Yuugi presses his face against the porthole to get a glimpse of where it is they've arrived, and is able to make out the giant pillar shadow on the horizon. He stutters in disbelief that THIS
The Kaibas continue to talk up their floating garbage-heap, in the center of which they point out stands their grand duel tower, pointing to the sky as a shining reminder. A reminder of what, you may ask? It's not clear, even to the translator, who has to put in a note regarding how super unclear this is. Granted, they lay the blame on the translation in an entirely different language for this murkiness, but I doubt the elder Kaiba is being too terribly specific in the original Japanese, either.
Anyway, Yuugi is just blown away by this duel tower. Meanwhile, Jonouchi looks out his window as well at the tower the blimp seems to be circling in a touristy way, wondering if this is the place he will test himself to see how much power as a duelist he has. Since every single point in the tournament has done exactly this in one way or another so far, I'm going to take a wild guess and say yes. Yes it will.
Then, we get an odd panel showing other!Marik glaring down his nose at something, presumably the window, holding up his Millennium Rod. No thoughts or words or anything. He's just standing there looking a little snobbish. It's weird.
The blimp touches down on a cleared patch of concrete, and Kaiba encourages his guests to descend to the ground, calling it an altar of his creation. Mokuba elaborates that the whole thing was brought to them by advanced Kaiba Corp technology. For fuck's sake, can someone just get down on their knees and kiss the brothers' asses so they'll get bored of grandstanding? We get it, you're brilliant and deserve aaaaaaall the praise.
Those little monsters.
A set of steps touches down to the hunk of astroturf, and everyone makes their way down to stand upon it themselves, giving each other morning greetings as they do so. Jonouchi looks around at the debris piled on the outskirts of the landing pad for the blimp and asks what's with all the junk, and Yuugi suggests it might be a landfill. A landfill that the Kaiba brothers are REALLY proud of.
Mentioned while he was having a man he fired dragged out of the building while the guy was dropping truth-bombs about how Kaiba killed Daddy-Dearest. May not have been worth remembering to cinnamon roll Yuugi, but I think it's worth a mention. Just in case we've gotten far enough away from the incident to discard the relevance here.
Kaiba starts to monologue on the timeline of the company, starting with ten years prior when Gozaburou started the whole thing up as a center for military tech. The island was created to be the hub of the business, ground beneath their feet and all.
But the sob story is really working its magic on Yuugi, who looks up at Kaiba with a concerned expression. Jonouchi doesn't look too terribly moved, though. He's turned down the gullibility for this presentation, it seems. Kaiba keeps his oration going, skipping to after Gozaburou died, when he swore to use the company's technology for games only, and remake its image altogether. Notice he didn't say anything about swearing not to use the tech to hurt anyone. Truth by omission.
Kaiba destroyed all the relics of Gozaburou, including the island. Sort of, considering they're all still able to stand on this damn landfill. Yuugi looks down at the Duel Disk on his arm, unsettled by the origin story for it. Well, at least the part of the origin story that didn't involve Yami punching Kaiba straight in the, ahem, inspiration. Jonouchi fumes from his position, because he hasn't forgotten who built a theme park to kill all of them way back when. At least SOMEONE isn't letting that shit go, because I don't wanna be the only one.
With spectral fire surrounding him, Kaiba turns to Yuugi and states that it's time he's beat, indicating that Gozaburou's isn't the only member he's trying to dwarf. But Yuugi has morphed into Yami by that point, who looks just about as determined as Kaiba. He is NOT intimidated by Kaiba's overcompensation.
What's more, Jonouchi refuses to be ignored, warning Kaiba that he's in trouble if he's forgotten his other competition. Jonouchi jabs a thumb at his own chest and vows to beat Kaiba, showing him that he's a worthy adversary. Kaiba scoffs at him, glaring out of his periphery before tossing a comment behind him that Jonouchi is the closest to trash among the assembled duelists, so he should feel right at home in this junkyard. Now Jonouchi is the one radiating spectral fire, shaking his fist, the only thought he can properly articulate in his rage being that he has to beat that guy. Dude, seriously, just punch him.
Mokuba impatiently points at the duel tower and repeats that they all need to be heading towards it. He wants to get this bullshit over with, dammit! While they make the uncomfortably long and silent trek over there per Mokuba's orders, Yami and Anzu look over to find other!Marik not walking the cleared path like the rest of them, but hiking along the ridge of ruined concrete and rebar. Other!Marik strikes a captain pose and pauses, looking around, humming about this duel tower rising over them. He looks down his nose again, this time at Kaiba, asking him how he plans to decide who's dueling whom. Kaiba just glares back, so Mokuba, clearly getting testy by this point, barks at other!Marik not to worry, because he'll know his destiny when they get to the tower.
When they finally reach the door at the base of the duel tower, there's a shadowy figure there to receive them. After the four finalists in particular enter an octagonal room, with yet another set of stairs leading up from behind the figure who welcomes them to the start of the final duels of Battle City. It's Moar Cards Guy! Wow, they must really have been going slow if he got there before they did. No wonder Mokuba was constantly reminding them to get their asses over to the tower.
Moar Cards Guy tells them that each of them can enter one of the four doors, which they ponder for a moment from the middle of the room, one on every other of the eight walls. He tells them not to worry, because whichever one they choose won't affect the duels. The boys all stand in front of a door, which automatically opens for them. As Yami steps into his door, Moar Cards Guy repeats his request to do just that. He's just as eager as Mokuba to get this ball rolling so they can all go home at the end of the day.
Yami steps into a pod which he identifies as a virtual card game system for one. Back out in the central room, Moar Cards Guy invites the filtering in peanut gallery to ascend the stairs behind him to enter the field. Honda asks when the matches will be decided, and Moar Cards Guy answers that they'll be determined presently, in the game that's about to start. Yo dawg, we heard you like duels, so we put duels in your duels so you can duel while you're dueling.
In the meantime, the doors each of the competitors entered snap shut, Jonouchi looking out questioningly as his does so. Their pods begin to rise up along rails up the wall. As the spectators reach the top of the stairs, They see Yami coming up through a hole in the floor, Honda stuttering in disbelief.
Moar Cards Guy says that it's standard Duel Monsters (or Magic and Wizards, as this translator has decided to accurately translate; first time I've seen its actual name in a while) rules, where the players start with 4000 life points. The more points lost, the higher their little pod-cars go up on the wall, so the losers will reach the top of the tower first. Jonouchi is mystified by what this will look like, but Honda seems pretty impressed with how this will account for dueling ability in this elimination match. Anzu asks what he means, so he explains that any player should be able to target any of the three others that will give them the biggest advantage. He imagines that if Jonouchi wants to fight Yami, he can, and just ignore the other two. Uhhh, somehow I don't think it'll be that simple...
The big question is, of course, who will attack whom. Kaiba only has eyes for one dude... to be his first opponent. What did you think I meant? Yami just glares, Jonouchi recalls his promise in Duel City, and other!Marik doesn't have a preference, because it doesn't matter.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Here we go on the sympathy coaster with the Kaiba brothers once more. This chapter is setting them up as highly sympathetic, and Seto in particular as a poor, exploited kid whose invention for enhanced enjoyment of games was stolen and sold to a military industrial complex. But I know how this song and dance goes, and as I've indicated above, I haven't forgotten that Kaiba has used that very technology he's pissing and moaning about being used by the military here as a torture device in the past. Yes, I still think that Kaiba's invention and drastic actions were affected by Yami messing with his head upon their very first game, but even I can't blame Yami for it all. Kaiba performed the actions, and neither he nor Yami have owned up to their roles in ruining several peripheral lives so far. I doubt they ever will, and that's why I'm cautious about extending sympathy to either one of them by this point.
In the same vein, Kaiba's timeline here leaves me with a few questions. From what I can gather, or maybe estimate ROUGHLY, at most a year-and-a-half has passed in this story. That's half as long as Kaiba's three-year figure in which Gozaburou sold his virtual tech to the military. Does this mean Kaiba was developing the idea long before he and Yami played that fateful game at the beginning of the manga? It would actually make some sense, given that it would explain how fast Kaiba came out with a simulation of his experience in the penalty game, if the base technology was already there for tweaking. On the other hand, Kaiba kind of gave the impression at its introduction that the penalty game was his inspiration for his box/hologram system. And if he was working on this at 12 or 13 years old, if the various fan pages online are to be trusted that Kaiba is 16 at this point anyway, what about Gozaburou's constant and grueling academic push on him? To hear Mokuba tell it, his big brother barely had time to scratch his ass, let alone pursue a passion project in gaming holograms. Did it start out as a part of Seto's intensive education, and he finally found passion in it when he had a specific vision for it?
None of these questions necessarily break the story - they're not necessarily contradictory to information given before, and as speculation lead to some interesting places. I'm just peeling the ideas off the wall where KT stuck them, only to step back and throw them yet again.
I'm not touching the blob that has DADDY PENIS ENVY written all over it, though. Everyone knows where THAT'S been, and it isn't anywhere nice.
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