Maximillion J. Pegasus (manga)

Maximillion J. Pegasus, known as Pegasus J. Crawford in the Japanese version is a character in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. This is the original depiction of Pegasus created by Kazuki Takahashi. With the exception of one occassion where he is called Pegasus J. Crawford, he is one of the few human characters to not use his original Japanese name in the English manga.

Pegasus is depicted as a well mannered, yet overly dramatic man obsessed with cartoons, concealing the appearance of a ruthless businessman and gamer, yet man of his word. His motives stem from the death of his lover, Cyndia. His fascination with Egyptian beliefs in life after death led to him obtaining the Millennium Eye and creating the Duel Monsters card game. He attempted to take control of KaibaCorp to use their Solid Vision technology to create a lifelike version of Cyndia. The takeover plan involved him hosting the Duelist Kingdom tournament to defeat Yugi Mutou. However his defeat against Yugi led to the failure of his plan and his murder at the hands of Dark Bakura.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, Pegasus had had taken care of a number of orphans. One of them, Yako Tenma, blamed Yugi for Pegasus' death and arranged Project R.A in an attempt to revive Pegasus.

History
When Pegasus was growing up in the United States, he watched Funny Rabbit every Saturday morning and considered its characters to be his best friends at the time.

At some point, Pegasus painted portraits of Shadi and Cyndia, which he hung up in his castle, but did not like to talk about them.

Pegasus became president of the company Industrial Illusions and established himself as a young genius game designer on creating the card game Duel Monsters, which became a huge success in the United States, with players said to be in excess of twenty million and many tournaments hosted with large prizes. He received an offer from KaibaCorp to develop Virtual Simulation Battle Boxes together, to enhance the experience of playing Duel Monsters.

The United States top Card Professor, Keith Howard challenged Pegasus to a Duel. Pegasus was not interested at first, but accepted under the conditions that the prize was to be one million dollars, the Duel was to take place in a stadium capable of holding fifty thousand people and broadcast nationwide with earnings split between sponsors and TV stations. The Duel was to take place in the New York Duel Stadium. Before it began, Pegasus took the time to teach some children present how to play Duel Monsters. He gave one of the children, Tom, a Deck of cards as he could not afford to build a good one of his own. When the Duel began, Pegasus performed a Mind Scan on Keith and wrote instructions on a piece of paper. He then called Tom to the Duel and gave him the paper, telling him to follow the instructions and he would win. In the meantime, Pegasus sat with his guest, Seto Kaiba from KaibaCorp and accepted his offer to develop the Battle Boxes. When Tom defeated Keith, Pegasus took him to the camera and advertised Duel Monsters as a game where even a beginner can beat a strong champion, effectively turning the Duel into a commercial.

Pegasus had his eye on taking over KaibaCorp and had a number of his employees work their as spies, including Saurwatari.

Duelist Kingdom
When Seto Kaiba was left in a coma after losing to Yugi Mutou in Death-T, KaibaCorp shares began to plummet. With the company in a bad state and Kaiba out of action, Pegasus seized the chance try and take over it. He made a deal with the company's leading stock holders, the Big Five, in which buy the position of chief executive if he defeated Yugi Mutou in an official game of Duel Monsters in order to rebuild the company's reputation.

To defeat Yugi Mutou, Pegasus organized the Duelist Kingdom Duel Monsters tournament. It was to place on his island, which shared its name, Duelist Kingdom. Participants were given 2 Star Chips to wager in Duels in the battle royal format preliminary stages. The Duels were to take place in Battle Boxes scattered across the island, granting different Field Power Sources based on their location. Duelists who acquire 10 Star Chips would earn the right to enter his castle. Pegasus also hired Player Killers to try and defeat Yugi in the preliminary stage and win Star Chips from the regular participants, so that no more than four finalists could enter the castle. The finalists would participate in a knockout stage with the winner facing Pegasus.

Invitations were sent to Duelists Industrial Illusions deemed to be the best in Japan. , including one to Yugi, along with an 8 mm videotape. Pegasus also appeared at the finals of the Japanese National Duel Monsters Championship, where he congratulated the winner Insector Haga, and personally invited him to the tournament. Pegasus arranged the boat ride to the island.

When Yugi played the videotape Pegasus sent him, Pegasus appeared on screen and, despite claiming to be a prerecording, challenged him to a Duel to test his skill. Using his mind reading skills, Pegasus predicted and countered Yugi's moves. Upon realizing the Duel was a Shadow Game, Dark Yugi took over from Yugi. Dark Yugi suspected the video contained subliminal messages telling him what cards to play, allowing Pegasus to prerecord moves to respond perfectly. Dark Yugi ignored his subconscious decision for one move, which resulted in Pegasus counteracting with a weaker monster. However the video footage showed Pegasus' monster being destroyed and Pegasus claimed to have known that would happen and took the hit on purpose. With limited footage left on the tape, Pegasus imposed a 15 minute time limit. In the last few seconds, Dark Yugi's victory was apparent, but the time ran out, making Pegasus win due to having higher Life Points. As Dark Yugi's Penalty Game and a means of ensuring he would take part in Duelist Kingdom, Pegasus sealed the soul of Sugoroku Mutou in the videotape. He then showed Dark Yugi the Millennium Eye, explaining he had used it to read his mind.

Two nights before the tournament, the Big Five kidnapped Mokuba Kaiba and brought him to Pegasus' island as he had swallowed the key to a safe with documents they needed to complete their deal with Pegasus.

When the tournament began, Pegasus appeared before the participants and explained some of the tournament rules. Some time after Mokuba had been recaptured after an escape, Pegasus stripped Mokuba's soul from his body and sealed it in a "Soul Prison" card. During the night of the first day, Pegasus heard word that Kaiba had woken from his coma and was coming towards the island. He was confident Kaiba would not make it to the island, as he had two spies on the same helicopter. However Kaiba managed to overpower them. When Kaiba arrived on the island, he was refused permission to speak to Pegasus, so he took his adviser, Croquet, hostage. After receiving word that Yugi had collected ten Star Chips, Pegasus made contact with Kaiba. He agreed to return Mokuba to Kaiba under the condition that Yugi first defeat Yugi in a Duel. He got Saruwatari to give Kaiba five Star Chips Mokuba had stolen and instructed Kaiba to wager them in his Duel against Yugi. Kaiba won the Duel and was able to use his ten Star Chips to enter the castle to face Pegasus.

The four finalists, Keith Howard, Mai Kujaku, Yugi and Katsuya Jonouchi qualified in time to watch the Duel between Kaiba and Pegasus. Kaiba insisted that they Duel using his Duel Disks, something he had designed as a means of combating Pegasus' mind reading. However Pegasus thought it would be unwise to fight on his opponent's terms, so he complained about the degree of fitness needed to operate one and agreed to use the Duel Disks only if Mokuba's soulless body would act as a proxy and throw his Duel Disk. Kaiba refused to fight his brother, so he agreed to Duel Pegasus without the use of Duel Disks.

By reading Kaiba's mind, Pegasus knew when he was about to Summon "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" and used the card "Prophecy" to easily take the card from him. Pegasus also foresaw Kaiba's "Saggi the Dark Clown" and "Crush Card" combo and used "Negative Energy" to make "Saggi" too strong to hold the virus, killing the virus. Pegasus then used "Toon World" to turn his monsters, including the "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" he took, into cartoon versions of themselves, capable of dodging attacks. To avoid having his mind read, Kaiba discarded his hand and played cards straight from the top of his Deck. He managed to defeat the cartoon version of "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" with a combination of "Shadow Spell" and another "Blue-Eyes White Dragon". Pegasus captured the new "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" in "Dragon Capture Jar" and Kaiba tried to attack "Dragon Piper" to stop it Summoning "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" from the jar. However Pegasus used "Doppleganger" to copy Kaiba's "Crush Card", infecting "Dragon Piper". Once the piper was destroyed, Kaiba's Deck was infected, killing everything with more than 1500 ATK. Now only able to revive "Saggi the Dark Clown", Pegasus easily finished Kaiba off. Pegasus then inflicted the "Mind Card" Penalty Game on Kaiba, trapping his soul in another "Soul Prison" card.

Pegasus arranged a dinner party for the tournament finalists and placed Millennium Eye replicas in their soup. Each eye had a slip of paper with a letter on it to determine the match up for the finals. When the finalists discovered the eyes in their soup, Pegasus appeared on a screen and explained the rules of the bingo game, which resulted in Yugi and Mai being paired up for the first semi final and Keith and Jonouchi being paired up for the second.

Deck
Pegasus uses a Deck containing cards he created exclusively for himself. These include "Dragon Capture Jar" and "Dragon Piper", which he uses in combination to overcome Seto Kaiba's "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" cards, "Toon World", which turns all his monsters into near invulnerable cartoon versions of themselves and a number of eye-themed cards, which paralyze and absorb opposing monsters.

He makes use of his Millennium Eye's mind reading powers to predict and counter opponents' strategies and exploit cards like "Prophecy", which usually require guess work.

Duels
Pegasus took part in the following Duels.