Disclaimer: Why do you even bother reading this disclaimer anymore? It's still, STILL, not mine. Just no. Not going to happen anytime soon. Nice try, but now.

Seto: Jeez. Bitter much?

Yami: What am I even doing here? I'm not in this story anymore. Feh.

Seto: Whine, whine, whine. This is MY story for a change. Stop trying to steal MY glory.

Yami: You're just jealous.

Seto: Bah.

Author's Notes: Okay, I know. I haven't updated in nearly three months. And if it hadn't been for a review I just read this evening, I probably would've forgotten about this story...so kudos to you, mistresscorrupt. Your astute observation has incited me to post this piece, and possibly even write more.

Whether I do or not, this chapter takes us right up to the beginning of the Dartz Arc, and that means it's capable of ending where I left it, if need be. With a little persuasion, though, I might just have to continue. As always, special thanks go out to Schuschu and Jia, both of whom I love to death, and also both of whom deserve lots and lots of hugs. So you should all head on over and read their fics.

Formalities aside, I present to you...PART FOUR!

-.-.-.-.-.-

It's been a week now, since that nightmare.

Everything's changed. My world has been turned upside down, sideways, and shaken out like an old rag in the back of a closet.

I think, given the circumstances, I'm dealing with it very well.

One week ago, when I awoke from my nightmare with blood running down my arm and that accursed piece of metal lying on the floor, I still thought magic was utter nonsense. I didn't believe in it because I didn't have to. I could explain everything away, and continue pretending that I controlled my own destiny.

Still, I have to admit I'd been having some suspicions of my own beliefs, ever since that whole soul-stealing bit that Pegasus pulled. Something happened, all right. But I pretended not to believe it, tried to make it go away by denying its existence, just the way a child closes his eyes to pretend something's not there simply because he can't see it anymore.

I've opened my eyes now. I'm not just the foolish child I used to be.

It's kind of hard to not believe in magic when you've got the five-thousand-year old spirit of an ancient Egyptian priest co-inhabiting your body.

Heh, heh, heh. He's still cranky about the fact that he has to share.

-.-

The first thing I saw when I looked up that day was a pair of blue eyes. Just eyes—nothing else had processed in my mind yet. Cold blue eyes and a very, very bad feeling.

It took me a moment to realize that I could feel a strange warmth coming from the end of the bed, even though there was no depression in the mattress. Something was there...and yet, it wasn't.

Then a face appeared out of the shadows, peering at me in something akin to confusion.

My first instinct was to scream. My second instinct was to grab the intruder by the neck and snap it. Kill first, ask questions later—that's what Gozaburo Kaiba had always emphasized. Cruel, yes, but still...

I made a grab for the intruder, but he disappeared into thin air.

Or at least, my hands went through thin air.

A face identical to mine, albeit a bit more tanned, moved closer to my own. This thing on the end of my bed was acting like a curious puppy, slowly moving closer, eyes wide in wonder.

I backed away as much as I could, thinking I was just hallucinating. I mean, there was nothing there, right? If there had been something there, I would've broken its neck by now. If I could've caught it, it would be dead. There couldn't be anything there...could there?

"Iiti em hotep," the phantom said softly.

Okay. NOW I was getting scared.

I know my brain was racing a mile a minute, trying to figure out how to deal with this...this thing that was a person except that it wasn't, but I could see it and it could see me and it was talking to me but it couldn't be real, it couldn't be there because if it were there it would be dead, or maybe it was already dead and back from the dead trying to kill me, except that there's no such thing as ghosts...

"W-What are you?" I managed to stammer out, completely lost as to what to do.

My instincts were screaming to run, or perhaps to kill and then run, but I couldn't get by, could I? I was trapped against the headboard and here was this strange, shifting, shadow-thing that could disappear into thin air and yet was talking to me in words I didn't understand...

It paused a minute, its nonexistent brow furrowing a bit. "Iiti em hotep," it tried again, slowly and firmly.

It sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it...but this thing was trying to communicate, so it obviously wasn't going to kill me just yet. I supposed the first thing to do would be to try and answer it.

Now if only I knew what it was saying.

I shook my head, lifting my shoulders in the universal sign of confusion. "What are you?"

It pondered this a moment, before identical blue eyes lit up and it tried something new. "Salve?"

This registered in my head, fortunately. Thank goodness Gozaburo had forced me to learn Latin, despite my protests of it being a dead, pointless language. Latin I could understand.

I managed to nod. "Salve."

Its face broke into a smile and it began to chatter in an ancient dialect of Latin, far too fast and accented for me to follow. Holding out a hand and shaking my head, I tried to silence it.

"English?" I asked slowly, searching its misty face for confirmation.

It blinked once, twice, three times...and then twisted its lips into a slight frown. I cursed under my breath. We'd almost broken the barrier, and I'd gone and confused the thing even more.

Slowly, a misty finger reached out and touched my forehead. Bewildered, I stared at the thing, wide-eyed, not sure what it was doing. Was it curious, perhaps? Trying to establish some form of primal sign language?

Quite the contrary, I came to realize.

There was a flash of light, and suddenly there was a weird stretching sensation in my mind, as if my thoughts were pounding at the inner walls of my skull and fighting to be set free. My life didn't quite flash before my eyes, which was a relief, but for a few short moments I felt as though I was going to explode from the inside out...!

Then the thing pulled back, settled itself in a cross-legged position at the end of my bed, and molded its face into my own trademark smirk.

"Hello," it said in perfect English. "I'm very sorry about the confusion we had earlier. Now who are you and why do you have my Sennen Rod?"

At that point, I fell off the bed.

Once I got over the initial shock of hearing my own voice addressing me from the lips of this phantom on the end of my bed, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. This was the familiar figure I'd seen in my dream...the one who was angry with the golden one...the one who felt such betrayal and who was scared away by my screams.

"Who are you?" I demanded, taking small pleasure in the fact that the ghost would understand me this time.

"Which name would you like?" the phantom replied pleasantly, still smirking at me. "I have been called many names in my lifetime...I wonder if I even remember my given name at birth, after all these years..."

"Stop the games," I snapped, glaring at it.

"Very well, then. The name given to me at birth was Seth. My title..." His voice faltered here, suddenly sounding very sad. "My title is...pharaoh."

"Pharaoh!"

"Yes."

"That's a lie," I spat. "Yugi Mutou's split personality, the one who calls himself Yami and looks just like him, that one is the supposed pharaoh. Not you."

Seth looked hurt for a moment, but then his head shot up as realization sunk in. "Yami...?"

"Yes, Yami. You heard me. Short, spiky hair, red eyes. He claims he's the pharaoh from ancient Egypt, which means you can't be. Now stop lying and give me the truth."

"I have not lied to you..." Seth answered softly, glancing around the room. "But tell me more of this Yami you speak of. Do you have a picture of this person, perhaps? Who is he?"

At that point, I was still assuming that this thing was a figment of my imagination. I was either going crazy or I was still dreaming, and either way I didn't see any harm in humoring the thing. It hadn't tried to kill me...yet.

Shrugging, I walked over to the laptop sitting on my desk and pulled up my dueling files. I keep pictures and files of every duelist ranked in the top tenth percentile on my laptop, staying up-to-date with every win, loss, and advancement they make. And over ninety percent of the pictures in that database were of my oldest rival, Yami Mutou.

I pulled one up and motioned Seth over, gesturing to the screen as I filled a mug of coffee. "There. That's Yami Mutou. He's the current—" I winced, "—world champion of Duel Monsters."

Can shadows turn pale? Because I could swear that Seth did when he saw the image. "So he kept his promise..." the ancient one croaked out, reaching out a misty finger to touch the screen.

"Excuse me?"

"I...I did not lie to you when I said I was pharaoh," Seth replied, turning slowly to stare at me with dazed eyes. "That was the title I held at the time of my death...but the only one I truly earned was that of High Priest, under the wise and powerful Pharaoh...Yami."

My mug dropped to the floor, shattering as the boiling-hot liquid spattered in all directions.

He jumped, startled by the sudden noise. "What the—!"

"You! But—that means—that woman said that—it can't—" I stammered, completely unaware of the scalding liquid trickling around my feet.

"What is it?" Seth demanded, approaching me.

"That...that would mean..." I whispered. "That...you're me."

-.-

The fact that there's a spirit from ancient Egypt living in my body hasn't really sunk in yet, but I'm getting there. He's never really fought me for control of the body we now share...or even asked for it, now that I think about it. He seems content to just follow me around as a spirit, talking to me whenever we're alone.

That's one of the few rules I set down from the start. If he talks to me while there's someone else in the room, I won't answer. I am not about to start sounding crazy just for his sake. There's way too much at stake for me to do that.

I'm just working right now, sitting in the office and wading through paperwork at KaibaCorp while Mokuba's at school. Seth is looking out the window, I think. He's not used to being up this high in the air. He's also not used to being surrounded by so much silver metal—he says his domain back in Egypt was mostly stone with gold adornments.

"Have you ever loved, Seto?" he remarks softly, hearing a momentary lull in my typing.

His voice sounds distant. He must be thinking of Egypt again.

"Not really. Never had the time."

He chuckles a little, somehow managing to sound extremely sad. "We had a fable, back in Egypt...one about true love. About making the choice between life and death for your love."

"As do we. Several, in fact. Authors in this time seem to be more enthralled with the concept of love than with any other," I remark, turning away from my work. He's got my attention now...besides, I can afford a little break. It's a lot easier to pry information from Seth when he's musing on the past.

"The Damsel or the Demon, we called it," he continues, placing a fingertip against the window. "It's a story of choices...which is the lesser evil? Sacrificing the one you love to death? Or having to watch as they marry another, and living the rest of your life without them?"

"Death," I reply promptly, leaning back in my chair as he turns to look at me in amazement.

"So quickly you answer...why choose death for your beloved?"

"It's better than sharing them. If it were true love, I would sooner kill my lover with my own two hands than have to live out the rest of my days, knowing they still lived but I could never reach them again."

"Then in the same way, you would sooner kill Mokuba than let him be sent away for the rest of his life, never to see you again?"

I wince at that, my answer suddenly becoming much harder to accept. "I...I don't know. If I didn't think he would have a good life...then yes, I would."

He turns and manages a weak smile at me. "I hope you never are faced with such a choice."

"I'm sorry that you were."

"I had an option that the story did not consider...the possibility of life after death," Seth murmurs, leaning against the glass. "The opportunity to meet myself in a distant future."

"Did Yami know you were in the Rod?" I ask quietly, anxious to know the pharaoh's ancient plans. "Is that why he gave it to me?"

"Likely. Perhaps he also wanted you to realize the possibility of magic, and thus further trust him. My pharaoh was well known for playing games within games, his every move an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I knew him all his life, and even beyond the moment of his death, I could never unravel all his riddles. They were his favorites, you know. A meaning within a meaning."

"Is that so? Riddles...as in word games?"

"Child's games. Just little things," Seth answers with a nod. "Ones such as, 'the more of me you take, the more of me you leave.' Simple little puzzles."

"Footprints. I see what you mean now. If it's any consolation, he's still doing it."

"Is he now?" Seth sounds amused. "Such as?"

"He and I played a game of chess. He kept making references to my 'white queen' and his 'holy bishop'."

"And the answers?"

"The Blue Eyes White Dragon, and you."

"Ah. A bishop is a priest, then. Something that you would understand that tied to the past. He's more used to this new future than I am, it seems."

"Yes. Which reminds me: the television set is not possessed by demons. You can stop trying to cast them out. Same goes for the telephone and the radio." I smirk at him, watching as he kicks at the carpet in embarrassment.

"Humph. It's not natural for inanimate objects to speak as though they were people. My reactions were perfectly natural. I don't see why you find it so humorous."

"You just keep telling yourself that. Any other good riddles?"

"My favorite one. 'Never was I, and yet always to be, that which I am has no man ever seen, yet I am the confidence now and for all, who live and who breathe on this sapphire ball.' Do you know what the answer is, Seto?" He smiles, knowing he's momentarily stumped me with the rhyme.

I mouth the words as they run through my head, trying all the possibilities. "Tomorrow," I say finally, nodding with affirmation. "It sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it? Puts the world into perspective, I mean. Makes one feel insignificant."

"I felt that way sometimes. Usually when I was staring into the eyes of my dragons. They were so massive, so powerful...so beautiful..."

But I wasn't listening to Seth anymore. I was too busy staring.

For at the moment he said those words, a dragon flew past my window.

A real, live dragon.

And then everything went black.

-.-.-.-.-.-

TO BE CONTINUED...

-.-.-.-.-.-

Oooooo, freaky.

Seto: Psh. Hardly.

Yami: THEY'RE REAL! REAL MONSTERS! AAAAAA!

Seto: That was a TV show, back in the day.

Yami: What?

Seto: Aaah, Real Monsters.

Yami: ...

Seto: Yeah. Really.

And there you have it. We've reached the beginning of the Dartz Arc, and only one minor change has been made—now it appears that Seth will be accompanying Seto throughout the entire Arc. Interesting to think how Seto's actions might've been influenced by the voice of experience in his mind, hmm? Maybe he's starting to believe in magic after all...

Speculation and plot suggestions are, as always, welcome. Reviews are greatly appreciated, as are constructive criticism. Flames, however, are NOT welcome, and Joey the Flame Swordsman and Flamina, the angel minion of fire, are standing by to take care of that. I hope you enjoyed part four, and please read and review!