Isis is recounting the time she took Malik out for an icecream once and destroyed her whole family. #oops
It started well…
Good to know the Ishtars have an actual normal way in and out of the cult-dungeon and don’t have to climb up and down the well that Pegasus et al broke in via!
Malik gets his first ever taste of the sun…
Can you imagine how intense the Egyptian sun would be, having never seen anything brighter than candlelight? Although possibly Malik has seen sunlight coming through the well, since the moon is definitely visible from it.
Isis takes him to a town which must be really very close by. If Isis and other women from the clan do come here, which they must, I wonder if they’re noticed, the way, say, a semi-secret group of Amish people would be in a village market. Old-fashioned simple dress, archaic language, buying in bulk and leaving in a direction where there’s supposed to be nothing but ruins?
Despite this being the smallest and crappest market in northern Africa, Malik is OVERSTIMULATED and I guess we’re all just lucky she didn’t bring him to a mall.
what now they’re fucking fairies or something? ~“of this world”~ This is your local supermarket, for all intents and purposes, and you’ve obviously been here before. But even though Isis is probably allowed to come here, she’s obviously been taught to think of herself as totally separate from these people.
But the first thing Malik does touch ~of this world~ isn’t anything flashy, it’s a magazine someone dropped…
Malik shows an admirable librarian-like quality!
And he’a absolutely fascinated by the I-have-to-presume photos in the magazine. They could be drawings. Because they ARE drawings. It’s functionally impossible for me to tell what’s supposed to be an anime-style drawing and what’s supposed to be a photograph IN an anime, except by context, and either a semi-realistic drawing OR a photograph would look “so real” next to, y’know,
Malik is enchanted by a photo (drawing?) of a man riding a motorbike, and then happens to see a different (the same??) man riding a motorbike on a live action (animated???) television program
Isis hurries him away when she realises the man at the stall with the TV is surprised that Malik is so awestruck by seeing a TV. She obviously doesn’t want him to guess that Malik has never been outside before. It’s unclear whether she knows about child protective services or not but definitely they will all be in some trouble if CPS ever found the child-torture-isolation-dungeon aka home.
She DOES know about motorbikes and TVs and stuff though! Malik asks and she tells him exactly what they all are. It’s so fascinating to me that she’s having clearly such a very different life to him, and they’re so close but she’s obviously never told him about any of these things. I imagine the women are more permissive, especially over ground, but have impressed on Isis that she mustn’t tell Malik of these things, especially when he was young. If Malik let slip something about televisions to his father, they would probably all be in trouble.
Malik’s excitement dissipates as he realises, even if he lives a long life…
And Isis stops dead
She was trying so hard to make Malik happy, to give him his wish while still protecting him from their father, and this is where she realises that maybe Malik not knowing what he’s missing was better. Now that he knows, now that he’s stood in sunshine and had a taste of possibilities, how can he ever be happy underground? He’s only 12, and she’s only 16.
She swallows it all and puts on a smile for him.
Trying to ease the blow that they have to return so soon. She made him promise they would only be gone an hour, I think the town must be more than 20 minutes walk away.
And just all she wants is for him to be happy!
He does have amazingly effective puppy-dog eyes though… They’re both so cute! And they really ask for so little! He doesn’t even ask to keep the whole magazine – a whOLE MAGAZINE, like that would be such an outrageous demand for a 12 year old. He just wants one little reminder of the only hour of his life he didn’t spend in darkness.
And then. THIS asshole. Shows up. Just fuckin teleports right into their path so Isis almost runs right into him.
Isis, being one of the smartest people on this show, is immediately almost aggressively suspicious of This Asshole.
This Asshole tells them, nbd, their inevitable future is awash with “bloodshed and tragedy” and, oh, btw,
THIS IS JUST A LIE. HE’S JUST STARTING SHIT FOR NO GOOD REASON. YOU KNOW WHAT HE WANTS?? HE WANTS ISIS AND MALIK TO TAKE UP THE MILLENNIUM ITEMS AND GO FIND YUGI MUTOU SO THEY CAN GIVE THEIR ITEMS TO HIM AND ALSO SOME TRADING CARDS. YOU KNOW WHAT HE COULD HAVE SAID INSTEAD OF THIS??
“oh hi kids, don’t be alarmed or murder anyone, I’d just like to let you know your Long Foretold Destiny is here, the Pharaoh’s soul is kickin around Japan (for some reason), so it’d be just super swell if you two would inherit the mystical artifacts your family has been guarding for millennia for Just This Occasion! and pop over there to drop them off with a Mr Yugi Mutou of the Kame Game Shop, central Domino City, Japan, I’ll write down the address for you, oh, and be sure to look up a Mr Pegasus on your way, he has some trading cards you should tuck into that little Pharaoh Care Package too! hey, y’know what, I’ll walk you home to explain all this to your dad too in case he doesn’t believe you!”
or even a like
“The Great Pharaoh’s soul once more walks the Earth. Your ancient promise must soon be fulfilled. Seek the Pharaoh.”
that would probably have worked, they’re good kids. And smart. They could have stolen the Items from the shitty desk tidy and run away to Japan all together: Malik and Isis both separately found the Pharaoh, so together they definitely could have, and probably sooner!
INSTEAD:
yep that’ll probably work.
Isis insists they return home, and Malik asks for one more thing
(vrum vrum)
One moment longer in the sunshine to imagine his new wish, which he currently accepts will never come to pass:
a highly safety-conscious motorbike ride.
But when they re-enter the child-torture-dungeon, they notice something they missed on the way out…
It’s some contraption attached to the door, which Isis says she didn’t notice in the darkness as they were leaving. She must never have been out without an older relative before, and didn’t realise there was a rudimentary alarm. She immediately guesses what’s happened but it isn’t until they see Malik’s room has been trashed that Malik figures it out, and by the time they reach Rishid…
#just-child-torture-dungeon-things
And that’s where things start to slip out of Malik’s control, because with Rishid unconscious…
This mini-murderer is free to take over. That’s him CATCHING THE END OF THE WHIP BEFORE IT STRIKES HIM, btw.
One of Mr Ishtars hopefully many regrets will be that he decided to whip Rishid to unconsciousness in this particular room, because it makes it far too easy for Yami baby!Malik to claim the Rod.
And he isn’t shy about using it, pinning first his father
and then his sister to the walls.
And just straight up stabbing Mr Ishtar to death with the pointy interior of the Rod, which, you know, was a bit of a weird design choice to begin with. You really have to Work to murder anyone with any of the other Items…
(AU where Malik instead strangles Mr Ishtar with the Necklace and during Battle City Malik knows the future and Isis controls people’s minds)
He’s about to turn on Isis too, thinking Rishid dead already, but that’s when Rishid wakes up (above, pictured, Yami baby!Malik’s surprised face) and as soon as their eyes meet, Original Flavour baby!Malik resurfaces, with no memory of what just happened.
Rishid tries to protect him (this is so touching, look at Malik’s little hand on Rishid’s chest </3) but Malik sees…
He’s surprisingly upset for someone whose father, y’know, tortured him, kept him trapped underground, almost beat his brother to death, probably more than once, completely overlooks his sister, throws candles at people, etc etc. But that’s not uncommon in children who’ve been abused by their parents.
Oh yeah, and just in case the TRAUMATISED CHILDREN aren’t fucking traumatised enough…
THIS ASSHOLE
Was he POSSESSING him?? He comes right out of Mr Ishtar?? Did Shadi go tell those kids death is their future and then pop home before them to ORCHESTRATE THE DEATH?? Like Mr Abusivshtar is definitely capable of beating Rishid to within an inch of his life, Asshole possession or no, but like, why is Shadi coming out of him if he wasn’t In him??
NO IT FUCKING WASN’T YOU’RE LITERALLY THE WORST GO GET CAUGHT IN A VACUUM CLEANER YOU SPITEFUL ETHEREAL RUINER
But Shadi’s item is the Millennium Key. He could have easily used that before to peek int the thoughts and heart of Amen (My name for Mr. Ishtar) and see that by telling him that the Ishtars need to leave the tomb and find the pharaoh of old that Amen was deadset in his ways and unwilling to be the one to break tradition. After all, I am certain that kind of strict thinking was taught.
It is also possible he checked the children when they were asleep. (Creepy in a way yes but this is a show where characters do weird weird things) Surely he saw good things in Ishizu and in Rishid a willingness to follow Malik and protect him to the best of his own abilities.
In Malik however- what if he ventured into the wrong room and stumbled upon the darkness within? Assumed that was the original (I mean Kazuki said they are all meant to look exactly alike, the hikaris and yamis but only look different for our sake) and took that knowledge back out with him and /then/ came up with the plan to say it was the pharaoh’s will? After all, Marik has extreme determination to get things done his own way and when Malik had finished the initiation and begged Rishid to tell him who he should hate… Rishid had told him the pharaoh. So knowing Marik held hate for the pharaoh already- it kind of made sense to go about it the way he did.
I am Terra 