Yu-Gi-Oh Manga: 303 To Pierce the Darkness

By all means - it's been keeping me awake lately. My husband is a mechanic at a warehouse, and his hours at work have always been a tad irregular. Previously, he would get up at 2 a.m. in order to make it to his job across the bridge at 4 a.m., then come home at around 4:30 p.m. It changed over the last week, so that now he's leaving at 7:30 p.m and coming home at 9 a.m. It's wreaked HAVOC on both our sleep schedules, and just as crucially, our comfort in bed. I've gotten so used to him being there that when I wake up in the middle of the night and he's not next to me, I can't get back to sleep. 

We're both DREADFULLY tired nowadays, as you can imagine. 

I'll take some yawns over THIS problem any day, though.

As a recap on the end of the previous chapter, we see the final wisps of Shada's monster among the rest of the ka, someone reiterating that it was destroyed by the attack from the shadows. He's still clutching at his chest, wincing in pain. Beside him, Priest Seto urges him not to give in yet, preaching that they have to keep fighting as long as they have an ounce of soul left. Very fitting. Also, it looks like there are speed-lines behind them while Shada is doubled over in his saddle and agreeing - are they riding a full tilt right now? And Shada is still keeping his balance on the back of his horse despite the pain? Shit, dude, this guy is kind of a badass. 

Anyway, Priest Seto says that the moment they turn their backs to the darkness is the moment the kingdom falls. He then turns to the ACTUAL cavalry behind them and instructs them to follow thief!Bakura, commanding the guard to evacuate the city, and open the palace to the refugees. Sounds generous, but really they're just going to squeeze all those refugees into a torture cell together. XD 

They all accept these orders without hesitation. 

Yami is still stuck on his silent insistence that there has to be a way to find their foe in the darkness, completely missing the fact that he's being shown-up in leadership skills by the guy in the big tall hat. Kalim calls to Priest Seto and reminds him that Duos dealt Diabound a pretty deep wound, suggesting that it can't be as powerful as before with one of its hands missing. Priest Seto hums to show he's listening as Kalim continues to make assumptions: he says that IF the range of Spiral Wave is shortened, they should be able to determine its position when it attacks. That is a BIG ASS IF, friend, and dependent on whether or not anyone has managed to calculate all the possible ranges of Diabound's Spiral Wave. Still, he offers to use his ka as bait, telling everyone to attack when Diabound shows itself.

Yami and Priest Seto look behind them at Kalim in alarm for a moment, presumably considering the proposal. Priest Seto accepts this plan, adding that Duos's Aura sword can mark Diabound's position if Duos can hit Diabound with it. Again, "if" is doing some heavy lifting here. I hope it's lifting with its legs at the VERY least. Priest Seto and Kalim gallop off with an affirmation of action, the former calling to the injured Shada to protect the pharaoh. This can only end well.

Yami thinks after the two charging forward, sweating bullets and making groaning noises. Shada sucks up his own pain, I guess, and tells Yami how very unwell he looks, since Slifer was injured by thief!Bakura's attacks. Telling his king he looks like shit? My respect for him grows despite myself. Shada says that Yami's life will be in danger if he continues to fight, pleading with him to take Slifer and go back to the palace, and leave the rest to the priests. It's not at all that he's having a hard enough time staying on his OWN horse without babysitting Yami.

I don't know, bro... sitting there sweating isn't really accomplishing much... Not to mention, Yami has to acknowledge through his own moaning pain that Slifer was badly injured and is almost out of power. As the city-dwellers run from the crumbling and smoking buildings under the direction of the guards, Shada tries again to reason with Yami. He reiterates to Yami that he's the literal embodiment of a god to these people, like Ra shining a light of hope on them, his very existence lighting the shadows of the world. Damn, if that isn't a whole lot of empty flattery. Yami croaks that he's not a god, and (discordantly) says he'll never forgive thief!Bakura for trying to put out the lights of the world. Okay, dude, you don't have to forgive him, but that doesn't mean you have to be a sitting duck, either!

While Yami stubbornly stares up at his sky dragon writhing in the air above, Shada appears to have an shocking epiphany regarding this that he'd rather not believe. He wonders if Yami is using Slifer as a decoy. 

Kalim and Priest Seto are catching on to Yami's fool intentions too, the former stuttering that he'll surely be attacked if he keeps making Slifer climb so high up in the open like that, the latter questioning why Yami would DO this. I don't know, man, maybe because his stupid ass makes a more tempting target for the villain obsessed with him? Just a guess. Slifer presumably keeps getting up in altitude, which is pretty good for catching a certain someone's eye.

Thief!Bakura plans to use one attack to eliminate Yami's ba, or life force, and that will take out the ka too. Nice and tidy. He's got that manic grin again when he invites Yami to die along with his god, and commands Diabound to attack. The Spiral Wave shoots out at Slifer, and as the god-monster dissolves in the blast, Yami groans all the more. The shot blasts right through Slifer's coiled body, blowing into separate segments. 

Hope this if-heavy plan works, because I think Yami is pretty much spent as bait.

Right in front of Duos, the residual energy an the trail it left behind from Diabound's attack is fading. Though he growls in frustration, Priest Seto shouts to indicate this as where Diabound has been hiding, and commands Duos to pierce the darkness. He said the thing! The thing in the title! Duos throws his Aura Sword at Priest Seto's order, and it embeds itself smack in the center of the remaining point of light at the origin of the attack. Pretty much pierced the OPPOSITE of the darkness, but whatever. Thief!Bakura is in some disbelief at seeing this, apparently. 

And in classic Yu-Gi-Oh style, thief!Bakura promptly switches to a triumphant smile, asking if Diabound's attackers are blind as though they're right in front of him. Complete attitude 180, as usual. Both Yami and Priest Seto look on in horror, though the former is looking a tad more run-down. 

Turns out the Aura Sword is actually skewering a flying eyeball ka with tiny stupid wings rather than Diabound, something a sweaty Priest Seto can't seem to wrap his head around as possible. Again, as though he's still talking to people in range of his words, thief!Bakura explains to literally NO ONE that they've forgotten holders of Millennium Items can summon ka from the Shrine of Wedju, and he borrowed a weakling that didn't cost him much of his personal energy because he knew they'd try something like that. A close-up of Priest Seto's beady eye is shown before Thief!Bakura keeps talking over an image of the dissolving eyeball - he says he TOLD them that they can't catch Diabound as long as the darkness exists, and it's now his turn. 

Is he just using one of these monsters as a megaphone or something????

Yami is slumped on the neck of his horse, huffing in exhaustion. He considers Ra, the light of hope, the only thing that can defeat the darkness, and it appears to hearten him at first before he remembers that his energy to summon it is already gone. He then hears someone call to him in his own head and his eyes widen. 

An... invisible cavalry has arrived? Emotional support cavalry?

Yami just sort of gapes at first, and Yuugi has to call out to him again before he seems to catch on that he and the others are really there. Or perhaps he's unable to see them at first just like everyone else. It's a little unclear. Either way, Yuugi says that half of Yami's soul is still with him, reaching out a semi-transparent hand to cover Yami's as the puzzle swings below. 

That's the most threatening sunshine I've ever SEEN. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The desperation of the situation is palpable, as is the scrambling of the characters to do something about it. I made fun of how tenuous the assumptions that led to this flimsy plan of the priests are, but the lack of time and accurate data made them absolutely inevitable. It was probably the best set of "if"s they could have come up with, and that helped to make their questionable solution somewhat realistic as well as more heroic, in a way. Despite the massive amount of variables and unknowns in the problems, the priests weren't locked up in despair or inaction. They took their best shot anyway.

I thought Yami's stubborn refusal to leave the battle was at first a little annoying, but I was pleasantly surprised with how WELL it worked in the whole context of the chapter. It made sense that he would be encouraged to retreat for his survival, since as a living embodiment of a god, he would be a symbol of the endurance of their kingdom for the people. But the snag is that no one else would be a tempting enough target to attack. No offense to Kalim, but he's a small-fry, and in lieu of satisfying his desire to kill the pharaoh and all hope for a viable future with him, thief!Bakura would have just had Diabound dart around firebombing the city from random directions. Yami HAD to be the bait, as the only one who could draw thief!Bakura out, so he wasn't just a self-indulgent martyr - he was making a rational, reasonable decision to give everyone else a better chance of beating thief!Bakura. It was a much-needed motivation to his action to help solve the problem I was talking about in the previous chapter's analysis, because it contains strategy, and isn't just vague heroism for the sake of it. A very satisfying rectification of that problem as well.

And I LOVED how thief!Bakura used Yami and the priests' resources against them here. I should have seen it coming, as it was set up way back when we learned that holders of the Millennium Items can summon from the collection of ka in the Shrine of Wedju, but the payoff was far enough off from it and in such an unexpected place as a SHIELD that I was completely caught off-guard in the best way. Clever move on KT's part. 

The only thing I'm still scratching my head about is whether or not any of them can actually HEAR thief!Bakura? Seriously annoying that we're this far in the story and I STILL have trouble telling what is and is not dialog.