This fic was made by request of and is dedicated to harinezumiko for being such an amazing and wonderful reader and reviewer. Hopefully this was what you were looking for considering that you let me pretty much have my way with it.

Both Seto and Kyoya are fourteen in this fic.

There was so much junk in Gozaburo's desk, and it all had to go. The old man was gone, and Seto didn't want any remembrance of him left around to undermine his position, not name, but position, as the new 'Kaiba.'

So, the old man's spare pair of reading glasses was tossed. As was the gold Swiss pocket watch bought as a souvenir in Grindewald years before Seto and Mokuba had been adopted, probably before they'd even been born. The centuries-old ceremonial tribal bowl from Africa that Gozaburo had used to hold his paperclips was trash, though Seto did save the paperclips. A stack of receipts Seto set aside for Crump to go through later (he wanted to know what his adoptive father had been up to in the past months before he jumped), but the wooden cigar box with brass hinges and a painting of a stunningly handsome Cuban woman on the inside they had been stored went into the wastebasket with the rest of the rubbish, along with one remaining cigar.

And, that was all only in the first drawer.

"Um, Seto…? Seto…?"

Seto stood up from hunching over the desk and stretched his back. He sighed and ran a hand through his slightly sweaty hair as he thought about having to do the same sort of cleaning in Gozaburo's home office. Next, there were also the files of weapons designs that needed to be destroyed, and the staff who built such weapons who would either be asked to work on assembling Seto's dream of a holographic gaming system or be fired outright. After that, he had to hire people to replace those who were fired with engineers and designers who'd be able to follow and do exactly what Seto told them to. And, then—

"Seto, you should really go down to the party," Mokuba interrupted. Seto blinked and looked up, having forgotten that his little brother was in the room with him.

Mokuba was curled up in one of the uncomfortable chairs that Gozaburo had bought. They had given him the upper hand when the people who had sat in those chairs became more eager to get out of them than they were to get a good deal. Some of the world's harshest dictators had caved to Gozaburo because of those chairs. Seto was thinking of keeping them.

But, Mokuba had been sitting in one of them for nearly an hour, twice as long as the staunchest of those aforementioned dictators, waiting for his brother to give some indication of being ready to go down to his own party.

Seto's head bent down once more as he returned to his work. "I will when I'm done Mokuba. I told you that when I started this project. Just hold on a little longer."

"You started this project the moment the party started on purpose," Mokuba mumbled, shifting his position in the chair as he felt his spine warping.

Glass shattered as Seto harshly chucked a paperweight from the second drawer into the trashcan, causing Mokuba to just about jump out of his skin after having spent such a long length of time in silence, waiting for his brother to so much as acknowledge his presence.

"I don't need this from you, Mokuba," Seto growled, his face in shadow.

"…O-okay," Mokuba whimpered as he slunk slowly out of his seat. "I'll just… I'll go hold your place for you downstairs, then, alright?"

"Yes. Fine. Go." Once again, Seto began rummaging through the drawers, not sparing his little brother a second glance or thought.

"Kyoya."

Kyoya Ootori had been watching the younger Kaiba brother exit the elevator —finally one of the Kaibas had joined the party— but now looked up at his father. "Yes, Father?"

Mr. Ootori took a discreet sniff of the champagne being passed around in flutes. It must have been good because he actually took a sip of it. Kyoya would bet he'd already checked to see if the flute was actually crystal. "This new Kaiba just inherited a multi-billion dollar company from his dead father," Yoshio began, his own eyes latching onto the figure of young Mokuba Kaiba. "He apparently has no intention of continuing his father's work, and he is said to be quite moody with a quick temper to boot. Not only that, but he obviously has no respect for his superiors." Yoshio waved one arm to encompass the room full of tycoons."

"And, what would you like me to do about that, Father," Kyoya obediently asked.

"You're the new Kaiba's age; go find him and forge a friendship," his father ordered.

"…Alright, Father," Kyoya agreed, realizing this must be the reason that his father brought his youngest, least accomplished son along with the older two: to woo the new owner of Kaiba Corporation.

It didn't really matter at this point that Kyoya's father was just using him. Just a few months ago, Kyoya had been asked to befriend Tamaki Suoh. That scheme had ended up working amazingly well, for both his father and for Kyoya himself. In fact, Tamaki would be arriving later with his own father and had already made Kyoya promise to hang out with him when he got there. Kyoya had gratefully accepted, wanting to be a considerable distance away from his remarkably proficient brothers, who were no doubt casing the place and the people as they circled through the party, so as to avoid being compared to them, again.

But, there was enough time until Tamaki arrived to go court the fledgling CEO.

Kyoya discreetly made his way over to the elevator that the younger brother had just vacated. When the elevator doors closed him in, Kyoya schooled his face into a serene, welcoming smile in the mirrored surface of the doors, hoping that it this little endeavor wouldn't take too long.

Back up in Gozaburo's old office, a picture was found in the second drawer. Seto had never seen it or the aqua-haired boy that posed with Gozaburo before. Seriously, what possessed people to dye their hair green? There was no way that color could be natural, absolutely no way in hell. Seto tossed the picture, frame and all. It made a satisfying thunk.

"Hello, Seto Kaiba."

Since Mokuba had left, Seto had once again become absorbed in his de-cluttering, and it took a moment for him to focus on the person suddenly speaking at him. Glancing up at possessor of the unfamiliar, faux-friendly voice, Seto got only a brief impression of the person: about Seto's own height… nice suit… glasses… dark hair… fake smile. Whatever, Seto had work to do, none of it involving socializing with some spoiled brat living off daddy's dime.

When Seto returned his attention to the desk without saying a word of greeting, Kyoya felt sufficiently snubbed. But, he had work to do, too.

Walking over to stand a few feet before the desk, he warmly stated, "My name is Kyoya Ootori. Perhaps you've heard of my family?"

He didn't even receive a grunt of recognition. Maybe the rumors of Gozaburo's adopted son being a genius were lies, spread by one company trying to psyche out another. Seeing as the teenager was doing the corporate equivalent of going through a dead man's pockets, Kyoya was so far not impressed with the former orphan… now an orphan again.

Maybe that was an angle he should take with dealing with Seto Kaiba.

"Well, my father and your had some transactions that took place some time ago." Kyoya shrugged as if business wasn't of much interest to him. Then, he blinked suddenly for show, as if just realizing something important (not that Seto was watching). "Oh, I'm sorry." Kyoya tried for as heartfelt a tone as possible. "I hope I haven't upset you by bringing up your late father."

He finally got a reaction as Seto's scowling blue eyes flashed up to check over Kyoya's carefully cultured remorse-filled face. The searching look lasted just a few moments before Seto once again bent to his task.

Kyoya was becoming frustrated, though he tried to keep it from showing.

"I heard he was a remarkable man," Kyoya pressed on. "Making great strides in his field of expertise that no other person in the industry was able to keep up with—"

"Just shut up about my father," Seto snarled from where he was still crouched behind the desk. Kyoya could only see the top of his bowed head.

Kyoya nearly felt bad for using such a low ploy in his attempt to get the other teen to open up.

"Forgive me," Kyoya said, keeping his tone professional, though his sentiments were sincere this time.

The third drawer down was slid out of its place and heavily dropped onto the desktop. Kyoya nearly expected a cloud of dust to erupt after the impact. He mentally kicked himself when it didn't, internally chiding himself for giving into his imagination.

"…I heard your shareholders are demanding you go to a school despite you already having passed high school," Kyoya mentioned in an effort at casual conversation, trying out a different tactic.

Seto sent him another sharp, nasty look. Everywhere he turned people seemed incapable of stopping themselves from bringing that up. That, and his dead father. Did they not realize that Seto didn't want to think about either of those things? Spending the next four years with teenagers, who would no doubt be intellectual midgets compared to himself even if he hadn't already learned everything he was going to be "taught" all over again, was one of Seto's personal version of the seven circles of hell. And, Seto had never liked talking about (or with, for that matter) Gozaburo Kaiba.

Kyoya gave a forced chuckle at his own words, taking a step closer to the new Kaiba and the old desk. "Perhaps you might decide to come to the same school my friend and I are attending? His father is the chairman, so late enrollment into Ouran wouldn't be a—"

"I will be attending Domino High," Seto bit out, running a hand through the innards of the drawer and hoping that the chatty intruder would be appeased by responding a little. Said intruder was currently trying to get a curiosity-fueled look of Gozaburo's possessions, smoothly easing another step closer. It was almost more insulting to Seto that he was trying play it nonchalantly than it would be if he'd just bluntly stuck his nose right in.

Kyoya nodded understandingly. "That would be a good move public relations-wise. You don't want the city turning against you because of some imagined slight." Hm, perhaps Seto wasn't as hopeless as Kyoya had first assumed. Or, it was possible he was just a pawn of his board of executives left over from the last Kaiba regime, and merely did and answered as they told him to. The second hypothesis seemed more probable than the first, the idea of an ambitious board using their boss's son as a figurehead in their takeover just making too much sense.

As Kyoya crept even closer to the misplaced drawer, he let his eyes drop in order to peer inside and missed Seto giving him a more focused once-over, checking out the slight tell-tale signs of a sneer that ever so gently creased Kyoya's face.

Idiot, Seto thought. 'Ootori' was the surname that the classy punk had given. In his mind, Seto flipped through the lists of important people that either Gozaburo had dealt with or Seto himself planned to. He found the Ootoris somewhere between the von Schroeders and Pegasus.

Seto smirked to himself as he called up the details pertaining to the family, particularly to the sons, of Yoshio Ootori.

Seto leaned forward just as Kyoya was about to get a glance of what was in the drawer, blocking his view. It was his turn to take the offensive.

"So, Kyoya, how are your brothers? Yuuicho and Akito?"

Kyoya froze and his widened eyes shot to Seto's maliciously-aligned features. Taking a moment to collect himself, Kyoya answered, "They're both… fine."

"Just 'fine'?" Seto prodded, his bicuspids showing in his not-quite-a-grin.

Kyoya narrowed his eyes slightly. "They're fantastic, as usual."

"But, you aren't, are you?" Seto said, sneering the words.

Kyoya leaned back, inhaling sharply.

Seto straightened as well, his face flat and serious, but his eyes flashing with held-back insult and ire.

"The next time your father decides to have one of his sons to do his spying for him," Seto started, "have him send someone that might actually be worthy of speaking with me. I neither like nor need to associate with third-rate daddy's-boy."

Kyoya's own blood began to boil, if just in the slightest. Pushing his glasses calmly up his nose, Kyoya rejoined, "Not that I mean any offense—" Seto's raised a brow, challenging the lie "—but wouldn't you also be considered somewhat of a, as you put it, "daddy's boy" after inheriting the company from your father after his death?"

Seto's face twisted into something that Kyoya hoped never to see on another human's face again.

"Inherited?" Seto spat. "Is that what the blue-bloods have been saying I've done? Why do they think Gozaburo decided to go splat on the plaza in the first place?" Seto jerked his head at the window behind him, which Kyoya now saw still had bits of tape residue stuck to it from its recent installation.

Kyoya felt a shiver run up his spine. "You caused your own father to… jump?"

Seto looked at Kyoya steadily, but more like a cat squaring up a bug than a person gazing at its equal. "If he hadn't jumped, I would have pushed him."

Kyoya was appalled and felt his jaw drop open at Seto's admission. Who had his father sent him to deal with?

"I know you were ass-kissing when you said Gozaburo was "remarkable" man, but you have no idea who Gozaburo Kaiba really was." Seto shoved the drawer that was still on the desk across to Kyoya's side.

Inside was a gun. And, beneath the gun, were pictures of horrific scenes of scarred battle fields and… bodies. Mangled, charred, and twisted.

"That "field of expertise," as you called it, was finding the most brutal, message-sending way to kill people. And, Gozaburo enjoyed it. The world should be at my feet, worshipping me for finding a way to take him out before he could end any more lives."

Kyoya didn't know what to say, and Seto seemed to know that.

A near-manic grin came to his lips, but his eyes stayed icy and threatening. "When you can deal with that without balking like the privileged idiot that you, Kyoya Ootori, are, maybe I'll deign to speak with you. Until then, you and your father, who, I might add, has been making quite the tidy profit from healing the people my father's death-dealing enterprises didn't quite manage to wipe out, can go to hell."

Kyoya stumbled out of the elevator, nearly knocking into a cleaning lady getting in who'd forgotten that she'd been given the night off.

He apologized, not as prettily as he might have had he not been so rattled, and she'd given him a slight smile back. Whatever she did next Kyoya couldn't remember.

He came back to himself by the refreshment table when a hand dropped heavily onto his shoulder, a blue-tinted goblet of water in his grasp that he couldn't even remember acquiring. He knew, though, that he'd been watching the lightly bobbing ice cubes rub caressingly against each other as they'd moved ever so slightly in an anticlockwise circle around the rim of the glass. Now, he watched as they violently rattled against each other and their container as the hand on his shoulder jostled him.

"What do you think you're doing?" a voice hissed in his ear. It was his brother Akito's. "You were supposed to be up schmoozing the new Kaiba. He just came down and completely blew Father off when he introduced himself. What did you do?"

Kyoya blinked a few times before turning his head to face the frowning features of his brother.

"Seto Kaiba is not interested in being involved with us," he said lamely.

Akito's eyes boggled incredulously for a moment. "We figured that out for ourselves," Akito replied, his teeth bared. He abruptly let go of Kyoya and stalked over to their elder brother and father who were in conversation with Yuzuru Suoh. Tamaki must be looking for me, Kyoya thought distantly.

When Akito reached Yoshio, their father broke out of the discussion, leaving it to Yuuicho just liked he'd eventually leave everything else to his elder son. After speaking a moment, Yoshio's gaze turned Kyoya's way. After a moment, Yoshio shook his head slowly, his disapproval growing with each swing of his head.

Kyoya knew that later he'd be reprimanded, but, at the moment, he just felt numb.

If he hadn't jumped, I would have pushed him.

Kyoya was once again disturbed as something flew into him from behind, screaming, "Kyoya!"

At the same time, Kyoya felt warmth wrapped around him as Tamaki's arms wound about his torso and bone-chilling frostiness as the water from his goblet splashed onto his front and onto Tamaki's enshrouding arms.

The blond shrieked as the freezing moisture doused his sleeves, but was already laughing it off as he moved into Kyoya's field of vision, as well as shaking his hands spastically, throwing clear droplets everywhere.

Looking Kyoya in the eye, Tamaki giggled, explaining, "You have speckles on your spectacles."

Kyoya didn't move to clean them.

"What's the matter? Did something upset the great, cool Kyoya?" Tamaki asked, sobering slightly, but still retaining a note of delight.

Cool, Kyoya thought, thinking of the look he'd seen in Kaiba's eyes just before he'd nearly run from the room like a coward. But, not cold.

"…Tamaki," Kyoya slowly, carefully began. "Is there anything you can ever imagine killing your father for?"

Finally realizing what had been bugging him, Kyoya's eyes jerked to his own father, who was already talking to Yuzuru again, seeming to have forgotten his youngest son already. Could Yoshio really have used the bloodbaths Gozaburo had lent a hand, more than a hand even, in creating to his own gain?

…But, even if he had, Kyoya didn't know if he could wish his father dead. He didn't even think he could hate him. He'd just be… disappointed.

Turning his attention back to Tamaki, he caught a dark look hidden in the normally bright, open face of his friend. Soon, though, the look passed and Tamaki shook his head wanly, a smile, much less present than those normally on his lips, making an appearance. "I can't say there is."

"…Me neither," Kyoya responded, his own minute smile slightly glowing on his face.

Tamaki laughed, having recovered from the despondency of the question, and slung an arm around Kyoya's shoulder, seeming to have forgotten his damp, chilled sleeve.

Grateful for the embrace, despite the discomfort, Kyoya returned it, first reaching behind Tamaki's to place the goblet responsible for the discomfort on the refreshment table for one of the waiters to clear away.

"So, what's this party for anyway?" Tamaki asked, as ignorant as ever. He tugged and began pulling Kyoya around the room, marveling at the sights.

Holding back the answer that it was a celebration for the death of an evil, hated man, Kyoya answered, "It's to celebrate the new Kaiba's coming into power."

"Oh. Well, I knew that," Tamaki declared flippantly. Kyoya rolled his eyes, but smiled anyway, tightening his hold on his friend just a bit; Tamaki didn't even notice.

"'The new Kaiba,'" Tamaki repeated, stretching out the word 'new'. "What was wrong with the old one?" Tamaki joked.

Plenty of things. But, being that as it may, after having met the new Kaiba, he wasn't sure that this one was all that much better. "The old one committed suicide."

Tamaki looked stricken for a second. "Yikes."

"Indeed."

"I hope the new one doesn't have the same tendencies…?"

Kyoya shook his head. "Not that I could tell."

"You met him? What's he like? Isn't he supposed to be our age?"

Kyoya nodded to the first and last questions. As to the second one…

"He's not like anything you've ever seen," Kyoya answered truly enough.

"That can either be a good thing or a bad thing," Tamaki laughed.

Just then, Seto Kaiba stepped into their meandering path.

He and Kyoya aught eyes for a moment, and Kyoya felt the removed disdain in them for the moment they settled on him.

"Hi!" Tamaki greeted, somehow instinctively knowing that this was the person they'd been talking about. He struggled to get out of Kyoya's hold in order to offer his hand. "I'm Tamaki Suoh. That's my father over there talking to Kyoya's. You—"

The new Kaiba abruptly turned his back on the blathering blonde, before Tamaki could even get his arm untangled.

Kyoya watched Kaiba's receding back for a moment before turning his dark gray eyes to his friend. Tamaki was blinking feverishly, as if not understanding what had just happened. He eventually turned his own eyes to Kyoya and asked, "Was it something I said?"

Kyoya shook his head again, this time being the one to drag his friend into an aimless walk. "No. But, I believe you understand what I said about him being—"

"—nothing I'd ever seen? Yeah, I got that." He still seemed dazed.

After a while of silently ambling about without a goal, during which Kyoya saw Seto once more, standing with his cowed-seeming younger brother and facing a man in an obvious red suit with gray hair that covered half his face, he heard Tamaki mutter to himself, "Bad."

"Hm?"

"He's like nothing I've ever seen in a bad way," Tamaki decided, appearing a bit pained to be saying such an uncharitable thing. Kyoya would bet any chance he had of taking over after his father that Tamaki would like nothing more than to be proven wrong about his conclusion. He would be the same that Tamaki would, if proven wrong, like to change the new Kaiba for the better.

Kyoya would not bet, however, that Tamaki, or anyone else, especially not himself, could actually do something that would change the darkness and coldness and hatred that had, thanks to his father, taken up inside of him.

It made Kyoya glad and supremely thankful to have someone like Tamaki around him to keep such things from getting out of control within himself. He didn't want to become like Seto Kaiba, corrupted by the evil business that took place around him. He didn't want to become one of the corporate children.

Thanks for reading!

Tamaki ended up playing more of a part than I initially meant for him to, but I wanted to make sure that this fic didn't end on too depressing of a note, with there seeming to be no hope for Seto. I can easily see what happened to Seto happening to Kyoya, at an admittedly slower rate, if Tamaki hadn't shown up.