Chapter Text
“Dark Magician? What the fuck is a Dark Magician?”
One month earlier:
The world is rotten.
The bell rang, signalling the end of yet another underwhelming day. The front doors opened to give way to a stream of altogether uninteresting teenagers. Around the middle of the outpouring, between gaggles of chattering students, walked a rare point of interest. Light Yagami looked like a perfectly ordinary young Japanese man with short brown hair, a little lighter than most of his peers, but not quite the bleached blond of those who had bothered to affect the stylized appearance - his hair was hardly the most interesting thing about him.
He walked without any urgency; it wasn’t like he had anywhere worth going, just another date. Here he was wasting his time on frivolities when there was so much that needed to be done, so much he could be doing to fix this crumbling world, if only he had the chance.
But if he was going to go on a date, then he would not be late. He considered turning around and going home when he arrived at the bus stop precisely on time and she was nowhere in sight, but waiting was no more a waste of his time than any other way he could spend it.
It was fifteen minutes before she arrived, running toward the bus stop as though she could somehow excuse or even prevent her tardiness. Light greeted her with a smile and they descended into banal small talk, which proceeded to an - if possible - even more meaningless conversation, only briefly interrupted by the arrival of the bus to take them to their destination.
Said destination was, unexpectedly, a run down neighborhood, with boarded up shop-windows and ill kept loiterers. At least it had no pretensions of purity. His date grabbed Light by the hand and led him through the winding streets until at last she allowed him to stop and catch his breath in front of a dirty little antique store.
He only had a moment before she pulled him into the cramped, dusty one-room shop. He could taste the stale air as it settled in his lungs. His date eagerly dove in in search of long lost “treasures” as he took in the scene at a more measured pace. It was like an old hidden object book - he could even smell the musty pages. The walls were lined with trinkets even more useless now than they had been when they were new. He scanned each shelf from top to bottom in a half-hearted effort to do something other than count the seconds he was wasting. He had made his way to the back of the room and was about to begin the trek back to the exit and its vain promise of freedom when a glint of gold caught his eye.
He had passed over many other things that shone or glimmered with a glassy stare, and he had disregarded many more that had once been shiny. This gold box - as he found it to be upon closer inspection - was not particularly remarkable among the glitzy artifacts of even more wasteful ages. The markings that decorated its surface appeared to be hieroglyphics, identifying it as of Egyptian origin, or at least an emulation of Ancient Egyptian style. The gold was presumably just paint. He didn’t know what the characters read, but he doubted the inscription was anything truly worth understanding. Chances were that they didn’t mean anything at all; it was just decorative, a stylistic flare. A waste of time.
He lifted the surprisingly heavy cover to peer inside. It contained several chunks of gold configured into angular shapes that when put together must have resembled a pyramid; it was some kind of puzzle. He fished out a piece to examine it closer. The gold was presumably fake, but it was too substantial to have been plastic. The smooth metal, with sharp corners, was barely worn from the time that it had purportedly endured.
He idly wondered how much it cost, not to buy it, but for curiosity’s sake. Did the owner think it was real or a fake?
“I knew you’d find something cool here, I always do,” his date remarked, and he wondered if she had murdered the silence brutally enough to warrant an investigation led by his father - Chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, whose jurisdiction was all of Japan. “What’s that?”
“That,” the old shopkeeper interrupted - she paused for unwarranted dramatic effect - “is from the Valley of the Kings, dug up from the tomb of a Pharaoh. The man I bought it from said it was made of solid gold.”
“That’s impressive,” Light said, though it didn’t even count as an impressive lie, “if it’s true.”
The shopkeeper laughed, “For such a handsome young customer, I’ll give you a special price.”
The price she gave him was expensive for a fake, but it certainly wasn’t priced like the genuine artifact.
“Are you going to get it, Yagami-kun?” his date asked.
“It is very cool, but unfortunately out of my budget. Someone else will have to uncover the mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian puzzle.”
In that instant he knew he couldn’t let that puzzle fall into anyone else’s hands.
It was silly, absurd. It was a fake. It had to be. There was no other reasonable explanation.
But what if it wasn’t?
There was something about that puzzle that drew Light in, that he couldn’t shake from his mind.
He had translated the symbols on it to the best of his ability - they were real hieroglyphics, he would give the forger that. The inscription on one side of the box roughly translated to “this treasure can be seen, but you haven’t seen it.” The other side read, “to the one who controls me, I will give dark wisdom and strength.” And he had gathered from the third side that whoever solved the puzzle would be granted one wish.
It was a joke, a lot of nonsense. He supposed it could have been a replica of some actual artifact, but even that he seriously doubted. The inscription was just the sort of thing that would be used to frighten - and intrigue - gullible tourists. The solution to the riddle was obviously the puzzle itself; it could be seen when put together, but was in the box in pieces. The rest was just absurd.
The bus came to a stop and Light stepped out onto the run down street for the second time that day. It was nearly dark out, maybe the antique store was closed already and that would put an end to his mission - for that day, at least.
He had plenty of money saved up and it wasn’t like he was spending it on anything anyway. Everyone had their hobbies, at least this was less of a waste than the pursuits his classmates engaged in; all of the time spent collecting stamps and playing trading card games.
The shop was still open. The puzzle had been moved to the front, by the desk where the old woman stood as though she were waiting for him.
“I had a feeling you would return for it.”
Light awoke with a painful groan.
What happened last night?
He pushed himself upward in an attempt to haul himself out of bed. His tired limbs ached with every move he tried to make.
The last thing he remembered... The act of thinking was beyond onerous. Had he been drugged?
He sat up and his head spun. A weight hung heavy around his neck. A sharp edge burrowed into his upper chest, barely dulled by his thin shirt.
He looked down-
A large golden pyramid hung from around his neck, gaudy and painful. It was the puzzle, completed in a feverish haze - it seemed more like a dream than reality, but apparently not.
What was it doing around his neck? He must have been drugged to put in on, like a giant piece of jewelry - he shuddered at the thought of what he could have done unconstrained by careful deliberation. That was, unless someone else had put it around his neck, but why…?
His head ached with the effort it took to think. He felt sick, worse than sick.
Knock. Knock. The sharp sound was painful in his ears, or maybe that was just his pounding skull.
What had happened to him?
"Light, is everything okay in there?" It was his mother.
He had to stand. She couldn't know what had happened - or that he didn't even know. No one could ever know. The thought provided enough leverage to force him to his feet over the pangs of his muscles irritated at the sudden movement.
His fingers fumbled with the cord that pressed against the back of his neck, bearing the weight of the puzzle. He pulled at the knot with burning fingers until finally the puzzle fell to the ground at his feet with a thud.
He rolled his neck, suddenly a pound lighter, to stretch out the tension.
Knock.
"Light, what was that? Are you alright? You're almost late for school-" it was his mother again, she was beginning to really sound concerned.
"Don't worry about me, I just stubbed my toe. I'm almost ready to go," Light answered in the lightest tone he could muster.
Everything had to continue as usual.
His mother accepted his lie and he heard her footsteps receding from the other side of the door.
Nothing was wrong. His body ached and he did not remember why, but life would continue as usual. Light Yagami had never been late to school in his life and being drugged and beaten would not stop him now. If nothing else, he could guarantee that .
As soon as his mother's footsteps had faded to the point where she would be out of sight, he slipped from his room, into the bathroom for his morning shower.
He fumbled with the buttons of yesterday's shirt - he apparently hadn’t thought to change into nightclothes. It was covered in dirt and stained with blood in a few places. The mirror reflected back his body covered in scrapes and bruises. He had never been in a fight before, but he had little doubt that this was what the outcome of one looked - and felt - like.
What had he done?
The cold water of his shower jolted him into a shaky awareness. It stung as it ran across fresh scratches and did little to assuage the aching bruises. That would show whatever side of him had been in control the previous night, maybe make him think before doing whatever he had done again.
Questions echoed around his mind in circles as he walked to school - he arrived just in time.
He tried to remember as the teacher droned on at the front of the classroom. He had to remember something, anything from the previous night…
He picked at his lunch to spare an aching stomach.
... He had been sitting at his desk, it was late, he had been angry about... about those men he had seen earlier that day...
That he remembered clearly, at least, a whole lot of good it did anyone. He saw them harassing a woman on the street while he was out shopping and there was nothing he could do about it. Every day there were countless crimes like the one he had seen, or worse, and all he could do was go through his pointless routine, wasting his time and intelligence that could be put to such better use-
And then he had solved the puzzle. He had been thinking about that woman and the men who had attacked her and how little he could do to stop them or anyone else and the puzzle had just come together.
He had put the puzzle together and then…
Classes continued unheeded.
What had he done next? Who had he gotten in a fight with? Why? Did they recognize him? Everything hurt too much for it to just be soreness from falling asleep at his desk.
He stared into the void, the gap in his memory that he could not repair. He only knew that anything had happened because of the state he had woken up in. Was this the only gap in his memory or were there more that he had somehow missed? No matter how careful he was, he could never be sure.
He had to record everything. That way, he could forget nothing. And if there was a gap, he would know it. He purchased a plain black composition notebook on his way home from school.
When he got back to the house, that day’s paper, which he hadn’t had time to read in the morning, was still sitting on the dining room table. He took it with him as he went up to his room and flipped through the pages, wondering, half-hoping and half-dreading, but not expecting that he would find any evidence of his activities the previous night - just the world continuing its inevitable decline. But buried in the local crime section was an article with the headline, “Suspected Rapist, Takuo Shibuimaru, Driven Mad.”
It couldn’t be a coincidence. That was the man Light had seen assaulting that woman the day before, Light would have recognized his face anywhere. He had been found in an abandoned warehouse, muttering to himself. Something had happened to him in the night.
It seemed impossible, but maybe there had been something in the air that evening that had affected the minds of everyone in the vicinity. Light had held together better than Takuo Shibuimaru at least - unless it was only a matter of time. But that it couldn’t be, there was no evidence that anyone else had been affected, and Light having a small memory lapse - and getting badly bruised - had nothing to do with a criminal tipping over the edge into insanity. It had to be a coincidence.
Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder, a little bit worse.
Light Yagami woke up to the sound of his mother knocking at his bedroom door, the golden puzzle around his neck. He was almost late to school and spent the day practically sleep-walking. And amidst it all, a chant from a summer camp he had gone to as a child, which he thought he had managed to wipe from his memory entirely, floated in and out of his mind, exacerbating his already aching head.
He was being drugged. It was getting worse.
The last thing he remembered was opening that box that had contained the ridiculous golden puzzle. Twice was too much to be a coincidence. There must have been some drug hidden in all the dust from that wretched shop.
Of course, he hadn’t thought to write in his notebook. There was no record of what he had done the night before.
In that morning’s paper, there was an article whose headline read, “Escaped Criminal Jiro Jorogumo Burned Alive in Fast Food Restaurant.”
Light remembered Jorogumo; he had been in the news the day before. He had escaped from prison, killing three guards in the process. Light had been thinking about Jorogumo the previous day as he opened the puzzle box and now… Now Jorogumo was dead.
He had wanted Jorogumo dead.
Light had smelled smoke when he woke up that morning.
Was this the wish the puzzle had granted him for solving it? Was this the side of him that appeared when all his careful controls were stripped away?
But there was no proof. He had blacked out and had a couple of rough nights, that was enough of a problem on its own. There had to be countless others who wanted Jorogumo dead after hearing about what he had done.
Jorogumo wasn’t the only one who deserved...
He clearly needed a reminder to write in his journal no matter what state he was in.
Very well, he would make it impossible to misunderstand what he was supposed to do.
He tore out a page of his notebook and left it inside the box, on top of the puzzle. In bright red ink, it read:
Stop.
Are you wearing the puzzle? Circle one: Yes No
What are you doing? ____________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
What have you done? ___________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
What do you intend to do next? ___________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
For the first time in his life, Light Yagami was late to school. He would have been mortified were he not so exhausted. That morning his mother had finally jarred him into awareness with her incessant knocking at his bedroom door. He felt like he had barely slept at all, but he wasn't too badly battered and bruised - an improvement.
Awake was an overstatement. Functional was barely accurate. The very act of thinking - something that was supposed to come more naturally to him than breathing - was almost too difficult to be sustainable. But at least he still had the presence of mind to answer with a deflection when everyone asked him if he was okay.
Light Yagami did not fall apart…
… Unless he was being drugged by a puzzle pretending to be an Egyptian artifact that he must have been inebriated to purchase in the first place.
His head ached.
He dozed off in class.
His classes were all beyond meaningless anyway.
He tried to drag up memories of the previous afternoon, but all he remembered was taking out the box to write in the notebook, and then… nothing.
Buried in the crime section of the paper was a report that Yonegoro Nusumi, whose acquittal - only for lack of evidence - Light had read about just the day before, had inexplicably gone mad in the night, just like Shibuimaru. Shibuimaru still showed no signs of recovering, and Jorogumo was dead, to never hurt anyone ever again.
Every day, the world gets a little bit better…
But there was no evidence Light had anything to do with it.
Inside the puzzle box, just beneath the “questionnaire” for his drugged-self, he did not remember scrawling:
What is the meaning of this? You are my vessel, do you protest this arrangement?
Light stared at the words on the page as if they could answer half of the questions racing through his mind. “What is the meaning of this?” did not answer his questions.
The handwriting was strikingly similar to his own, but different enough to be unique.
“My vessel…” Who did he think he was? What was this drug doing to him? Causing a psychotic break? Giving him another personality?
What had he done? Could he have possibly…?
At the bottom of the page, in large characters, he wrote:
ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.
Some days later, he received an answer:
I am Pharaoh Yami. The Millennium Puzzle is mine. The world is out of balance, I am restoring it.
If the questionnaire was too complicated for his drugged-self, then Light would drag the answers out one at a time: Who do you think you are? How are you restoring balance?
“Dark Magician? What the fuck is a Dark Magician?”
Light had woken up in the morning, tired if not sore, to find the puzzle hanging from his bedpost and now this.
The puzzle box was not hidden safely away, but sitting on his desk, front and center, the cover askew, and inside it was a whole stack of what Light vaguely recognized as children’s trading cards which he had not purchased. He certainly hadn’t wished for the cards to appear as his reward for solving the puzzle. He didn’t remember anything after coming back up to his room for the night, but that was hardly unusual these days.
What had he done this time? Bought children’s trading cards apparently, and then…?
A knock sounded on the door, interrupting his thoughts, and from the other side, his mother called, “Light, you’re almost late for school, are you sure everything is alright?”
“Coming!” Light said, and hastily put the box away.
However, he had a chance to glance at his drugged-self’s latest delusional declaration:
There is much I do not remember. I know only that I was once Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, but that now my soul is tied to the Millennium Puzzle.
I find the wretched criminals that plague this land and challenge them to shadow games to try their souls. Their own guilt betrays them and when they lose, they must face the penalty game alone.
That afternoon, after school, Light flipped through the paper to the crime section to find that sure enough, another criminal had been driven from his mind, this time put directly into a coma rather than driven mad.
But that meant nothing. All he had done was go on a late night shopping spree for some unfathomable reason, and maybe spook some bystanders. He only hoped that no one had recognized him. At this rate, it was a matter of time before someone found out, he just had to figure it out first.
Just to be thorough, he did his research and found that they were Duel Monsters cards - a children’s card game created by the eccentric American billionaire, Maximillion Pegasus. Light vaguely remembered seeing his classmates playing with them back in junior high school, but what they were doing in the puzzle box, he couldn’t fathom.
He demanded: What are you doing? Why did you get trading cards?
The monsters are somehow familiar to me. I believe I played a similar game a very long time ago, but I do not remember. They call to the Millennium Puzzle, it feels only natural to use their power to banish the souls of the unworthy to the Shadow Realm.
It was all absurd, laughable, impossible.
And yet, there was something beneath the ridiculous exposition… Ever since he had put together the puzzle, each criminal within striking distance who had earned Light’s ire had somehow, inexplicably, gone mad - or now fell into a coma. But that didn’t mean anything; he just subconsciously wanted to believe that it was his own doing, that he finally had his chance to shape the world anew, and whatever drug had been interfering with his memory was just making him think that it was, that was all it could be.
But Light needed to know for certain.
All of the other criminals had been ripped from the headlines, he needed someone only he would know about. Someone whose case had never been publicized, whose file was stowed away in some folder on his father’s computer. A murderer who had evaded the police, whose case had been hushed up in the hope that he would resurface.
He deserved to die - or failing that, be driven mad…
--
The next day, he had been found, lost to the world.
Light had done it... He had killed one man and sentenced several more to never wake again. Somehow, beyond all plausibility, he had done it.
His whole body shook.
Finally… Finally, he was more than just a helpless bystander. Finally, he could put his intelligence to good use. He could bring justice to a world in desperate need of it. He could do what needed to be done and eliminate the rot that poisoned the world.
He let out an unbalanced scream of a laugh.
Light had hardly slept in days and he had lost ten pounds already. The progress that he made was impossibly slow, but night by night, the world gradually became a better place as those who poisoned it were removed. He had already begun to draw attention, it was only a matter of time before they realized the otherworldly retribution that was being wrought - that Light had brought upon them.
However, for all his efforts, the only reward he reaped was an article in one morning’s paper with the headline, “Criminals in Comas, New Drug to Blame?”
The article attributed his work to everything from contaminants in the water to the efforts of a crime boss, and the local police swore to trace these “incidents” to their source and stop whatever was responsible, as though they weren’t grateful that someone was cleaning up the mess they had so slovenly left behind. Light would show them gratitude.
The next day, there was nothing more in the news, but in his notebook, Light found a message:
How dare you wish for me to strike down a force for justice!
Light would stand no mutiny. She called us criminals, this is the thanks you get for your work.
The following day, however, the puzzle had not budged:
You claim to uphold the cosmic order, but she has not earned our wrath.
The insolent fool.
We are the cosmic order. You call yourself Pharaoh, and to go against the Pharaoh is as much a violation as any crime.
The puzzle did not have a chance to respond, however, before another article in the paper caught Light’s attention. A Duel Monsters card has been found up the sleeve of a comatose criminal. The puzzle had become sloppy. It was only a matter of time before it made an even worse mistake.
A package for Light Yagami from Industrial Illusions. Had Maximillion Pegasus somehow traced a single Duel Monsters card found up the sleeve of a comatose criminal back to Light? The police had made little of the puzzle’s foolish mistake - their half-hearted investigation into the comatose criminals had gotten nowhere. But somehow, the American card game magnate must have figured it out all on his own.
Mr. Pegasus was currently in Japan - Light had taken to keeping an eye on this game that had some connection to the puzzle, though he rarely paid it any heed. Maybe Mr. Pegasus had noticed the local news and had his own guilt - as any successful business man did - and hoped Light might show pity on him for a price or be scared away by a threat. He needn’t have tried; Light had no mercy to spare anyone who defiled the world.
He took the package up to his room to open it. Inside was a VHS tape and, beside it, a ridiculous fingerless gauntlet with a bulky metallic cuff embossed with stars and a pair of golden stars that looked like they had fallen out of it. Light supposed he should have expected nothing more from a man who had made his fortune on children’s playing cards. Just to get it over with, he slid the VHS tape into the tv and pressed play.
A man with long white hair, wearing a dark pink suit with a ruffled collar, appeared on the screen, talking directly into the camera. “Greetings, Raito-boy, I am Maximillion Pegasus.”
Raito-boy? The words echoed in Light’s mind as a sneer. If Mr. Pegasus wanted to underestimate Light, who was he to complain - it would make it that much more satisfying to give him the justice he deserved.
“I have heard some terribly interesting things about you, Light. So much so that I decided to investigate you personally,” Pegasus continued, with an attempt at a subtle suggestion of a threat - from a man who clearly didn’t even know what subtlety meant.
There was something funny about the thought of this deluded man trying to blackmail him . “You don’t have a chance!” Light proclaimed.
Unaware of his position, Pegasus smirked. “Right here, right now, we shall hold a special duel. We’ll play with a strict time limit of fifteen minutes, and when time is up, the player with the highest life points will be the winner. Are you ready?”
Pegasus really had gone mad if he had sent the VHS tape just for the purpose of challenging Light to one of his silly card games - and a prerecorded game, no less.
And then a blinding light burst from the screen, brighter than should have been possible. The world began to waver and shudder around them and Light’s room faded into the distance. For a desperate moment, Light wondered if he was going to collapse into a faint, but Pegasus never faded from view even as the light receded, giving way to a shadowy void and an unnatural chill. Pegasus’s long hair had been blown away from the left side of his face by an unnatural wind to reveal a gold metal eye - the same symbol that was on the Millennium Puzzle - where his own should have been.
“We’re no longer in the world you know, but I shall return you after our game,” Pegasus taunted as he began to shuffle a deck of those ridiculous cards.
Light wanted to scoff, but he could hardly move in this thick, oppressive darkness. His room was gone, it was only Light, and Pegasus on the television, and the gleaming puzzle, where he had left it a few feet away.
“What’s the matter Raito-boy? Afraid of the dark?”
This was the puzzle’s fault and its problem to deal with. With all the strength he still had, Light lurched across what remained of his room, stumbling through the shadows. As his hand reached the puzzle, everything faded to black.
--
“Light!”
Sayu? What was she doing in his room? She called to him from the television screen, where Pegasus had been moments before.
Pegasus’s voice continued, “Yes, we will duel again, Light. How else will you ever reclaim your sister’s soul?” He laughed as the screen faded to static.
Light shouted after him, but he was already gone.
Behind him, Sayu stood frozen in place in the doorway - as she had been from the instant she foolishly barged into his room, probably begging for help with her homework. As the television turned off of its own accord and the unnatural shadows faded from Light’s room, she slumped to the ground, alive, but empty without her soul - or so Pegasus had claimed.
Light remembered it. For the first time he actually remembered what had happened while the puzzle was in control. It was distant and faint, but he remembered a world of darkness - the “shadow realm” Pegasus had called it - with monsters that looked almost real, summoned from Duel Monsters cards. He remembered the puzzle dueling Pegasus. And losing.
Of course the puzzle had lost. Its incompetence was disappointing, but unsurprising. But there had been something unusual about how Pegasus had dueled, something important about his golden eye. Somehow, the Millennium Eye gave Pegasus the power to read Light’s mind - or to suggest things into it; from his hazy memories, he couldn’t tell which.
That eye was how Pegasus had known about Light and the Millennium Puzzle and it seemed, like the puzzle, it could banish peoples’ souls to the shadow realm, and who knew what other powers it concealed. It was too dangerous for Light to leave it in anyone else’s hands, that much he knew. And in Light’s hands... The puzzle had proven that it was insufficient for the creation of a new, peaceful world; it was slow and failable. He had no choice, but to take the eye.
Pegasus had mentioned that he was hosting a tournament and had invited Light to join; that was why he had sent Light the package and that was why Pegasus had taken Sayu’s soul. She was supposed to serve as an incentive to force him to join the tournament and wager his Millennium Puzzle, and it seemed that the pharaoh had taken the bait, but Light found the Millennium Eye to be a much more worthy objective.
Maximillion Pegasus was a fool who had brought about his own demise, which Light would be more than happy to deliver.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I don’t know what happened to Sayu, but I’m going to figure it out and bring her back. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be careful, I just need to do this. I’m Sayu’s older brother, I should have been able to protect her, but I didn’t and now she’s gone, maybe forever. I have to do now what I couldn’t do then.
I’ll be back soon, and when I return we’ll be able to wake up Sayu, so we can all be together again.
Your son,
-Light