-Pegasus's Helipad Atop His Private Island Manor
"Yugi-boy!" Pegasus nearly shouted as little Yugi stepped from the Industrial Illusions business helicopter.
Yugi smiled genially at the approaching billionaire, adjusting his suitcases in his grip. Pegasus J. Crawford strode gleefully nearer.
"I was happy to get your letter, Mister Crawford," was Yugi's timid greeting.
"Not nearly as ecstatic as I am to see you once again, my boy!" With that, Pegasus unabashedly threw his arms around the small teen, lifted him a foot off the ground, and spun Yugi in circles, suitcases and all.
When Yugi's feet again found solid ground, his eyes were spinning and his suitcases quite unbalancing. The boy collapsed comically to the ground as Pegasus continued dancing in circles. Eventually, Pegasus noticed the out-of-commission kid sprawled out on his helipad.
"Come, come! Boys, collect Master Yugi's bags and take them to his room," Pegasus commanded, extending a hand down to his floored guest. "Yugi-boy, I've got so much to show and tell you and so little time to do it in! Come!"
Crocketts, who had waited behind for his employer, finally found a moment in which to slide a logical word. "Master Pegasus, the flight from Japan is very long, so I'm sure your guest would prefer to listen to your tales over dinner."
Pegasus stopped short. "Ah, how right you are, Mister Crocketts! Yugi, I shall tell you everything over an exquisite dinner. Follow me!"
Little Yugi sighed, watching his suitcases disappear into the body of Pegasus Manor before his happy host; he could already smell the exhausting adventure ahead.
-Dining Room, Pegasus Manor
"Yugi-boy, did you enjoy your meal?" Pegasus asked, just as he had after every single course in the incredible 7-course meal he had practically had poured down his guest's throat.
"Yes, Mr. Crawford. And I am very, very full now, thank you," Yugi replied drowsily.
"Please, my boy, call me 'Pegasus.' And now, perhaps, you are ready to hear my story?"
Yugi nodded to the spirit he felt hovering just beside him and turned expectantly to the head of the great dining room table. "Yes, we're listening," he answered.
"Well, I guess I should start at the very beginning. After my tournament, I was sadly bedridden."
"That reminds me! I'm sorry. I've been meaning to ask you what happened to your Millennium Eye…" Yugi asked nervously, hoping it wouldn't be too rude to inquire.
"Hmm," the American began. "My Eye was…taken," he finished hesitantly.
Yugi's brow furrowed, but Pegasus pushed on, completely determined to share his good news.
"So, because of this," Pegasus restarted, gesturing vaguely to the left side of his face, "I found myself turning my mind once again to the problem that had previously plagued me – How could I reunite myself with my beloved?
"I once again turned to technology, but technology applied this time to occult arts. I found that reversing an ultraviolet light frequency in a graveyard produces quite the frightening otherworld projector. After many more tries, I found the perfect combination of computer electronics and otherworld spirit guiding relics to be able to open up a black hole, of sorts, over an item which housed a soul. The problem, then, became retrieving the soul from the hole. I thought it thru over many months and finally created a reanimation project."
"Reanimation!?" cried the teen.
"Not in the Dr. Frankenstein way you're thinking, I assure you. Basically, what the machine does is copies the life functions of the being I'm sending into the otherworld (which is where the black hole leads) and applies it to the retrieved soul that the one who journeys into the otherworld, or the 'hunter' as I like to say, brings back with him."
"So, you're copying a body and putting another soul into the copy?" Yugi asked, trying very hard to understand this complex theory.
"Not at all. The retrieved soul returns to the body it remembers from when it was last alive. Take these hamsters, for example. Which one was retrieved from the otherworld?" asked the host as Crocketts handed a cage filled with squeaking rodents down to him.
Yugi slid the cage in front of himself and studied each hamster thru the wires of the cushy cage. "I can't tell the difference between them!"
"You're more than welcome to hold them," offered his host.
Yugi unlatched the cage and gently scooped up two small beasts that had not yet reached their adult years. "They both look completely fine and totally real to me."
Pegasus smiled. "Both of those hamsters were retrieved from the otherworld when they were just two weeks old."
"What!?" Yugi jumped, almost dropping both hamsters he held. "No way! They grew up?"
"Yes. Their development has been completely normal, except for the part when they died just two weeks after birth." Pegasus stood and reached into the cage himself, pulling out the oldest and widest rodent. "This is their mother. She is the one who retrieved the souls of her four departed children."
"Wow…" Yugi liked what he was seeing. "How does the soul retrieving work exactly?"
Pegasus replaced the elderly hamster and the cage latch. "Well, that I can not truly tell you."
"Why? Is it a secret?" Yugi teased.
"I can not tell because I simply have not been to the otherworld before."
"Oh," was all Yugi could think to say. He had hoped he would not be jumping blind into another crazy Shadow Realm adventure, but that seemed like just what this was shaping up to be.
"What I can tell you about soul retrieving, though, is still helpful, I believe. The journey will remove the hunter completely from his consciousness, and, once the hunter has retrieved the soul or souls he was sent to find, the hunter returns unharmed to his own mind. The actual recovery of the lost soul seems to be will-based. See, in the case of this mother hamster and her four children, one immediately recognized her, and its body started to form very soon after the mother was sent into the otherworld. The other three, apparently, needed some persuading, because, as far as I have found, lost or displaced souls are often completely ambivalent to the living."
"Another huge plus for this mission." Yugi was suddenly very tired.
"As you've seen, though, soul replacement can be done! And hamsters were a perfect choice for the initial experiment. In order to get a soul interested in living again, great emotion sometimes needs to be accessed, and hamsters, as animals go, are actually quite emotional creatures."
Yugi dropped the two hamsters back into their cage, sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "I just don't know about this. Yami, why don't you take over?"
The boy's round eyes closed gently. Sharp, angular eyes blinked back open.
"What's the catch, Pegasus?" the Pharaoh asked in a no-nonsense, no-jokes voice.
"The catch, Pharaoh-boy, is that if your soul fails to return with little Yugi's on his first attempt to retrieve you, there will be no trying again. I will have sent you to an otherworld that you can not escape from. And that means no discovering your past life."
The Pharaoh simply sat and stared hard at the American man for a number of minutes. Pegasus watched the hamsters clambering noisily over one another in their cage.
Finally, the Pharaoh stood abruptly. "You'll have our decision in the morning." He started for the door behind Pegasus which led to the hallways beyond.
"Pharaoh, please remember that your decision affects more people than simply yourself."
"I'm well aware that my decision affects you," the ancient soul snapped.
"No," the billionaire began, rising and turning to look directly into the ancient king's eyes. "I will do this with or without you, but please consider the strain of unlocking and protecting a Millennium Item on your young host." Pegasus looked steadily at the young man for a moment before inclining his head gracefully and whispering, "Good night, Pharaoh." The mysterious and brilliant man then started to hum, sliding silently into the hallways of his expansive manor.