Jonouchi brings Yugi and Honda to a store called the Junky Scorpion to purchase a popular kind of shoes called Air Muscles (knock-offs of Air Jordans I presume). The store owner says he won’t sell those shoes to just anyone, so he gives Jonouchi a challenge. The store owner puts a scorpion inside one of the shoes and dares Jonouchi to put his foot in. Jonouchi accepts the challenge and passes the test. The store owner reveals that he never put the scorpion in the shoe. He also sells them to Jonouchi for half the original price. Then the store owner warns them about a dangerous gang called the Muscle Hunters who go around stealing people’s rare shoes.

Jonouchi frolics through the city in his new Air Muscles. However, the Muscle Hunter gang soon spots them. They assault Jonouchi, Honda, and Yugi, and take Jonouchi’s Air Muscles.

After the gang leaves, Yugi and co. brush themselves off.

Jonouchi asks Yugi if he can get himself home.

“What about you and Honda?” asks Yugi.

“We want…REVENGE!!!!” they both say.

“I’ll go too…if I’m not in the way,” says Yugi.

“Way to be a man!” says Jonouchi, “Just leave the fighting to us! Check out the right way to punch!”

Jonouchi and Honda follow the Muscle Hunters to an arcade. They walk up to the gang while they are playing video games, and Jonouchi says, “We don’t attack from behind like cowards! We come from the front!”

Jonouchi and Honda start clobbering the muscle gang while Yugi innocently watches.

Jonouchi asks for his shoes back, but one of the muscle hunters says, “We don’t have them…we were hired…like always…it’s him…the shop owner.”

“How could he,” thinks Yugi, “He knew how much Jonouchi wanted those sneakers…having us beaten up…swindling people!!”

Back at the Junky Scorpion, the store owner is holding the Air Muscles in his hands when Yugi walks in, but in his alter-ego form.

Yugi tells the store owner to give him the shoes.

The store owner puts the scorpion inside one of the shoes and hands it to Yugi. Yugi reaches for the shoe, and in an unexpected move, drops some coins in the shoe.

“It’s a game!” says Yugi, “Like your test of courage! Only this time there is a scorpion in that sneaker! The rules are simple! There are ten coins in this sneaker. We’ll take turns pulling out coins and hoping your scorpion doesn’t sting us. The person who takes the most coins wins!”

“I’ll take your challenge,” says the store owner, but on one condition! If I win, you owe me 100,000 yen for each coin!”

Yugi agrees. The game begins.

Yugi goes first. Yugi pulls one coin.

The store owner takes his turn. “You wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he thinks as he safely pulls one coin.

While Yugi takes his next turn, the store owner thinks of a way he can win the game faster.

“As long as you stick your hand into the shoe to grab the coins, anything goes, right?!” says the store owner.

Yugi agrees.

The store owner reaches his hand into the shoe while he simultaneously uses a knife to stab the front of the shoe, in hopes of killing the scorpion. The store owner grabs all of the coins at once, but now his fist is too big, and he can’t pull it out of the shoe. (Isn’t there an Aesop Fable that goes like this?)

“That’s a dangerous card to play!” says Yugi, “You got greedy and took a fistful of coins…and is the scorpion truly dead?”

The store owner hears a sound from inside the shoe. “This sound!! This shuffling sound…It couldn’t be!!”

“In the shadow games, those with weak hearts always lose!” says Yugi, “If you had any love for your scorpion or those sneakers, I couldn’t have foretold how this game would turn out.”

Yugi managed to get back to Jonouchi and Honda (in his regular form of course).

“Whaa…When you woke up, the sneakers were in your hands and the owner was being taken to the hospital for a scorpion sting!?” says Jonouchi.

“I don’t know why, but there’s a hole in the sneakers,” says Yugi.

Jonouchi is just happy Yugi got the sneakers. “I’ll consider this hole a battle scar,” he says as he frolics down the street with them once again.

**Images from the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga were obtained from https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/yu-gi-oh

To any and all who may be following these reviews, I thank each and every one of you. Some of you may be die-hard Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, some may not be familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh! at all, and the rest of you are somewhere in between. For all audiences, we have reached the end of what I consider to be the expositional chapters of Yu-Gi-Oh! Over the next few chapters, the direction for the entire series shall begin to unfold.