Yugi is standing on the bank of a lake, looking at his reflection in the water. The immaterial spirit of the Millenium Puzzle is standing next to him, having no reflection of course.

'It was nice to see all those friends again,' the shorter boy casually comments.

'Well, it sure was nice to see Mai. And Mako,' Yami Yugi replies. 'And maybe Rex. But definitely not Weevil!'

Yugi turns to where he supposes the immaterial spirit would be standing right now if he had his own physical body. 'Come on, partner, don't hold grudges,' he laughs.

'Well, it's not like I want anything bad to happen to him,' the other Yugi explains. 'But he's not a person I would hang out with.'

'I wouldn't hang out with him either,' Normal Yugi agrees. 'But still, I think we should thank him someday.'

Yami Yugi's eyes widen. 'THANK HIM?' he cries. 'Have you gone insane, partner?'

'Think about it,' Normal Yugi elaborates with a laugh. 'By depriving us of Exodia, he did us great good, albeit unintentionally.'

Yami Yugi crosses his immaterial arms, starting to see his partner's point.

Nevertheless, the other Yugi feels the need to make himself more clear. 'At the Duelist Kingdom, we grew a lot as duelists. We learnt how to develop winning strategies, to get out of all kinds of pinches, to make the most out of the cards in our hand. I don't think we would have developed our skills that far if we could just go like BOOM, EXODIA anytime.'

Yami Yugi chuckles. 'I guess you're right, partner,' he admits. 'We should thank him someday. Though I'm pretty sure that would make him mad.'

The two Yugis share a laugh.

Next, Yami Yugi gets serious. 'Now let's go to find someone to duel. We won't collect six locator cards by standing here and gazing at the lake.'

'You're right, partner,' Normal Yugi nods with a smile. 'You take it from here.'

And, with these words, Yugi transforms.


Marik and Mokuba are looking at Yugi on the screen, unbeknownst to the latter.

'This is the holder of the Millenium Puzzle,' Yami Mokuba unnecessarily explains.

'Thanks, Captain Obvious,' Marik sighs and rolls his eyes.

'Then be the Captain NON Obvious, smartmouth,' Yami quips, annoyed. 'How are we going to get the puzzle? What will our next move be?'

'I'm already one step ahead of you,' Marik smiles. 'I have sent Arcana the Conjurer, one of my most skilled Rare Hunters, on his trail.'


Mai and the Seeker draw their respective starting hands, both of them feeling great confidence.

Mai is surprised that someone just walked over to her and challenged her. Being the reigning Duel Queen, she expected that most duelists would be afraid to approach her during the first minutes of the tournament, when everybody still has only one locator card each and, therefore, loss means disqualification. And just when she thought she would have a hard time finding an opponent, here a no name comes! She guesses weaklings often lack sense of danger!

As for the nameless duelist, he, too, has reasons to believe that this duel is won already. What reasons? Umm, Exodia, duh. Normally, this monster is hard to impossible to summon. In fact, in all recorded history of duel monsters, only Yugi Muto has pulled it off. Not only because it's really hard to draw all five pieces of Exodia in the same duel, but also because they are extremely rare. So rare that most duelists have never even pulled one piece out of a booster pack, let alone all five of them. However, due to their forgery skills, the Rare Hunters can practically produce as many copies of any card as they want. And so, this guy has three copies of every piece of Exodia in his deck, which, in his opinion, renders him unstoppable.

I mean, it doesn't matter how skilled his opponent is. It doesn't matter whether she beat the creator of the game himself. It doesn't matter whether she is regarded as a queen. Queen my ass! As soon as Exodia is on the field, the game is automatically over, no matter how 'clever' or 'skilled' or 'cool' the opponent is.

With those thoughts, the Seeker produces a coin.

'I'm surprised you have a coin,' Mai scoffs. 'I thought you were a penniless hobo or something.'

The Seeker rolls his eyes. 'Heads or tails?' he casually asks.

'Heads,' Mai selects.

The Seeker tosses the coin. It is heads indeed. Therefore, it's Mai's turn.

Skipping her draw phase, since she goes first, Mai places a card on her duel disk. 'I summon the Cyber Harpy (1800/1300) in attack mode.'

The powered up version of Mai's old Harpy Lady appears on the field and greets her master with a howl and a flap of her wings. Essentially, it's the old Harpy monster, except it's already equipped with the Cyber Shield.

'I set 1 card and end my turn.'

Mai places a face down card on the board. It's the Mirror Wall, which she is planning to activate as soon as her opponent attacks, though it doesn't matter, since the Rare Hunter does not intend to attack before summoning Exodia. And, when Exodia launches his infinitely powerful attack, all mirror walls in the world won't be able to do any good to Mai.

The Seeker draws a card and looks at his starting hand. It includes: Stone Statue of the Aztecs, Exodia the Forbidden One, two copies of the Right Arm of the Forbidden One, Giant Soldier of Stone and Upstart Goblin.

The duelist activates the last. 'I play the Upstart Goblin,' he declares, placing the aforementioned magic card on the duel disk. It depicts a poor, old, kneeling peasant paying his taxes to a noble that looks like a goblin.

'Thanks to this card, I get to draw one card,' the Seeker explains. 'In exchange, you gain 1000 life points.'

Mai raises an eyebrow as her life points increase to 5000. Why did her opponent play this card? Essentially, he gave her 1000 points without him gaining anything.

'I know what you're thinking, girl,' the Seeker thinks, with the creepy grin on his not so handsome face widening as he draws and looks at his new card (Left Leg of the Forbidden One). 'It doesn't matter how many life points you have as long as I keep drawing pieces of Exodia.'

So far so good. It's his first turn and he already has three pieces (plus one extra right arm). Two more to go! But let's not forget about protecting our life points in the meantime.

'I play the Stone Statue of the Aztecs (300/2000) in defense mode,' the player declares.

The seemingly soulless green statue with orange, glowing eyes appears on the field. His palms are open and turned towards the opponent's field, as if it is saying, 'Keep out'.

'This monster's defensive power is high enough to protect me from the Cyber Harpy,' the player thinks with a relaxed smile.

Mai looks at the statue curiously for a while. Why did he start off with a defensive monster? Is this his style, that is to say, is he a turtle player, hiding behind his defenses? Or is it just that he hasn't drawn anything strong enough to defeat the Harpy yet? Either way...

'My turn,' Mai cries and draws. She looks at the card and smiles. 'I equip the Rose Whip to the Cyber Harpy.'

The aforementioned whip appears in the Harpy's hand, thus increasing her ATK points to 2100. The Rare Hunter grits his teeth; now Mai's monster is strong enough to crush his wall.

'That's not all,' Mai carries on and, to make matters worse (for her opponent), summons another monster. 'Amazoness Chainmaster (1500/1300) in attack mode.'

The aforementioned monster appears on the field, greeting her master with a crack of her chain weapon.

'Cyber Harpy, attack the Stone Statue!'

The Harpy strikes with her newly equipped whip the defensive monster, which subsequently breaks into a million tiny pieces.

'And now, Amazoness Chainmaster, attack his life points directly.'

With no monsters between him and her, the Amazoness Chainmaster strikes the Seeker with her chain. Although it's just a hologram, the vibrations cause the player to wince and step back a little, as his life points drop to 2500.

'My turn,' the Seeker unnecessarily declares and draws a card, mumbling curses. This isn't good; he has to draw an even stronger defensive monster as soon as possible!

He looks at his new card. Graceful Charity. He smiles, with a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek.

'I play the Graceful Charity spell card,' he says and places the green card depicting an angel on the board. 'Now I get to draw 3 new cards, then I have to discard 2.'

And so, he draws and looks at his three new cards. Gear Golem the Moving Fortress, Right Leg of the Forbidden One and Left Leg of the Forbidden One. The Seeker grins. Perfect! Not only did he draw the defensive monster he desired but also one more piece of Exodia. With a smile, he discards the two extra Exodia pieces in his hand to the graveyard.

'And now, I summon Gear Golem the Moving Fortress (800/2200) in defense mode,' he casually says, summoning the aforementioned monster.

The monster appears on the field. It looks like a spiked, faceless, metal giant or something.

Only one left arm to go!

Mai smiles. So far, she's totally dominating this duel. Everything is going well for her. Perhaps too well!

Suddenly, the woman has a bad feeling. Why is all this freak is doing play monsters in defense mode and spell cards that change the cards in his hand? Is he waiting to draw something?


Joey is roaming the Domino City streets, looking for his first opponent. Since, as we said in one of the previous chapters, the weather is pretty warm by now, he's wearing only his t-shirt rather than his blazer as well.

The streets are full of duelists. Vehicles and commuters can barely move. Joey feels a mixture of amusement and sympathy for all those people struggling to make a living who will be late for work just so that weirdos like him can play a children's card game. He wonders how the KaibaCorp managed to convince the local authorities to be cool with that. He guesses that, when you're a multibillionaire, anything is possible.

Oh, over there, a duel is taking place. Joey knows one of the two duelists. It's Rex Raptor. And who's the other one?


Once more, it's Mai's turn.

The female duelist thinks she has an idea. The Amazoness Chainmaster has an effect. When she's destroyed by a card effect, Mai gets to search in her opponent's deck and add a monster in her hand. Right now, she has the Grave Arm spell card in her hand, which allows her to destroy one monster on her field. So, if she plays it on the Amazoness Chainmaster, she will get to browse through the Seeker's deck.

Not that she needs any cards of that freak, mind you. But if, on that pretext, she looks through his deck, maybe she will discover what he's up to, what he's waiting to draw.

And so, here we go...

'I play the Grave Arm and destroy my Amazoness Chainmaster with it.'

The aforementioned arm emerges from the ground, grabs the female monster and then goes back underground, dragging her along.

The Rare Hunter is mildly annoyed. Now Mai will find out about his strategy. Oh, well, it's too late anyway. It's only a matter of time before he draws the last piece of Exodia.

Mai walks over to the player, passing through the Harpy's hologram, and rudely asks for his deck. The opponent gives it to her, mumbling.

Mai starts looking through the cards and... her eyes bulge in terror. Exodia! So that's his plan!