"Welcome to game night…" Joey silently mouthed out. Yugi's words echoed, bouncing from ear to ear and through all the little nooks and crannies hidden away in his headspace.

No one else even moved.

The air was so silent that at first he wasn't even sure if anyone huddled around him was even breathing, but since there appeared to be only one stiff in the room, all of his friends had to be alive and well…just as incredibly mind-baffled as he.

Yugi merely stood there in the center of the room with his funky little hat – 'when did he have the time to put that on, anyway!?' – and his clipboard in his arms, wearing the largest, dopiest grin on his face.

No one seemed to be able to make any sort of rational sound either, and it was then that Joey realized that the main reason why they had huddled together in the doorway to the dragon's den – Mokuba's panicked cries for help – were suspiciously silent.

Little snot had to be in on this – whatever this happened to be, and played his part perfectly. Now he was off to the side to make room for everyone else, near where he had deposited Kaiba's distasteful pizza. All traces of his prior hysteria gone, he merely watched the group, waiting to see who picked their jaw up from the floor and recovered first.

Yugi started rocking back and forth on his heels, and thank you that someone else managed to put themselves back together and do something, as Atem pushed his way past Tristan and Duke to get to the front of the crowd.

"This…this is game night?" he asked, eyes ready to jump out of his head. He looked from Yugi to Kaiba on the floor and back again.

Yugi nodded so enthusiastically that one large tuft of his hair nearly managed to escape the confines of his deerstalker cap.

"I…I don't understand," Serenity said in a very small voice.

"Oh!" Duke said suddenly, in a voice louder than even he expected it to be, and both Serenity and Téa both jumped. "This is like one of those dinner theater things, isn't it? Only this isn't a dinner theater."

"Dunno about the theater, but I think the pizza definitely counts as dinner," said Tristan, after finally finding his voice.

"Is that what this is? We have to—" Téa bit her lip and looked down at the mess on the floor. "We…have to find out who killed Kaiba?"

Yugi nodded again, and this time his hat flew off his head and he nearly dropped the clipboard in his fumble to catch it. He awkwardly stuffed it back down and gestured around the room. "A group of friends, gathered together for a night of fun – only to be interrupted by cold-blooded murder! Hiding in the throes of pizza and party games someone in this mansion is a killer – but who!?"

"Wait – one of us did it!?"

Yugi laughed. "Kaiba certainly didn't do this to himself!"

"I don't see how we're going to figure out who did it," said Tristan, "We were all hanging out in front of the tv failing our way through all those video games!"

"But that's just it – we weren't all there the entire time," said Téa, "We all split up. I was off in the library before the pizza arrived."

Joey crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at her. "Were you? Or maybe – you snuck in here to kill Kaiba!"

"Why would I kill Kaiba!?" Téa said, and shot Joey a dirty look in return. "I was just as surprised at game night as everyone else! And Duke was the one who found me in the library anyway!"

"Yeah…"Duke said slowly, "but that doesn't mean you couldn't have killed him before I found you…."

"Look, it wasn't me!"

"Actually, if any of us are going to be the one to off Kaiba, it would be you, Joey," said Tristan, "You are the most obvious suspect."

"Don't you be gangin' up on me, Trist'!" Joey snapped and balled his hands into fists. "I didn't do it!"

"He does have a point though," said Duke, "You are the only one among us with any sort of motive to get rid of him."

"Come on now, guys!" Serenity cried, and stepped between Duke and Joey before either of them could think to do something stupid. "We don't have to fight – this is a game, remember? We're here to have fun!"

"And I'm rather eager to get started!" Atem said, rubbing his hands together. He looked to Yugi. "I imagine, as the organizer of this event, you have to know who the killer is, and aren't playing."

"Yeah," Yugi said. He raised the hand holding the clipboard and gave it a little wave. "Think of me as a guide. I can help consolidate the clues we discover, but otherwise not playing the same way the rest of you are."

"Wait a minute, that means Mokuba isn't either!" Tristan said, "I mean he lives here. He has to know what you and Kaiba were up to, putting this whole thing together."

Mokuba frantically shook his head. "I'm as in the dark as the rest of you!"

Duke rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, you don't expect us to believe you don't have a clue to what was going on, do you?"

"No, I really didn't!" Mokuba crossed his arms and pouted up at him. "Sure, I knew Seto was going to be the murder victim, but Yugi wouldn't tell me anything else! I honestly didn't know when the party was going to trigger into murder time until just now!"

"He's telling the truth," Yugi said, "I kept Mokuba in the dark as much as possible so he could play and have his reactions be as genuine as possible. He only knew Kaiba was going to be the victim so that just in case Kaiba decided to…you know…"

He gestured out at the mess on the floor. "…go overboard with the theatrics, that he didn't think his brother was really dead."

"Smart," said Atem.

Duke frowned. "I still think—"

"Okay, okay!" Téa threw her hands up, exasperated. "I, for one, want to play and not argue over who knows what. What do we do now, Yugi?"

Yugi tapped his pen against the edge of the clipboard. "Just a couple of rules before we dive in. One – Kaiba has expressed that the upstairs is off limits."

Joey snickered. "Kaiba hidin' more bodies upstairs?"

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "Seto's the victim here, not a serial killer."

"Kaiba was generous enough to offer up his home for this game night and the sleepover," said Yugi, "Under the condition that we don't wander where we're not wanted. And as far as the mystery is concerned, there's nothing we'll have to do upstairs. Any clues we need to locate are along the ground floor. And along with that, there's no need to venture outside the mansion for solving the murder either."

"We can obey the rules," said Téa, and gave Joey and Tristan a stern look before giving Yugi her full attention. "Anything else we need to know?"

"Yeah, like are we timed on solving the mystery or something?" asked Duke, "Does something bad happen if we don't figure it out in a reasonable amount of time?"

"You mean aside from Seto getting tired of laying on the floor for hours and hours?" Mokuba shrugged.

Joey snorted. "What does that matter? Jerk's dead. Time don't mean nuthin' for him anymore."

Yugi chewed on the corner of his lip and caught the barest twitch in Seto's jaw. There technically wasn't a penalty for taking their time to solve the case…but he had a feeling at least a few of his friends were going to draw out the game as long as humanly possible – just to get on Kaiba's nerves.

"No…nothing that I can think of," said Yugi, "We just have to find Kaiba's killer. And…"

He put a hand up to his forehead and made a dramatic sweep of the room, taking in the scattered bloodstained papers on the floor around Kaiba's body and the décor on the tables and shelves around the study. "…what killed him, I imagine. I don't see a murder weapon here."

Duke also cast a quick glance around the study. "We've never been here before, and this house has a ton of rooms to it. He could have been killed with anything. I don't see how we're supposed to find out what did it – or who, since we were all spread out around the house."

"Then we start from the beginning," said Yugi, and hovered the pen over the page on the clipboard and looked to the other expectantly. "Kaiba came back from his canceled business trip…and then what?"

"He trash-talked us out and then disappeared," said Duke, "and we were all playing video games. But then we split up."

Mokuba scrunched up his nose. "Joey left first, right after we had that nice intense discussion on pizza toppings."

"Look, it wasn't me," said Joey.

"I know it wasn't you…then," said Mokuba, "cuz Seto was still alive when I went to see what he wanted on his pizza, remember?"

"He still could have offed him afterwards," said Duke.

Joey glared at him.

"Look, It's no secret that you two hated each other."

"Don't you think it would be a bit too easy if it were me?" Joey scowled.

"I don't know, Joey," said Atem suspiciously with a strange glint in his eyes, "there was plenty of opportunity afterwards. Maybe you're just trying to throw us off in a different direction!"

"Not you too, Atem!" Joey whined, "I thought you for sure would be on my side!"

Atem dramatically placed his hands on his hips. "There can be no sides here, Joey! Kaiba is dead and we must avenge him by finding his killer!"

"That don't mean it was me!"

"You were gone for a suspicious amount of time, even after Mokuba came back from ordering his brother's pizza," said Téa. "I'm not saying it was you, Joey, but it's going to be really hard to prove your innocence when the rest of us were still in the living room."

"Yeah, well I wasn't alone cuz Tristan and Duke came with me."

"We did," said Tristan. "We were all playing in the billiard room."

Serenity snapped her fingers. "Hey wait a minute! I just thought of something!" Everyone turned to look at her, and she blushed. "Oh, well, we only saw Kaiba when he came home and watched us playing in the living room, right? How do we know he wasn't killed once he went back to his office?"

"Because I ordered his pizza," said Mokuba.

"Ohhhhhhh," Tristan said, and rubbed his hands together. "I see. What a perfect excuse!"

Atem blinked at him. "You'll have to explain, because I can't follow you."

Tristan suddenly pointed at Mokuba. "You are the only person here who would bother going to Kaiba's office in the first place! How do we know you didn't kill him, then order a pizza for him and pretend everything was fine!? It's not like any of us were going to check on him, and that way it didn't matter what the rest of us did – you could pin your cover up on anyone! And – of us all, you're the only one who knows the ins and outs of this place. I bet you planted something to pin your crime on us, and my bet is on Joey."

Mokuba's jaw dropped and he clenched his fists and opened his mouth to retort when he was cut off – not by any of his friends (or so-called ones, seeing how they just tried to pin him for murder) when an annoyed huff sounded…from near the floor.

Joey, currently standing the closest to the desk, froze. He raised an eyebrow, glanced at Yugi, and then pivoted around. "Did…did I just hear the stiff get testy at us for gangin' on his bro?!"

Yugi grinned, trying hard to suppress his laugh, and raised his clipboard up to cover his snicker.

Joey turned back to the others and help up his hands. "Okay, gang. Clearly Kaiba ain't dead. Whoever tried – good attempt, but not good enough. I'm gonna close my eyes. Please go find somethin' heavy and thwack him in the head again, then we can start over. 'Kay?"

Mokuba crossed his arms over his chest and pouted up at him. "How do we know it wasn't you?"

"Alright, time out!" Atem stepped into the center of the little circle they had made in the middle of the room. "Clearly, pointing fingers is not going to get us anything but snide little remarks from the…er…ghost gallery." He smirked down at Kaiba, though he knew it'd go unseen. "I suggest we change focus."

"I agree," said Tristan.

"We all split up in various directions as the afternoon went on," said Atem, "that's a given. All of us were alone at some point, so all of us are on the hook for Kaiba's murder until we can prove our own innocence. But maybe, if we can pinpoint what the murder weapon is, and then find it, we might be able to track down the killer!"

"Okie dokie," said Joey and crouched down next to Kaiba. He had to strongly resist the urge to poke him, just for the fun of it, knowing that he'd have to break character in order to retaliate. "So…I see a lot of fake blood and –"

"Blood, not fake blood," said Tristan, and he jabbed Joey in the arm. "C'mon get into it. Kaiba is dead. Nothing fake about it."

Joey cleared his throat. "'Kay, a lot of blood and some frays in his jacket." He whistled. "Yo, Moku-man, how much money did Moneybags throw away messin' his fancy-pants suit like that?"

Mokuba shrugged. "I've never seen that one before."

Duke snorted. "Right, so instead of a fifty-thousand-dollar suit, it was maybe ten thousand. Chump change. Anyway, it doesn't look like he was shot or anything, so that rules out any sort of gun."

"Could he have been stabbed?" asked Téa, "it might explain the tears in his clothes."

"That's possible," said Tristan. "And…"

He grinned slyly and looked at Duke. "Who was it that decided to make a trip to the kitchen while we were playing pool?"

Duke glared at him. "I didn't go to the kitchen alone, genius. Téa went with me."

Mokuba stiffened. "Yeah, but we saw you alone in the hall. How do we know you didn't go there, find a knife, kill my brother, and then pretend to be lost afterwards trying to get back? And it was after I got Seto's pizza order so you can't use that as an excuse to turn it back onto me."

Everyone turned to Duke, except Yugi, who weaved around the group and knelt down next to Kaiba, as if the rest of them weren't preparing to start another round of The Blame Game.

"A stabbing definitely looks possible," said Yugi casually, "though these wounds look too wide and shallow to be a knife. I wonder what else could have caused that."

Téa moved away from the body and to one of the bookcases housing all of the awards Kaiba had won. Some of them looked hefty enough to be a murder weapon, but none of them looked damaged. Not that Kaiba really got bludgeoned with one, but if he had gone through the effort of making it look like someone had actually killed him, it only made sense to make the murder weapon stand out too.

"What if it was something blunt?" she asked. "Maybe he wasn't stabbed with a knife at all."

"Maybe we should check the kitchen anyway," Serenity said nervously, "just in case a knife is missing."

"But if it's not a knife…," Atem mused, "it could be almost anything."

"Anything that lived in this room," said Tristan, "How much do you want to bet that the killer just picked something up, beat Kaiba to death with it, and ran. Something should be missing out of here."

"Alright, kiddo," said Joey, "this is your big moment. Don' matter if you offed your brother or not. Wha's missing outta here?"

"I mean, if Mokuba is the killer, he's just going to lie," said Tristan.

Mokuba snorted. "I can lie anyway – just because you keep trying to pin it on me!"

"That don't do anything to help prove your innocence," said Joey.

"Maybe sending you on a wild goose chase for something that doesn't really exist is just payback for making fun of Seto's pizza." He paused. "And I guess...for someone killing Seto in the first place."

"Oh, that's a low blow," said Joey, "cuz that is a sad pizza."

Tristan sniggered. "Yeah, because thinking of your brother being dead as an afterthought isn't a low blow enough."

Duke rolled his eyes and, like Téa, started surveying the room for anything out of the ordinary. Plenty of awards, a shelf of books, a bit of this, and a bit of that. But the table along the side of the room caught his eye and he wandered over. Two display stands were set up onto it, but only one was being used, and it held up what he believed to be a duel disk, judging by the spaces set in around the circular shape that were the right size to fit Duel Monsters cards.

He never saw this design before, not in person at least. Yugi once, while on the road during one of their many adventures, mentioned Kaiba's original duel disk design that was essentially a two-piece system that involved a lot of arm strength to maintain during a duel. They were only seen in Duelist Kingdom, once Kaiba arrived on the island, and were instantly phased out with the start of Battle City.

Frowning, Duke knelt down to be eye-level with the table. There was some sort of red mark along the base of the second stand and on the table around it. Marks that definitely didn't belong there.

He then got up and rejoined the others, staring straight down. The palm of Kaiba's outstretched hand was red, and whatever coated it bled onto the document it rested upon.

"Okay, I think I've got something," said Duke. "Look at the table over there, and tell me what you don't see?"

"What I don't see?" asked Atem. "I do see Kaiba's first duel disk."

"Man I hated that thing," Joey muttered.

"Why? Cuz Kaiba demoed it on you and whooped your novice butt sideways?" asked Tristan.

Joey scrunched up his nose, made a sour face and looked over at him. "Trist', are you my pal or not?"

Tristan nonchalantly shoved his hands into his pockets. "Right now I think you might be a murderer. There are no friends here."

Yugi chuckled. "Ouch."

"Well, what I don't see is whatever is supposed to sit on this thing," said Téa, pointing to the empty display.

"The table is set up for just whatever these displays are," said Tristan, "And if that one is a duel disk…"

"Yo, Mokuba," said Joey, "What's supposed to be on the other one?"

Mokuba crossed his arms and turned away with a haughty little hmph!.

Atem placed a hand on his Mokuba's shoulder. "Please, Mokuba. I don't believe you would do such a terrible thing to your brother, and I promise to do everything in my power to bring his murderer the justice he or she deserves."

Mokuba gave him a side-eyed glance. "Really?"

"Really. I won't pretend it's worse than that of losing a family member, but his death still cut right through my heart. I've lost not just a friend, but my rival. The field of battle will never be the same again."

Joey failed his arms out before noisily dropping them back to his sides and he stared, jaw-dropped, at Tristan and Téa. "What the hell am I?!"

Duke leaned over to Tristan and whispered into his ear. "Atem's really laying it on thick there, isn't he?"

Tristan nodded. "Yep. Drama Kings, all of them."

Mokuba gave them all a hard judging glare. "If I tell you, you all have to stop throwing me under the bus."

"But what if you're the murderer?" asked Tristan.

Duke punched his arm. "Shut up!"

Mokuba glared at him. "That blank space is for Seto's Battle City duel disk, or, as we call them – Mark II."

"What was Mark I?" asked Serenity.

Mokuba pointed to the first disk. "That one. It was never mass produced. Seto only built the prototypes, but after using them at Duelist Kingdom he recognized that not everyone was going to have the strength and stamina to keep flinging the main hologram projector half back and forth during a duel – especially during a really long and intense one. And when the tournament rules updated into the current version, the design didn't work anymore."

"But Kaiba had that briefcase with a duel disk and his cards in it, right?" asked Téa, "What if his disk is just in there. Just because it's not here doesn't mean it's the murder weapon."

"Yeah, but look there," said Duke. He pointed in closer to the table. "That wouldn't be blood, would it?"

"Oho," Yugi said, and scribbled a note on the clipboard. "Could Kaiba perhaps have left a dying clue?"

Atem shuddered. "Kaiba…murdered in cold blood by his own duel disk. That's a rather personal attack, to be killed by your own invention."

A thought whizzed right through Joey's head, in one ear and out through the other just as fast as it came, and he suddenly burst out laughing, to the surprise of everyone else in the room. "Oh man – like the Segway guy!"

"The who?"

"Don't you dare compare me to him!" Seto said irritably.

"Oi!" Joey snapped, "Corpses don't talk!"

"Who's the Segway guy?" asked Serenity.

"Who he is ain't important, sis," said Joey, "just look up how he died."

She raised an eyebrow at him, then pulled her phone from her back pocket with Téa looking over her shoulder.

"…Oh. Oh my…"

With wide eyes, Téa walked back over and loomed over Kaiba. "You really think a duel disk did this to him? I didn't think they had sharp edges."

Another indignant huff from the floor. "Duel disks are designed with rounded edges with a durable safety lining to prevent this exact scenario from happening."

Maybe not a stab, but a duel disk could still do hefty damage if used as a bludgeon, but that was also still beside the point, and Yugi rolled his eyes. "Kaiba…"

"Yeah, but they weren't always that way," said Mokuba, butting in before anyone else could tell his brother to pipe down and go back to playing dead. He looked up at the group. "When he was first designing the Mark II, he nearly cut his finger off on the prototype."

Seto's eyes shot open. "Mokuba that's enough!"

Mokuba ignored him, grinning and picked up his brother's unbloodied hand. "See? Here you can still see the scar from all the stitches!"

"Let go of my hand!"

Joey quickly put his palm out and caught Seto by his shoulder before he could get up any further and pushed him back down onto the floor. "DEAD BODIES DON'T MOVE!"

"It's alright, Kaiba," Atem said gently, "We'll find your killer and then you can rest easy and haunt more than just the floor."

"Atem, Kaiba's dead," said Duke, "Technically, he can't hear or talk."

Atem shrugged. "We have a bond that goes far beyond life and death. And besides," he added with a wink, "I too am a ghost."

"Sort of," said Yugi, cringing. "You're a bit too solid to be a ghostly ghost."

Atem nodded, conceding. "Sort of."

Duke straightened up and gestured towards the doorway. "Well this should be easy then. Wherever the duel disk is should reveal the murderer!"

Serenity crouched down and leaned forward. "Hey – wait, what's this?"

"What's what?" asked Joey.

Serenity inched forward, and reached past Kaiba's head for the phone stealthily hidden away under the desk.

"What's Kaiba's phone doing there?" asked Téa.

"Maybe it fell out of his pocket when he fell," said Atem.

"Or maybe he was on it and got a picture or a recording of his killer!" said Duke.

"Oh! Heck yeah, good find, Serenity," said Joey. "I'll take that!"

Yugi held up his hands. "Oh, wait just a second – time out." He glanced down a moment at Kaiba. "I told Kaiba, as a bribe for having him play the dead body, was that if no one was in here he could do emails or whatever while he was on the floor."

"Eh, sorry Yug'," said Joey. "No can do. Dead bodies don't write emails."

Seto's blinked his eyes open and leveled one of the darkest looks on Joey that any of them had seen in a long time. Tristan, never one to be intimidated by any of Kaiba's past antics, took a step back, wide-eyed.

"Joey, this was something mutually agreed upon," said Yugi.

"I might've if Kaiba, you know, was cooperating, but so far he's been a movin', speakin' corpse, and we can't have that. So Moneybags has to go back to bein' absolutely dead." Joey pocketed the phone. "This is evidence, Yug'!"

He looked back down at Kaiba. "Sorry, Rich Boy. Play your part and you can Kaiba Corp later."

Seto huffed again, rolled his eyes, and closed them again.

Tristan clapped his hands together and gestured to the door. "So….who's up for a scavenger hunt?"

Yugi smiled and waited until he was the last one in the study before turning back to Kaiba. "Sorry. I tried."

A hand raised up off the floor in a flippant whatever gesture before dropping back down with a thump, and then Yugi exited, following the others back out through the hall and towards the living room.

Once Seto was sure no one was in the office or in the close vicinity of it, the unbloodied hand moved again and clicked the 'KC' pin on his jacket's lapel.

"They're enjoying this far too much."

Roland's chuckle sounded through his earpiece.

"They took my phone."

"What a shame."

Roland didn't sound apologetic at all, and Seto scowled even more. Then again, they rigged little cameras everywhere. Roland watched it all happen, so it wasn't news to him in the slightest.

"The tablet was supposed to be in here for this very purpose. Did Mokuba make off with it before we got back from the office?"

"No sir. I have it down here, with me."

Seto opened his eyes again and propped himself up on his elbows. "Why?! What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

"Sleep, I imagine. You are supposed to be dead, after all."

Seto glared out at the wall in front of him.

"Besides, sir, a ghost needn't worry about company matters anymore. I will of course, do my best to continue in your stead and honor your memory until Mokuba is of age to man the helm if he wishes to."

"Traitor."

"Lie back down, Mr. Kaiba, or I'll have to radio your murderer to come back and finish the job."

Seto hissed but sank down and resumed his proper position. "You're having far too much fun."

"Yes. Yes I am."