Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 258 The Servants Surpass God

What servants? Are we talking about Yami and Kaiba? The broody amnesiac who skipped school and joined a tournament to have some past-life visions of life as a king? The child billionaire who THREW said tournament for another chance to high-key defeat his rival and self-aggrandize for a couple of days? Who are these snot-nosed brats serving? The gods they summoned to fight each other and take each other out for their own personal benefit, bickering the entire time?

Man, the more I summarize this whole situation, the more I think those god cards just had a conference while they were locked in combat and decided they would rather commit mutual suicide by spectacular virtual explosion than spend one more moment with these mercurial little bastards.

Since this panel isn't exactly... informative to anyone who might just come across it while browsing in a Barnes and Noble, Yami launches into an abridged (heh) explanation of what has got he and his opponent so breathless - the powers of two gods clashing in a brilliant explosion of light, inside which he saw a vision of a king commanding a Dark Magician and a priest controlling a white dragon. He's convinced it had to be the battle from 3000 years before, depicted on the stone tablet Ishizu showed him at the beginning of the arc. He further clarifies that it's the battle he fought when he was alive.

Because the implication that our protagonist is already dead is totally not going to confuse newcomers all the more. Everybody gets it now. It's all so completely transparent.

While Yami gives the audience a vague explanation of why he and Kaiba are just standing there, Kaiba is NOT taking the previous chapter well. He wonders if he's gone mad, and starts rationalizing that what he saw was just a realistic illusion. To be fair, that isn't a terrible conclusion to come to when your business is literally creating realistic illusions. Instead of leaving it at that, though, Kaiba just starts INSISTING that magic and the occult aren't real, and there must be a logical explanation. Dude, you just came up with one. You're SURROUNDED with machinery that can create super convincing holograms. You could just assume someone who worked on the tower's visual holograms was pulling an elaborate prank. That's probably what I would think.

But Kaiba just can't help but question the falsehood in the king facing the priest, the strength of his presence...

Having feels about what you saw doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't still an illusion, but yeah, okay. We'll go with that.

Yami thinks at Kaiba that he understands now; this duel spanning 3000 years is their fate. Fate's a funny thing isn't it? It was Titanic's fate to sink, it was fate that Cesar crossed the Rubicon, and it's these two brats' fate to play a card game after 3000 years of fuming unresolved rivalry. At last, they stand upright in preparation to resume their super important fate-duel. Yami states that it's back to square one with their gods god, and Kaiba scoffs.

Below the platform, other!Marik is still glaring at the Millennium Rod clutched in his fist. He considers it and Yami's puzzle, and wonders what those boys up top saw if these items have their memories sealed inside of them. Good to know the little creep doesn't get to peek in on private memories inside these things. Seems real mad about it too, and I'm oddly satisfied by his frustration. Maybe it's just refreshing to see him not being a smug shit.

Jonouchi has been fully assimilated. He is part of the collective now.

Yami reiterates that he's certain now, claiming that his current duel with Kaiba will open the first "door", to these goals of his, if I had to guess. Which I do. Kaiba declares that he doesn't give a shit about illusions of the past or whatever, and all he cares about is defeating Yami right here and now. Clearly he's decided that the "presence" he noticed earlier doesn't actually count as evidence of anything. What a rational boy. He says his future is to be the king of duelists.

Kaiba asks Yami if he's ready, then reminds us all that it's still his turn regardless of his god being gone, because he didn't state that his turn had ended. This is a good thing, because I had TOTALLY forgotten. Don't know how this kid who has spent the last chapter having intense hallucinations managed to remember, but I'll take his word for it.

Look man, just because you managed to avoid your god monster blowing up in your face by summoning Frank Sinatra and attacking with it doesn't necessarily mean it's the more powerful card.

Yami announces it's his turn now that he's been informed that His Aspiring-Royal-Highness's has ended. Insert eyeroll here. He draws a card, glances at it, and notes that he hasn't drawn one key card yet as he puts the new one in his hand. Looking at Kaiba's side of the platform, he observes that there aren't any monsters over there, but Kaiba DOES have a face down card. Yami wonders if his attack will go through.

At the moment Yami summons a great winged, horned beast called "Baphomet" (it resembles the gnostic/pagan idol a LITTLE, but the updated design is a little uninspired), Kaiba chuckles and throws out his arm to reveal his trap, "Clone Reproduction". Yami is in alarmed disbelief that Kaiba managed to clone his monster, and an identical twin of Baphomet appears on Kaiba's side of the platform. Kaiba explains that if Yami attacks, the clones will just end up killing one another, being equal in stats, after all. Yami growls, putting his original Baphomet in defense.

But he puts a card face down on his Duel Disk before ending his turn. Kaiba is in full smug-mode again, patronizingly saying that he supposes Yami made a wise move there. But he announces he's going to sacrifice the clone of Baphomet this turn, giving Yami a sinister chuckle, and another glance at his Blue Eyes card in hand. Yami doesn't need a look at that card himself; it's pretty obvious which monster Kaiba will be working to summon now that both their gods are in their respective graves. He doesn't NEED main character privilege in order to deduce that much.

Yami also knows the Blue Eyes White Dragon needs two sacrifices to summon it since it has eight stars and all, so Kaiba shouldn't be able to summon it on this turn if he has it in his hand. No doubt that "if" is pretty superfluous at this point, regardless of the fact that Yami doesn't have the sneak peek at Kaiba's hand like we do. Yami wonders if he'll be able to draw his key card before Kaiba does, but when Kaiba declares his turn and draws a new card, he looks beyond it at Yami with the smuggest of smug little grins. Seriously, he looks like he's practiced this one in the mirror a LOT.

He tells Yami, MAGNANIMOUSLY, that he's already got a Blue Eyes White Dragon in his hand, and reiterates the assumption Yami made that he won't be able to actually play the card this turn. But he slaps down a spell card that allows him to summon his dragon right now, with the usual amount of dramatic flourish and gesture, hand outstretched as if to physically stop Yami's train of reasoning in its tracks. The spell card is "Cost Down", which is exactly what it says on the tin, art showing two swords piercing two stars on a card in the picture. Card-ception. Yami is in disbelief as Kaiba explains that this card lowers the level of a monster card by two stars for one turn, which prompts the shocked Yami to trot out the step-by-step conclusion that Blue Eyes White Dragon will only be SIX stars now, and can be summoned with just one sacrifice.

Boy, it's awfully convenient that Kaiba has a card that specifically circumvents his "Super Expert Mode" tournament rule that we're all just expected to forget wasn't actually a thing in previous iterations of the game.

Anyway, a slightly manic Kaiba tells Yami to take a good look, because it's not an illusion, but the ultimate monster he's about to bring out.

And when he says "not an illusion", he really means "an illusion that I control and expect, given the parameters in which I have programmed it."

Kaiba cuts right to the chase, commanding Frank Sinatra to attack and burn Baphomet to ash with it Burst Stream of Destruction. The Blue Eyes White Dragon charges up and fires with extreme prejudice on Baphomet, which is vaporized so fast that the rest of the blast streams past Yami and cracks the fake coliseum wall behind him, where all of Kaiba's fake fans are still seated watching this weird match. As the digital smoke clears, Kaiba laughs and claims that, starting from this turn, all of Yami's monsters with less than 3000 attack points are going to burn. He even adds a little note that he's going to destroy Yami's mind along with them, though I'm not sure if it was an out-loud attempt at intimidation or a genuine inner promise. Either way, since he doesn't have a Millennium Item, I find that little threat rather LESS scary than he may have meant. Kaiba ends his turn, yielding the field to Yami's move.

Yami claims his turn, with some hesitation, considering he's being stared down and roared at by a giant virtual dragon. He looks down at his Duel Disk where his deck is nestled with utter dread, sweating hardcore. He knows that whether his memories will be returned to him or forever be lost in darkness depends on this one turn.

Oh come on man, it ALWAYS comes down to one turn. Just draw the damn card already.

At last! The card that breaks EVERYTHING! This is what we've been waiting for, folks!

Yami asserts that Kaiba saw that vision of the duel first depicted on the 3000-year-old tablet too, and Kaiba gives him a mildly surprised look as though he WASN'T just raving about illusions he wasn't going to pay attention to earlier. Yami continues by stating that it doesn't matter who that pharaoh or priest were, but their spirit as duelists which was what was actually carved there. Instead of protesting that no illusions are real except for his, Kaiba remains quiet in his stoic surprise. Yami says that those duelist spirits have been passed on to the two of them, insisting that it wasn't an illusion, I'm assuming silently, because otherwise, Kaiba would be crowing. Instead, he just keeps glaring.

Yami activates the game-breaker, calling forth the soul of the magician sleeping in his graveyard. Kaiba shows some more genuine shock here at the mention of whose soul Yami is summoning. With a triumphant "TA-DA" the classic Dark Magician appears at Yami's prompt to rise from his grave, arms crossed and floating with a stern expression like he's actually here to settle an argument between these two bratty kids. And, I suppose, in a sense he is.

Kaiba stares at the magician in shock, realizing at last that the card Yami lost with that Life-Shaver play must have been this one. Then he notes the wider scene.

Why do I get the nagging, persistent feeling that the conclusion to this duel WON'T actually be the end of this?

Yeah, that'll do it.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It feels like a return to Yami and Kaiba's fundamental characters and their divergence in how they view the world. When they come out the other side of the same strange experience, we get a good look at how each of them interprets it based on their outlook. Yami is immediately validated and knows he's on the right track, as we saw at the end of the last chapter too. Kaiba, on the other hand, is disturbed and tries to dismiss the vision right away, denying its reality and insisting that it doesn't matter. Though he insists that the occult and such don't exist, that's just an excuse for swift dismissal. What really gives him pause is the palpable presence and spirit of the vision's inhabitants. If his sense that these people have desires and motivations like his is this strong, it's a lot harder to deny their reality.

Kaiba's complicated relationship with his past is nothing new; he's always been one to deny its relevance, while at the same time making it a centerpiece of his motivations. building a tower atop an island of trash that represents the ashes of his step-father's empire is a prime example of that. Here, he gets to gaze into that paradox uncomfortably close, because he relates to these ancient counterparts at the core of his being, but he has an impulse to flee from that feeling - to uncouple himself from something he can't change so he can work toward something he can. But because he refuses to understand his history, even ancient history, with Yami, he seems doomed to repeat it, literally. He appears poised in this chapter to once again abjectly refuse to acknowledge his failure to address old (really old) problems.

Luckily, Yami seems to have learned to speak a little of Kaiba's language. I think his declaration that it doesn't actually matter who these dead old Egyptians were and focusing on the part that Kaiba obviously identified with was clever. Saying that they had just inherited the fighting spirits of their ancient counterparts doesn't require Kaiba to accept that the people in the vision are literally them, or even that the vision was necessarily "real" for lack of a better term. It just requires that Kaiba recognize the rivalry as very similar to the one he has with Yami now, and that things are playing out in much the same way, even if it's coincidentally. The figurative way this statement can be taken leaves Kaiba enough room to consider it without being too hung-up on the actual contents of the vision.

Whether or not he'll do that is up in the air. It's not like these visions he's had have given him a lot to work on anyway, so the only thing he can really do regarding examining this ancient grudge is marvel at how similar everything looks in the current incarnation. He's still perfectly capable of examining why he's so pissy about Yami in THIS lifetime, though, and extrapolating from there.