I own a deck of dueling cards. Not Yu-Gi-Oh itself.
The City
Maya and her family got me into the city with no problems at all. I'd wanted her brothers to see me, but I could go unnoticed very easily if I had to. To Maya, it was much like I was strolling along the city streets beside her, although it was all in her head, of course. It took a lot of energy to be seen by lots of people, and I was a bit rusty.
Soon enough, her father stopped the little parade at a multi-goods stall. I simply nudged some minds out of the way, so no one would notice or think it odd that a little girl was having a conversation with one of the stall vendors. "Here. This is for you to sell." Maya said, sadly taking my Ring off her hair ribbon. "Make sure someone nice buys him, okay?"
"Of course," the teenage boy behind the table said. He took the Ring from her hands, and traded her a bit of candy. It had to be an actual trade, of course. The candy was so that no one else would notice she had anything, because it would already be eaten. And so Maya passed out of my life.
The boy put me down on the table very quickly, of course, so I didn't have a chance to probe much. Just enough to notice one maddening fact. They sold only resident goods here, food, cloth, and the like. Neither they, nor any of the other vendors he knew sold tourist items. Which meant that I could be waiting a very long time before any foreigner came my way, let alone someone from Japan.
I lost track of the years. The boy always packed me up at the end of the day, unconsciously, and always unloaded me every morning although no buyers noticed me. His father died, and he inherited the stall. He got a wife, and a few children, and still I waited. Once, there was someone from a country I hadn't even known existed, but it had recently been at war with Japan. An American soldier wouldn't have been any use to me whatsoever.
And then one day, there was someone new at the town boundaries, someone who tasted foreign to my mind. And, I recognized the same peculiar, flowing script work in his mind that was in Solomon Motou's. He's from Japan… I thought elatedly. I reached out to pull his mind closer, to guide him to my stall. I was a bit disappointed, he was much more stubborn about magic, and seemed to be an utterly dull individual. But then I saw something that decided me once and for all. His last name, although it held a letter that never existed during my time, was Bakura.
I woke parts of my mind that I hadn't used in far too long. Instead of sliding people's eyes away from me, I had to attract this Bakura's gaze. And make sure that my current owner would sell me for an extremely low price. It took very little prodding. One thing this man knew was the value of gold, and apparently thought the Egyptian selling me was a bit slow. Which wasn't true in the slightest, he just had my considerable influence leaning on his soul to get rid of me. In the end, they settled for three chocolate bars and an extra canteen, and I was in the possession of a new owner.
Not only that, but he was leaving for Japan the next day. We got to Cairo, and were on a flying machine called a plane as soon as I could have wished. I did have a bit of a shock when I was run through a strange metal archway. I was in his bag, since I doubted I could get him to wear jewelry of any sort, and alarms went off as the bag passed through. I picked out an image of what the people were looking for from their minds, and disguised myself as a bag full of Japanese currency. Luckily, they didn't scan me through a second time. I had no idea what the peculiar archway was, or how to fool it.
We got to Japan with a minimum of difficulty, although I was a bit bored. I discovered Bakura to be just as dull as I thought when I poked at his soul. He did some sort of sales work with an average income, had a wife, an average house, no real hobbies or talents, he didn't even care about the Duel Monsters game. Lovely.
What he did have was a son. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with Ryou, just that the boy was always forgetting to do things, and insisted on time to be left alone in his room, listening to music. Music the father hated, no less. And, to my joy, collected Duel Monsters cards. Ryou… he seemed like someone with a life, a little imagination, and the basic skills I needed to do my work, not to mention he seemed a little bit of a free spirit. Hopefully he'd extend that way of thinking to accept my need to abolish the Pharaoh…
Author's Note: Sorry it took so long. I couldn't get time at the computer, because we had guests always in the basement, then I couldn't get to the library because I worked, then my disk had a freak-out and wouldn't upload anything.