SW: Why do I always start these so late?

Malik: You're just a procrastinator.

SW: Yeah, yeah. So anyways, I'm re-watching Rise of the Guardians (because who doesn't love Jack Frost) and I am totally fan-girling over it. No big deal.

Thank you to White Weasel (Haha, yeah…there's going to be a lot of twisting the truth in this chapter too.), Phoenix0192 (Yeah, completely and totally biased. Thanks, and Rishid's gonna do something about it, don't worry.), Ocena Strex (You called it! I don't know, Yugi is gonna go through some major stuff here.), Awesometamez (Yeah, the defense is pulling some completely horrible moves. Hopefully it will turn around!), LineatheHedgehog (I can definitely see why, Dean is amazing!), Usagi Snowfall (Thank you, hope you like this one!), samaurai (I don't know ;) You'll just have to wait and see!), Roxyrn (You find out in this chapter! Sorry, I don't know Yusei too well [haven't seen 5D's] so I wouldn't really know how to write him.), and BlackShadowFlames (Thank you so much! I'm so glad you like it!) for reviewing!
Enjoy!

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Yugi watched as Ryou was moved from the witness stand to his chair next to Rishid, obviously still out of it. Rafael asked if the prosecution had any other witnesses and Rishid shook his head, barely looking up from his frantic writing as Dartz called up his first person to question.

"I'd like to call Mr. Bandit Keith to the stand." Yugi stiffened as a man with an American flag bandana wrapped over his blonde hair stood and walked to where Mai stood waiting, glaring at the once officer. Ryou had told Yugi about what had happened after he had questioned Maximillion, and how this man had helped Pegasus to escape. What was Dartz thinking? Rishid had the opportunity to question Keith too, so there was a chance that the man could slip up.

But the prosecutor still had yet to look up from the paper he was writing on, what he had been focusing on since his last objection. When he finally finished, half-way through Dartz' questioning that Yugi felt slightly embarrassed at having not paid the slightest attention to, Rishid slid the papers over to Ryou, the boy glancing down at it absent-mindedly. There must have been something on it that caught the albino's attention because he nodded his head quickly and grabbed the pen offered to him and scribbled what Yugi assumed was his signature.

"Nothing further." Dartz turned from Keith, a smirk on his face. The blonde had just furthered the jury's belief that Isis was in cahoots with criminals, and he had told Keith exactly what to say to every question that he could think would even help Rishid's case, so there was nothing to worry about.

"I stand to move the motion of the recusal of Judge Rafael." The smirk faded as Dartz made his way to his seat, turning into an all-out glare at the prosecutor.

Rafael shrugged, his stoic face never faltering. Even if the motion didn't pass, which was unlikely, court room etiquette states that he must remove himself anyway, to prevent tension. So he nodded and stood as Rishid moved to hand the motion to the secretary. The motion probably wouldn't even go through, since he was removing himself. "There will be a recess until another judge can be found."

"All stand for Judge Rafael!" Mai hastily added as the man started to leave through the side door, obviously not caring about what the outcome of the motion would be, not that it mattered. "You can be seated."

There was a moment of silence as the door closed behind Rafael, before the whispers started. Bandit Keith was still at the witness stand, waiting for Rishid's questioning and the jury were all looking through their notes, chancing glances at both the prosecution and the defense occasionally.

"Thank goodness. Now at least we have a better chance." Malik leaned over after five minutes of clenching and unclenching his fists, his eyes never leaving Ryou's and Rishid's back as he whispered to Yugi. "I wonder who our new judge is going to be?"
Mai was waiting by the door, for news of another judge, and Yugi shook his head as he looked over at her. "I don't know. Hopefully someone better than Rafael. What freaked you out at the stand?"

Before Malik could answer, however, Mai announced, "All rise for Judge Valon!" The woman stepped to the side as the door opened, looking around it to announce the name of the new judge.

The man had wild brown hair, and was smirking as he walked over the judge's chair. Yugi blinked in shock when the man started talking, the uncommon Australian accent mingling in with the Japanese words. "Rafael was a friend of mine and I hate to see him be dismissed, but what're you going to do?" Rishid stiffened at the sentence, so the two judges were friends? Did that mean they had gotten rid of a biased judge just to get an angry biased judge? "We left off at the prosecution's cross-examination of the defense's first witness, yeah? Let's start off with that."

"You may be seated." Mai moved back over to her position next to the witness stand.

Rishid stood and buttoned his suit coat, making his way over to Keith. He just had to hope that the judge wouldn't be too prejudiced. "You worked for Sheriff Isis for some time, correct?"

"Yeah, Peggie and I joined around the same time." Ryou looked over at Pegasus and Dartz, one wincing at the nickname, the other glaring at where he could already see this going.

"So if you two worked together than surely you would've seen if Isis treated Mr. Pegasus unfairly, or acted dishonorably, right?" Rishid could see that the man wasn't very bright, and he hoped that he would be able to get some semblance of the truth out of him.
"Not really, she never seemed that bad and-" There was the light sound of a pen tapping rapidly and Keith coughed as he glanced over at Dartz nervously. "I mean, yeah, of course. She used to cut Pegasus' paychecks sometimes for no reason and always assigned him to jobs that were almost impossible for him to do, but whenever I brought it up with other officers they all pretended to have no idea what I was talking about."

Ryou narrowed his eyes and shook his head; hopefully the jury could see that the man was obviously lying. Isis wasn't the type of person to do that. He watched Rishid stiffen as the man talked down the woman who was like a sister to him, but the man just let it go and continued his questioning.

"So when Isis had Pegasus detained, why did you release him?"

Bandit Keith scoffed at the question, as if the answer was obvious. "Because I knew he was wrongfully accused, she had-"

"But Isis hadn't even accused him of anything yet, there were no charges pressed against him, so how did you know that he wasn't just a witness for a crime?"

"He, well," Keith narrowed his eyes as he tried to think of an appropriate response, "I knew what he was doing after hours so there weren't any crimes he could have seen that he would admit to."

A smile spread across Rishid's face, the man hadn't even realized what he had just said. Ignoring the sudden rapid clicking of a pen on the defense's desk, the lawyer kept going. "And what did you know he was doing on his off-hours?"

"Well, he was at the warehouse-" As if just realizing what he was saying, the blonde clamped his mouth shut and cleared his throat. "He would be at his house. He never left it except to go to the station."

"Nothing further." Rishid walked back to his table, convinced that the two slip-ups Bandit Keith had made would be enough to convince the jury who was lying and who was telling the truth.

Dartz stood up stiffly, glaring as Keith walked past him and calling up his next witness. "I would like to call Satsujin Motou to the stand."

Yugi jerked in his seat, twisting his head as he watched the one man he never thought he'd see again make his way to the stand. Jagged black hair was pulled back in to a hair tie, the blonde tips sticking out in all directions. He watched as the man swore in, not hearing the words, as dark violet eyes swept over the crowd before settling on Yugi.

The man smirked and started answering questions, but there was nothing Yugi could hear over the dull roaring in his ears. His father. His father of all people to show up to court! Why was he here? How was he here? What did this mean? Was the man coming back to stay?

It didn't even register to him that the man was speaking to support Pegasus, he was still in too much shock that one of his parents was alive and here. He didn't notice the fact that Malik was practically shaking in his seat, his eyes wide and unfocused.

He barely noticed that Rishid had now moved up to question the man, his eyes never leaving the purple that he had inherited. What was Grandpa thinking? At seeing his son again? The questioning ended and Satsujin stood up, giving one last look at Yugi and smiling before he walked back to his seat.

Someone called his name and he blinked as he watched Mai walk over to the gate, waiting for him. Had he been called to the stand? Didn't he already say everything? Numbly, he stood up and stumbled his way over to Mai where she took hold of his arm and guided him to his chair. Yugi could feel worried eyes on him, and he could take a wild guess at who they belonged to, but right now it didn't really matter to him.

He looked at Dartz, the fact finally hitting him that he was about to be questioned. But the only thing he could think of was that his father was here and he could see him again.

"Have you ever met Sheriff Isis before this incident?"
Yugi's eyes skimmed the audience, a smile twitching his face when he found his father staring back at him. He blinked and shook his head. This couldn't actually be happening. "What? No, no Isis and I had never met."

"Are you aware of the rumors going around about your supposed disappearance?"

"Yeah…" He let his eyes wander back to his father. "People said that I got caught cheating."

Dartz nodded his head solemnly, but it went unnoticed by the distracted teen. "It is a little strange that someone so young could have the title 'King of Games', don't you think?"

"I guess. But I'm just good at games."

"Maybe." Dartz walked in front of Yugi's line of view, smiling lightly. "But couldn't it also be possible that you did cheat your way to the top and Isis told you she'd allow you to keep doing so if you helped her?"
He shook himself one more time. Get a grip, Yugi. So what if your father suddenly appears after eighteen years of no contact? You need to focus on the here and now. Trying not to wince at the amount of time he had to think before he answered, knowing it did look like he was coming up with an excuse, Yugi quickly stated, "No, I didn't cheat nor will I ever. Maximillion kidnapped me and took me to Millennium and I want justice for that."

Someone stood up with a cry, but Yugi was still too out of it to hear what was said. There was a loud bang and Yugi jumped, everything going into sudden, sharp clarity even as his ears started to ring.

There was screaming and Yugi looked up to see almost everyone scrambling out of the courtroom. He watched with wide eyes as Yami and Bakura leapt over the bar separating them from the jury and judge, running over to him. They fell to their knees in front of the witness stand and Yugi stood up to peer over the wood that blocked his view of what they had sprinted to.

His mouth went dry and his body went cold. Yugi opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out, he looked over to watch as Isis and Marik ran out of the courtroom and saw Ryou standing to the side with Malik, holding on to each other with Rishid standing over them protectively. Dartz was staring at the scene without feeling, before he turned and made his way back to where Pegasus was sitting.

This hadn't just happened. He was having a dream. Because lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, after jumping in front of the bullet aimed at him…was Mai.

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SW: I hate myself.

Bakura: Good. I'm sure your readers hate you too.

SW: I'm sorry! I had to do this!

Yugi: No! You didn't have to at all! You could've avoided this entirely!

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