Tulip-Jin: Ten minutes to showtime! Lets see...Millennium Mace, list of favorite one-liners from You Don't Know Jack - man, I love that gameshow - have I forgotten anything?
Yami Tulip-Jin: Don't forget the makeup to cover up that hidieous boil.
TJ: WHAT?! What hidieous boil?!
Yami TJ: Oh, I'm sorry, that's your face.
TJ: L. O. L. A really rib-splitter, Yami. Anything I REALLY need to remember?
Yami Tj: Well, don't forget to tell whats-their-face not to worry about the pancakes, Aibou.
TJ: Yeah, I know you only like waffles...(stagehand runs up and whispers something in her ear)...What? What do you mean we're live? You mean people can see me? (stagehand nods) Right now? (stagehand nods again) But we don't start filming for another five minutes!
Stagehand: Well, Miss, someone set all the clocks back thirty minutes...except for the one that triggers the cameras.
Yami TJ: (whistles innocently)
TJ: (eye twitching) Is that so? (Whips out Millennium Mace and leaps on Yami TJ, screaming Xena's trademark battle cry)
Stagehand: (sweatdrops) Uh, technical difficulties, folks...why don't you just go on to the fic.
Disclaimer: We own nothing. That means you can't use nothing without OUR permission! MUWAHAHAHA! ...Actually, we'll share it with you. There's plenty of nothing to go around anyway...
As it turned out, I almost started a scandal. After weeks of being cooped up in my room almost constantly, someone had finally gotten the courage to check and see if I was still alive, only to find me gone. The whole palace guard had been turned out to try and find me - I was supposedly the most important heir, with the whole magic thing and all - and the entire city had been turned inside out.
Hiskotonamekt had been about to send the army into the desert to look for me there when I finally got back from the Shadow Realm. So I was cross-examined by at least a dozen priests for days, but I refused to say anything about the Shadow Realm or my Game with Takai.
I kept the Millennium Puzzle hidden. Eventually, the generally accepted story was that some mischievous spirit had carted me off and brought me back for reasons known only to itself. At least that story wasn't spread around much, but it just made the priests more insistent that I was 'special' somehow.
I managed to make it through all that without stressing myself out too much. Once I wasn't being constantly watched, I started visiting the Shadow Realm almost every night, to practice with the Millennium Puzzle and sometimes, to watch other Shadow Games.
There was one in particular that caught my interest. I only came by at the very end of it, but as I paused to check it out the younger of the two won and destroyed the loser himself with brutal efficiency.
He hung around the area for a while afterwards, letting me get a decent look at him. He had long white hair and a mean face. It was a predator's face, and it looked strange on the body of someone practically my own age.
He started looking around and I spotted the thing he was wearing around his neck. It was a large pendant, a ring with a flat triangle shape inside it and five dangly things hanging around the outside.
Oh, and it was engraved with the Sennen Eye.
I left when he started looking in my direction more intently. He hadn't seen me, but his Millennium Item - that's what It had to be - sensed my presence. That made five I had seen - so there were two such Items still going around unnoticed.
I wondered if anyone had noticed that one of the four in the vault was missing yet, as I practiced and practiced. The Millennium Puzzle helped me channel and control my magic to levels I had never attempted before.
I was generating all the power myself, but It worked as an amplifier. Soon, I was more powerful then all of the priests and magicians in the palace put together. And then I was challenged to another Shadow Game.
I recognized this opponent - he was some nephew of some rich man that lived in town. I'd seen him from a window but I'd never known his name. And I never would - he lost. He saw he was losing, and tried to cheat and attack me directly, which was against the rules we had both agreed to, and I did something I'd never known I could do before.
It was my first ever Game Penalty.
I overdid it a little - most Penalties have a year limit and that's what I was aiming for, but I turned the poor guy into a hallucinating, raving lunatic for the rest of his life. It almost put me off Shadow Games completely until I realized, he deserved it.
Shadow Games bring out the worse qualities in a person, the ones you keep hidden until you want to use them on someone else. And that rich guy, he used his money to terrorize everyone he knew. I sent him back to his own house and returned to mine only to find I'd been gone for less then four hours. No one noticed my second disappearance.
I played more and more Games, winning every one and increasing my magical powers more and more as I went along. The more powerful I got, the less 'real' time I was in the Shadow Realm.
People began noticing the way my skin was getting paler, the aura I was putting off, how I cared less and less about being around people and spent weeks without eating or sleeping or leaving my room, that I was getting obsessed with finding out still more secrets behind my magic.
It was about this time that Seth finally returned.
TJ: There! That's all the fic you guys get!
...
...
...
TJ: Ah, why the hell not. Chib's on vacation, Yami's holed up under a rock...I'll double the chapter! Go me!
I hardly recognized him at first - not only was he almost three times my height, his face was drawn and his unusual blue eyes had taken on a dark chill to their depths.
But he greeted me cheerfully, and he teased me about how I had been shrinking, and he still laughed about all the things that had been happening to me while he was away. He'd heard about my 'Mystery Disappearance', and claimed I had been sneaking out to see a girl.
I accused him of trying to flee the country over the past year and we both laughed and for the first time in a while, it was like nothing had ever changed. But that night he had something he wanted to show me.
"Some of the lower-level priests are having a Duel - I'm allowed to bring someone to watch and I knew you'd want to see it," he said.
"A Duel?" I asked.
I had played almost every type of game known, Shadow or normal, but I'd never heard of a Duel before.
"Trust me, you'll love it," he said.
That night, he came to my door and dragged me down to a chamber below the palace that was off-limits for anyone not a important priest. They had to clean it themselves because slaves couldn't go down there.
Seth was right, as usual. The Duel, to me, seemed the be-all end-all of games. Seth was explaining how the chanters energies released the image of the monsters to fight, and tip-toed around explaining its direct connection to the Shadow Realm, but I was too busy watching to care.
Anyone with any sense could feel the Shadow Realm's hand in this, or at least that's how it seemed to me, and I was trying to figure out if the monsters could be summoned from the tablets they were using without all those chanting people. In the end, the lower of the two low-level priests lost and his soul was sent to the Shadow Realm.
Afterwards, I began pestering Seth about getting a chance to Duel. He thought it was cute, and that's how I got my first monster tablet.
"You have to get a certain monster keyed to your magic, see? And then you can summon it in any Dueling area. So, go pick one and then meet me over there," he said as we entered the room where the priests kept all the unused monster tablets.
A 'Dueling Attendant', as they were known, was standing on one side of the small dueling area. There were hundreds of them, all able to summon one and only one monster tablet. They had a short life expectancy, since losing meant being sent to the Shadow Realm.
Anyway, I was left alone to look at all the carvings and pick one. They were beyond count, all strange beasts and people. Nothing seemed to be just right for me - until I saw him.
Well, sure it was a carving, but it was still a he. Slender, with body armor and a long staff, I knew instantly he was what I was looking for. The Millennium Puzzle, hidden underneath my robes as always, glowed in agreement. The hieroglyphics said this creature was called a 'Black Magician'.
Seth gave me a weird look as I practically danced back.
"Seen something you liked?" He asked with a laugh.
I flushed and nodded. "There are so many to choose from! It's amazing! And no one but the priests even knows these are here!"
"You're giving us too much credit, Yamakali," Seth said. "Some other people do know about this. Now, did you pick a monster?"
"Yes! Now what do I do?"
I must have sounded very eager, since Seth laughed at me again. He directed me to stand on the opposite side of the tiny ring. It might have been my imagination, but there seemed to be a darker sense running under his normal features.
"Now, in this ring, summoning is easy. You just need to concentrate on the monster you picked. Here, Attendant Dakal will show you."
Attendant Dakal held his hands over the flat stone area in front of him. Slowly, it lifted to a vertical position, then turned to face me. A small but powerful looking figure was carved on its surface.
"Judge Man, I call yea forth unto this plane!"
After Attendant Dakal spoke and the tablet finished its turn, the Judge Man appeared, hanging faded in midair. He looked very tough, and I could have sworn Seth had a satisfied smirk on his face.
The penalty for me losing this was just about the same as it was for losing a Game in the Shadow Realm itself - and he knew it. I knew then that there was something wrong or at least different about Septhroith now. But what he didn't know - what nobody knew - was that I was used to playing for my very existence.
"Time to summon, Yamakali," Septhroith called across the area to me.
I concentrated, focused on the monster I had seen, the one that seemed so utterly different yet utterly perfect. The flat stone in front of me rose up, and then I was face to face with that carving again.
I could sense the raw energy hidden behind that stone façade and I knew the 'Judge Man' was not going to be a match for it.
"I summon…the Black Magician!" As I spoke, the tablet turned and my monster appeared. Somehow, I expected the purple. It seemed natural. So did my next order.
"Black Magician, Black Magic Attack!"
The magician charged up his magic and blasted away. The Judge Man vanished, his tablet crumbled, and Attendant Dakal vanished into a blur of light with a scream. I saw the look of anger on Septhroith's face before he hid it under a look of fake happy surprise.
"You picked a good monster to defeat that one - Dakal was one of the strongest Attendants here! I guess congratulations are in order for yet another win, how about it Yamakali?" He said as he came over.
During all this, the Dark Magician went back into his tablet and the tablet went back to its original position.
"All I want to do to celebrate is to play this Dueling game some more," I told him with genuine enthusiasm, "And it was probably only luck on my part this time. You've been playing with these all the time you were gone, weren't you?" I accused him, and we both laughed and chatted and pretended it was all the same, but now both of us were lying straight-faced.
Yami Tulip-Jin: Don't forget the makeup to cover up that hidieous boil.
TJ: WHAT?! What hidieous boil?!
Yami TJ: Oh, I'm sorry, that's your face.
TJ: L. O. L. A really rib-splitter, Yami. Anything I REALLY need to remember?
Yami Tj: Well, don't forget to tell whats-their-face not to worry about the pancakes, Aibou.
TJ: Yeah, I know you only like waffles...(stagehand runs up and whispers something in her ear)...What? What do you mean we're live? You mean people can see me? (stagehand nods) Right now? (stagehand nods again) But we don't start filming for another five minutes!
Stagehand: Well, Miss, someone set all the clocks back thirty minutes...except for the one that triggers the cameras.
Yami TJ: (whistles innocently)
TJ: (eye twitching) Is that so? (Whips out Millennium Mace and leaps on Yami TJ, screaming Xena's trademark battle cry)
Stagehand: (sweatdrops) Uh, technical difficulties, folks...why don't you just go on to the fic.
Disclaimer: We own nothing. That means you can't use nothing without OUR permission! MUWAHAHAHA! ...Actually, we'll share it with you. There's plenty of nothing to go around anyway...
As it turned out, I almost started a scandal. After weeks of being cooped up in my room almost constantly, someone had finally gotten the courage to check and see if I was still alive, only to find me gone. The whole palace guard had been turned out to try and find me - I was supposedly the most important heir, with the whole magic thing and all - and the entire city had been turned inside out.
Hiskotonamekt had been about to send the army into the desert to look for me there when I finally got back from the Shadow Realm. So I was cross-examined by at least a dozen priests for days, but I refused to say anything about the Shadow Realm or my Game with Takai.
I kept the Millennium Puzzle hidden. Eventually, the generally accepted story was that some mischievous spirit had carted me off and brought me back for reasons known only to itself. At least that story wasn't spread around much, but it just made the priests more insistent that I was 'special' somehow.
I managed to make it through all that without stressing myself out too much. Once I wasn't being constantly watched, I started visiting the Shadow Realm almost every night, to practice with the Millennium Puzzle and sometimes, to watch other Shadow Games.
There was one in particular that caught my interest. I only came by at the very end of it, but as I paused to check it out the younger of the two won and destroyed the loser himself with brutal efficiency.
He hung around the area for a while afterwards, letting me get a decent look at him. He had long white hair and a mean face. It was a predator's face, and it looked strange on the body of someone practically my own age.
He started looking around and I spotted the thing he was wearing around his neck. It was a large pendant, a ring with a flat triangle shape inside it and five dangly things hanging around the outside.
Oh, and it was engraved with the Sennen Eye.
I left when he started looking in my direction more intently. He hadn't seen me, but his Millennium Item - that's what It had to be - sensed my presence. That made five I had seen - so there were two such Items still going around unnoticed.
I wondered if anyone had noticed that one of the four in the vault was missing yet, as I practiced and practiced. The Millennium Puzzle helped me channel and control my magic to levels I had never attempted before.
I was generating all the power myself, but It worked as an amplifier. Soon, I was more powerful then all of the priests and magicians in the palace put together. And then I was challenged to another Shadow Game.
I recognized this opponent - he was some nephew of some rich man that lived in town. I'd seen him from a window but I'd never known his name. And I never would - he lost. He saw he was losing, and tried to cheat and attack me directly, which was against the rules we had both agreed to, and I did something I'd never known I could do before.
It was my first ever Game Penalty.
I overdid it a little - most Penalties have a year limit and that's what I was aiming for, but I turned the poor guy into a hallucinating, raving lunatic for the rest of his life. It almost put me off Shadow Games completely until I realized, he deserved it.
Shadow Games bring out the worse qualities in a person, the ones you keep hidden until you want to use them on someone else. And that rich guy, he used his money to terrorize everyone he knew. I sent him back to his own house and returned to mine only to find I'd been gone for less then four hours. No one noticed my second disappearance.
I played more and more Games, winning every one and increasing my magical powers more and more as I went along. The more powerful I got, the less 'real' time I was in the Shadow Realm.
People began noticing the way my skin was getting paler, the aura I was putting off, how I cared less and less about being around people and spent weeks without eating or sleeping or leaving my room, that I was getting obsessed with finding out still more secrets behind my magic.
It was about this time that Seth finally returned.
TJ: There! That's all the fic you guys get!
...
...
...
TJ: Ah, why the hell not. Chib's on vacation, Yami's holed up under a rock...I'll double the chapter! Go me!
I hardly recognized him at first - not only was he almost three times my height, his face was drawn and his unusual blue eyes had taken on a dark chill to their depths.
But he greeted me cheerfully, and he teased me about how I had been shrinking, and he still laughed about all the things that had been happening to me while he was away. He'd heard about my 'Mystery Disappearance', and claimed I had been sneaking out to see a girl.
I accused him of trying to flee the country over the past year and we both laughed and for the first time in a while, it was like nothing had ever changed. But that night he had something he wanted to show me.
"Some of the lower-level priests are having a Duel - I'm allowed to bring someone to watch and I knew you'd want to see it," he said.
"A Duel?" I asked.
I had played almost every type of game known, Shadow or normal, but I'd never heard of a Duel before.
"Trust me, you'll love it," he said.
That night, he came to my door and dragged me down to a chamber below the palace that was off-limits for anyone not a important priest. They had to clean it themselves because slaves couldn't go down there.
Seth was right, as usual. The Duel, to me, seemed the be-all end-all of games. Seth was explaining how the chanters energies released the image of the monsters to fight, and tip-toed around explaining its direct connection to the Shadow Realm, but I was too busy watching to care.
Anyone with any sense could feel the Shadow Realm's hand in this, or at least that's how it seemed to me, and I was trying to figure out if the monsters could be summoned from the tablets they were using without all those chanting people. In the end, the lower of the two low-level priests lost and his soul was sent to the Shadow Realm.
Afterwards, I began pestering Seth about getting a chance to Duel. He thought it was cute, and that's how I got my first monster tablet.
"You have to get a certain monster keyed to your magic, see? And then you can summon it in any Dueling area. So, go pick one and then meet me over there," he said as we entered the room where the priests kept all the unused monster tablets.
A 'Dueling Attendant', as they were known, was standing on one side of the small dueling area. There were hundreds of them, all able to summon one and only one monster tablet. They had a short life expectancy, since losing meant being sent to the Shadow Realm.
Anyway, I was left alone to look at all the carvings and pick one. They were beyond count, all strange beasts and people. Nothing seemed to be just right for me - until I saw him.
Well, sure it was a carving, but it was still a he. Slender, with body armor and a long staff, I knew instantly he was what I was looking for. The Millennium Puzzle, hidden underneath my robes as always, glowed in agreement. The hieroglyphics said this creature was called a 'Black Magician'.
Seth gave me a weird look as I practically danced back.
"Seen something you liked?" He asked with a laugh.
I flushed and nodded. "There are so many to choose from! It's amazing! And no one but the priests even knows these are here!"
"You're giving us too much credit, Yamakali," Seth said. "Some other people do know about this. Now, did you pick a monster?"
"Yes! Now what do I do?"
I must have sounded very eager, since Seth laughed at me again. He directed me to stand on the opposite side of the tiny ring. It might have been my imagination, but there seemed to be a darker sense running under his normal features.
"Now, in this ring, summoning is easy. You just need to concentrate on the monster you picked. Here, Attendant Dakal will show you."
Attendant Dakal held his hands over the flat stone area in front of him. Slowly, it lifted to a vertical position, then turned to face me. A small but powerful looking figure was carved on its surface.
"Judge Man, I call yea forth unto this plane!"
After Attendant Dakal spoke and the tablet finished its turn, the Judge Man appeared, hanging faded in midair. He looked very tough, and I could have sworn Seth had a satisfied smirk on his face.
The penalty for me losing this was just about the same as it was for losing a Game in the Shadow Realm itself - and he knew it. I knew then that there was something wrong or at least different about Septhroith now. But what he didn't know - what nobody knew - was that I was used to playing for my very existence.
"Time to summon, Yamakali," Septhroith called across the area to me.
I concentrated, focused on the monster I had seen, the one that seemed so utterly different yet utterly perfect. The flat stone in front of me rose up, and then I was face to face with that carving again.
I could sense the raw energy hidden behind that stone façade and I knew the 'Judge Man' was not going to be a match for it.
"I summon…the Black Magician!" As I spoke, the tablet turned and my monster appeared. Somehow, I expected the purple. It seemed natural. So did my next order.
"Black Magician, Black Magic Attack!"
The magician charged up his magic and blasted away. The Judge Man vanished, his tablet crumbled, and Attendant Dakal vanished into a blur of light with a scream. I saw the look of anger on Septhroith's face before he hid it under a look of fake happy surprise.
"You picked a good monster to defeat that one - Dakal was one of the strongest Attendants here! I guess congratulations are in order for yet another win, how about it Yamakali?" He said as he came over.
During all this, the Dark Magician went back into his tablet and the tablet went back to its original position.
"All I want to do to celebrate is to play this Dueling game some more," I told him with genuine enthusiasm, "And it was probably only luck on my part this time. You've been playing with these all the time you were gone, weren't you?" I accused him, and we both laughed and chatted and pretended it was all the same, but now both of us were lying straight-faced.
