Microchipped trading cards.
Jonouchi points and promises the next hole he makes will be in Keith's heart, which I hope is metaphorical, because being convicted of murder isn't how I want to see his story end. Keith growls and thinks that the smug-looking Jonouchi opposite him won't get away with this, while the manga reminds us what the score is. Keith is only 100 points ahead with his 1250 score.
Yami grins and congratulates Jonouchi on his good work, and Anzu squeals about how Jonouchi is actually holding his own against the US champion. Silently, she asserts that he can do it, for the sake of his sister. Anzu looks over at Yami as he starts to philosophize about card games having an ebb and flow, the ones who control the pattern being the winners. He thinks that Jonouchi's move shook Keith mentally as well as injured his points, so the flow is now being directed toward Jonouchi. Yami says that Jonouchi can do it aloud. Glad you've been convinced, Yami.
Jonouchi shouts that it's his turn now, drawing a card. It's Garoozis, which makes him internally chuckle as he smirks. He plays a card face down on the table to begin, wagging his finger at Keith and warning him to be careful of the big bad trap card. Keith isn't amused, growling while he questions whether Jonouchi telling him this is supposed to be some kind of stupid mind game. Jonouchi doesn't answer, putting his Axe Raider back in defense. But... isn't Stop Defense permanent? I went back to the graveyard duel with Kozuka, and it LOOKS like the card might say it's a continuous trap, but Kozuka's thumb is in the way. I could be full of shit too, so there's that.
Jonouchi's final card is a new monster in attack.
Instead, Keith draws a card while announcing his turn. He calls out to his spider tank to target Jonouchi's Garoozis with its missiles in an attack Keith calls "Shock and Awe". Jonouchi doesn't seem to exhibit either of these emotions as the doors open in the missile compartments and they launch at Garoozis, creating a lots of flashy explosions when they reach the target. When the virtual smoke clears and he doesn't see Garoozis in death, Keith assumes at first that the holographic corpse was just obliterated.
Jonouchi corrects him with a grin as he chuckles and turns over the trap card Keith just activated.
Yami is stoked when he acknowledges the lead Jonouchi has now, though small. Enthused too, Anzu says that he can win, then asks Yami if that's the correct assumption to make, because clearly she has no way of telling for herself, then encourages Jonouchi to go. It's a whole big mess of a speech bubble. She contemplates a hypothesis that's kind of out there; that the cards sensed Jonouchi's intentions to save his sister. Anzu, are you LOSING IT, girl? Yami just thinks at Jonouchi not to give Keith an inch and keep him on the run.
On the balcony above, Pegasus is thinking about how strange it is that Jonouchi's now ahead, considering he's nowhere in the same league as Keith in skill, deck strength, or strategy. He wonders what is making up the difference, recalling that Keith disappeared after his defeat at the hands of the creator of the game. With a bottle in his hand if the panel is correct. Pegasus had heard that Keith turned to drugs and alcohol, and an underground gambling circuit where he had nothing left to lose. A panel showing an out-of-it Keith with a gun to his head suggests that there was some Russian Roulette involved, because we haven't had enough of that crap in this manga.
Counseling, Keith. Get some.
Below, Keith is chuckling maniacally, which prompts Pegasus to consider when despair and revenge cross a certain line into an irresistible power. Keith is still chuckling when Jonouchi asks him what he's grinning about. Lowering his head to peer at Jonouchi over the tops of his lenses, Keith asks if Jonouchi has ever risked his life before. He points his forefinger at his own temple like a gun and asks if Jonouchi has ever seen Hell. Jonouchi glares, saying nothing in response to this.
Keith says that not caring who you have to kill as long as you save your own life is the definition of Hell he's working with, and it's just like the Duelist Kingdom they're in now. He asserts that there's only one way out of his own personal Hell, and it's right through Pegasus. Pegasus doesn't have anything to say any more than Jonouchi did, staring down at Keith with a blank expression. Keith concludes that he'll do anything to get to the point of going through Pegasus, cackling some more.
Finally, Jonouchi responds with a promise to kick Keith back down into Hell, grinning cockily. Keith says it's his turn and slaps down a face down card in front of him, followed by...
No one seems to be laughing with me though. Yami is staring horrified and agape at the creature. Keith says that this is going to be fun for him now, because he gets to gamble, Jonouchi questioning what that means. Keith explains that Barrel Dragon has three revolvers, one on each shoulder and the head, which are each loaded with three bullets. The chambers spin every attack, meaning that the chance of firing is a fifty-fifty chance. Jonouchi notes the similarity this monster has to Russian Roulette with terror on his face.
This poor boy is just HAUNTED by Russian Roulette. It will not leave him alone!
Keith alerts everyone to the attack and begins the Russian Roulette spin. Each of the chambers on the guns whir as they spin, and Keith throws in the nice little tidbit that if all three guns go off, he can kill three monsters at once. That's nice Keith. When the chambers start to slow their spin, Yami shouts this out, and then each of the chambers clicks into place.
Jonouchi's horror has turned to a glower as he thinks that he can play that game if that's the way Keith wants it.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The beginning went at a faster pace than I've come to expect from this comic, I have to say. Thinking about it, I'm not too surprised by this, given that most of what Keith and Jonouchi have to say to one another are short insults. As a result the first few pages were filled mostly with actual plays, and had very little to do with the characters having a conversation.
It started to slow when we entered Pegasus's head, where he read the minds of the opponents. This isn't terrible, considering Keith DID need quite a bit more development behind him, being one of the more one-dimensional people who have gotten this far. Hell, Ryota Kajiki had more to him that Keith did, and he didn't even make it into the finals. We hadn't delved far enough into Keith's past to understand the depth of his struggle, so any look at that was welcome.
But the way in which we got a glimpse was obscure, at best. Pegasus has the ability to read minds, but the way he speaks about what happened to Keith during the time he was "disappeared" suggests that Pegasus is still talking from the rumors he's heard rather than the information he could pull from Keith's brain right then and there. Keith himself alludes to these shadowy experiences in the next few panels, but he still doesn't CONFIRM these rumors that Pegasus heard. The deep depression and fall from significance that Keith went through still feels largely unexplored because of this, despite how we can probably trust those rumors to be true, given how Keith's gestures after the fact are so reminiscent of Pegasus's recollection of the hearsay.
I can't say whether that's good or bad, because I don't know if we'll get more information later in another chapter. All I can say is that it was just STRANGE. Why have a character who can read minds only speculate about a another character's past when that other character is RIGHT THERE?
*shrug*
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