Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 299 Assault on the Palace!

Guess those giant sentry statues sitting at the entrance weren't intimidating enough. Perhaps they're more an advertisement of the wealth within than a deterrent in the best of times, but especially when there's a madman running amuck with a creepy monster in his wake stealing everything he can get his hands on. I'm not saying that the architecture isn't impressive, or huge statues aren't cool, but maybe the pharaoh that commissioned those things should have considered what statement they were really making. I'm considering some fun aesthetic bullshit for my new house, but if I flanked my front door with a pair of massive expensive carvings, I'd expect at least a couple of people in the neighborhood to think about taking me down a peg. 

Yup, she's lying on a cot behind those bars; so much for her getting a proper ROOM, I guess. 

As Priest Seto stares at her sleeping on the other side of the bars, backlit like the creeper he is, one of the guards to her cell says she's out cold, and the doctors say she'll recover well with some rest. The "CLANK" sound effect that accompanies his closer look is a poor indicator that the door is being opened for him by a guard (I had to look at the next page to confirm. Mystery Lady just keeps on snoozing.

Once he's in the room, standing over her, he wonders how much pain will need to color her blue eyes before her white dragon is released into the sky. 

Keep your mediocre sadistic poetry to yourself, please. 

With a hard stare, Priest Seto makes a silent vow to make the white dragon his own servant, even if he has to sacrifice the wielder's life. Well, I guess we know now why he didn't just take her to be inducted into the priesthood. Dude wants to take a woman's extraordinary talents/achievements and claim them as his own. Tale as old as time. 

We see the full moon through the bars on a window, hanging over the palace. Yami's Millennium Puzzle is buzzing around his neck, restless. He grasps it and peers down to where he holds it just below his chin, looking a little concerned as he repeats that he's got a bad feeling, and wonders if it's a premonition from the puzzle. In a timely manner, a couple of guards burst into the room in which he's sitting at a desk to alert him to some terrible news: they found a bunch of corpses in a tavern, ripped to shreds, and the blood is still warm. EW. The guards suspect this is the work of thief!Bakura, of course. At first, Yami looks alarmed at the news, then adopts a more stoic expression when he insists to himself that he KNEW thief!Bakura must be near. 

Sure, you can turn that vague sense of dread into a specific vision. I definitely WON'T call you on it. 

Much more fitting as a title page than the panels above, I have to say.

Thief!Bakura says it would be easy to just kill Akhenaden and take his Millennium Item right now, but he proposes a partnership. That's right, he suggests that Akhenaden could work for HIM instead of the pharaoh. Gritting his teeth, Akhenaden is utterly speechless at the moment, probably because he's still reeling from his spine splitting like the stone behind him, but that's just a guess. Thief!Bakura doesn't bother to wait for an answer anyway, because he has a lot more adjacent stuff to say, like he's found the Millennium Ring he's wearing can infuse a part of the owner's soul into an object. Just HOW and WHY did thief!Bakura come to this conclusion? No clue; it's not exactly published in a peer reviewed journal of any kind. Even one of the less trustworthy ones. Just thrown out there without so much as a reference to whatever experiment or accidental finding thief!Bakura stumbled into. Anyway, he asks Akhenaden what he thinks would happen if he put a piece of his soul into the Millennium Eye, favoring the possibility it would make Akhenaden into his pawn with a chuckle. 

Akhenaden stutters that he's loyal to the pharaoh, so that would NEVER work. Golden eye glinting, he begins to summon another monster from one of the unbroken slabs on the wall. What looks like the head and shoulders of an armored cat emerges from the stone, only for an annoyed-looking thief!Bakura to yell that he's sick of these sorts of wimps as his Diabound issues a blast at it from a massive palm. The armored cat is incinerated, and Akhenaden gurgles in response. 

Thief!Bakura is a lot more serious when he threatens that he could tear Akhenaden limb from limb at this very moment, but he says it wouldn't be enough of a punishment for Kul Elna. 

No doubt a feature of that "sin" he was talking about earlier. Thief!Bakura confirms this with his sardonic question about if Akhenaden can still hear the death screams of those people of Kul Elna, the village of thieves, of which he is the sole survivor. I see he came by his thieving talents honest. The revelation that thief!Bakura came from Kul Elna takes Akhenaden aback, but remains silent as he stares at thief!Bakura, who vows that this city will drown in blood now too. He adds that Akhenaden will be the one to spill it too, when Akhenaden becomes the ruler of the shadows, which is... a foreboding statement, to say the least. Akhenaden is definitely sweating about it. Or all his shattered bones. Or both.

A scream issues from the shrine, and the confused guards recognize the voice carrying it. Yami hears it too and rushes out to a balcony to investigate. 

Looks like the senpais noticed each other.

As he's running along the tops of the columns, thief!Bakura thinks at Yami that one of the priests belong to him now, wondering what the punk pharaoh will do about it. He raises a bloodied hand to show a shocked Yami, mentally asserting that the fall of Yami's kingdom has begun. 

Priest Seto seems to have not noticed the commotion as he strolls out of the palace, until one of the guards calls to him to come along quickly, citing Akhenaden in the Shrine of Wedju as the reason. Immediately, Priest Seto expresses tense disbelief, eyes wide and teeth clenched. Meanwhile, the bulk of guards yell back and forth about how thief!Bakura was here, that he must be hiding in the palace, commands to find him and calls to bring back the guard in the city to surround the palace, etc. One guard leaps on a horse to perform the latter duty, galloping out under an arch that no one has noticed thief!Bakura is perched upon. Well, until the smug bastard leers down at the rider, and by the look on the riders face, leaps right down on top of him. 

That pain must be a hazy drop in the bucket at this point, but DAMN. That looks AGONIZING.

Kalim (this poor guy, I keep having to look back up his name XD) assures everyone that Akhenaden's just unconscious and not dead. Priest Seto growls through gritted teeth fuming over that scum thief!Bakura for first targeting Mahado and now Akhenaden. I'm surprised he even remembers that guy he seemed to hate so much for literally no reason, let alone recalls his death as a BAD thing. Probably the nicest thought Priest Seto has ever had of the dude. 

We get another shot of Akhenaden with his eye half out, and Kalim says it looks like thief!Bakura tried to steal it. Priest Seto questions the fact that he left WITHOUT the item, which is probably the first coherent thought he's ever had about anything. He doesn't dwell on it, though, yelling that thief!Bakura is still nearby and ordering someone or other to get him. 

But thief!Bakura is already galloping past scattered guards with little resistance - they just weakly yell at him to stop as he laughs it it up, breezing on by. The guards assemble in a very THIN formation in front of another arch, their spears held up defensively, calling for each other not to let him pass. With a smug grin from thief!Bakura, they are all shoved back in a ring around him, blood spurting from disembodied limbs and heads. 

Whatcha lookin' at there? Surely nothing is capable of turning your overinflated head now!

Try Yami, speeding out behind thief!Bakura on a white steed, prior subversion of light and dark color associations be damned. Though thief!Bakura lost his grin for a moment, it's back in full force now. He's no doubt tickled pink that the pharaoh himself is chasing him down. As he gallops up behind thief!Bakura, Yami makes one of those high-elbowed gestures that indicates he's chosen a card to summon with a Duel Disk, thinking thief!Bakura won't escape this time. 

All he needs is some shining armor. Or... any armor, really. Looking a little vulnerable there.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The action in the final third of this chapter promises A LOT in the next one, and possibly beyond. With a rematch between an upgraded thief!Bakura/Diabound and Yami's swapped out god coming up, I assume we're about to get a better idea of how powerful thief!Bakura has REALLY gotten with the Millennium Ring. The way thief!Bakura tosses around and minces the guards doesn't really give us a great idea of what he's capable in a legit fight, considering they weren't holding up any better against him BEFORE he picked up the new powers. I'm both excited and nervous to see what kind of new challenges Yami faces just days after the first encounter, considering he hasn't done much in that time except sit on his ass. Or stand. Occasionally. 

I appreciate that thief!Bakura was clever enough to make it LOOK like he was trying to steal the Millennium Eye before he left, that Kalim made the very understandable mistake of assuming this was the case, and that Priest Seto had the mind to question that due to thief!Bakura's escape without it. He was also way too concerned with catching thief!Bakura to ponder to much on this thread. This all makes Everyone in the situation fallible, but in a logical way, while not dumbing them down for the sake expediency or lengthening a thread in the plot. I can think of another mangaka who could take this leaf out of Yu-Gi-Oh in particular. Not naming names, but...

It's interesting that thief!Bakura plans to implant a part of his soul in the Millennium Eye, presumably to control Akhenaden, since his spirit counterpart in the ring pulled the same "horcrux" shit with the puzzle to allow himself to get in the Memory World. I'm curious as to whether that piece of his soul STAYED in the eye too, if it's still there. Is it the malevolent presence that Pegasus sensed when HE had the eye? Is it possible that, given the right circumstances, there could be MORE spirits of Bakura running around all at once? 

Gracious, what a HORRID thought. It'll keep me up at night.