Predictions and Observations:
Return of the Sacred Beasts

A summary:
“Marcel” jumps into the big crack in the ground he just opened up and runs down a tunnel. Jaden pursues, telling Blair and Bonaparte to get back to Jesse and the others. Chazz, still a zombie, blocks Jaden’s path; the only way to get past is to duel. Adrian also appears out of a side tunnel, still following “Marcel”; he’s heard the rumors of the Sacred Beasts, and it looks like “Marcel” is about to find out if there’s any truth to it all. That makes two of them!
Meanwhile, Blair and Bonaparte are surrounded by the duel ghouls that followed them there, until Pharaoh, claws flying, leaps into the crowd and clears a path. Blair and Bonaparte follow the cat, inspired.
Meanwhile, in front of the main building, the regular students are starting to get hungry and losing faith in their de facto leaders. Blair and Bonaparte show up and tell where Jaden went. Despite Jesse, Jim, and Hassleberry’s objections, a trio of Obelisks rally the other disgruntled students to duel their way to the food storage. The three go through the doors, are surrounded by duel ghouls, and the screaming can be heard from the power station, where Axel and the blue berets are just about done looking around. Just as they’re about to leave, the power lines crackle, and a face appears, attempting to contact them. Axel apparently sent a runner, because soon the rest of the group (minus the students who tried their luck with the duel ghouls) joins them. Bastion recognizes his mentor, Professor Eisenstein, and rigs up enough extra power to clear up the communication. Eisenstein is on Academy Island with a bunch of strange-looking equipment and techies, along with none other than Aster Phoenix. The two fill them in: they have been transported to another dimension—crazy as it sounds—and in order to get home, they need to widen the same dimensional portal through which they’re currently communicating. This will take a huge surge of duel energy, in exactly the right place and time, and the help of Crystal Beast Rainbow Dragon. When Jesse replies that it hasn’t been found, they learn that it has: Chancellor Sheppard and Pegasus are on their way to get the all-important tablet and make it into a card. For now, the right *place* is Duel Academy’s tennis court (go figure), so they have to get there through the hordes of duel ghouls. Aster asks if they’re all okay, and where Jaden’s gotten to. They start to worry, until Jesse reminds them that this is Jaden they’re talking about; he’ll be just fine.
Meanwhile, Jaden duels Chazz; in this particular duel, it’s apparently entirely real. At one point Chazz’s monster literally grabs Jaden by the throat, and Flame Wingman lights Chazz’s coat on fire. Chazz’s strategy is very different from usual, and none of his usual cards are anywhere to be seen. The duel ended, Jaden’s Neo-Spacian hero catches Chazz before he falls off the ledge and into a pretty endless-looking abyss. Chazz is left on the walkway unconscious, and Jaden runs on after “Marcel”. It looks like Jaden’s too late, until Adrian shows up right when “Marcel” is about to get the cards, and asks if he’s planning to share. They seem to be about to duel.

For some reason, the crowd of zombies that was approaching the Sacred Beasts’ site was mostly Obelisk and Ra. From a distance it appeared to be only Obelisk and Ra. That’s probably because it’s easier to goad them into duels; Slifers tend to be less confident in their abilities and therefore know when to pick up and run.

What about the spirit keys? She asked stupidly. If I had to guess, I’d say that the spirit keys are only one way. The only *requirement*, I believe, is plenty of duel energy, concentrated on the island within a period of time. That seems to be what makes all that appear. “Marcel”’s claw was glowing with the same stuff that comes from the bio-bands; if we can assume that’s duel energy (which would be pretty safe), that probably means that it just basically channeled all the energy it had been draining into that crack, which allowed it access. Now, how to actually get the cards, once it gets done with Adrian? Nothing seems to be glowing in eerie rainbows yet, so it might be pretty safe. Then again, since the original Sacred Beasts adventure was something of a setup, we don’t know how much of that was required and how much was staged. We know from that, though, that Kagemaru was actually interested in the duel energy they expended in protecting the keys.

Usually, duelists stay the distance apart at which they start. This was a marked exception to that. Can I think of any others? (Here we go…) Fighting for a Friend, both of them actually, though in the first one they always returned to their starting places. Almost happened in Awakening of Evil, but the Winged Dragon of Ra had other ideas. Everything’s Relative. Friends ‘Til the End. Makings of a Magician. But still, all of these were kinda interrupts; some may technically have had a victor (like Friends ‘Til the End, which Joey technically won because Yugi turned the final attack on himself instead), but the moving took place either right after the duel was over, it interrupted the duel, it occurred because the duel was interrupted, or it caused the duel to end. It’s kind of an interesting thing to notice. After a while it seems almost as though each duelist is in a bubble. Whenever they’re in the arena, it’s even considered a bit weird when one player crosses the field to exchange cards or whatever, or even when they come over afterward, like in Grad Match or The Final Duel. It’s sort of part of the duel etiquette that’s even more unspoken than ‘you don’t mess with someone else’s cards’, akin to, say, ‘dueling your very best is a mark of respect for your opponent’ or ‘tournaments traditionally start with fireworks in the daytime.’ It’s part of the image you think of when you think of a duel. It also makes it pretty easy to remember whenever those “bubbles” got broken or bent.

“My mom was right. I should’ve done some homeschooling this year.” If you didn’t head for the hills after spending a semester brainwashed into an evil cult, you deserve what you’ve got, I’m afraid.

“He, um… usually saves us.” I’m not really sure whether to cheer that Crowler’s caught on to the importance of having Jaden around, or groan that he doesn’t have the guts to step up and at least try to save them himself.

Crowler and Lex know what’s going on when they mention the Sacred Beasts, though; they were the original keykeepers. The only one who isn’t present (yes, you all know where this is going) is Zane. Heck, even Banner’s put in an appearance, and he spends most of his time hanging out in Pharaoh’s digestive system.

Well, there go the rest of the students, I said when they attempted to storm the food storage. *Are* there any students left besides our heroes? Other than a couple extra zombies to wade through, it’s kind of good riddance because they’ll be just fine, they probably won’t even get hungry, and they’ll give the people who know what they’re doing the freedom to do what they need to do.

It’s Eisenstein again! And we all thought he was the most bizarre and obscure one-ep wonder in the history of ‘em! Have you noticed that most of the really silly ones come back? Then again, they’re all pretty silly. But when are we going to see Dimitri’s impersonation of, say, one of the transfers, or Chazz (who won Gx), or someone else he hasn’t yet? Come to think of it, last year, if they had run into Dimitri as a light-head impersonating Sartorius, that would have been all kinds of hilarious.

Pitch-dark Dragon…? I know that monster. I’ve heard of it before. A long time ago. Kaiba played it? Joey, maybe? Rick, that kid with the dragon deck and Heart of the Underdog back in KCGC? I’ll try to look it up. Well, it’s not Rick. And Heart of the Underdog reminds *me* of Joey, too, which is a compliment by the way. Okay… my next guess is late Waking the Dragons, either Joey or Kaiba. We’re talkin’ Flight of Fear, Fighting for a Friend, circa that. That was back in the dark ages before I gained the ability to hang onto these episodes longer than it took to summarize them (which makes ep-guiding more than just a mad daydream), so I s’pose I should be thankful that back then I posted a detailed summary with my predictions. The summary actually came first, and eventually the predictions got longer and the summary got shorter. By popular demand, the summary seems to be making a comeback. Anyway. Didn’t find ‘em. Dang. I know I’ve heard of that monster somewhere before. It’s too obscure to be Duelist Kingdom. The dragon suggests that it’s Joey, Kaiba, *maybe* Rex Raptor. I’ll check out On the Wrong Track. Ah-nope. Pitch-dark dragon. It’s on the tip of my tongue. The School Duel? I’ll check the only part of it I have. Chazz’s deck was full of dragons to support his Armed ones. Nope. Drat. I admit defeat for now, I’m afraid, but I’ll keep an ear out for the name. I know it’s in a duel I know well.

Chazz is unusually lively for a zombie. He seems to maintain his uncharacteristic zombieness through different eye shapes. It’s very weird, but kinda interesting.

When he’s back to normal, Chazz is going to *get* Jaden for singeing his coat…

So Pegasus and Sheppard are en route to the Valley of the World…? Nifty. What took so long? I have a rather interesting theory, actually, that, in searching for the rest of the school, they stumbled into Viper’s lab and found records from his security cameras (‘cause we all know he would have kept ‘em, lol), including a recording of Trapper mentioning it to Jesse. Hence, now they know, they know where it is, and we’re off.

Creating your own power spike with duel energy. This just sounds like such an interesting discussion of duel energy properties. Feel free to skip over this guaranteed ramble if you get tired of me trying to figure out how the crazy duel magic works. To me it seems like they’d have to either hook their bio-bands up to a different “energy pool” (so they drain somewhere else as opposed to the tank of goo sitting on a table in the school library), or they’d have to crack ‘em off somehow. Otherwise the requisite energy would go to “Marcel”, not to getting them home. Unless, of course, the energy is gathered from the whole duel, not just collected at the end. I can think of plenty of duels when the end was only one of the exciting parts, or even the low part. You don’t need to win a duel or even end it to put a lot of energy into it and have it be amazing. So… my first question is, what’s the contraption for? My follow-up to “what’s the contraption for” is, do they need duelists on both ends? If so, that could get fun. Just about the only duelist I can think of who has a strong enough connection with these guys and would be willing to come would be Atticus. Zane would be a candidate, if he gave a darn, which in all likelihood he wouldn’t, unfortunately. I’m not sure what kind of duelist Echo is, but her deep bond with Adrian would make her a candidate, especially since she’s part of the whole mixed-up painful thing we learned about in A Snake in the Grass I and in a duel the truth always comes out. Aster and Jaden could stand to have a rematch, but somehow I get the feeling that, now that we’ve got Rainbow Dragon, Jaden and Jesse are going to duel again really soon, which suggests that the duels will not all, at least, be cross-dimension. Unless the “twins’” rematch happens later. But since Rainbow Dragon is a major player in this situation, I think taking on Jaden is going to be one of the first things it does, and that means rematch. So… the contraption may be to facilitate cross-dimension duel(s) (and you have to admit that would be pretty cool). If not, what? Perhaps *it* can gather the energy instead of the bio-bands, if they’re in the tennis court? It looks like a great big satellite dish with a platform attached, and what do you want to bet the area they’re moving it towards is where the tennis court would be if the main building were there? So… my next question is, they said they had to convert duel energy to energy-energy. I’m not even going to bother asking about conversion factors or stupid things like that, and just ask, *how?* How are they different? What sort of mechanism translates between them? So, to create a power spike, they would probably need several duels at once, powerful duelists, and high-excitement duels. Fierce rivalries and deep connections.

The tennis court? Why the *tennis court*? We’ve only been there once before, for Courting Alexis, that episode way back in freshman year with the Obelisk pixies and the goofball with the tennis cards and the very shiny teeth, a one-ep wonder who never returned. I don’t suppose this means we’re picking the “fiancée means friend, for now” conversation back up? I highly doubt it, but…

Awww. Aster really seems to care, a lot more than he lets on. How did he find out, and how did he get there? We had all been wondering where he got to after Jewel of a Duel.

Why didn’t Chazz just get back up? That’s what a duel zombie would usually do. Then again, “Marcel” just burned a lot of energy opening up that passageway, so either he’s tapped out (quick! Head for the tennis court!) and the zombies that go down will stay down, he’s saving the rest of the energy for something else, or he decided not to waste the energy on reviving Chazz because he’s almost there and he thought he’d have the Sacred Beasts by the time Jaden got there anyway; Chazz provided all the stalling he needed.

New end credits. They removed the background. What gives?

“Time to get what I deserve…” Adrian keeps saying that, and I keep answering, “which at this point is most likely a good butt-kicking.”

Hey! What about the shadow charms? It took me a while to remember them (it’s embarrassing; I didn’t think about them until I came across an entirely random reference while doing something else), but I do now! Where are they? Anyone’s guess. Jaden said he was accumulating a collection, so maybe they’re hidden under his bunk in the Slifer Dorm. Maybe if we’re lucky he gave them to Sheppard for safekeeping and they’re in a dusty cupboard in the Chancellor’s office that Crowler and Bonaparte never messed with and no one else ever noticed. I had thought it was just a loose end never tied up, but if the Sacred Beasts are back, there’s still hope that there will be some use for them, even if we never did see the Shadow Rider with a skateboard. There’s a necklace, a glove, an ovalish rock, a crownlike circlet, and a book. Two of the Shadow Riders wore masks and didn’t have shadow charms. The circlet actually has a history of interdimensional travel (but come to think of it, it probably wasn’t responsible or Abidos III and his entourage couldn’t have returned from whence they came). I’m keeping in mind that Jaden had Sebatiel the Sorcerer’s Stone to bail him out last time he tangled with the Sacred Beasts, and reminding myself that he has two more years of experience since then and it’s like saying that Yugi can’t beat Kaiba without Exodia.

Ha! I figured out something finally that I wanted to share. I’m always on the lookout for chronology, right? Long story short, I’m working on a Ballad of Battle City, have been for about a year and a half now, and I’m working on the portion containing the events of Stalked By the Rare Hunters. Since that episode is relatively hard to come by, I’ve been going through the notes I took for my episode guide the last time it showed (when I was about thirteen, fourteen, and hadn’t a clue the level of detail I would soon require, making said notes relatively useless), and came across the following bit of information: Joey hasn’t spoken to his mom since he and Serenity were separated, which means seven years! Previously to Duelist Kingdom, Serenity’s message said six, meaning, for chronology kooks like me, that one year occurred between the messages, or in other words between Duelist Kingdom and Battle City. However, since that’s a bit far-fetched, I’ll postulate instead that the anniversary of the separation, a day they’d remember, occurred between the messages, moving the count up from six to seven. It seems far-fetched to place a year between Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, simply because Duelist Kingdom is still very much in everyone’s mind.

Doesn’t look like there’s an episode this coming weekend. Or next weekend. I’ll keep my eye on the listings, but it looks like we have officially entered a no-new-episode zone. That’s all, folks! -Clio