Tell me, my opponent, tell me true with every card
Of us two, you'll brave the harsher plight.
Promise me by winning you can face the way that's hard,
For the loser is out of the fight.
Swear if you defeat me, and then beat me if you can,
That the faith of my loss is secure,
The only way to beat me is to be the better man;
We both know all we're fighting for.
Wrest from me the darker path, right into that bleak cloud,
Take, along with victory, the fall;
And then, if you do win this, never could I be more proud
Than to know that I faced you at all.

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Background:

Or, in Munchkin terms, "To the Victor Goes the Doom". I wrote this in January 2009, but it's got nothing to do with the Fortune Cup (yet?). I found out that 4Kids was now streaming not some, but all Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes online. Stoked? Oh, yeah. One of my favorite duels ever is Fighting For a Friend, and that night I re-watched Joey vs. Valon (even now I'm not quite ready for Joey vs. Mai) for the first time in four years and a few days later I wrote this. I think it's influenced more by FFaF than by the other episodes I was seeing for the first time in a while, Back to Battle City and The Darkness Returns, but there was some influence from those, too. By the time the duel is over, Valon isn't afraid to lose because he knows Joey will carry on for both of them: "'Ey, Wheeler. It's up to you now; save Mai." It also applies to the Semifinal episodes I was watching, in that Back to Battle City is all about who faces who, and Joey must persuade Yugi to let him face Marik, despite the danger. And all of this, in true YGO style, happens in the medium of a duel. Poetically, I wondered if, along with grief for Joey, Yugi felt as though he was partially to blame. Now, in Clash in the Coliseum, this isn't what the duel's about, but if Kaiba had won, he would probably have faced the same fate as Joey, or worse. "Best of Friends, Best of Duelists" was also such a situation. Like many poems about dueling this is somehat universal, which is why I also linked from GX. One situation I can think of is when Zane calls Jaden out in Conquering the Past I, and won't let him continue recklessly into danger unless he proves in a duel that he's ready.