#atem and bakura are a bit more firmly anchored; so banishing them just sends 'em back into their jewelry.

[waffliesinyoface]

i like to imagine that kaiba, having been an Actual Fucking Sorcerer in his past life, also has some level of magical bullshit abilities inherent to the other members of the cast

crucially, they are strongest and can only be reliably manifested when kaiba is being... himself. This is most notable when it actually happens in canon - ie: kaiba defies ishizu’s 100% accurate predictions of the future through the sheer power of fuck you, god, he’s going to win this duel with blue-eyes. I want to believe that he changed the future through sheer assholery.

Now, admittedly, the “ridiculously skeptical” part of his personality was inflated by the anime - in the manga he is a bit more introspective about it, and notably, after battle city, he kinda just goes “fuck y’all, Kaiba OUT” and leaves, and isn’t as dismissive of “that hocus-pocus nonsense” as he was before, because you know. Shadow games and angry gods just kind of happened in front of him. 

That said... he’s still like that at the beginning of battle city, despite getting mind-crushed by Atem in the prologue and Pegasus mucking about with souls in Duelist Kingdom. Magic has already happened to him personally, and he still goes “nah”. So in this case, I’m willing to make an exception for the anime-only arcs where he shows back up and continues blatantly ignoring magic shit, because it’s funny. 

Anyways. Based on that, I’m willing to argue that, should Bakura or Atem actually bodily project in front of Kaiba, as opposed to their regular possession shtick, I feel like Kaiba could just. Tell them no. He can accept that Yugi sometimes gets more dramatic but is willing to acknowledge split personalities as a Thing. If either of them tried to talk (atem) / threaten (bakura) him in ghost form, he could just be like “ghosts aren’t real” and they would be forcibly relocated back into their respective items. 

#this would also apply to like. any actual haunted house. #atem and bakura are a bit more firmly anchored; so banishing them just sends 'em back into their jewelry. #if a random ghost wandering around tried anything he'd just be like ''nice halloween effects; dork'' and the ghost would be Instantly Dead #he was kind of an exorcist before. i feel like this tracks. #yugioh