He has this whole deliberation in his head on what "power" is, and comes to the conclusion that's it's the only thing you can rely on, that's what! Not really a definition, but maybe he's going somewhere with this. Kaiba's view is that everyone else in a fight is an enemy, and your own strength/power is the weapon you use to protect yourself and your domain. He believes that he can only count on himself here, just like in real life, but as he watches the decimation of the opponent across from him brought on by Yami's use of his own cards to that effect, he wonders if the power of unity is actually greater than the power of being alone.
Depends on the situation, really. In some instances, like in creative projects, doing all the heavy lifting means making sure everything ends up how you want it to and you don't have to worry about everyone else screwing it up. In others, like a situation in which you are in danger of being splattered all over a lobby floor from several stories high if you make the smallest of miscalculations, having a buddy there with your back means having twice the brainpower and twice the chance of leaving the whole disaster alive. You know, it's best to pick the right tool for the right job.
Not that I'm calling either one of these fine boys a TOOL or anything...
Anyway, Tallie groans about losing 2000 life points, and calls Shorty a shrimp whom he was depending on for support. Shorty warns Tallie not to call him a shrimp again, and it's at this point obvious to Yami that cracks are beginning to form in their frame of teamwork. He plans on exploiting these cracks by prying them wider and forming rifts. Of course, this means that he and Kaiba have to work together to take advantage of the newly formed weakness. To his left, Kaiba looks forward with stony concentration.
Tallie growls and reminds everybody that his turn's not over yet before settling into contemplation about how he doesn't have any defense out right now, making him vulnerable to the Blue Eyes White Dragon again, not to mention that bomb on the edge of his skylight pane. He decides that he can't rely on Shorty anymore, and grits his teeth as he pulls a new card from his hand. It's obvious to him that he's got to look out for himself.
So, Tallie slaps the card face down and ends his turn.
Side note: the scans for this chapter appear to be cut off on the bottom of most of the pages. I hope there aren't pieces of dialogue I'm missing because of it, and I don't think THAT much is cut off, but you never know. Full disclosure and all that.
Kaiba orders his Blue Eyes White
Tallie grins and chuckles, revealing his face down card to be Mask of Impregnability, a giant iron face with two palms covering the lower two-thirds beneath the eyes. He says that this mask will act as his shield and it's no lie, since the Burst Stream is deflected successfully by the mask. Kaiba just looks bored by this fact, almost like he saw it coming. You know, almost. Tallie gloats about how even Kaiba's dragon couldn't get through his defenses, and it's too bad that it was obvious he would try something like that.
Yami is excited that Kaiba seems to be purposefully eroding the trust between their opponents. Kaiba glares forward again, scoffing, and Tallie curses Kaiba for how Shorty is giving him the distrustful side-eye right now. Shorty declares it's his turn, drawing a card, but he immediately seems to regret the one he drew. Why would you put something in there that you didn't want to draw, dude?
He contemplates the huge disadvantage of having the Blue Eyes White Dragon across from his team, and decides to stake everything on his next move. He reveals a card (not sure if it's the one he wasn't thrilled for) like he's trying to convince himself that he's NOT relieved to have one to play at all, and it turns out to be a spell card called "Chosen One". A card named after THAT trope can't possibly be anything but amazing.
Kaiba and Yami gape in disbelief as Shorty starts to explain what it is that the "Chosen One" card actually does, other than be a hand-picked savior by some omnipotent force (*coughstorytellercough*). He gets to play three cards, one being a monster and the other two being something else. Each card appears in a triangular formation, and a spinning top adorned with a mask on one side. Wherever the mask points at the end of its spin is the card it picks, and if it's a monster, Shorty gets to summon it immediately. He asks if everyone is ready, as if he cares, and then demands the top start to spin. As it does, Kaiba silently freaks about the possibility of Shorty being lucky and being able to summon a high-level monster in one turn. Yami is just wide-eyed and sweaty.
Round and round the top goes, and Shorty contemplates the choices of cards he laid out for it; two spell cards and the most powerful monster card he has. The top begins to slow down, and eventually the mask on its side faces....
Tallie congratulates Shorty on a job well done, and after a prideful giggle, Shorty assures him that he'll handle the duel from this point on. Yami is discouraged that Shorty not only won the gamble, but the trust of his fair-weather friend back, and wonders what's going to happen now. Kaiba sweats about the fact that his dragon can't even stand up to this monstrosity, and he's also questioning what he's going to do now. Yami thinks there's one way he can turn this around again from his hand while Kaiba's thoughts are blank, processing.
Shorty asks which one of them is going to get a Masked Beast of Guardius to the face, taking stock of Kaiba's Blue Eyes and 2100 points, in contrast to Yami's Magnet Warrior and his 1900 points. Grinning, Shorty asks Yami for confirmation that he'll take 1900 in damage if Guardius attacks his Magnet Warrior in attack. Yami answers with the beads of sweat running down his face, but for some reason, Shorty believes he doesn't get the implication and reiterates that he can be murdered right now. His smile is more and more fucked up the longer this goes on.
Tallie warns Shorty to be careful, because Kaiba's Blue Eyes might be able to attack one of them if left unchecked. Shorty snaps back that he doesn't care and is attacking Yami. Kaiba scoffs smugly, snarking about how Shrimpy Shorty thinks he's a big man now that he has a decent monster. He adds a chuckle on the end for added effect, and sure enough, Shorty twists his expression in fury once again. Kaiba encourages him to go ahead and murder Yami, because he's got all the cards in his hand he needs for making Blue Eyes White Dragon stronger and will use them next turn to crush Shorty in turn.
This gives Shorty some serious pants-shitting pause. He stares at Kaiba with uncertainty and a little fear, as Yami gives Kaiba a sidelong glance. Shorty decides that Kaiba is right, Yami's monster is garbage, and he can defeat him anytime he wants, he just doesn't want to. So, he declares he's going a different route this turn.
Kaiba's eyes snap open as he yells at Yami that it's his turn. Yami gives an affirmative, and pulls a card from his hand to play in honor of Kaiba's fallen dragon. Before he does, though, he has to make sure his drama isn't upstaged by Kaiba's, and he declares that the Ghouls have fallen into a trap. This is news to Shorty, who I guess has never heard of reverse psychology before. Kaiba makes I'm sure the most painful statement he's ever had to make in his life and says that his dragon was nothing but a decoy for the summoning of an even stronger monster. Shorty insists that it can't be true, and Tallie tells them not to forget their Mask of Restrict preventing them from sacrificing to summon.
Yami informs them that, uh, he didn't say he was going to sacrifice at all, so get off his back. Then he tells them to sit their asses back and watch him play his next card. He puts Gamma the Magnet Warrior out there, with 1500 attack points. But, this is about to change. As the parts of all his Magnet Warriors begin to dislodge from each other and rearrange, Yami states that when all three of them are out there on the field together, they merge. Shorty looks terrified by this fact, but I don't care because he deserves as many nightmares as I had to endure from the hideous monstrosities he threw out during the game. So there.
The pieces all zip back together, interlocking to form:
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It was a very interesting way to get Kaiba into the swing of things. He spent a long time trying to grasp this idea of teamwork, but until now he didn't really understand the requirement of his OWN sacrifice in the mix. Yami was putting in all the effort, and Kaiba thought it was a matter of manipulating him into continuing to support him. It's only when he sees how weak his opponents become when they're out of sync with one another that he starts to cotton on to how useful being united can be, in a reverse-logic sort of way.
KT's making Kaiba's understanding of teamwork conditional on how it's erosion fucks up his opposition's game is neat in two ways. The first is that it falls in line with Kaiba's established characterization as someone who thrives on conflict to the point where it just doesn't occur to him that teaming up with someone could have any benefits. The lightbulb that another writer might have go off in his brain as to those obvious benefits DOESN'T EXIST in this characterization, since Kaiba is just not wired like that. The roundabout method of seeing the effect of a team falling apart and being able to take advantage of that is the only workaround for his current worldview. It's actually quite clever, because you get to see how he struggles with the notion, trying to approach it from his normal point of view and when that doesn't work, he gets frustrated and upset. I'm willing to take back my previous assessment of the over-the-top presentation of Kaiba's struggle with the concept before, since now, much like Kaiba himself, I have a bit better of a perspective of what was going on here. It was the fact that the concept wasn't fitting into his established ideas that was making him so uncomfortable, not the concept itself. He just couldn't wrap his brain around it as a result, and that's probably not something that happens to him very often.
The second way this is neat is the introduction of struggle itself. Before this, Kaiba didn't really HAVE a struggle as a character. Sure he just couldn't manage to beat Yami, and his brother got kidnapped and all that, but these were all external. They didn't have the same quality of internal turmoil and character development like, say, Jonouchi's did. As a result, Kaiba was really difficult to relate to, and it was hard to connect with him as a character. But his arc is finally starting. He's finally starting to get a true sense of development. This is especially illustrated when he has to make a sacrifice of his Blue Eyes White Dragon to make sure that his teammate doesn't die. He wouldn't have been able to do that without the struggle of the previous couple of chapters at his back and certainly not in any of the previous arcs. The trading of his Blue Eyes for Yami's safety, the somber attitude he displays afterward, indicating that his personal sense of power has been given up for the sake of a unit and this teamwork business is not exactly the warm, fuzzy victory that Yami has painted it to be, has done more to humanize Kaiba than either penalty game Yami inflicted on him. More than a thousand Mind Crushes.
And all it took was the effort to make sure Yami is alive long enough that Kaiba can face him one-on-one in Battle City later.
Meh. I'll take it.
I like how Kaiba's idea of teamwork is more along the lines of insulting his opponent and getting them to do what he wants than outright supporting Atem, barring the Gadget Soldier defensive move.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the "null hypothesis" that supports teamwork. Kaiba is SO WEIRD.
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