Seto Kaiba sighed internally. There were days when he felt that he had the patience of a saint. Today was not one of them. While he might be tempted to blame his current irritation on the innate restlessness of any other seventeen year old male (and Mokuba would possibly insist on it), Kaiba seriously doubted it.

He figured it could have something to do with the variety of ridiculous and – to be quite frank – asinine ideas his marketing team had scraped from the bottom of an exceedingly derelict barrel. His sapphire gaze narrowed on his newest target and he felt pleased to see the man pale for a second.

Stan Nevin had been with Kaiba Corporation's marketing division for fifteen years. Ten of those years had been spent at the American region of the company. He'd been transferred five years ago to Domino City. While the man had made a remarkable adjustment to Japan, Kaiba was more than a little put off by Nevin's current production levels.

Nevin had enjoyed twenty years of marriage to his blonde high school sweetheart, Eileen, and had two children with her. Toby was a fifteen year old sophomore and his sister Moira was a thirteen year old freshman. Nevin had been slacking off lately due to an affair he was having on the side with an intern five years older than his son. Thusly, Nevin's production levels had lagged and produced sloppy presentations, backed up his assigned work, and resulted in a particularly casual air to his attire.

Seto Kaiba did not suffer a fool, especially a sloppily dressed one. And he particularly did not tolerate a man cheating on his family. Yet was certain that he did not want to tear apart a family by exposing the man's infidelity.

There really was only one thing left to do.

"…and so, the marketing team believes it will be an excellent idea to laser etch the Kaiba Corporation logo onto millions of eggs to be distributed in the largest grocery stores in the city and beyond…"

"While I have no doubt that laser etched eggs will grab the city's attention," Kaiba's tone of voice informed the group of fifteen that he was both bored and a little peeved all at once. "I think more that Kaiba Corp would be the talk of the town, radio talk shows, and late night talk shows all at once."

"Exactly!" Nevin interrupted his boss and was beaming at the assumed praise. "Not only will everyone be talking about Kaiba Corp, they'll be thinking about it as they make breakfast, lunch, and dinner!"

"Actually, they'll theoretically be eating Kaiba Corp," Kaiba tilted his head to the side in a dangerously and deceptively benign pose. "And the old saying is that you are what you eat. Why would you want someone to become Kaiba Corp, and in theory, becoming as powerful or even more powerful than Kaiba Corp?"

Sensing that something was wrong, Nevin gulped visually. "Uh, n..no, Sir. We wouldn't want that."

The surrounding men shuffled papers or looked among themselves. They definitely didn't want his attention on them. There was a general feeling of a lion picking out a wounded zebra from the herd. And this lion was hungry.

"Based on your ideas and that you are the head of your department…"

Nevin relaxed a little. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

"…And based on your…extracurricular activities which seem to keep you preoccupied," Kaiba steepled his fingers. "I believe that Kaiba Corp no longer needs your services."

Nevin paled and his eyes widened. "What?!"

"Security has already emptied your office. Your escort out is at the door."

At that, the double doors to the room opened and four security guards stepped through.

Nevin took a step back, but froze at the guards with their guns. "You can't!"

"I already have." Kaiba shrugged. "Farewell, Nevin. Good luck explaining this to your wife."

"But…"

"And do forget about Mikuna," Kaiba smiled thinly. "She's already had her internship canceled and she's looking for a new one."

Nevin gaped again. "H…how did you know?"

Kaiba's smile vanished as if it had never been there. "This is not just my company, Nevin, it's my life. I am Kaiba Corporation. I know everything. Leave now, peaceably, and I won't have to press charges."

"For what?!"

The sapphire gaze narrowed to near slits. "Youand I both know what. Do you wish for everyone in this room to know?"

'Everything' included slight embezzlement on the side.

Nevin grew paler but shook his head. "You're a bastard!"

"Actually, my parentage isn't the subject on hand," Kaiba shrugged nonchalantly. "I'm not the one facing an impending divorce."

"No, you never will because no woman would be stupid or crazy enough to marry a cold, heartless bastard like you!" Nevin shouted. "You've ruined my life! Do you know what I did to get this job?!"

Kaiba was unruffled. "Yes."

Nevin took a step back, then lunged at his now former boss. The security, some of Kaiba's most trusted, rushed the man and captured him before Nevin got two steps in Kaiba's direction.

The teen CEO hadn't flinched or moved a muscle. He didn't have to. Even if the security guards hadn't been there in time, Kaiba knew martial arts as thoroughly as he knew his company. "Please take Mister Nevin to the curb with the rest of the trash. See to it that he loads his belongings into the taxi waiting outside for him."

Nevin was dragged out of the room, screaming insults and threats until one of the guards told the ex-employee about lawsuits for breech of contract, embezzlement, and threats of bodily harm. He shut up fast. He knew that the lawyers Kaiba had on retainer were as cutthroat and lethal as the CEO himself.

Kaiba turned a blasé glance at the remaining men. "Any other suggestions?"

a beautiful oblivion
by Yami no Mira

Author's Note: This story is an Alternate Universe (AU) story set after the Orichalcos saga but before the KC Grand Prix. Please keep in mind that this story is completely AU, has nothing to do with any ongoing storyline, and is not to be taken as anything other than something to read and enjoy.

The lyrics at the beginning of each chapter are meant to set an atmosphere. They are also the lyrics to the song that inspired this story.

Update: This is a re-edited version of 'a beautiful oblivion.' There were a lot of things about it that I didn't like on the re-read, so I tweaked it. I hope you enjoy it even more!

۞


The tick tock of the clock is painful
all sane and logical
I want to tear it off the wall

In the end, it all came down to a cup of coffee. A cinnamon spice mocha grandé with whipped cream and a sprinkling of ground cinnamon, to be precise. It wasn't something Seto Kaiba would normally indulge in, and especially not on a whim, but after the long day he'd had so far – as in it wasn't over yet– he had felt an unexpected need for something hot to drink.

It was Friday, the thirteenth of October, but he wasn't fool enough to believe in the legendary properties of superstitions. Even so, things had seemed to be worse than any other day. First there had been residual onlookers from an early morning accident between a city bus and a car. Their gawking had held his limo up in traffic on the way to school. Then, in his advanced biology class, he'd realized that the battery on his PDA had died down to almost nothing and that he'd neglected to pack the back up battery in his briefcase.

The most fun he'd had all day was the public firing of Stan Nevin.

But even that wasn't the end of things for Seto Kaiba. There was still an eight o'clock board meeting tonight. From the notes he'd picked up from his head secretary, Seto was certain the meeting would stretch late into the night.

Not even the stirring events that happened at school could rouse him from the daily hum that came with being the head of a major corporation. Even if a couple of students, who just happened to share the same geology class that he took, would be able to upset him. No matter how much they tried. If dueling with God Cards wouldn't shake him, if dealing with that damned Isis Ishtar wouldn't phase him, Seto Kaiba would happily be damned to the third rung of hell if he'd let two pubescent boys shake him with crass remarks.

After all, he hadn't been the one to tell them to waste three hundred dollars on Kaibaland slot machines. And he certainly hadn't told the children to steal it from their parent's bank accounts.

The Starbucks he had gone into was just around the corner from Domino High. He had only been in it twice before and, since he was one of the A-list celebrities in Domino, one of those times had been at its grand opening. The other time had been a quick stop last winter to get some hot chocolate for Mokuba after the two had taken a rare early morning walk.

On entering the store this time, the smell of fresh coffee had hit him like a brick wall, but he'd welcomed it and every hassle seemed to vanish almost completely just by inhaling the heady coffee scent. The store itself was warm, both in temperature and atmosphere, and there was a steady mix of teenagers and adults that populated the room.

At first he'd been stared at, but that quickly changed when he deliberately iced up his stance. He didn't even have to worry about paying for his coffee. Not after a teenaged admirer in line behind him had fawned and insisted she pay for his beverage. Normally Seto would have glared until she backed off, but this day he did not care.

Uncharacteristic of him? Perhaps.

With the way his day had been, it wasn't something that would keep him up all night; to be full of worries about what people thought about him.

He'd taken his coffee to a private booth in the back. The location gave him an excellent vantage point of the store. He had thought about taking out his laptop and working on the notes he'd prepared last night for tonight's meeting, but discarded that thought. Tonight's meeting was suddenly the very last thing he wanted to think about.

For now, he was just going to relax, or at least attempt to. Try as he might to not think about it, his thoughts kept swimming back to the churlish conversation that had gone on between the two male classmates.

The boys had been talking loud enough for him to hear, but soft enough that the teacher wouldn't. Seto had ignored them as only he could. Despite his emotionless expression, the boys had kept on with their comments. To a lesser person, the comments would have enough potential to damage self-confidence.. Self-confidence was what Kaiba had a lot of.

The only thing that irritated him about the comments was the potential for making him miss hearing something the teacher said. Though the class itself was easy, he wasn't fool enough to ignore the teacher. The last thing he wanted was to miss advance notification of a test or paper, especially due to the menial chit-chat around him.

He hadn't been embarrassed by their cutting words, or ashamed because one of the kids had lost money at one of the games. He had kept as calm, cool, and collected on the inside as he managed on the outside, and he held back his temper by repeating his mantra for such occasions.

Show no irrational emotions or they will know they have the better of you, and no one gets the better of Seto Kaiba.

They'd even had the audacity to wait around after class to try to berate him. One had been waiting specifically for him. The other had lazed against one of the lockers that lined the hallway. Kuri Elohssa and his friend Jack D'Aria. Memories of the conversation were still sharp in his mind.

"Your company cheated me!"

He'd turned around, momentarily surprised at the outburst, "What did you say?"

"You heard me," the blonde had been held back by his friend. "Arrgh, lemme go!"

"Stay here, Kuri," the brunette had talked in a tone as lazy as his earlier slouch, "I told you he had nothing to do with it."

"Kaibaland has everything to do with him, Jack, and you know it." The angry teen had turned back towards Kaiba but didn't make another move. "Your DMA slots suck! I wasted my allowance on it! You owe me three hundred dollars!"

The kids had instantly reminded him of Wheeler and his idiot friend Tristan. That fact alone rubbed Seto the wrong way. The DMA the first kid had been ranting about was a slot machine called Dark Magic Attack. Money wasn't the object of the game as with normal slot machines. It had been Mokuba's idea to have duel monster cards being the prize. Common cards could be won easily, while it took combinations to get rare cards. A rare card would be issued if the correct line up of icons was achieved in a three play winning streak.

In spite of the three play win requirement, the machine had unlimited game time at a dollar per pull of the machine. What kind of an idiot kept playing if they kept loosing? Other than Joey. Seems that even the mutt may have met his match.

Seto sighed softly over his coffee as he remembered how he'd answered. It was a satisfied sigh that plainly said he'd do it all again and say the same thing to them.

"You have a lot of nerve, kid. There are no refunds. If you had read the signs in the game room, you would have known that. And if you can't read, then I suggest you stay in school instead of playing slot machines."

He'd then smirked as he turned around and walked calmly down the nearly deserted hallway. A few stragglers had seen the exchange and moved quickly out of his way, but the whispers followed him after he turned the corner.

There was nothing in his reply or actions that he would have changed. Annoyances such as Kuri and his friend were a dime a dozen and no where near as complex to deal with as double-crossing board members were. He sighed again and took another sip of coffee.

He reflected on how sometimes high school felt every bit as difficult to deal with as running a corporation. He didn't have time to worry about what two kids thought about him. He had bigger things to worry about; namely making sure Kaiba Corp stayed in its lofty position.

The worries the other students had paled in comparison to his own. There was no pressure in worrying about asking a girl out to a movie or turning in homework on time. He'd rather enjoy seeing the others squirm at the thought of year end revenues or keeping thousands of employees happy enough to come in day after day. That thought alone brought a small, cold smile to his face.

Still, a tiny part of him wondered what it would be like to have nothing more to worry about than being home by curfew. An unspoken wish of a normal life, without such advanced, adult worries, resonated through him. He took a deep breath and mentally shoved the wish away, deep into his subconscious mind. It wouldn't do to wish for unreasonable things like that.

He drank more of his coffee and thought back on the last class at school. Once the teacher had realized the final bell was about to ring, she had called out the assignment due for tomorrow. Most of the kids had groaned at the mere thought of doing the thirty assigned geology problems, much less doing them at all.

Seto relished it all. The more challenging the homework was, the more he enjoyed it. He walked through school the same way he walked through his company, and he would take down anyone who opposed him.

Well, just about anyone, Seto thought ruefully, Yugi Mouto has escaped a take down so far, but soon I will let him know what it's like to be second best in dueling. Then the world will know him for the fraud he is. Heart of the cards, my ass.

Opening his briefcase, he flipped through some papers in the built in binder, and stopped when his fingers brushed something unfamiliar. He pulled it half out of the binder and scowled down at it. It was one of the smaller celebrity weekly magazines. He almost shoved it at the back of his briefcase when he noticed something written on the cover of the magazine in Mokuba's messy scrawl.

I know how much you love glaring at people, but I think sometimes you should try to smile. Maybe this will help.

I don't need any help in smiling, Seto frowned at the marker that was scribbled all over some blonde woman's face, then realized he was glaring at the magazine. He sighed, relaxed his features, and pulled the magazine out. Mokuba had chosen to grace his briefcase with the latest edition of Domino Celebrity Lives, a weekly gossip magazine that tracked all of the celebrities in Domino.

Seto took great pains to ignore the magazine and all who worked for it. Not only were they as bad as any other gossip magazine, they were persistent to the point of being sued. They had tried to do an exposé of him last month while he was on a date. It had been a date with a the daughter of his assistant's secretary, a blonde girl his own age that, at first, hadn't seemed to be an empty-headed ditz.

A small smile tugged at his lips. She'd turned out to be too much of a simpering fool for his tastes; the sort of person who wouldn't just read Domino Celebrity Lives, but one that yearned to be in it.

Still, he flipped through the magazine, if only to appease his little brother. If he were of the type, he would almost swear he could sense Mokuba looking over his shoulder, making sure his brother was reading the magazine.

After a few pages, he quickly realized that only idiots would read such foolish dribble.

He didn't notice the jingle of the bell above the entrance doors that announced yet another customer entering this particular Starbucks. Instead, he irrationally imagined that he was just any other teenager sitting in a coffeehouse after school, reading a gossip rag. As if he had nothing more interesting to do that night other than going out with a group of friends.

But that was not the fate for Seto Kaiba. Instead of going out to the movies, he'd be in a conference room going over he latest numbers with his board. The board members were four trusted men and were nothing like the Big Five that Gozaburo, the man who had adopted Seto and Mokuba, had hired. Nothing at all.

They also had no chance of being any sort of threat to his company. Not like the Big Five had been. Seto had no desire to be burned again by people he thought he trusted.

Still, it might be a nice change to not be the one in charge, a voice whispered in his mind.

Seto ignored the voice, and sucked down a mouthful of the hot liquid. He closed his eyes and felt the heat of it track through his body.

Suddenly someone slipped into the booth seat opposite his. He opened his eyes to see the last person he wanted to see on such a ghastly day. Seto didn't speak to him and settled for glaring frostily at the newcomer.

"Yo, Kaiba, buy a pal a drink."

"You're not my pal, Mutt," Seto sneered. Anger coursed through him at the crude sound of Wheeler's accented voice, "And if you don't leave this booth immediately, I'll have you thrown out."

"Thrown out of a Starbucks?" Joey laughed, "Moneybags, you are just cracking me up."

"I wish."

"What's that ya got?" Joey leaned over and snatched the magazine. "What! You're reading onea these!"

"Mokuba put it in my briefcase," Seto snatched the offending magazine back and shoved it into the briefcase, "Not that it's any of your business."

"Now that's lame. Blamin' it on your baby bro," Joey sat back in the booth seat, leaning against the wall and propping his feet up on the green vinyl seat. "That's like payin him to go with you to a Pokemon movie just so you don't look like an idiot goin' by y'self."

Seto raised an eyebrow, "You sound like quite the expert, Wheeler."

"Hey, I ain't never done nothin' like that," Joey rubbed at his nose, "I was just sayin' is all."

"I'm sure," Seto checked his watch, a platinum Rolex Masterpiece that Mokuba gave him last Christmas. "As much as I hate to leave you and your ever charming presence, I have a meeting to go to."

Joey watched as Seto got up, leaving his coffee behind. "Whatcha doin' this weekend, rich boy."

It wasn't a question and it irritated Seto. The mutt spoke to him as if they were on equal terms.

He regarded Joey with cold blue eyes, then smirked, "I'm going to take my private jet to Tahiti. Have fun raking leaves, puppy."

"Y'always be a jerk, Kaiba."

"And you'll always be a shabby mongrel, Wheeler."

If the exchange between the two was noted by others in the coffee shop, they had the presence of mind not to say anything. Joey watched as the teen CEO walked out of Starbucks, watched as others watched him but said nothing. Watched how, as soon as the door closed behind Kaiba and he walked out of sight, the commotion began.

Joey smiled wistfully, knowing full well that such a thing would never happen to him unless he did something incredible, like beat Seto or Yugi in a top ranking duel. He knew he could walk out of Starbucks the same way Kaiba did and no one would notice or be on their cell phones calling friends to say they saw the great Joey Wheeler.

"Of course, it's like what they say," Joey said, grabbing Kaiba's abandoned cup of coffee. "Practice makes perfect."

And he did walk out of Starbucks, holding on to Kaiba's still warm coffee, and silently mocking the reserved saunter Kaiba had. The bell above the door chimed gently as the door closed behind him. He looked back at the store from the corner of his amber eyes, looked through the floor to ceiling plate glass windows, and imagined that the phone calls and clamor still going on from Kaiba's exit were phone calls and clamor for the one and only Joey Wheeler.

۞

Hey, maybe someday, Joey. Have hope!

Yes, Kuri and his friend Jack are still in this version (I told Jack I'd never let go!) Yes, Stan was a new addition, but I couldn't resist.

The egg thing is real. I snatched it from a topic of conversation on a talk radio show I'd listened to. I forget which tv network was going to do it (if they even did do it), but they were going to etch their logo, along with sayings from their hit shows, all in advertising on eggs).

I think Kaiba has a great point though. You are what you eat!