Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh (and I actually don't think I would want to), but I reserve the right to write horrible fanfiction about it.

AN: This story was written a few months back as a stress-reliever for my 9 to 10 hour summer workdays. So except some (err, consistent) OOCness and general lapses in judgment. Tell me if you want me to continue what I started. The name of the story comes from the chess term in which a move by either side results in their loss of the game.

TRÉBUCHET

by ~Mardigny

"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those

who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the

faithless who know love's tragedies."

~ Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Chapter One

6:47 AM, 23 November 2004

Our corporation has seen unequalled achievements over the past six years. From scratch, we developed one of the most highly sought entertainment technologies in the world and have nearly tripled the value of our stocks since they began to decline in the early nineteen-nineties. Yet we cannot simply suggest that we have reached the limit; there is still work to be done, another barrier to be breached.

As I see it, the goals for the two-thousand-five year will

Seto Kaiba frowned at the computer screen momentarily, thinking. Nothing came to him that could adequately continue the sentence; almost anything he thought of would simply sound more childish than the majority of projects he had already thrust into motion. The idea of some sort of school for teaching the Duel Monsters card game was absurd; the fact that an enormous entertainment corporation would begin it, build it, and run it, and not some small private enterprise with more time to focus their energies on the place, would be ridiculed out loud. Not just by the media, either. Kaiba was certain that the board of directors was going to have the desperate urge to laugh. They had bought his DuelDisk, hook, line, and sinker, yes, but only after he convinced them of its economic benefits to the company. He had even managed to convince them to build a god damn amusement park, using the company's faltering "reputation" as an excuse.

And what an excuse it was. Even if he had not taken over the company, the Kaiba Corporation would still be exceedingly rich, abnormally powerful and quite influential; but more than likely, it would probably be just about as corrupt as the lower echelons of the administration were now. They hadn't even wagged a finger at him when he had blown a hundred grand of the company's own funds on a Ferrari a few years ago that he hadn't even driven but away from the lot.

He sighed softly, letting his chesnut bangs shield his eyes from his work for a moment. Outside, he began to hear the tell-tale signs of Tokyo transitioning from its die-hard nighttime scene to the hectic morning struggle most of his employees would be facing over the next few hours – rushing to buy a coffee, rushing in front of cars trapped in gridlock. While his momentary worries were many, thankfully dealing with the morning scramble today was not one of them.

The document containing the goals for the next year, which Kaiba had been planning on giving to the vice president of development by seven-thirty to incorporate into a series of slides, went away with a mouse-click to reveal a pale blue home screen. There was nothing really open; just a minimized window containing his email. Upon maximizing it showed that he had received six more emails just in the few minutes he had started upon the transcript; one of them was from the development head herself, with "just a friendly reminder" to make sure she had what she needed.

With a bit of disgust, Kaiba pushed himself away from the cherry-wood desk, and wheeled around to glance out the large office window behind him, which looked across several blocks of the Tokyo suburb of Domino. He felt tired; for most people, this wouldn't come as a surprise having worked since eleven the previous night, but Kaiba was better than usual at being an insomniac. He had never been officially diagnosed, of course; actually, he had only been diagnosed with one thing in his life, although Kaiba knew enough to know he probably suffered from several other weird diseases that luckily didn't interfere with his day-to-day duties as chief executive officer of one of the largest national gaming companies in Japan. He smirked briefly; he always knew too much, it seemed, to be let alone.

His office phone rang then, unusually loud in the room otherwise blanketed by a silence, except for Kaiba's breathing. Upon picking it up, he found himself talking to his secretary, Hiroko, who was calling to see if he was at work that day. He glanced at the clock; it was a minute to seven.

"Why wouldn't I be at work?" Kaiba responded.

"It's a holiday, today, sir. I can't take off today because I needed to arrange a few things for you, so I might as well stay and get the full hours to make today count."

Labor Thanksgiving. That was right. So maybe he shouldn't have thought he could miss out on the bustle alone this morning; most people would be doing the same.

"Holiday or not, I'm as busy as you are," he replied with a non-intrusive tone. "So I think I'll be staying today too." Besides, it was stupid to have a day off on a Tuesday.

"Really, and with all of the hours you do work?" He heard laughter on the other end, mingled with the muffled noise coming from outside of his office door. "You do deserve a break, even if you call it a company retreat."

The suggestion intrigued him; it would be a good excuse to avoid having to give Hiroko any of the work he had been working on in his anxiety. But of course, he knew better than to simply back down out of his duties at this rate, even though with all likelihood he could live a middle-class lifestyle for the rest of his life if he dropped out with the money he had right now. Instead of accepting the offer, however, he simply snorted. And if he left than his brother wouldn't know where to find him when he came up later that day, and he didn't want to put him through any more trouble than having to fly all the way back to Japan just to see him over an American holiday.

"Do you have any updates from Mokuba?" he asked casually.

"Not since yesterday, sir, when he called saying he was getting on the plane later today. It's a bit of a trip, maybe seven hours or so. He should arrive around two; I'll forward you his 'I'm-safe' call as part of your speed-dial."

"Does that mean I should wear the coat with the speaker in the collar today?"

"It would make things a bit easier, yes, sir."

Kaiba frowned. He hadn't worn that dusty old thing in several months, since he had returned from Egypt. He hadn't even checked to see if it had come back from dry cleaning after being caked with the whirling sands. Some trip that had been. At least the matter was easily passed off as a vacation.

"Nevermind. I'll bring my cell. What's on my schedule outside of doing that transcript?"

"You've done everything else over the past few hours, am I right, sir?" Hiroko hazarded the guesses with foolproof accuracy these days. She was older than he was – she was in her mid-fourties, or so he thought. He had never really thought to ask her because he had never really gone into a friendship with her, even though from her side of things that point of view could be challenged. He cringed at the thought that she might see herself as a mother figure.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Well, you have a luncheon today at eleven-thirty down at KaibaLand. Other than getting that transcript in for your speech coming up at the end of the week, you should be set to leave early around two PM today if everything goes well on Mokuba's end." Yeah, definite mother tone there.

"Thanks," Kaiba said curtly, and hung up.

Most of the morning went without anything too special going on. Practically nobody except Hiroko was at work that day, and she was more focused on watching the TV broadcast of the emperor's palace than she was at doing any paperwork she may have had. Today was quite the easy day. Kaiba couldn't think of anything really better to do than to finish the transcript, which he did by maybe eight (with a short explanatory message to the development vice-president, who responded around ten minutes later saying that she didn't need the transcript until tomorrow after all), and then did some research, browsing around Google for information on anything that really popped into his head. After a while Kaiba realized he wasn't really interested in anything he was typing; it was simply the illusion of doing something productive that was keeping him at his computer. The revelation startled him a bit; but, taking it casually in stride, he stood up, powered off his office computer, turned on his cell, and checked the time.

Two more hours until he would need to call the limousine. Damn. He needed to find something to do; it was one of his little habits. Spending idle time simply waiting for an appointment, a meeting, or for his brother Mokuba to show up drove him, quite simply, insane with some sort of unspecified fear. It was one of those little neurotic things Kaiba was well aware of but too nonchalant to care about trying to fix, either by himself (which he would prefer) or by visiting a psychiatrist. Kaiba instead found the time to check his text messages, one of which was from Mokuba.

Hey bro in Japan. Flight was early. Coming home early maybe noon maybe earlier. Love you

The text was sent around twenty minutes ago. Kaiba flirted with the idea of calling off the luncheon – it was just with some business partners, anyway, a routine 'meeting' simply placed in his own park just to flatter him. Instead, however, Kaiba found himself moving back towards his desk, turning his computer back on, and then checking his plans for the company's international move.

Originally, the plan had been to move into South Korea or China, which were far closer than the United States. Also, Kaiba had been concerned that the United States was filled with business rivals – which it was – and that KaibaCorp wouldn't be able to get off the ground if they overextended into California or Texas or, damn, even Washington. But Mokuba was going to Berkeley now, and Kaiba knew that his little brother would be able to run KaibaCorp in America once he was done with college, in three or so years. He had no doubt that Mokuba would instantly become a high-level administrator in KaibaCorp; he would make sure of it himself, because it suited himself to be near his brother.

He wondered when he was going to tell the board – and via them, inevitably, the media – about his wild idea. Another one of his wild ideas, to be precise; a different one from the 'Duelist School' he was working on right now. He supposed that growing international would more than likely be a more wise decision to present to the board than an earnest hope of some institution plucking children away from their parents so that they could become professionals in a card game. He shook his head; where did these ideas even come from, anyway?
After around an hour and forty-five minutes of finalizing the plans, Kaiba hit print on the Word document. Upon strolling back from the printer, several cubicles down outside his office, he glided over to his secretary, who was busy watching TV in the cubicle straight across from his office door and did not hear him approach.

"Hiroko."

She jumped a bit and hastily turned off the TV, turning to face him with a face that showed embarrassment beneath the hastily-constructed professional face she adopted in several seconds.

"Sir?"

"In two days, KaibaCorp is going to be making an announcement."

"…sir?"

"KaibaCorp is going international. I'm telling our business partners about it today at the luncheon, although they won't technically react to it until we've made it official."

Hiroko stared at him in stunned silence, and then began to laugh in disbelief.

"I don't have any notices about any of this, and none of the VPs have mentioned to me…do you even have-?"

Kaiba dropped the stack of papers, still warm, from his hand, and they neatly hit the desk in front of Hiroko with a strong thud!. He simply watched her impassively as she scrambled through them, incredulous, before she looked at him.

"But when did you decide-?"

At that moment, Kaiba's cell phone vibrated, cutting her off. He silenced her with a long, bony finger and flipped open the case of his Blackberry. He set it to speaker.

"What."

"Your helicopter has arrived, sir," came a gruff voice from the other end.

"…helicopter?"

"Limousine driver's off today, sir." Oh, yeah. Right.

"On my way."

After he had stowed the cell phone away again, he smirked slightly at his bewildered secretary.

"You know why I hired you. I want you to make sure that the VPs know that they have a meeting soon, and all of them need a copy of it. Start making calls to potential business partners. I'll be back." He began to walk away.

"But, sir, I thought you were going straight to-?"

"I'm picking Mokuba up and then coming back here to check up on you," he explained wryly as he disappeared from view, having rounded the wall that led into an adjacent corridor that led to the elevators.

Hiroko gawked at the spot where he had vanished for several seconds; then, composing herself, she muttered to herself, "and on my day off, no less," as her hand reached to pick up the television remote again.