The Infestation

by nedthejanitor

Seto and Mokuba Kaiba's mansion suddenly falls into siege, courtesy of an organized army of man-eating cockroaches. This is basically just a way for me to vent after I found out that my new apartment had a roach problem.

Disclaimer: See, I'd write one, but I have too many little guests on my laptop keyboard to hit the keys without touching them at the same time.

"Big brother!"

Seto Kaiba's lips tightened as he heard his brother's annoying reedy voice beat him to the bottom of the stairs that led to the underground garage. There, Seto was trying to work out an issue with one of his new dueling stadiums. Anything to keep his head clear after the humiliating loss to Yugi Moto and his Exodia three days ago.

"Big brother, did you ever fix the dueling platform?"

Kaiba wiped some sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and rolled himself out from under the dueling platform with the skateboard he borrowed from Mokuba. "Not yet. Why?"

"Well, my friend from school and I wanted to use it for a duel."

"What?! Mokuba, I haven't patented this thing yet, you can't just tell all your friends I have revolutionized the way we duel forever!"

"But Seto," whined Mokuba, "you showed it off to your friend Yugi the other day!"

"That was no friend, Mokuba," Kaiba yelled, standing up. "That was the person who stripped me of my title as the Duel Monsters Champion!"

"Is that the only thing he stripped you of?" Mokuba said, narrowing his eyes.

It took a second for Kaiba to decipher that comment. Then his eyes narrowed. "That's disgusting, Mokuba."

"I meant, he also stripped you of a part of yourself… didn't he?"

Kaiba thought back to the strange thing Yami did right after their duel, when he screamed "MIND CRUSH" and destroyed… something. He felt an emptiness where something was. Mokuba was right, and Kaiba could feel his face reddening from how he misinterpreted his little brother's little remark. He should have known that Mokuba didn't mean it THAT way, since the kid probably knew less about sex than a deaf amish toddler.

"That's nothing for you to worry about, Mokuba," Kaiba said. "Here, take this. It's your favorite card." Kaiba handed him a copy of Hitotsu-Me Giant, which hadn't been Mokuba's favorite card since a year ago.

"Big brother, I already have like twenty of these," he said. "You can't just hand me one of these every time you want to end a conversation-"

But Kaiba had already left the room, leaving Mokuba to ponder how losing a duel could turn his big brother into such a-

"COCKROACH!"

At first Seto, who had gone to the kitchen to ask his cook to make him a foie gras sandwich, couldn't even recognize what it was. The ugly brown thing skittered across his marble floor, and had the chef standing on one of the kitchen chairs, screaming like her head was on fire and her ass was catching. But while Kaiba normally had all the time he needed to think about his cook's ass, now was no time. Once he figured out it was a cockroach, of the particularly nasty German breed (no offence to Germans, but seriously, fuck German cockroaches, they're the hardest to get rid of), he screamed the phrase just before this paragraph and brought Mokuba running.

"Whoa!" He exclaimed as the roach made a beeline for Kaiba's foot. "That thing looks so gross, let's catch it and show it to-"

"We will do no such thing!" Kaiba screamed. "You! Chef standing on the chair not doing your job! Do your job and kill this thing!"

"That wasn't part of the job description when I signed up!" the cook protested.

"It is now, because I'm your boss! Now kill this god-forsaken thing before it-"

The scream Kaiba let out when he felt the roach on his pant leg may as well have come with its own tutu and set of ballet lessons. It was so girly, if Joey had been there with a camera to record it with, it probably would have burst from the sheer volume that the octave Kaiba reached emitted. In other words, he screamed like a girl and lost his dignity for that moment.

"Ohh, I get it!" Mokuba said devilishly. "You're afraid of the cockroach."

"Not afraid of the cockroach," Kaiba remarked coolly as he finished stomping the bug and after clearing his throat and regaining his poise. "Just disgusted. Chef woman!"

The "chef woman" stepped down from her chair. "Yes, Master Kaiba?"

"Go and tell the butler to buy a thousand glue boards, twenty cans of roach spray and ten thousand boric acid tablets."

"Yes, Master Kaiba!" And with that, the chef was off to do her job. Kaiba started to walk away when his little brother ran in front of him. "Where ya going?!"

"I have to go back to working on my dueling stadium," he said.

"But Seto, what if there are even more in the kitchen, crawling around in our food?"

Kaiba turned away from his brother to steal a look at the kitchen, only turning back after seeing that it was cockroach free. "Mokuba, we have people who do all of our shopping for us. Do you even know what we have in our refrigerator?"

"Food."

"I know, but specifically."

"Expensive food."

Kaiba tightened his jaw. "Shit," he thought to himself, "I never thought of it that way. If roaches are in the fridge, they're going to eat all of my food, and that means I'll have less money to invest in Duel Monsters cards and my personal favorite, more Duel Monsters cards.

And I like Duel Monsters cards."

"Mokuba."

"Yes, Seto?"

Kaiba turned around to start a march toward the kitchen. "Let's get a war started."

So for the next thirty minutes, Seto Kaiba and his little brother got to work meticulously inspecting every nook and cranny of the kitchen, with special attention being paid to the refrigerator. To Mokuba's disappointment, their search was turning up empty. Seto, on the other hand, was in such a fightin' mood, that half-hour felt more to him like just five minutes. In fact, he was so hyped up, he sprayed the back of Mokuba's head twice because he mistook it for a really big cockroach. Since the kid's hair makes him look like that, because look at the shape of it, he got carried away. Mokuba was not pleased.

"Do you know how much hair spray I have to use in a day to make my hair not look like Super Saiyan 3 Goku?!"

"Yes, I do, because I refuse to hire an accountant and I do all our book-keeping," Seto said. "You know, you're one of the more expensive things around here. If you don't watch out, you're going to end up falling under some cost-cutting measures."

"Seto!"

"I'm just saying, I've already buried some of the more cost-inefficient things around here. Like that stupid-"

"No, look!"

Mokuba pointed at the kitchen door, which was open. But he was actually pointing at the garage door, which was visible through the kitchen door and across the entrance hall of the Kaiba mansion. There were roaches, and not just one. A veritable organized marching army of them were approaching the kitchen, seemingly fixated on the Kaiba brothers, approaching with a speed that appeared unnatural for cockroaches.

Seto screamed like an opera singer who just teabagged a bear trap and slammed the kitchen door shut so hard, it almost came off its hinges. Mokuba grabbed onto the back of Kaiba's trench coat for dear life as Kaiba attempted to rationalize the insane, impossible thing he just saw.

At first the screams were faint. Or maybe Seto was so deep in his thoughts he couldn't hear the unspeakable horror going on just feet away from him. Mokuba heard it, though, and his desperate calls for his brother to open the door fell on deaf, inattentive ears. Seto was so busy thinking about the enormous path of roach shit that he was going to have to make one of his borderline-indentured servants clean up, he didn't even become privy to the fact that none of those servants were going to be in any shape to be cleaning up anything before too long until it was too late. God damn, that last sentence had 60 words in it! Think I should do something about it? I'm not, but it doesn't hurt to ask anyway.

"SETO!"

Finally, Mokuba's shrieking of his brother's name got past his thick, card-playing skull. "What?!"

"Open the door!"

"What the fuck do you mean, 'open the door?!'" Seto blasted before he could self-censor. "You know what's out there just as well as I do! You're the one who pointed it out to me in the first place, even! So what's the point of opening the door?!"

Mokuba didn't want to say it, but he didn't want to just stand there all day fingering the back of Seto's coat. WOW. Think that sentence could be misinterpreted?

"Seto… I think everyone out there is dead."

The way his brother said that was just as chilling to Seto's bones as what he said. He felt like he just did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge with liquid nitrogen. Man, he was going to have to stage a hell of a lot of job interview/duels to fill those positions. Not to mention the bribing of the dead employees' families.

He opened the door reluctantly, and by reluctantly, I'm talking glacial pace here. He started opening this door when Jesus was hanging out at his front door, begging for table scraps and a card that would make those other twelve homeless dudes quit following him around. But he eventually got it open, and what greeted him shocked him even more than what he expected; his employees were lined up in front of him, facing the kitchen entrance with empty expressions. It was completely clean in the room they stood in.

"Are you guys trying to unionize again?" Kaiba asked them, smirking. "Because there's plenty of room in the New Mexican landfill for you all, along with the other poor saps who attempted to unionize, and I already scheduled a day's worth of job interviews as I was opening the door."

Kaiba expected a protest. He expected some kind of empty threats or even pleas for mercy or compromise from this mob of serfs. While he was running for his and his brother's life just a minute later, he would reminisce about the greatest hits of employees who tried to squeeze extra money out of him by any pathetic means necessary. His favorite was easily the one guy who tried to give him a sob story about his children and Kaiba responded by pointing out the fact that his family owned a refrigerator. He had to hand it to Fox News, they could supply him with some really good anti-poor lines.

Instead, however, all the line of serfs did was open their mouths at the same time. The first thing that came to Kaiba's mind was the end of that "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" remake. The second thing right after that was "AAAAHHHH!" For when they opened their mouths, sound did not come out, except for the ones that a swarm of roaches will make as they each exit the mouths of the shells that Kaiba once called his employees. After the cloud of roaches was finished pouring out of each of his employees' mouths, their skins crumpled to the floor like clothes, all of their insides- bones, muscles, organs- having been shredded by the roaches to make room for more roaches.

Seto Kaiba grabbed the nape of his brother's neck like he was a suitcase and, screaming so loud and high that all dogs within a three-mile radius starting thinking that Satan had replaced the planet with himself, ran for the computer room where Kaiba helped Yugi fend off the fat ghost clown version of himself. Man, what the fuck was up with that, anyway?

"Well, well, if it isn't the Kaiba brothers," the sassy computer said when Kaiba shut the door behind the both of them. "And I suppose you're here just to play with my buttons for a while instead of a nice visit?"

"We're being attacked by cockroaches!" Mokuba cried before Seto could even attempt to match wits with his own computer.

"Cockroaches?" said the computer. "What variety?"

"We don't know," said Kaiba. "They're small and brown."

"Sounds like German cockroaches, which are a very common- and very resilient- household pest. Don't your cleaning people get paid a pretty handsome salary for doing what they do?"

"Well, no, but they should still be doing it and doing it properly!"

"Hmph. Well, in any case, just from examining the security footage that's being recorded as we speak, your little roach problem is more than just a regular infestation. Take a look at this!"

The big screen cut away from Seto Kaiba's name (his main page, the arrogant prick) to footage of a thick army of cockroaches making a direct march to the computer/storm shelter. Mokuba buried his face into Seto's chest, and the older brother stared at the screen in slack-jawed amazement.

For the first time he could remember since he was a little boy, Seto Kaiba had no idea what to do. This wasn't a duelist looking to take his best cards. This wasn't some megalomaniac who has kidnapped his brother and wants money or some strange mystical item in exchange for his safe return. This wasn't even a freak natural disaster that other people had dealt with in the past. No, these roaches were representative of something Kaiba hated more than anything else: the unknown. The unexplainable. Science or logic had no way of explaining why Kaiba and his brother were being hunted by an army of roaches that could eat people from the inside out in seconds.

"Computer," Kaiba rasped in a voice he barely recognized as his, and he paused until he could regain his composure before finishing his sentence, "I need your guarantee that this room is insulated against those things."

"Well, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Kaiba, it's hard to say," the computer replied. "You never really prepared, or told anyone else to prepare, for something like this."

"Damn it," he said. "Okay, computer, alert my security team. The least I can do is try to hold them back."

"With all due respect, Mr. Kaiba, I think that would be a poor decision. I saw what happened to those employees of yours in the entrance hall."

"Wait a minute," Kaiba said. "How the hell did you gain access to that footage? You're only supposed to know about the stuff I specifically tell you to keep recorded, and anyway, you can only record whenever you are awakened, and I'm the only one who can do that. So how…?"

The computer didn't respond at first, and Kaiba wondered if he just did one of those things where he made his computer malfunction through a very astute use of logic. Of course, a guy like Kaiba should have known better. But he was pretty shaken by the cockroach stampede, and besides, he was being written by a guy who knows about as much about computers as your mom knows about not being a slut. So yeah.

But then Kaiba saw something pretty familiar. Yes, a little too familiar in the last hour. It was hard to believe, just an hour ago he was reeling over his loss to Yugi Moto while working on updating the software on his dueling arena. What the hell happened in the last hour? Maybe this is a dream he would wake up from. He must have just fell asleep under the duel arena, right? He'd wake up any second with his little brother pestering him to play and his defeat still lingering in his mind like a tumor with tri-colored hair and "the weirdest boner right now" hanging around his neck.

A roach crawled across the screen. It was almost impossible to see because of how big the screen was, but it was definitely there. Then he saw another. And another. And another. He realized they were swarming inside of the computer screen, not outside. His computer had been infested, possibly way before he even got to it. The situation felt hopeless.

"Seto, look!"

He looked behind him, only to see his brother redundantly pointing at the computer screen. He wondered if his brother was perhaps a little slow, because Kaiba had been explicitly staring at that screen in slack-jawed awe for the last forty-five seconds. It wasn't hard to notice.

Kaiba felt something hit his right hand, which was limply placed on the keyboard, ready to punch in commands that weren't going to go through anymore. He looked down. Roach. Fully grown one. He screeched and whipped his arm upward with all his might, making the cockroach fly off his hand and right at Mokuba's face. Mokuba made only a slightly more masculine scream and slapped the roach off of his face, feeling a sting where the roach had been.

"Seto, I think that bug bit me!" Mokuba cried. "And I'm not talking about the Mighty Mighty Bosstones song!"

Seto felt ice in his belly for three reasons. One, because he was Seto Kaiba and sometimes he was just so damn cold his body had to remind him physically. Two, because now that someone mentioned a song by a band the author likes, all the other ones from that same album are probably going to be referenced about 1-2-8 times before the end of the fanfic. Three…

Cockroaches that bite. That's just what the doctor fucking ordered.

Seto shielded Mokuba with his coat as the eventual rain of roaches fell from the black ceiling. Even though he shouldn't have been at this point, Seto was amazed at just how many of them there were. The grubby, dirty-feeling things coated the room in mere seconds, getting every nook and cranny stationed with too many of their selves. Seto practically wrapped his brother in his coat like a sausage and did his best to put his hands over his mouth and eyes, two of the many places on his body where the roaches could enter him and eat him alive on the inside. It occurred to him that he could die right now by having a swarm of roaches crawl up his asshole. It was not a happy thought.

It was when he could feel them crawling all over his body, consuming him and his brother, that his life began to flash before his eyes. He saw himself tormenting Yugi's grandfather by playing his biggest, scariest monsters on the holographic dueling platform he had created, beating him into submission and nearly killing him just for a Duel Monsters card. Man, that was great! A bit of a dick move, Kaiba could admit in hindsight, but nonetheless awesome. That was the worst part of his ensuing loss to Yugi Moto. It wasn't the loss itself, losing the championship crown. It was the feeling that he had been castrated, and he was no longer capable of doing anything like that ever again.

His brother's faint crying was drowned out by what sounded like the sprinkler system going off. The roaches began to scatter, terrified. By the second, Seto could feel them jumping off of him, and after he was sure it was safe, he tilted his head to see what could have caused this deus ex machine.

"Kaiba," his computer's weak, glitching voice said, "hurry, I've unlocked the door to the cellar manually. Take Mokuba and get out as quick as you can!"

Seto Kaiba didn't need to be told twice. He picked up his brother like a suitcase and made a bolt for the exit. He couldn't pause to gag at the squishing sounds underneath his feet. His brother did that for him.

They exited the computer cellar just in time; Seto felt an explosion behind him that could have only been his precious talking computer self-destructing to destroy the infestation, or perhaps just because it had been over-stressed. He felt a mix of emotions. The infestation was surely defeated by that devastating blow, and that made him happy. But there was also the complete destruction of his main computer. It would take him a lot of time to adapt a new one to do all the things that one could do, and he was already working on his revenge strategy against Yugi Moto and his updated holographic dueling simulation. A nerd's work was never finished.

"Seto! Look! Oh my God, look!"

Seto stopped his frantic, furious running pace on a dime, nearly causing Mokuba to fall out of his hands, and twirled around to face…

The same damn army of cockroaches.

It didn't even look like the self-destruction of one of Kaiba's favorite pieces of technology even made a dent in the encroaching plague. Heh. Enc"roach"ing.

Seto Kaiba could feel his breaths rattle inside his chest. He'd never run so fast so much in one day. It just wasn't like him. He hired people to exercise for him, for God's sake! But he knew he was the only one standing between Mokuba and his monstrous plague, so he devised a brilliant plan. He was going to lure them somewhere where they could be destroyed.

He ran for the gate that enclosed the Kaiba mansion away from the rest of Domino City. He knew he wouldn't be able to open it like usual with his supercomputer having just been destroyed. The voice recognition software was gone. But he knew he could jump over it. At least, HE could, by himself. With Mokuba weighing him down like 60 or so pounds of helplessness, it was up in the air as to whether he could. But this was his greatest hope, his one shot, and he had to take it.

He leapt up, shutting his eyes tightly, hoping he'd feel his feet touch the ground, hoping he wouldn't feel the gate slap him in the face. Time slowed to a glacial crawl and everything felt more alive, more dangerous than it could really be.

*CLOP!* Success! His feet touched the finely manicured driveway leading toward the Kaiba mansion's gate. And as an added bonus, he felt light as a feather! He was ready to take on the horrors of this new world! He even turned around, preparing to mock the roaches in one last spitting gesture before turning tail and leading them to their fate…

And when he did turn to see the army of roaches, there was his brother, hanging off one of the spikes at the top of the bars on the gate. He evidently had fainted, because he wasn't putting up too grand of a struggle as the roaches made a steady line up the bar to the defenseless child.

Seto would never hesitate to save his brother under any normal circumstances. But you'd have to be one crazy motherfucker to call a marching army of man-eating German cockroaches a normal circumstance. Seto was deathly afraid of even touching one of the beastly brown bugs, but what he was afraid of even more than that was alliteration, and if he didn't get over there and save his brother right goddamn now, I was going to use even more of it.

So the elder Kaiba brother kicked the gate as hard as he could with his best shoes, which had already become a graveyard of crushed roaches thanks to earlier endeavors, and managed to shake most of them off. He grabbed his brother's feet and tugged as hard as he could, ripping the back of Mokuba's favorite shirt so bad it might as well have not even been on him, but thankfully working, as Mokuba fell into Seto's arms and cued the CEO to run like a son of a bitch. So he did.

()()()

Not very many people in Domino City, by the following day, weren't aware through at least second or third-hand recollection of the insane thing that happened in Domino one afternoon. Seto Kaiba, the famed young CEO of KaibaCorp., was running through the streets wheezing like someone just punched him straight in the solar plexus. In his arms, being carried bridal style, was a shirtless boy with straight black hair who was apparently unconscious. People stared, people pointed, the cops didn't want anything to do with it because some of their own department quit to be a part of Kaiba's security team and they still held a grudge against him for that, but perhaps worst of all, the one man Kaiba would never want to see him in that sorry state was walking down the street today, wondering what he was going to do about his freshly kidnapped grandpa.

Yugi Moto.

At first, the small dueling champion couldn't believe his eyes. He believed it was just his frazzled mind using prominent images within his mind to play tricks on him. "Would Pegasus have kidnapped my grandpa if I hadn't defeated Seto Kaiba?" That thought was torturing his mind without mercy. He felt a stab of guilt with every vow against Pegasus for revenge. He set something in motion that he might not be able to stop. But apparently, he wasn't the only one going through some problems, for there was none other than Seto Kaiba, running down the sidewalk across the street with a child in his arms. He could only vaguely remember what happened at the end of their duel- the strange thing he did to Kaiba and called "MIND CRUSH"- and wondered if it had something to do with this.

Despite not being in any state of mind to help anybody with anything, Yugi's curiosity was piqued beyond a point where it was resistable. He tailed Kaiba while remaining a safe walking distance away, and found soon enough that he was not alone. There was a massive crowd following the Kaiba brothers, some of them running right after him, others playing it cautious like Yugi. Others still were getting into cars or cabs and taking them in the direction Kaiba was headed.

()()()

Seto Kaiba knew some people saw him on the streets, but he was in no mood to care about that. He was sure the roaches would eat them soon after anyway, and he felt bad because of that, but sacrifices had to be made to ensure his and his brother's survival. Nothing, not even basic morality, would stand in the way of that. Sure, he felt guilty, which was weird to him because the Kaiba that existed before losing to Yugi wouldn't have cared at all, but desperate times called for asshole measures.

Mokuba stirred. "Seto… where are we?"

The elder Kaiba brother had led the both of them to a junkyard, where in the background not too far away, a massive smashing machine used to crush cars into big cubes loomed like the hand of God twitching his finger against the trigger of the world's most specialized gun.

"I don't remember this being here," Mokuba said. "Are you sure we're still in Domino City?"

"Yes, Mokuba," wheezed Kaiba, who was kneeling on one leg and wondering if he'd ever breathe right again after all that fucking running, "I just don't take you to places like this very often. Mainly because you'll-"

"Look what I found!" Mokuba held up a screwed-up looking bicycle pedal to Seto's face.

"…do that."

Mokuba brought the bicycle pedal closer to his own face and saw, no shit, that it was damaged. "Can you fix it?"

"And you'll do that too." Seto managed to finally stand up. "Look, Mokuba, we're insanely wealthy. If you want a bike just-"

"SETO!" Mokuba pointed at the entrance to the junkyard, where the roach army was making slow, steady progress to the Kaiba brothers.

Seto quickly got over his shock and got his head in the game. "Okay, Mokuba, it's time to set my plan into action. I need you to-"

"Is that an old Duel Monsters tin?!" Mokuba screamed, and Kaiba realized he hadn't even seen the swarm because of some old, shitty-looking 2003 DM tin on top of some small hill of trash just to the right of the entrance. Mokuba ran toward it before Seto even had a chance to talk some reason into him, and Seto gave chase, though he was so terribly winded already that there wasn't much hope of catching him. It amazed him that his little brother could do something so stupid. The roach army was right there in plain view, coming to meet him halfway, and he was so focused on some Duel Monsters tin he couldn't see them! It was maddening!

Mokuba made it to the Duel Monsters tin, and in the process, ended up covered in roaches. Seto screamed with horror, something he very, very rarely did before this day. His brother was being eaten alive! Suddenly, the wheezing, barely-jogging Seto Kaiba turned into Usain Bolt's worst nightmare, as he made it to his brother with Flash speed and shook him harshly until all of the bugs were off of him. Then he took the boy and ran until he was at the other side of the junkyard.

"Big brother!" cried Mokuba. "What are you doing?!"

"What the hell do you think I'm doing?!" Seto snapped, scaring Mokuba even further. He couldn't even remember the last time his big brother ever got short with him. "You were about to be eaten alive by those monsters! Why didn't you listen to me?!"

"What monsters?!" Mokuba shouted back, teary-eyed. "Seto, I don't know what you're talking about!"

"The roaches, Mokuba!" Seto shouted right back, his face getting closer. "You ran right into them! How couldn't you see them?!"

Mokuba paused, his mouth open and ready to speak, but lacking ammunition from Mokuba's brain. "I- where were they?"

"The entrance, Mokuba." He put Mokuba down reluctantly and pointed to the entrance, which was now so far away as to be barely detectable to the human eye. "Right there in plain view, kid."

"Big brother," Mokuba said in a tone barely above a whisper. "They weren't there. I was looking at the entrance for them, and they weren't there."

Seto looked down at his little brother, stunned. Was he blind, or was the situation they were in causing his mind to just break? He knew from watching "Ray" at a cultural sensitivity seminar about a year ago that sometimes horrible trauma could cause someone to just lose one of their senses. He also learned from watching "Walk Hard" a week later that it could be hilarious. THIS WASN'T HILARIOUS.

"Mokuba," Seto said as calmly as he could, "I don't know how or why you couldn't see the same thing I saw, so for the sake of brevity, I'm going to let that go. But you have to promise me that you won't run away again."

"But Seto-"

"PROMISE."

Mokuba made a pouty face. How was he supposed to resist all this awesome stuff at the junkyard when he was but a poor 8-year-old boy trapped in the body of a rich 8-year-old boy? But his brother was deadly serious, and Mokuba respected him enough, in spite of his apparent burgeoning insanity, to abide by what he told him. So he did. "I promise, Seto."

Seto Kaiba didn't respond, instead standing totally still with his hand over his mouth. At first, Mokuba thought he was going to throw up, and he backed away while covering his ears. Seto sounded like a train whistle when he vomited, and it would be several years before Mokuba would realize how unusual that was. But Mokuba realized how intently focused his eyes were. He turned, wondering what kind of crazy shit he was going to see. His face lit up with a combination of anger and relief. It was Yugi Moto, being followed by a large crowd of fellow rubberneckers, there to stare at Seto Kaiba like he was a circus elephant.

"Yugi?!" Mokuba said, enraged. "What are you-"

Seto picked up Mokuba by his hair and started another manic sprint. He looked back after a safe distance, confirming that the army of roaches was eating Yugi Moto and a bunch of other innocent bystanders that followed him, and continued to run after snarling in disgust at both the creatures and Yugi Moto for trying to play hero by luring a bunch of defenseless townspeople to a roach slaughter. At this point, Seto was in panic mode and Mokuba was purestrain WTF. "Seto?! What are you doing?!"

"If you aren't going to run, I'm running for the both of us!" Seto said in response, amidst pained wheezes. His own plan, which would normally have to have been excavated from his mind with a pick-axe and way too much time, was fading into the distant background of his fogging mind. He wasn't sure how much longer he was going to- *PLOP*.

"SETO!"

The world turned into some shapes and sounds that didn't correspond with each other. He heard screams, he saw spots. The last thing he saw before the injury he took to the head from it falling on a wayward can of old soup took him away from consciousness was the goddamn face of goddamn Yugi Moto.

()()()

"So, wait a fucking minute," Kaiba rasped through gritted teeth three hours later as a nurse treated him on his living room couch, "you're saying the roaches were just a holographic illusions generated by Pegasus?"

"Not quite." Yugi said. "Your technician found a bunch of this strange powder underneath your dueling stadium and we had it analyzed in your personal laboratory-"

Kaiba lunged forward, throwing his hands around Yugi's neck. "DEE DEE! GET OUT OF MY LABORATORY!" The nurse who was treating him had to pinch his head wound to make him return to the real world.

"I'm sorry about that," said the nurse as Kaiba laid back flat on his bed and regained composure, "the injury to his head, combined with the soup in that can being so old it was toxic, is making him a little loopy. Please continue."

Yugi huddled meekly to the corner of the room opposite Kaiba's bed. "I'm not too sure if I want to…"

"Oh, he's just being a silly billy," the nurse laughed for a little longer than should make anybody remain comfortable. "Silly willy walnut head! You know, I like him a lot better this way! Normally he's YELLING at us." At the word "yelling," she pinched Kaiba's head wound a little harder, making him cry out. Now Yugi was more afraid of the nurse than Kaiba.

"A-anyway, they analyzed the white powder and it came back that it was a hallucinogen that makes humans- and computers- see roaches until the moment they fall asleep."

"That's absurd," croaked Kaiba. "Where could someone even get such a thing?!"

"Uh… Industrial Illusions."

Kaiba sat up, scaring his nurse backward. "PEGASUS?!"

"Yeah. I think that's why his company is called Industrial Illusions. He makes computers hallucinate."

Kaiba's face froze and didn't relax until Mokuba came bouncing in. "Seto! Seto!"

"Yeah?"

"Seto, we got a package from Pegasus! He heard about our problem and sent us a bag of sugar!"

Kaiba's eyes narrowed. "Well. It looks like he's trying to bug us." Then Kaiba laughed like a madman and had to be pinched.

THE END