Okay, so there might be a bit of an epilogue coming later. We'll see.

My parents rarely do any sort of parties for Christmas, but when they do they go all out. I've been swamped with parties since Christmas Eve - my mom's and brother's birthdays are today and tomorrow in addition to the Christmas parties - and I've not had a chance to sit down until today. Sorry for the delay and a belated Merry Christmas to you all!

On the twelfth day of Christmas my muses gave to me:

Twelve 4Kids Edits
Eleven Shadow Games
Ten Exploding Fuzzballs
Nine Random People
Eight Friendship Speeches
Seven Alister-shrooms
Six Hell-Bent Villains
FIVE SENNEN ITEMS
Four Toon World Monsters
Three Ishtar Siblings
Two Kaiba Brothers
And Atemu in a tree.

"I know for a fact that this skirt was shorter," Mai grumped, staring down at her clothes with a frown. "And my shirt's low, but…is it not low enough or something?"

"You aren't the only one with a wardrobe malfunction," Vivian pointed out, gesturing to her signature yellow gown. "My dress is longer than I remember, and looser too. And if you look at your Harpy Ladies you'll notice they've got a wardrobe malfunction going on too. I was looking at your cards earlier."

Mai pulled out her deck and shuffled through it, a perplexed frown marring her features. "You know, Vivian, you're right," she said after a moment's pause. "I don't know what's going on...they certainly didn't look like that before."

The two women studied each other for a long moment before coming to a unanimous decision. "We need to go shopping when the stores open up."

Bakura stomped inside, causing Ryou to look over. "Here's your book," snapped the tomb robber irritably, huffing as he sat down.

"Thank you for picking it up for me, but what's wrong?"

"Eleven. I held eleven games because people were being utterly ridiculous about their shopping, even though it's Christmas Day!" snapped Bakura. "But every time it got to the good part it was as if it got skipped!"

Ignoring his counterpart's indignant glare, he continued. "One minute the monster would be bearing down on them, the next they'd be on the ground twitching. The monster never hit them, and when on some off chance it did some white mist blocked me from seeing the actual blow! I know it hit them, but the fact it got obscured… IT'S UTTERLY RIDICULOUS."

Ryou glared, somewhat severe. "That's what you get for holding too many Shadow Games. Use the Sennen Ring one more time to hold a Shadow Game and I'm confiscating it."

"I'm only surprised that I didn't see you get hit by those dolls, Yugi. I was standing right next to you when it happened," his grandfather remarked sympathetically as he helped Yugi clean the various burns. "All that happened was that you walked over to the shelf and the next thing I know you're burned from where the Kuribohs exploded."

"Why are we still carrying those, anyway?" said Yugi, an unusual amount of annoyance in his words. "I thought we cleared them out last night."

"There were about ten people who reserved them to pick up today…though if they come for them they'll find that they'll only get stuffing. If we find that much."

"I've got your wallets back!" Kajiki announced proudly as he clambered out of the river, shaking his hair dry. "That pickpocket did not do a thorough enough job of disposing of the evidence."

"I get cold watching you swim in there," remarked Espa with a shudder. His younger brothers nodded in agreement, identical shudders rippling through the four smaller versions of their older brother. "How on earth could you have managed that without freezing to death?"

"The ocean's a lot colder than this at times," explained the fisherman as he handed Ryuzaki and Haga their drenched wallets. "I'm used to it."

That did not entirely surprise the group.

Kajiki blinked over at where his harpoon was holding the unconscious pickpocket, frowning in bemusement as he studied the trapped man. "I could have sworn that my harpoon pinned his clothes to the wall," he mused, padding over. "Yet it only pierced the wall…"

"You threw it so fast I didn't even see it," said Ryuzaki.

"I don't even remember throwing it," replied Kajiki with a deepening frown. "It was…bizarre."

"No."

"Come now, Kaiba boy, admit it," said Pegasus, smirking. "You know you have to."

"I'm not admitting anything," replied Seto stubbornly.

Noa sighed. "Seto, I'm admitting it," he said. "There's no way not to see the obvious."

"Your sanity has always been questionable, at best. Same goes for Ishtar," he added when Noa opened his mouth to comment. "Both of you are automatically ruled out of this discussion."

"I'm admitting it, though, and I'm perfectly normal," Otogi pointed out. "Come on, Kaiba, even you can't not admit it."

"I can. Very easily."

Dartz raised an eyebrow. "I do not doubt that you can," he commented, hovering in a transparent form above them. "But Raphael was swayed and even I had to admit that I can see why when similar reasoning was turned on me. The vessel of the Pharaoh can be very persuasive when he has to be."

"And he helped me too, Mister Kaiba," said Leon helpfully. "Yugi's helped all of us turn around at some point."

"Join the 'I was persuaded by Yugi to join the good side' club with us, Kaiba boy," added Pegasus cheerfully.

Seto glared. "Never."

"Of course he won't," said Noa with a sigh. "Seto's a very stubborn anti-hero. He won't admit the obvious truth—OW!"

Seto looked thoroughly confused for a moment. "All I did was lift my hand. I never intended to punch anyone."

He glanced at where Noa was glaring at him from the floor and smirked. "On the other hand…"

"RAAAAAPH!"

The blond, who had been comfortably situated on the recliner, jumped at the sound of Valon's distressed wail. His eyes searched the room until he found the Australian, but when he did an exasperated sigh escaped him.

"You antagonized Alister again, didn't you?" he guessed as Valon came up to him.

Poor Valon's hair had been dyed a deep shade of red, alternating white spots dappling his head; what made things worse for the teenager was that his hair had been styled exactly like Alister's, forcibly bringing the mental image of a mushroom to mind.

"I'm not goin' t' look like this forever, am I?" Valon asked, looking stricken. "I didn' think 'e'd get back at me like this, knockin' me out 'n' dyin' my 'air, but if I'm like this I'm—"

"Calm down," admonished the older man wearily. "I'm certain that your hair can be returned to its natural state in no time."

"Can' 'e take a joke? 'e wasn't this uptight about the other six times I teased 'im 'bout the mushrooms!"

"I've warned you about overusing the joke, Valon," Raphael explained as he ushered the boy into the bathroom.

"'e moved so fast I didn' even see 'im! I'm normal one second 'n' the next I'm like this! I didn't even see 'im doe this to me!"

"He does know karate and he's always been quick, Valon. That's not all that surprising."

Yami no Marik frowned. His shadow creatures had caught their victims by now (with the exception of Dartz, who had vanished somewhere along the way; it was all right, though, because now he could contend with that Gozaburo man again), but for some reason he could not see the monsters attacking the other villains.

Ah well. He could hear them scream. That was good enough for him.

For now.

Shadi could see Bakura ranting to his descendent through the window and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The tomb raider had always been temperamental.

He had not thought that the problem would have extended this far—Bakura was not the only one having trouble performing the Shadow Games. The Pharaoh's Sennen Puzzle had been acting up, as had the Ring, Ankh, Scales, and Eye; he had needed to punish a trespasser for intruding in the catacombs in search of treasure, but the items seemed to have lost their potency. Either that, or some higher being was preventing the items from performing to their full capability.

The malfunctioning items were only a small part of the problem facing Domino. Lately anything that could be construed as being remotely violent or inappropriate was being censored or omitted altogether, causing problems city-wide; policemen could not take down criminals and firemen suddenly found their axes missing.

This was a problem that would need to be rectified as quickly as humanly possible.

Pegasus pouted when he checked his email. "Looks like Kaiba boy finally decided to ignore me," he sighed. "I should have asked about the email earlier when I saw him at that impromptu meeting, but…oh well."

He studied his hands for a moment before snapping his fingers. "There is always the fact I can send him Christmas balloons!" he exclaimed brightly, causing Croquet to groan. "Let's see, four Toon Blue Eyes should do the trick!"

"Sir, I would like to point out it's Christmas Day. I don't think Kaiba would—"

"—have anything in return? Posh, dear Croquet, that's the fun of it," replied his employer, already setting about to make the balloons. "His reactions are most amusing. Who needs gifts?"

Maybe Croquet should call Roland in advance and warn him of his employer's intentions. There was no guarantee on how much longer Kaiba would put up with this.

Pegasus suddenly paused, looking at something on his computer intently. "Wait a moment, who's edited my Red Archery Girl's seashells? The coloring is all wrong and she looks awful!"

Ishizu looked utterly relieved as she finished going over the last of the translations for the Greek noble's scrolls. Her brothers both had done wonderful jobs; although she'd had to correct them here and there—mostly Marik's translations, since the boy had a habit of getting irritated with translating and it reflected in his words—they were overall accurate. To top it off she was back to feeling one hundred percent and ready to resume work once the holiday ended.

Marik and Rishid, on the other hand, had simultaneously caught her cold.

She handed Rishid a glass of water and said, "Pass that to Marik, please."

"Oh come on," Marik said thickly, sneezing violently and huddling under the quilt. "I can handle my own glass!"

"You broke the first three I handed you, Marik. Any others broken and we'll find ourselves drinking from the bowls," she said firmly, watching Rishid set the glass on the table next to Marik before handing him another one. "It is for precaution's sake."

Marik sat up on the sofa a bit more and glared. "Yeah, because I'm such a hazard," he retorted, stretching his arms far out to the sides. One of his hands lightly bumped against the glass and before any of the three Ishtars could move they were staring at a broken mess of glass and water on the floor.

"…Not a word."

"Stick your hands in the air, Mister Kaiba!"

Thomas heard it before he saw it, his weapon out of his holster and pointed at the man behind his boss and Mokuba; Seto easily moved his youngest brother behind him and turned his attention to the man currently threatening them, looking bored.

Thomas kept his eyes trained on their attacker. "Easy there, friend," he chided, though his eyes were narrowed and there was an edge to his voice. "Let's put the gun down and talk about this like civilized men."

Mokuba, momentarily caught off guard by how quickly events had gone, stared in surprise. "What gun?"

Thomas blinked, looking at their attacker's hand. Sure enough, the man's hand was devoid of a gun…and come to think of it, so was his own. Where had his standard issue gun gone? He'd had it five minutes ago, when he'd checked his holster on the way down.

He grinned and cracked his knuckles. Ah well. He'd figure out it out later. "I hope you're good at fist fights, buddy. No gun means clobbering time and I have a Christmas present to give you."

Yugi and his friends were not sure whether they should laugh or not.

Poor Atem had only been standing by the Mutou's Christmas tree. That was all he had been doing, really, until Jounouchi had accidentally bumped into the tree and knocked it on top of the Pharaoh.

Atem managed to extricate himself halfway out of the tree before he let loose a stream of what were supposed to be profanities in Egyptian—except his voice had suddenly vanished, resulting in Atem laying in the middle of the floor, pinned under a Christmas tree and soundlessly raging.

They exchanged glances. "Should we…help?" asked Anzu uncertainly.

"I don't even know what we're supposed to do," said Honda, looking in disbelief at Atem.

Yugi frowned, studying the trapped Pharaoh before he snapped his fingers. "I think I'm beginning to understand what's going on here!" he exclaimed, disappearing for a moment.

"Where are you going?" called Jounouchi as Yugi vanished into the storage room.

"I forgot to send that 4Kids company their Christmas gift and I happen to have a surplus of highly explosive Kuriboh plushies," came the annoyed reply. "This'll solve Atem's problem easily."