Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-gi-oh, the characters or anything else. By the way don't' swear by many of the facts in this story because they are very likely to be inaccurate. (Translation: I'm probably wrong)
Summery: Well surprise, surprise, the gang, (excluding Yugi and a few others) has all been trapped in the shadow realm again. What else is new. Well how about the fact that in order to get them out Yami, Ishizu and a new stranger. Have to actually go into the Shadow Realm and rescue their friends and… a… sorta-not-really-don't-like-him-but-still-gotta-help-him… person.
A.N.- forgive me if this is wrong (I will change it if you let me know), but I have it down that Ishizu and Isis are well sort of like Yami and Yugi two minds in one body.
Prologue:
In the middle of a shadow duel the loser, secretly places a curse on anyone that is watching the duel. He only tells Yami after Yami has already put in action the last move of his destruction… to late for Yami to stop him. The losing figure falls to the ground then he disappears in a swirl of smoke. Yami stares at the spot where the curser had fallen. He suddenly fell onto his knees his eyes wide as he felt Yugi, their mental link barely withstanding, wrenched out of him and locked away. He stared unseeing and in total disbelief at the ground, gasping from the pain and suddenly realizing the full impact of the curse. He forced himself to stand up and he stumbled towards the edge of the duelling platform, he got to it holding his side as though in pain. There he saw laying on the ground the bodies of Joey, Mai, Isis. He shook his head as he saw Isis rise and shake her own before slowly and gently, as though it caused her great pain, stand up. She raised her eyes to his and in their depths there was a confusion that he suspected was mirrored in his own. When she spoke it wasn't Isis it was Ishizu.
"What has happened Pharaoh?" she looked at the fallen bodies around her. "What kind of dark power is this?"
"I don't know… I believe that whoever that stranger was he knew he was going to lose, just before he died he… he said something about a curse on whoever was watching the duel." Ishizu looked around again then she met his eyes.
"Where is Seto Kaiba?" Yami allowed only a small amount of shock to come on to his face, Seto Kaiba? Why would he be watching? Ishizu ran a hand over the golden necklace that hung around her neck, the Millennium Necklace. Yami knew that she was using it to try and figure out something. She opened her eyes and looked at him, now true confusion and puzzlement settled over her beautiful face.
"I cannot see anything… it is as though a giant curtain has been pulled over my sight." Yami sighed and sat down on the edge.
"So what do we do now… I can feel my link with Yugi getting weaker, and weaker, as the shadow realm begins to tighten it's grasp on him…" she nodded since she could feel the same with Isis.
"We should make sure that there is no-one else in this state, on board." Isheuz said turning and walking towards the single door that led out. Yami followed her.
They looked around when they went through, all that was in this new room were a few chairs along with a couple plain tables that served as duel-monster fields, when the holographic ones in a different room where in use. It was empty so they went through to another room and they kept going they were all empty every single one of them. They came back to the duelling platform again. Nothing had changed, but now coming in from a different angle they saw a still form sitting against the wall on the oposite side of everyone else.
"Kaiba… can you hear us?" Yami and Ishizu bent down over the still form of the young C.E.O. They tilted his head back and saw that the blue eyes had a dead shadowed look to them.
"He's gone…" Yami said stating the obvious.
"Is there any chance that you can bring all of them back?" Ishizu asked rising from Kaiba's side. Yami shook his head.
"As you said Ishizu it is as though there is a wall or block of some kind in my way." suddenly he sensed a precense appearing behind him.
"Shadi! How many times do I have to tell you to quite doing that." Ishizu said turning around to look at the stranger who had just appeared out of the ground behind them.
"Sorry, Tomb-Keeper." He said his pupil-less eyes focused on her. "That is the fastest way to travel and when I felt this new disturbance in the balence I felt speed was of the essence."
"So you know what it is?" Yami put in, Shadi turned his unnatural eyes to him.
"No, I'm afraid I don't Pharaoh, back in the first time there were only three who would have been able to tell you what it is."
"Who were they?"
"One my Pharaoh, was you." this got a widening of the eyes, "The second," he looked down a Kaiba, "was the high priest."
"And the third?"
"Ahhh, well, the third might still be able to tell you since you see, the third is the Keeper." This received blank looks from both of them.
"Who or what is the Keeper?" Ishizu probed turning to him. He didn't look surprised that they didn't know.
"The Keeper is the one who was created, yet destroyed."
"Would you quite talking in riddles." The formarly patient Ishizu's nerves were definitely frazzled.
"Down Ishizu. Shadi. Explain." Yami bit out.
"Yes Pharaoh." they both said in unison.
"Well," Yami prompted, not in the best mood himself.
"The Keeper was created long before the other Items."
"The Keeper is an item? How is that possible?"
"No the Keeper is a person, or sprit. But mostly the Keeper acts as the doorway between our world and the Shadow Realm."
"This Keeper must be ancient. How did they come about?"
"Well it is said that the Shadow powers can't be severed completely because that would cause the end of the world, so when they were confined to the Shadow Realm, a, gateway had to be left open. That is how the Keeper came. Legend is very vague about who the keeper was but one fact that is consistent is that the Keeper was a great sorceress. Whose strength and control of the shadow powers were, to say the least, greater then any other beings on earth. The Keeper had a Manacle, which had a chain connected to it, and on the very end of the chain hung a single silver key." He pause here for a breath, "Here the facts begin to change but it is most often said that…" he saw Yami's warning look and cut his long explination short. "Anyway as it was she had a child, who was there with her the day that she shut the gateway behind her. Taking hold of the key those who watched swore that it seemed to darken in her hand. Then all saw as she pulled all the shadow magic she could together and wove a single doorway. She stepped through it and it shut behind her with such force and light that they were all blinded for a moment. When they looked again they saw that only the Manacle remained. It had been the sorceress only wish that what every she left behind be given to her family."
"The child?"
"Yes, when the child tried to put it on they were unable to get it to open but when a slave girl was called forward to help it suddenly fused its self onto her arm, she was unable to get it off to the day she died. When she did, legend loses track of it since it connected itself to another. It reapers again in several other stories but any way the Keepers Champion, the one who wears the Manacle" he clarified, "should be able to tell you what is going on."
"Wonderful you don't by any chance happen to know who this Champion currently is by the way." Ishizu asked him still not long on patience.
"No, but…"
"Well that doesn't really help us how do we know if this Keeper is still even alive? Or if this Champion even exists!" Ishizu interrupted him.
"Maybe because I'm standing right behind you." The three of them turned around in surprise at the voice of a presence that they hadn't noticed.
