. Joey, Tèa and Duke had all noticed that something was very wrong about Yugi. He had turned down games, challenges, days out, even a date. They did however get to talk to him about it. Unfortunately, the whole time, he had been staring into space and not listening. Like something was draining him and didn't want him to know.

It took them half an hour to talk him into having a game of Duel Monsters. They got out a board and fetched their cards. The first match was Joey versus Tèa. After some good shuffling from Joey, Tèa found something very different and strange about her cards. The attack and defence points were fine and really it seemed like the perfect card with one mysterious difference. The picture was perfectly blank; the name on the card was gone too. She looked through all of her cards, confused. She found that the same thing had happened to everything in her deck. "Did you do this Joey?!" she said angrily showing him the cards. 'How could he cheat by replacing my cards?' She thought. Joey stared at the cards shocked and felt he had been framed.

"I didn't do this! Cheat'n is for babies who are afraid of loosen." Then he looked at his own cards. He stood up, as angry as Tèa, and showed his cards to the two witnesses' that were sat next to him. "The same thing has happened to my cards! Duke, did you do this?"

"No way! I would never do something so obvious. Here you can use mine." And just as Duke handed Joey the cards he noticed his cards were blank too. He stared at his cards, confused and astonished. He had checked them just this morning. Joey, Tèa and Yugi noticed too. Yugi brought out his cards and stared at the blank pieces of paper (apart from points and descriptions) in his hand. Everyone's cards were blank. With all of the resent deaths connected with them and the suspicious disappearance of their collectables, they all knew that this all had to have something to do with what happened to Maiya/Yamikoneko. They decided to visit one of the wisest people they'd met and who was great at all sorts of curses and mythology; Ishizu Ishtar.

They arrived at the museum at 04:00 pm, but didn't get to see Ishizu until about 06:30 pm because of security. When they finally managed to get to her office she started by facing away and saying their names in the order they came through the door. After once again being astounded by one of her predictions they showed her their cards she checked them and thought at first there was nothing wrong at all, but after they told her about all of the drama they had been through her eyes widened with a look of serious fear. She immediately recognised what was going on. She had been studying the new hieroglyphs in the exhibition and the words she had translated matched what Yugi was describing. "Have any particularly close friends suddenly turned against you?" Ishizu asked.

"Yeah, it was Maiya..." Yugi's voice trailed off as he remembered his three month girlfriend. Now Ishizu was sure that the pharaohs past had now brought more pain into Yugi's innocent life. She didn't want to tell him the bad news but she had to at some point. He was cursed. She took them to the hieroglyphs that proved it and told them.

"Before the Egyptians built the pyramids, Egypt was nothing but a small village by the Nile. The gods watched over the villagers like their own children and cared dearly for their only people. They were also friends with a small cat spirit."

She stroked the small cat carved into the rock staring at its adorable face "The cat was very mischievous and greedy. It played all sorts of tricks and rudely accepted anything offered. The gods of the neighbouring country were jealous of their friendship so captured the cat and made a deal."

Ishizu's tone grew sad and serious. "If the cat betrayed the Egyptian gods and helped the others they would give the cat a great power. The cat accepted the power, but instead of letting the jealous gods do as they wished, the cat used its new power for its own affection. It enslaved the gods and forced them to worship her kind or their people would pay the price."

She looked up at the cat's eye symbol carved at the very top of the rock. "Eventually the gods grew tired of obeying the cat so raised up against it. They banished it to live in Egypt as a pharaoh's slave, strictly telling the pharaoh to punish her as much as she deserved. Unfortunately the pharaoh did his job too well, after stealing some of his treasures the cat was executed and stabbed in the right eye. Before it was truly dead it uttered a curse upon the pharaoh."

She crouched down and translated the hieroglyphs written there. "Pharaoh beware for my curse is begun, my dagger will be down along with your setting sun. In another time, in another life we will meet again and one by one your loved ones will be dead." At this sentence, everyone felt a jab of fear spreading far and fast. "According to other information her curse involves possessing the closest friend possible to the victim. She terrifies the victim as much as she can until they are too scared to keep control of their own body. Then she begins to murder their friends and family, one by one. There's no avoiding your death and weaknesses are unknown. You're all in great danger. You could try to avoid her for a while, but she will get to you eventually." Yugi felt hopeless and terrified and Yami felt guilty. He shouldn't have hurt the poor slave girl so badly and he deeply regretted it.

Back in her office, they thanked Ishizu for the information she had provided and left. Ishizu looked on, sad that there was something she hadn't told them. She'd predicted the whole time they spent in front of the rock and what was about to happen. She heard a horrid cackle behind her and listened to it without turning around. She couldn't bear to look and see its face.

"Congratulations Mrs Sherlock you solved my mystery" purred Yamikoneko. "Why not tell Yugi I include his helpers?"

"Because Yugi would stay and try to stop you, then it he would have witnessed a death. He would only feel even more guilty." Explained Ishizu. She as almost crying at the thought of what the cat was going to do.

"Oh well. You may have spoiled some of the fun. But at least I still have other things to do." She raised her hand ready to claim her next victim.

Yugi and his friends were just going through the door thinking about what Ishizu had said. Then a high, blood-curdling scream flew through the door of her office hitting their ears like a mallet. Security guards, Yugi, Tèa, Joey and Duke ran to her office, only to hear one satisfied laugh echo through the building and see the corps of the Egyptian woman lying on the floor. A mark had been scored into her forehead in the shape of a cat's eye while her dress was stained with blood where a hole had been created going straight through Ishizu's body. Her lifeless eyes were wide open with shock and strikingly red because blood from her forehead had dribbled down her face. The wall was splattered with the red liquid where a message had been written.

'WATCH OUT PRETTY BOY YOURE NEXT!'

Warning: From now on the story is gonna get quite a bit more tragic and sad with a hint of romance for the final chapter.