TexasDreamer01

She stared at the board in front of her, pondering her next move as the array of cards in her hand and discarded marked her progress. It would be a loss – a terrible one, no simple defeat for her – but the manner in which she lost this game would dictate the next step in her negotiations.

The tea was bitter, unlike the sweet variety she was accustomed to drinking. Regardless, she sipped it again, an interlude of posturing that afforded to her a margin of error, in the slow, unblinking manner she looked over the rim of her cup.

Whispering to her, the Tauk glittered along her collar, a providential distraction as she sorted the chaff from the wheat of all the potential futures being allude to her. Her duel – one of her first, and for that the bitter taste would linger on her tongue for many nights – was a firmly fixed event of failure.

Its only saving grace in this ego-driven game challenged to her for the sake of positioning her on the losing end, her opponent knowing that her background ill-afforded her the opportunity to master this particular game of socialization, was that the particular angle of her fall would dictate whether she would be granted this opportunity for the next chapter of her life.

Her life, and that of everyone who came before her – will come after her, the Tauk whispered, a mournful tone edged in the long-warped darkness that carefully bore the soul of the pharaoh until the right time for his reemergence. As such, she grimly swallowed her tea, the bitterness laving her nerves and leaving them abraded despite her fractured, firmly-bound facade of tranquility.

“Your turn, Minister Mohammad?” She inquired of the man who would – could – become her mentor in this modern world.

It was, for all the world, as if she were the one poised atop the mountain of success, even with the few cards left in her deck and her game piece staggering to the finish line. Her kohl was perfect, hijab foreign to her antique sensibilities disallowing so much as a stray hair to appear. Though her appearance still flirted with this modern shaping of her country’s culture, she upheld the values of their joint heritage, the string of lotus flowers on the edges of her plain, linen dress an inscrutable declaration of the deepest values of their land.

She could only hope that her opponent saw that, beyond the guise of modernity and the opportunities the past yet afforded all of them. Their future depended on it, and so she sat, still as a crocodile in the water.

He paused, a clear mark of indecision as he reassessed the splay of cards between them. It was a mark in her favour, one carefully tallied as she refused to glance at either the cards or the game board which denoted the changing tides of their game. The whispers shifted, ever so slightly, and the frown on her future mentor’s face.

“I believe it is my turn, Miss Ishtar,” The minister-delegate to the Ministry of Culture said, a critical glint to his eyes as he moved his game piece to the end of the board, accruing the necessary amount of points to secure him a win. She sat serenely, laying the unacknowledged chasm that was her next step beneath her notice, setting down her tea cup with a decisive click.

The Tauk fluttered along with her heart, a thundering pulse that yet skipped jaggedly over the scar of their king’s name – ripped so decisively from their prayers, and yet for such an unenviable reason – as it beat out the winnowing of the future; the truest of futures, and the one she was destined to walk down all along. She smiled, a polite curve as she followed the junior minister’s rise from his seat.

“I thank you for the opportunity,” Ishizu said, “It was an enlightening game.”

“Indeed it was,” Minister-Delegate Mohammad replied decisively, “I believe we have more to discuss, if you have the time?”

It was with feet upon steady ground that she walked to the indicated guest chair by the man’s desk, leaving behind the shreds of the duel made with an ornate board. She had shown her mettle, the weight of centuries resting upon her shoulders – yes, she could convince this modern courtier that their past was worth saving, and that she was the appropriate fit for the role she was destined to receive.

Her pride was a due sacrifice, as deeply as the wound cut. Ishizu, daughter of the Tombkeepers of the Nameless Pharaoh, would perform her duties, even as each step into the future felt less and less like the duty she had grown so comfortable in.

Too many people relied on her destined success, and she would fulfill it.

I realized half-way through that the timing of "Magic and Wizards"'s creation, as the TCG is known in-universe, was likely not securely in place at the time period in which Ishizu likely began her career as a museum curator. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't find a real-life game that quite fit, so imagine that they're playing a blend of rummy and cribbage that's reminiscent of senet, only it uses cards instead of dice to create points and move one's game piece further along the board.

Attempting to figure out who, precisely, would be the best person for Ishizu to wrangle into a path for her to become a museum curator for the Supreme Council of Antiquities required a little bit of backdating, as the SCA is currently known as the Ministry of State of Antiquities, and who precisely was in charge of whom changed as recently for Ishizu as 1994 (Wikipedia), particularly where the ranks in the Cabinet of Egypt might be unusual for a Western audience member like me (Wikipedia; I did my best in this regard).

She's exceptionally young, but managed to work/obtain a very influential position that eventually allowed her to set up what was quite possibly her own exhibit in Japan (I doubt anyone else outside of the Tombkeeper clan(s) would even know Atem existed) - quite possibly she was also at a critical position to help her family, not only the Ishtars but possibly also the above-ground branches of the family that likely provided pragmatic support in the form of food and communication to the outside world.

I believe Atem's rise again as Yami Yugi would have failed at several points if it weren't for some heavy-lifting the background to enable all of the events leading up to the Ceremonial Duel to even occur - personally I believe that even though Pegasus received the Millennium Eye from Shadi, the route he took to learn of the Shadow Games could likely have been facilitated by Ishizu, via her political connections, her connection to the Tauk as its holder, or a combination of both, which spring-boarded the entire creation of Duel Monsters as we, the audience, know it.

All of this must have taken quite a bit of acceptance into how many of her wishes and wants needed to be shed in order to accomplish the sheer magnitude of what Ishizu did, long before Yugi even finished solving the Millennium Puzzle and Yami Bakura set into motion the final events that collected the Items into one place for the RPG to take place.

I think it's ambiguous as to whether Ishizu even enjoyed duelling on a personal level - or saw it as anything more than a means to an end in possibly the same way she viewed her position in the SCA - but I think she knew that sometimes you needed to lose a battle in order to win the war, which she showed that she has the determination to see things through even as it proved difficult to keep her own family together as the eldest of the Ishtar siblings when the world outside of the tombs is so, so vastly different. Egypt must have certainly seemed like a completely alien world to her, and adjusting to those differences while objectively knowing that she was in the same country she grew up in might have been an additional burden to her in combination with all of the apocalyptic-level stress she literally grew up with as a daily event.