Before Yugi could think what to do, a commanding voice spoke up from behind him.
"You are not Shadi."
Everyone whirled in shock to see the real Shadi standing in the doorway, fury obvious in his usually emotionless eyes.
"What the heck?!" Joey yelped. "There's two of 'em!"
The Shadi at their table rose, the fury in his own eyes matching that of the new arrival's. "Who dares to impersonate me?!" he cried.
"Perhaps you would care to enlighten me on that, since you are the imposter," the other Shadi said smoothly as he walked up to his double.
"Me? The imposter?" the lavender-eyed Shadi retorted. "That's absurd!"
"There is only one way to settle this," the blue-eyed Shadi said evenly. "We must display our skills with a Millennium Item."
The lavender-eyed Shadi didn't seem fazed. "Of course," he said smoothly, pulling the Millennium Ankh out from under his robes. "And where is your Millennium Item, pretender?"
"Mine is right here." The blue-eyed Shadi also pulled out a Millennium Ankh.
"What the heck?!" Joey burst out. "How can there be two of those things too?!"
"One of them must be a counterfeit," Yugi exclaimed.
"They did a carbon-copy of a Millennium Item?!" Joey burst out. "Man! The things that go on!"
"Now," the blue-eyed Shadi said sternly, "we will see how well you have mastered your item." Outwardly he appeared nonplussed that his opponent also had a Millennium Ankh, and Yugi figured that that was because he knew that he had the real one and that it had the strongest powers.
"You will find that your skills are highly inferior to mine," the lavender-eyed Shadi replied as he let his Ankh begin to glow. A dark blast of energy shot out in an attempt to strike his double down, but the blue-eyed Shadi expertly blocked it with a blast from his own Ankh.
"How is he doing this?" Yugi wondered, gaping at the Shadi whom he was sure was the phony one. "Did he just build his own Millennium Ankh and then power it up with his own dark magic?"
"That, most likely, is exactly what he did," Yami Yugi said, suddenly appearing behind Yugi.
"Yami!" Yugi exclaimed. "Where've you been?!"
"Taking Jade home," the ancient Pharaoh replied, watching as the lavender-eyed Shadi pointed the Ankh at his enemy and ran forward, pressing it against his forehead in an attempt to unlock the man's mind.
Yugi and the other teens gasped.
The blue-eyed Shadi remained calm, however. "You have done much with your item in order to pass it off as the Millennium Ankh, imposter—but you were not able to copy its powers of unlocking the mind!" He raised his own Ankh threateningly, but the imposter only gave a wicked sneer.
"I've installed a dagger in my Ankh," he announced. "One wrong move and I'll make it come out and go right through your skull."
****
Bakura gently dabbed a cool cloth over his Yami's forehead worriedly, his soft eyes shining. "Oh, Yami, I hope you don't have a fever!" he wailed. "Can a spirit have a fever?" He glanced about nervously, feeling as though someone was observing him.
An evil cackle abruptly echoed through the room and the poor boy leaped a mile high. "Who's here?" he demanded shakily.
Slowly a cruel-looking man with dark hair materialized in the room, the infamous stolen sceptre from earlier in his hand. "Ah, I see you remember me," he smirked, seeing the terrified look in the innocent boy's eyes.
"You hurt Shadi the last time you were here," Bakura said accusingly. "But I won't let you hurt Yami!"
"Hmm?" The man glanced at the unconscious thief curiously. "Bakare," he laughed. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
Bakura blinked in confusion. "You know him?! . . . Oh my, wait a minute! Isn't your name Khu?!" he demanded.
"That's right." Khu leaned on his sceptre. "This is mine, as you recall. The Staff of Khu."
Bakura fell back in stunned silence. He hadn't made the connection during their last mystery, but now he remembered where he had heard the name Khu before. His Yami had told him that tale of his life in ancient Egypt, and Khu had been an evil zealot leader who had almost succeeded in killing Yami Bakura when the thief had refused to join him and his band of revolutionaries.
"You seem surprised," Khu observed.
"You're not just the Khu who owns that staff," Bakura retorted with a sob. "You hurt my Yami terribly!"
Now Khu blinked. "You know of that? Well, well, I wonder how that came about." He smirked. "Rest assured, young one—while I don't have a desire to harm him now, I may very well want to in the near future." With an evil laugh he then vanished, never having explained what he was there for in the first place.
Bakura again sat down, shaking and wishing that this nightmare would just be over with. "Oh Yami, why did Khu have to come back?!" he bemoaned.
****
The blue-eyed Shadi still remained unfazed, even with the knowledge that a hidden dagger was being aimed right at his forehead. "You may think that you are taking me by surprise with this attack," he said smoothly, "but you are not." Before his opponent could react, the true Shadi had grabbed the wrist with the weapon and was twisting it painfully.
"Whoa," Joey said in awe, "go Shadi!"
"And now, your deception will be revealed." With his free hand Shadi grabbed at the turban and loosened it. A shock of blonde hair tumbled out, startling everyone there.
"No way!" Tristan yelled. "Marik?!"
"No, it's his imposter!" Yugi cried.
"Am I an imposter, or have I simply turned against you all?" Marik said smoothly, adopting his normal, unusual voice. With a sneer, he rubbed off some of the actor's makeup he had used while posing as Shadi, revealing that he actually looked exactly like the real Marik—even down to the scars under his eyes.
"You are a man of many faces," Shadi remarked at this change, "but Marik's true friends know that you are not him."
"Aren't I?" Marik rushed forward with the dagger exposed, stabbing Shadi furiously in the chest before turning to face Yugi and the others. "Does anyone else wish to challenge me?" he yelled amid the gasps of disbelief and horror.
Shadi struggled to stay standing, keeping one hand clamped firmly over the wound while using the other to bring out the Millennium Scales. To Yugi's astonishment, there was a feather resting on one side.
"It is quite obvious now that you have shown your true colors today," the Egyptian man said sternly. A horrible monster began rising from the other side of the scales, by far outweighing the simple feather.
"What's happening?!" Marik yelped as the beast reached out and snatched him.
"Your proper place is in the Shadow Realm," Shadi said.
"You can't send me there!!" Marik fumed, struggling against the beast's superhuman powers.
"Your own actions have placed you there," Shadi replied solemnly. "I have not."
Yugi cringed as he watched Marik be crushed against the monster's broad chest. With a puff of smoke, they both vanished into thin air.
Now Shadi fell forward, the wound becoming increasingly painful and hard to deal with. Quickly Yugi and the others ran to him, and Joey and Tristan caught the mysterious Egyptian just before he could hit the floor.
"Man," Joey cried, "why didn't you use that freaky scale thing earlier?!"
Shadi shook his head weakly. "The scales are to be used wisely and sparingly. It is not my place to decide whether an individual is banished to the Shadow Realm or not. It is their own behavior that makes . . . the . . . decisions. . . ." He groaned softly. "It is their own behavior that brings the Shadow Monster out from the . . . scales. . . . I . . . I cannot . . . summon it . . . myself. . . ."
"Don't try to talk!" Yugi exclaimed. "We have to get you to the infirmary!"
"Do not . . . concern yourselves . . . with that." Shadi sagged back against Joey and Tristan, his robes stained with his blood. Several wisps of dark black hair fell out from under his turban and covered his right eye.
"Come on, guys!" Yugi directed. "Don't listen to what he said; he needs help badly!"
"You got it, Yug," Joey said with a nod. "Heck, that chest wound could be serious!"
****
The real Marik, meanwhile, was sound asleep in his bed after a brisk shower that had restored much of the circulation throughout his body. He hadn't realized how numb his limbs had been getting in the cold water until Ishizu had insisted on having the ship's doctor examine him and they had found out that he had been starting to go into hypothermia.
"It is a miracle that Mako found them when he did," Ishizu said softly to Rishid as she gently pulled the quilt up around her brother's sleeping form. "If they had remained in the water much longer, they both probably would have succumbed to the icy temperatures and drowned." She shuddered as she said that.
"Marik would have found some way out," Rishid replied, his golden eyes reflecting his alarm at Ishizu's statement. "He wouldn't have drowned." He glanced over at his adopted brother, watching him sleep and seeing how innocent and kind he looked. "And he wouldn't have let Bakura's Yami drown either." Marik still had his defiant, short-tempered personality, but he also had a sense of honor.
Ishizu smiled and patted his arm. "I know," she whispered. "I know."
****
Seto got up quietly, not wanting Mokuba to hear him and awaken. For some reason, he found that he just couldn't sleep tonight. The young businessman ran a hand through his hair in vexation and slowly walked over to the door. It was late—almost two in the morning, he noted—and surely no one would notice him if he took a brief walk around the ship. It might help him feel tired again, he hoped. After putting his trenchcoat on over his pajamas and buttoning it—which was something he rarely did—Seto turned the doorknob and stepped out into the hall, locking the door behind him.
The last thing he expected to do was run right into Tea.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in embarrassment when they collided around a corner on one of the upper levels. Yugi, Joey, and Tristan had just taken Shadi to the infirmary and were waiting there to hear how he was, while Tea had decided to go for a short walk while she waited. "I . . . I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone else was here. . . ."
Seto grunted in reply and stepped around her, prepared to head off down the long corridor.
But something prevented him from going.
Slowly he turned back, studying Tea through narrowed eyes. A long time ago, when he and Yugi had been intense rivals, Seto had considered Tea to be just another of Yugi's tagalong band of friends—but over the last year or so, he had found her to have a distinct personality that alternately annoyed and amused him. Tea was an intriguing person, he found himself thinking now.
Tea stared back at him, looking a bit annoyed. "What is it, Kaiba?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing," Seto muttered, turning around and going off again.
****
Bakura was also wide awake, gently tending to his Yami.
The old thief stirred, opening his eyes. "Where am I?" he mumbled.
"You're here on the ship, Yami," Bakura told him in relief, seeing the recognition in Yami Bakura's eyes as he looked up at the boy.
The tomb raider glanced about the room, his senses sharply alert. "Who was here?" he asked urgently.
Bakura blinked. "Yami?" he said uncertainly.
"Who was here?" Yami Bakura growled. "I sense there was a dark presence here not long ago. Who was it?"
Bakura hesitated before replying quietly that it was Khu.
Yami Bakura's eyes narrowed in disgust at the mention of the zealot's name. "That wretched creature," he muttered before switching to Egyptian and saying a stream of words that Bakura was glad he couldn't understand.
At last the thief spoke in English again and asked what Khu had wanted.
"I don't know, Yami," the silvery-haired boy replied softly. "I was afraid he was going to hurt you again."
"As if he would get the chance," Yami Bakura grunted.
****
As Seto walked on around the upper deck, he suddenly heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the direction of the balcony. Muttering to himself, he rushed over and found Tea staring down at the floor below.
"What happened?" he demanded.
Tea shook her head. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "I heard someone screaming about a guy falling off the balcony." As her eyes darted about, taking in the scene below them, she suddenly gasped. "There he is!" she cried, pointing down to a figure sprawled on the deck. "And Kaiba, he looks like you! It must be Seth!!"
"You are not Shadi."
Everyone whirled in shock to see the real Shadi standing in the doorway, fury obvious in his usually emotionless eyes.
"What the heck?!" Joey yelped. "There's two of 'em!"
The Shadi at their table rose, the fury in his own eyes matching that of the new arrival's. "Who dares to impersonate me?!" he cried.
"Perhaps you would care to enlighten me on that, since you are the imposter," the other Shadi said smoothly as he walked up to his double.
"Me? The imposter?" the lavender-eyed Shadi retorted. "That's absurd!"
"There is only one way to settle this," the blue-eyed Shadi said evenly. "We must display our skills with a Millennium Item."
The lavender-eyed Shadi didn't seem fazed. "Of course," he said smoothly, pulling the Millennium Ankh out from under his robes. "And where is your Millennium Item, pretender?"
"Mine is right here." The blue-eyed Shadi also pulled out a Millennium Ankh.
"What the heck?!" Joey burst out. "How can there be two of those things too?!"
"One of them must be a counterfeit," Yugi exclaimed.
"They did a carbon-copy of a Millennium Item?!" Joey burst out. "Man! The things that go on!"
"Now," the blue-eyed Shadi said sternly, "we will see how well you have mastered your item." Outwardly he appeared nonplussed that his opponent also had a Millennium Ankh, and Yugi figured that that was because he knew that he had the real one and that it had the strongest powers.
"You will find that your skills are highly inferior to mine," the lavender-eyed Shadi replied as he let his Ankh begin to glow. A dark blast of energy shot out in an attempt to strike his double down, but the blue-eyed Shadi expertly blocked it with a blast from his own Ankh.
"How is he doing this?" Yugi wondered, gaping at the Shadi whom he was sure was the phony one. "Did he just build his own Millennium Ankh and then power it up with his own dark magic?"
"That, most likely, is exactly what he did," Yami Yugi said, suddenly appearing behind Yugi.
"Yami!" Yugi exclaimed. "Where've you been?!"
"Taking Jade home," the ancient Pharaoh replied, watching as the lavender-eyed Shadi pointed the Ankh at his enemy and ran forward, pressing it against his forehead in an attempt to unlock the man's mind.
Yugi and the other teens gasped.
The blue-eyed Shadi remained calm, however. "You have done much with your item in order to pass it off as the Millennium Ankh, imposter—but you were not able to copy its powers of unlocking the mind!" He raised his own Ankh threateningly, but the imposter only gave a wicked sneer.
"I've installed a dagger in my Ankh," he announced. "One wrong move and I'll make it come out and go right through your skull."
****
Bakura gently dabbed a cool cloth over his Yami's forehead worriedly, his soft eyes shining. "Oh, Yami, I hope you don't have a fever!" he wailed. "Can a spirit have a fever?" He glanced about nervously, feeling as though someone was observing him.
An evil cackle abruptly echoed through the room and the poor boy leaped a mile high. "Who's here?" he demanded shakily.
Slowly a cruel-looking man with dark hair materialized in the room, the infamous stolen sceptre from earlier in his hand. "Ah, I see you remember me," he smirked, seeing the terrified look in the innocent boy's eyes.
"You hurt Shadi the last time you were here," Bakura said accusingly. "But I won't let you hurt Yami!"
"Hmm?" The man glanced at the unconscious thief curiously. "Bakare," he laughed. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
Bakura blinked in confusion. "You know him?! . . . Oh my, wait a minute! Isn't your name Khu?!" he demanded.
"That's right." Khu leaned on his sceptre. "This is mine, as you recall. The Staff of Khu."
Bakura fell back in stunned silence. He hadn't made the connection during their last mystery, but now he remembered where he had heard the name Khu before. His Yami had told him that tale of his life in ancient Egypt, and Khu had been an evil zealot leader who had almost succeeded in killing Yami Bakura when the thief had refused to join him and his band of revolutionaries.
"You seem surprised," Khu observed.
"You're not just the Khu who owns that staff," Bakura retorted with a sob. "You hurt my Yami terribly!"
Now Khu blinked. "You know of that? Well, well, I wonder how that came about." He smirked. "Rest assured, young one—while I don't have a desire to harm him now, I may very well want to in the near future." With an evil laugh he then vanished, never having explained what he was there for in the first place.
Bakura again sat down, shaking and wishing that this nightmare would just be over with. "Oh Yami, why did Khu have to come back?!" he bemoaned.
****
The blue-eyed Shadi still remained unfazed, even with the knowledge that a hidden dagger was being aimed right at his forehead. "You may think that you are taking me by surprise with this attack," he said smoothly, "but you are not." Before his opponent could react, the true Shadi had grabbed the wrist with the weapon and was twisting it painfully.
"Whoa," Joey said in awe, "go Shadi!"
"And now, your deception will be revealed." With his free hand Shadi grabbed at the turban and loosened it. A shock of blonde hair tumbled out, startling everyone there.
"No way!" Tristan yelled. "Marik?!"
"No, it's his imposter!" Yugi cried.
"Am I an imposter, or have I simply turned against you all?" Marik said smoothly, adopting his normal, unusual voice. With a sneer, he rubbed off some of the actor's makeup he had used while posing as Shadi, revealing that he actually looked exactly like the real Marik—even down to the scars under his eyes.
"You are a man of many faces," Shadi remarked at this change, "but Marik's true friends know that you are not him."
"Aren't I?" Marik rushed forward with the dagger exposed, stabbing Shadi furiously in the chest before turning to face Yugi and the others. "Does anyone else wish to challenge me?" he yelled amid the gasps of disbelief and horror.
Shadi struggled to stay standing, keeping one hand clamped firmly over the wound while using the other to bring out the Millennium Scales. To Yugi's astonishment, there was a feather resting on one side.
"It is quite obvious now that you have shown your true colors today," the Egyptian man said sternly. A horrible monster began rising from the other side of the scales, by far outweighing the simple feather.
"What's happening?!" Marik yelped as the beast reached out and snatched him.
"Your proper place is in the Shadow Realm," Shadi said.
"You can't send me there!!" Marik fumed, struggling against the beast's superhuman powers.
"Your own actions have placed you there," Shadi replied solemnly. "I have not."
Yugi cringed as he watched Marik be crushed against the monster's broad chest. With a puff of smoke, they both vanished into thin air.
Now Shadi fell forward, the wound becoming increasingly painful and hard to deal with. Quickly Yugi and the others ran to him, and Joey and Tristan caught the mysterious Egyptian just before he could hit the floor.
"Man," Joey cried, "why didn't you use that freaky scale thing earlier?!"
Shadi shook his head weakly. "The scales are to be used wisely and sparingly. It is not my place to decide whether an individual is banished to the Shadow Realm or not. It is their own behavior that makes . . . the . . . decisions. . . ." He groaned softly. "It is their own behavior that brings the Shadow Monster out from the . . . scales. . . . I . . . I cannot . . . summon it . . . myself. . . ."
"Don't try to talk!" Yugi exclaimed. "We have to get you to the infirmary!"
"Do not . . . concern yourselves . . . with that." Shadi sagged back against Joey and Tristan, his robes stained with his blood. Several wisps of dark black hair fell out from under his turban and covered his right eye.
"Come on, guys!" Yugi directed. "Don't listen to what he said; he needs help badly!"
"You got it, Yug," Joey said with a nod. "Heck, that chest wound could be serious!"
****
The real Marik, meanwhile, was sound asleep in his bed after a brisk shower that had restored much of the circulation throughout his body. He hadn't realized how numb his limbs had been getting in the cold water until Ishizu had insisted on having the ship's doctor examine him and they had found out that he had been starting to go into hypothermia.
"It is a miracle that Mako found them when he did," Ishizu said softly to Rishid as she gently pulled the quilt up around her brother's sleeping form. "If they had remained in the water much longer, they both probably would have succumbed to the icy temperatures and drowned." She shuddered as she said that.
"Marik would have found some way out," Rishid replied, his golden eyes reflecting his alarm at Ishizu's statement. "He wouldn't have drowned." He glanced over at his adopted brother, watching him sleep and seeing how innocent and kind he looked. "And he wouldn't have let Bakura's Yami drown either." Marik still had his defiant, short-tempered personality, but he also had a sense of honor.
Ishizu smiled and patted his arm. "I know," she whispered. "I know."
****
Seto got up quietly, not wanting Mokuba to hear him and awaken. For some reason, he found that he just couldn't sleep tonight. The young businessman ran a hand through his hair in vexation and slowly walked over to the door. It was late—almost two in the morning, he noted—and surely no one would notice him if he took a brief walk around the ship. It might help him feel tired again, he hoped. After putting his trenchcoat on over his pajamas and buttoning it—which was something he rarely did—Seto turned the doorknob and stepped out into the hall, locking the door behind him.
The last thing he expected to do was run right into Tea.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in embarrassment when they collided around a corner on one of the upper levels. Yugi, Joey, and Tristan had just taken Shadi to the infirmary and were waiting there to hear how he was, while Tea had decided to go for a short walk while she waited. "I . . . I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone else was here. . . ."
Seto grunted in reply and stepped around her, prepared to head off down the long corridor.
But something prevented him from going.
Slowly he turned back, studying Tea through narrowed eyes. A long time ago, when he and Yugi had been intense rivals, Seto had considered Tea to be just another of Yugi's tagalong band of friends—but over the last year or so, he had found her to have a distinct personality that alternately annoyed and amused him. Tea was an intriguing person, he found himself thinking now.
Tea stared back at him, looking a bit annoyed. "What is it, Kaiba?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing," Seto muttered, turning around and going off again.
****
Bakura was also wide awake, gently tending to his Yami.
The old thief stirred, opening his eyes. "Where am I?" he mumbled.
"You're here on the ship, Yami," Bakura told him in relief, seeing the recognition in Yami Bakura's eyes as he looked up at the boy.
The tomb raider glanced about the room, his senses sharply alert. "Who was here?" he asked urgently.
Bakura blinked. "Yami?" he said uncertainly.
"Who was here?" Yami Bakura growled. "I sense there was a dark presence here not long ago. Who was it?"
Bakura hesitated before replying quietly that it was Khu.
Yami Bakura's eyes narrowed in disgust at the mention of the zealot's name. "That wretched creature," he muttered before switching to Egyptian and saying a stream of words that Bakura was glad he couldn't understand.
At last the thief spoke in English again and asked what Khu had wanted.
"I don't know, Yami," the silvery-haired boy replied softly. "I was afraid he was going to hurt you again."
"As if he would get the chance," Yami Bakura grunted.
****
As Seto walked on around the upper deck, he suddenly heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the direction of the balcony. Muttering to himself, he rushed over and found Tea staring down at the floor below.
"What happened?" he demanded.
Tea shook her head. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "I heard someone screaming about a guy falling off the balcony." As her eyes darted about, taking in the scene below them, she suddenly gasped. "There he is!" she cried, pointing down to a figure sprawled on the deck. "And Kaiba, he looks like you! It must be Seth!!"