Rebirth
by Ceresi

Rating: R

Summary: A rebellious Mokuba, a painful long-distance relationship, and someone trying to take out Seto -- these things an epic make. Seto/Joey established relationship, Battle City AU, plotty.

Original Characters: The maid and the boyfriend. I am neither an old woman nor a teenage boy. Fear not, they have not contracted Mary-Suism.

Ships: Seto/Joey, Mokuba/OMC.

Spoilers: Up to the Battle City AU.

Disclaimer: Pinky: What are we going to do tonight, Brain? Brain: Tonight, we are going to help Ceresi steal Yugioh, for she does not own it already and desires it greatly! Mwahahahahahahahaha!

Author's Note: I realize that there are varying standards as to what people do with names, language, food, geography, and culture in this fandom. For names, I use the names from the U.S. dub (except for Ryou, because no one's bothered to give the guy a full name). For language, I use American English. Food and culture -- well, I'm an American girl. They eat American food, 'cause that's all I know. At least, all I know well enough to include intelligently in a fic.

WARNING: There are spoilers for the HP books in here. I know, it's crazy. Also, slash, and one racy little R scene. ALSO. This is still, for all intents and purposes, a rough draft. I've had it betaed and edited it several times myself, but I'm working on a sequal, and some changes might be necessary.

ABOUT: (Some of this can be inferred from the story, but it's not stated outright. Some of it is world-building, background info. that's not particularly important. If missing that doesn't bother you, skip on to the Acknowledgements.)

This fic is set five years after the end of the Battle City arc (yes, it's AU). KaibaCorp has continued to expand, and now owns exclusive rights to Duel Monsters, as well as ties to every major gaming corporation in the world. Seto is a rich, rich, well-known, powerful man. Mokuba is fifteen and refreshingly normal.

Joey and Yugi are attending college together in America. Yami Yugi's still hangin' around. Yami Bakura's not.

After Seto got the rights to DM, he teamed up with the Yugi-tachi and looked into the game's Egyptian roots. In the process, Yami was able to recover a great deal of information about his magic, and discovered a hidden circuit of underground temples and dueling areans. That's where Ryou and Mai come in -- they're working in Egypt, Ryou as an archeologist, and Mai as manager of the dig site and go-between for Ryou, the Egyptian government, and Kaiba Corp. Seto is heavily invested in the Egyptian dig, and, via Mai, manages what goes on and where artifacts are sent. The magical nature of some of the uncovered artifacts is kept between Mai, Ryou, Seto, and Yugi.

The others are . . . around. Duke doesn't play a part in this fic (sorry, fangals), and neither do the Ishtars or Serenity. There's a sequal/companion fic to this one in the works, which will include more of the Egypt-tachi and Yugi. There's also a prequal, half-done, on my hard drive. Yeah. It's one of those fics.

Acknowledgements: Thanks a ton to Jordan, who betaed an early draft of this baby, got me hooked on Seto/Joey, got me re-hooked on Yugioh, and is in general a cute, bouncy, t00b. Also, may I take this moment to dis-Acknowledge FF.net, which is just a bitch?

***

"Hey, Seto, I'm going out!"

Seto glanced up from his papers, saw a Mokuba-blur tear past the study to his room. There came a thump as he tripped. Long, baggy pants were in fashion -- it happened all the time, lately.

"Are you all right?"

A grunt. "Ow."

Smirking, Seto went back to his work. Another boring contract . . . "Who are you going with?"

"Just, um, Daisuke."

Seto scowled at a certain paragraph. Like Hell he was going to agree to that! Those bastards . . .

Mokuba stopped outside of his study. "Seto?"

Seto looked up. "Hm?"

A small smile. "I'll be home in a few hours."

He returned to his work, frowning. "Have fun."

"Thanks."

Daisuke was waiting in the hall, plainly eavesdropping. "Weren't you guys closer than that, once?" he asked quietly as they left. Mokuba waved briefly to one of the servants. "I mean . . . none of my business."

"Nah, it's all right." Mokuba shrugged, mouth pulled into a tight frown, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "We don't talk much anymore, not lately. What are we seeing again, something with blood and guts?"

"Yeah, try not to scream this time."

"Hey, I only did that once." Mokuba shoved him lightly, grinning. "Besides, you put ice down my shirt!"

Daisuke gave him a forbidding look and slung an arm over his shoulders. "Now, it's not good to blame your flaws on others," he chided. "The first step is admitting that you have a problem."

"I have a problem alright, his name is Daisuke . . ."

~

"Seto Kaiba speaking."

"Kaiba?"

Seto blinked, pushed away from his desk and stood quickly. "Valentine?" When he passed the window, he glimpsed Mokuba and Daisuke walking down the sidewalk. The sight of Daisuke's arm around his little brother was more annoying than amusing.

"What the hell are you playing at?" Seto cocked an eyebrow at his faint reflection. She sounded angry. He was glad she was in Egypt, then -- she was the only employee that he could never quite intimidate, and she liked to throw things.

"I don't play," Seto reminded her coldly. "What happened?"

"There's been an -- attack. Ryou's really . . . ." She sighed suddenly, anger replacing itself with lassitude. "Hang on."

She didn't cover the phone as the doctor spoke with her. Seto listened attentively to the rundown of Ryou's injuries, wincing occasionally. Fractured skull, five broken ribs, internal bleeding, major surface damage to his left hip and leg, a thrice-broken arm and an almost shattered femur. What the hell happened to him, an explosion?

When the doctor paused, he said, "Valentine?"

"Here."

"Accelerated Healing. He won't survive without it." When Mai was silent, he ordered, "Do it."

She did. "Ryou's not gonna be able to pay for that," she reminded him tensely. He could hear the doctor calling out orders in the background.

"I'm paying for it. Tell me about the attack."

He heard her sigh again, could envision her pushing her wild mane of her back from her face. "Give me a minute."

He did, lingering by the window (Mokuba had passed from view), as she spoke with doctors, Egyptian police, and other injured researchers. He could hear the sound of weeping in the distance, and gathered that someone must have passed recently. Or several someones.

When Mai finally returned her attention to him, he was seriously beginning to worry.

"I wasn't there for it. I was needed in Cairo for a meeting." He could hear the weariness in her voice. He hadn't known that Mai could be weary, but then, she and Ryou were close. "I didn't know anything had happened until I landed an hour ago. Kaiba, it was a bomb."

He felt cold. Someone had used a bomb on his people. The bastards. Who would dare?

"What have the police found?"

"Nothing yet. Bombs destroy evidence." She paused, said something to a doctor, and continued. "It was in the camp itself, away from the temples and dig sites. A few artifacts were lost. Three people have died from sustained injuries and the camp has been almost entirely destroyed."

"No one died during the explosion?"

"We don't know." Mai's voice was dull. "There's a pile of rubble. Five people are missing, and the numbers are expected to go up. We have yet to find a reliable roll call system."

Seto was silent for a moment, processing the information. When he spoke, it wasn't about the camp or the missing people. "Ryou will heal?"

"With Accelerated Healing, yes." Mai sounded frustrated suddenly. Seto smirked. "Or so the doctors say. It's going to be quite a bill, even for you, Kaiba. You'd better not try to weasel your way out of it."

"I'm hurt," Seto said sarcastically, amused with the threat. "Valentine, find a computer."

"A computer? What am I going to do with it, dance? I don't know anything about computers."

"I'll tell you what to do. Just find one."

She sighed, but he heard her asking for one. They were both getting annoyed by the time she remembered that Ryou had a laptop -- ten minutes later, she was on it, and the background noise had vanished.

"You're in Ryou's room," Seto guessed.

"Yep," she said quietly. "He's sleeping."

"Hmm." Seto thought a moment. "Wake him up."

"He's injured, Kaiba, dear lord, he just nearly died! He's barely even stable. He's only woken up long enough to vomit blood -- I am not waking him up. And you can stop trying to glare at me, I'm on the other side of the equator."

Seto stopped scowling out the window. How had she known? "Has the Accelerated Healing started?" He thought he could the machine in the background; it was hard to tell. And all but the oldest models were silent.

"No," Mai said.

Seto rolled his eyes. "You're lying," he said coldly. Silence. "Fine. You're online?"

"Yes."


Seto directed her into the company database, giving her his access codes when prompted. He scribbled a note to change them later -- he trusted Mai (and would never admit it), but he was worried that the line was tapped.

"Now, hack into the second cluster -- there should be a command prompt. Type the following. . . ." Seto dictated as Mai scrambled to keep up. There was a muttered curse when her nail broke and he stifled a snicker. "Has a new desktop shell opened?"

Mai hissed another curse. "A what?"

Seto rolled his eyes. "Has the screen changed."

"Yes."

"Use the menu bar." Seto paced as he spoke. "Beneath the heading Visual Feeds it should have a series of options, coordinates."

"Yes, I've found them. Some of them are grayed out . . . ."

"Hmm. Those must be deactivated cameras."

"Cameras." There was pause. He could hear her temper starting to flare; what a familiar sound. "Cameras from the research camp? Kaiba, how many cameras were there? And where were they?"

"Don't worry," Seto said, amused. "They were only in the communications, labs, storage, and leisure areas. Your virtue is safely intact."

"The bomb was detonated in a leisure area," Mai murmured suddenly.

"Read off the options on the menu," Seto instructed. "I'll tell you the approximate location of each room, and you tell me if it was a leisure area or a hallway leading to. Don't skip any. Got it?" Mai got it. "Start now."

They were three-fourths of the way through the list when Mai found the right camera. As she watched the tape, she was silent -- Seto sat in his chair briefly and then stood again, pacing restlessly. He was tempted to hack into the dbase alongside Mai, but he doubted the servers would support a feed to Egypt. This business of relying on others was irritating.

"Oh God," she murmured at last. "There were three people in the room with him . . . with the guy with the bomb . . . . I knew them. Their families are just downstairs, waiting for news. Jesus."

"Describe him," Seto ordered, filing away the end of her statement for later reference.

Her voice was cutting. "Don't you care? They probably died because of you, Kaiba, or something you did."

"If I didn't care, would I be here, talking to you when I should be sleeping?" Mai didn't reply, but it sounded like a guilty silence. Good. Don't tell me how to look after about my employees, Valentine. "Tell me."

She obeyed. Seto kicked his chair aside as he listened -- brown hair, dark eyes, short, round, glasses, badly dressed, a bomb strapped to him . . . .

"He looks deranged," Mai said faintly. She was obviously sickened by the suicide bomber. "He's filthy. His eyes . . . don't stay on anything long, he's obviously . . . ugh, soiled himself. There are cuts all over his arms. He's screaming at the people in the room. I don't think he has a gun, they were just trying to calm him down . . ." She took a deep breath.

Seto was trying to place the oddly familiar description. Mai was silent for a moment, checking on Ryou, he guessed, judging by the muffled murmurs he was catching. He waited for her to finish fawning over the unconscious man and then asked, "Is he limping?"

"What? Oh, yeah."

It clicked. "Donald Eckert."

He could hear Mai perk up. "You knew him? Who was he?"

Seto was prepared to tell her, but Ryou beat him to it. "A former archaeologist." Mai gave a little squeak to see him awake, but he continued. "He lost his job when I was hired. You're talking to Kaiba, aren't you?"

"You should be lying down!"

"Enough," Seto interrupted. "Put him on the phone."

Annoyed, Mai did so.

Seto left a series of instructions with Ryou -- mostly ways to enforce security and keep such a thing from happening again. He was disturbed to discover that this was the second attempt on Ryou's life, although the first hadn't been work related.

When he finally hung up, he was left deeply unsettled. Eckert hadn't the mental capability to build a bomb and get past security, if Mai's description was anything to go by. Someone had used a former employee to attack his people.

Their loyalty to him had been repaid with their blood, and for some, with their lives. They hadn't deserved it. They hadn't deserved it at all.

His phone clattered onto his desk. He glanced at the clock as he passed it and then stopped -- it was going on ten-thirty. His conversation with Mai had lasted for three hours.

He rang security. "Has my brother come back yet?" he asked. Mokuba usually would have dropped by his study, since his room was just down the hall, but . . .

"No, sir."

Annoyed, Seto hung up. He was half an hour past curfew.

He fought back an unreasonable surge of paranoia. Mokuba would be back soon; even when he missed curfew, he was never too late.

Seto went to the front door to wait.