Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 124 It's Time!

It is? But I thought Thanksgiving (American brand, anyway) wasn't until Thursday. I know some people prep early, but I wasn't aware there was anything to do two days ahead of time. Maybe certain brines require a couple of days to soak into the turkey. Or are there still decorations to put up? I can't think of anything else that it could possibly be time for, but that may be because I'm hungry and I can't stop thinking of feasts during the upcoming holiday. There's probably SOMETHING I'm forgetting here...

No, it wasn't this. I couldn't ever forget that horrified look on the douchey face of Bandit Keith as it finally hits him that he lost his ASS. See what avoiding dueling for this whole time gets you? Bupkis!

Jonouchi is elated as he jumps out of his seat and shouts to the sky that he won, much to the jerk Keith's chagrin. Yami and Anzu run toward him, looking like they share every bit of his happiness. Jonouchi thinks of Shizuka as the initial moment of winning wears off and he smiles at really having done it. Yami yells out Jonouchi's name, while Anzu calls him their hero.

*Tries to hold back tears*

Yami corrects Jonouchi, telling him that he had a Duelist's Courage (TM), fighting alone to come out victorious. Anzu winks when she says that Jonouchi won without the help of anyone, so he can proud of it. Wordlessly, Jonouchi reaches into his pocket and draws out the card and Handkerchief Mai gave him, internally thanking her, because he seriously owes her now.

He looks to Yami now, apologizing, because though he knows he's not out of Duelist Kingdom yet, that felt like the final battle for him. Anzu asks if the fact that both Yami and Jonouchi won their matches means they have to fight, and I don't know why she doesn't already know the answer to that question.

Yami states flatly that him and Jonouchi dueling against one another won't be necessary, because their goal is to beat Pegasus first and foremost, and dueling more in front of Pegasus would only expose more of their tactics. That's all well and good for you, Yami, but this isn't YOUR tournament. YOU don't get to decide how things proceed. Pegasus makes the rules here, remember? But Anzu continues the pretense that YAMI is in charge when she says that she guesses that Yami and Jonouchi fighting would only hurt.

STOP TALKING, GUYS. You're just GIVING Pegasus reasons to make the final match happen as planned anyway.

Okay, I guess we're just ignoring the fact that Yami isn't the authority he's posturing as right now. It's not like Pegasus is speaking up or anything...

After a pause, Jonouchi looks down and says that he's known since before they reached the island that Yami is the only one who can beat Pegasus, but he squeezes his eyes shut and begins to protest. He asks Yami if he can really be weighed down by Jonouchi's problems too, in addition to trying to fight for himself and his grandfather. Yami is of course willing to take on the extra weight, smiling like it ain't no thing. He says he'll win because he's fighting for Jonouchi, just like Jonouchi won by fighting for his sister. Jonouchi is aghast.

Pegasus stands up dramatically and tells one of his Secret Service Servants to prepare his duel stage. The SSS protests that Yami and Jonouchi haven't faced each other yet, but Pegasus says they don't need to and that it would be pointless. He's come to this conclusion because he sees the strong bond of trust connecting their hearts, making Yami's spirit all the stronger for taking on his friend's wishes too.

That seems like an strange decision from a man who is all kind of down with the mental torture it might cause these two to fight each other, but hey. Pegasus thinks it's strange too, because he's compelled to face Yami's big fighting spirit head-on as the King of Duelist Kingdom. What other opportunity are you going to get for facing anyone as the king of your own self-professed kingdom anyway? Yami glares up at him from below with his arms crossed, while Pegasus mirrors his young opponent's pose, perfectly willing to grant Yami's wish. He announces that the final match of Duelist Kingdom is about to begin.

And here I was thinking Kaiba was just in love with Yami. I guess he elicits that reaction in quite a few people.

Meanwhile, Keith is dragging his feet along a hallway, cursing and chuckling as he bids whomever he's after to just wait. He's fully convinced they have yet to see who has the last laugh. Pegasus emerges from a nearby doorway, flanked with Secret Service Servants, when Keith swings around a corner in front of them. Pegasus looks completely bored, despite the fact that Keith is holding a KNIFE as he chuckles that they're finally meeting face to face. I guess he forgot that they already met before on that night he was humiliated.

The SSS to Pegasus's left shouts Keith's name and reaches into his jacket, but Pegasus holds out his arm to stop him, saying there's no need for weapons. Keith tells Pegasus that he's only going to demand the prize right now once, but I don't believe him for a second. Pegasus scoffs at how he sees the old American "prize king" now, and says it's no wonder to him that he lost to a boy who'd never participated in a tournament before now.

Keith yells at him to shut the fuck up, and OF COURSE says to give him the prize before Pegasus has to get hurt. Pegasus is as unconcerned as is possible to be when he tells Keith that he's glad they had this chat, because according to tournament rules, Keith has to be punished. Pegasus asks if Keith really thought he could get away with cheating by pulling cards out of his wristband right in FRONT of him. Keith just grins, because he doesn't give a fuck. It's legal by HIS rules, and that's all that matters.

Pegasus mutters that Keith must have lost his duelist's mind back when he was beaten by Pegasus the first time, then asks Keith if he's ready. A weird atmosphere swirls around, confusing Keith.

Clearly a REAL American would be totally thrilled by this. Although even THEY would be just as horrified as Keith is about how the gun-hand is moving on its own, to point straight at his temple. His thumb twitches with a click, and a gunshot is heard over a panel containing nothing but speed lines and a spatter of blood. As Pegasus walks on ahead, his SSS lags behind to stare open-mouthed at Keith, laying in the hallway silently with only his legs visible.

Pegasus has donned a hard look as he continues on his way. He'll let the staff clean up the dead body.

Meanwhile, Yami is going through the cards in his deck before he declares that they're all in order. Surely that's going to be all messed up by a mandatory shuffling, though. He lovingly strokes the cards as he thinks about how he trusts them. Then, he takes the digital camera out to tell Sugoroku that he's FINALLY going to face Pegasus to get his soul back.

Sugoroku warns him that fighting Pegasus will be the biggest challenge he's faced so far, and that losing sight of oneself in times of difficulty will only lead him towards defeat. His advice? For Yami to look within himself when times get rough, because that's where he'll find his answers to troubles. Yami says he understands this incredibly vague platitude, which is a good thing, because I'm not sure anyone else in his position would.

Oh hey! You guys are awfully late to the party.

Honda gives Yami a thumbs-up for making it this far. Jonouchi irritably asks where Honda and Bakura have been all this time, and Honda tells him that they were out all night trying securing Mokuba, who is resting in one of the rooms. I hope no one finds him and locks him up again while you guys are away... Kaiba is apparently locked away somewhere else, and therefore they weren't able to gather him up too. Honda tells Yami what he and everyone else already knew: Mokuba's soul is gone and the only one who can get it back is Yami. Thanks for the reiteration.

Yami recalls how Mokuba asked him at the end of Death-T if Kaiba would come back, and Yami assured him that it would happen. He renews his vow now that the brothers WILL be reunited, picturing them in his head as he does so.

From behind Honda, Bakura tells Yami to not only beat Pegasus for Mokuba, but also to KILL Pegasus. Honda gives him a sidelong look, thinking that Bakura has been acting awfully strange since last night, and wondering if he's the only one who notices this. He decides this isn't the time to bring it up, and turns back to Yami to say he KNOWS he can beat Pegasus. Yami agrees, because he read the script.

Mr. Croquet announces that it's time, and gestures to the table where Yami will be facing Pegasus, asking him to step forward and take his seat. Yami holds his deck up like the award he's already bound to win, and Jonouchi is raring to get on with this. As Yami takes his walk toward the duel stage, his friends all call out in support of him, wishing him good luck and to kick ass.

I guess Pegasus couldn't be bothered to go down stairs or something, so he had to bring Yami to him.

No principals, no student teachers.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm sorry to say that it was so DISTRACTING for me that Yami was so authoritative on how he and Jonouchi could just skip their duel at the end, and even more so that this point of view was validated by Pegasus. Yami had NO right to be making those kinds of decisions for a tournament that's not his, and it bugged me that he was so certain he could. I understand this could sound like I'm just being a stuffy adult about it, and I suppose it partly IS the issue. This is a KID, who has not set up or made any decisions in regards to this big, complicated event. His tone suggests a level of arrogance that is indicative of this "always right" position that KT has been putting Yami in for a long time. Even in the case of his previous duel with Mai, Yami wasn't so much WRONG as STRESSED and disconnected from his true Yami infallibility, and even then he didn't suffer any consequences from it. There's an annoying Mary-Sue-ism going on here that makes it so that Yami can't ever be acknowledged to be flawed or wrong unless it ends up benefiting him in the end.

More than this, though, Yami has seen first-hand just how far his adult opponent is willing to go to stack the deck against him, so to speak. He should NOT be assuming that those making the rules of the tournament are going to give him his way on this, because logically, Pegasus might have made him duel Jonouchi just to stick it to both of them. The fact that his conclusions were so contrary to all his past experiences in this tournament is mind-boggling in a frustrating way.

Not that the duel between Yami and Jonouchi should have happened. I think it's a good thing that it didn't, because that would have just been unnecessary drama in my eyes. But Pegasus should have been shown to be the primary decision-maker here, not Yami. Yami and Jonouchi should have been having a conversation around the perceived inevitability of facing each other and reassuring each other that they will be friends through it all, interrupted by Croquet telling them that it's Pegasus's wish he face Yami instead. That would have been more meaningful and added more tension that could have been diffused in just the one chapter. Instead, THIS happened, making me gag every step of the way.

At least Keith got himself the grand exit you would expect from him, one that I'm not surprised went down. It's not overtly clear he's dead here, but I think we can all assume that the mind-over-matter handgun did its job without shedding any actual blood, despite what the panel depicting the gunshot suggested. It'll make explaining the death to the police easy for Pegasus, seeing as how it can't possibly be murder.