Just Another Manic Monday
(a "Gainful Employment" story)
By Lucidscreamer
Note: This story will make more sense if you have read the others in the series, or at least the Seto-centric ones.
(1)
As was becoming the norm at Kaiba Corp in the post-Yami-employment era (or PYE, as Seto's future biographers would no doubt name it), Monday morning found Seto Kaiba standing in the office of his newest vice-president and attempting to talk Yami Mutou out of working.
"Too many people waste themselves on productivity," Seto was arguing with the kind of passion he usually reserved for ultra-rare Duel Monsters cards and/or dragons. Or ultra-rare dragons... He shook himself. He was getting side-tracked. "Look, all those 'cute kitten' videos on Youtube aren't going to watch themselves, you know."
Kicked back in an office chair so plush it looked like a leather-clad throne on casters (and where the hell had Yami dug that up, anyway?), his booted feet propped up on the corner of the sleek black desk next to a cluster of green plants in ornately decorated pots, Yami raised an eyebrow at this assertion.
"I had no idea you liked cats, Kaiba." Yami's lips curved in a slow smile that held a distinct hint of 'predatory feline about to snack on cornered canary.' "Perhaps there is hope for you, yet."
Less than a minute into this conversation and Seto was already regretting all his life choices. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Making sense of Yami was like trying to herd cats (i.e. irritating and ultimately futile). "What are you talking about?"
The smirk curled wider. "You just said you wanted to watch cat videos on the internet, did you not?"
Somehow, Yami managed to look as if he were seated on a royal throne while lounging almost bonelessly in his ridiculously overstuffed swivel chair. Not for the first time, Seto reflected on how very feline-like the Pharaoh could seem. It was this, more than anything, that prompted him to blurt, "I hate cats!"
Yami's expression darkened. "Is that so?"
Something told Seto that answering that drawled question in the affirmative would not be conducive to his continued health, mental or otherwise.
"Uh," he said intelligently.
Yami oozed into an upright position, his gaze holding Seto's like a cobra staring down a mesmerized rat. His eyes glinted.
"Perhaps you should run along back to your own office now, Kaiba," Yami said, his tone as slick and dangerous as black ice on a highway. He laced his fingers together and studied Seto over the tips of his fingers. Something seemed to flicker around him like a dark aura and, when he spoke again, his already deep voice had dropped into Portents of Doom levels. "I have work to do."
Uh-oh, Seto thought, swallowing so hard he was pretty sure it was audible in Tokyo. He wasn't entirely sure why, but some buried instinct was screaming at him that now was a good time to practice his power-walking - preferably out the door, down the hall, into the elevator, and (if possible) all the way to a tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific where they had never heard of Duel Monsters, Kaiba Corp, or Yami.
Especially Yami.
Getting a stern grip on his inner voice, Seto only power-walked as far as his office, where he slammed the door, locked it, and then managed to talk himself out of barricading it with his desk, two bookshelves, and an autographed, framed photograph of Steve Jobs.
Seto flung himself into his nowhere-nearly-as-plush-as-Yami's leather office chair and tried the boneless sprawling thing. He gave it up five seconds later when his back twinged in protest. Apparently, Yami had been born without a spine. It was the only explanation for how he could sit that way for more than a minute and not end up permanently disabled.
"I hate Mondays," Seto told the stuffed penguin sitting next to his computer. Its black button eyes regarded him with what he liked to pretend was a compassionate expression. "No, really. Mondays are just... Argh."
He dropped his head into his hands. This. This was what Yami had reduced him to: conversing with a stuffed toy bird. Was this what a nervous breakdown felt like? He had always thought there would be more sobbing and rending of garments. Still, given another month of this, he'd probably get there. He made a mental note to start wearing his second-best trenchcoat from now on, just in case.
Raising his head, Seto glanced at the appointment calendar he had been perusing before foolishly deciding to try Earth logic on a being apparently immune to the concept. Instantly, his gaze went straight to the reason he - filled with misplaced hope and determination, and perfectly well-placed gut wrenching terror - had stormed down one floor of the office tower in the first place.
The meeting with representatives from Pricevol International was on Wednesday. A Wednesday he had been unable to convince Yami to accept as a vacation day. A paid vacation day, even. Just his luck to get saddled with the one office drone in history who refused to skive off work.
"Wednesdays are worse than Mondays," he told the penguin. "You know why Wednesdays are worse than Mondays? Two reasons, both of which are Yami."
The penguin offered him what he chose to believe was a commiserating smile.
Seto closed his eyes and let his head fall to the desk, just missing his keyboard. The penguin fell against his temple with a soft "fwump."
It was a measure of how low he had truly sunk that Seto chose to interpret this as the plush toy penguin version of a hug.
o0o
(2)
The week flew past all too swiftly. So swiflty, in fact, that Seto didn't have more than a vague sense of Tuesday as a day filled with a burgeoning sense of dread and a complete lack of coffee. Also, there may have been some explosions or... possibly a volcano?
The first was due to his failure to get Yami to agree not to come into work on Wednesday. The second was down to an unfortunate "incident" involving his top of the line Prestige Coffeenator 3000.
As for the third... actually, Seto still hadn't figured out exactly what happened there. All he really remembered was a distinctly undercaffeinated fog filling his head as he zombied around corporate HQ and, it was a little fuzzy here, maybe a puddle of melted metal and plastic where his extremely expensive coffee-maker used to reside. He was still a little iffy on that one. There may have been a Duel Monsters card of some kind involved...
Unfortunately for Seto's peace of mind, into every week eventually a Wednesday must fall. This one fell on him like a ton of bricks embedded with sharp metal spikes soaked in hydrochloric acid.
That is to say, when Seto showed up at KC HQ bright and early and praying for a miracle, he was greeted with the ridiculous hair and friendly smile of one Yugi Mutou, complete with optional pharaonic attachment.
"There is no god," Seto said flatly, and sailed past the two of them as if they were merely nightmare figments of his overstressed imagination. He slammed his office door in their faces.
A moment later, the door swung open hard enough to smack into the wall and leave a sizable dent. Yami sauntered through the doorway with Yugi trailing a step behind him like the overly cheerful tail of a murderous kite.
Yugi offered a little wave. "Good morning, Seto."
"Come right in," Seto sneered, folding his arms over his chest and thinking longingly of the days when his life had been blissfully Mutou-free. "Thanks for ignoring the closed door and the metaphorical do-not-disturb sign hung thereon. That was purely for my own amusement and in no way intended to keep anyone out."
Yami shot him a dark look. "Have you no manners, Kaiba? My partner bid you a good morning."
"Good morning," Seto intoned flatly. "Have a great day... somewhere else."
If possible, Yami's look got darker.
"Good morning. I see the assassins failed again."
The Pharaoh's expression was positively Stygian, but Seto was feeling almost light-headed with snarky glee. (Possibly Mokuba was right when he accused Seto of having a bit of a death-wish.) It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep his face set in its usual stoic mask as he watched Yami eye him like a lion attempting to puzzle out why its prey was poking it with a stick.
"Good morning. It's-"
"Oh, for the love of- Are the two of you still in kindergarten?" Yugi interrupted. He didn't give either of them a chance to respond. "I walked Yami to work and just wanted to say 'hi' before I left. So... 'hi, Seto.' Bye, Seto. Have a good day and I'll see you this evening, Yami!"
"I look forward to it, aibou." Yami gave his partner a quick peck on the cheek and walked him to the office door. "I hope you have a good day, as well."
Once Yugi was out of sight, Yami turned his attention back to Seto, much to Seto's displeasure. He would have preferred it if Yami had forgotten Seto's existence and wandered off to join an expedition to the South Pole. Or the center of the Earth. Or Pittsburgh.
Basically, just anywhere that wasn't where Seto was, was what he was saying.
"To what do I owe the unmitigated torture of your company?" he asked, slumping into his chair and glaring across the desk at this unwanted plague upon his existence.
"You are such a drama queen," Yami (undisputed Drama Emperor for Life of the Known Universe) said, seemingly without irony. Ignoring Seto's indignant squawk, he continued, "Have you considered perhaps taking a spa weekend to destress?"
"I would need a spa year to get rid of all the stress I've been carrying since I met you," Seto sneered. Or a spa decade. Century? Possibly there wasn't enough time before the entropic death of the universe to destress from his association with the Mutous. They were all exhausting, even Grandpa Mutou. (Damn that old man, anyway, him and his "heart of the cards." Why couldn't he have taught Yugi how to play mah-jongg instead of Duel Monsters?)
Taking a deep breath, Seto pulled himself together. "What do you want, Mutou?"
Since he existed to make Seto's life miserable, Yami deposited himself on one of the stiff chairs before Seto's desk with the air of someone settling in for the long haul. In a chair specifically designed to be uncomfortable, Yami somehow managed to look as if he had never been more at ease. At the same time, he exuded a commanding presence, as if he knew he was the master of all he surveyed and anyone who disagreed simply hadn't gotten the memo yet.
He was the only person Seto had ever met who could strut while sitting down. (And Seto's hatred burned just a little brighter...)
"-Are you listening to me, Kaiba?" Yami demanded suddenly, cutting into Seto's reverie, which had begun to drift toward satisfying (if ultimately futile) fantasies of defenestration. After all, it had worked so well to solve his Gozaburo problem.
"...What?" he asked, reluctantly focusing on the Pharaoh.
"I said, are you listening to me?" Yami repeated.
"Do I look crazy? Of course I'm not listening to you! I'm sitting here focusing all my energy on awakening any hidden telekinetic powers I might possess, in the hope that I can use them to make you go away. If your head explodes at some point in the near future, I'll consider it time well spent."
Yami folded his arms over his chest and glared for a moment. Then one corner of his mouth twitched. "I didn't think you believed in things like hidden psychic powers."
"If it will get you to leave me alone, I'll make an exception."
"When are you going to stop trying to get rid of me?" Yami asked, sounding only mildly curious as to the answer. "Can't you just accept that I'm here? I never thought you, of all people, would be so resistant to reality."
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." Seto woke up his computer and pretended to concentrate intently on the start-up screen. Oh, look, a corporate logo! How fascinating! "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm busy. I'll have to ignore you some other time."
"Kaiba-"
"Please don't interrupt me while I'm ignoring you."
Yami huffed. After a few seconds of silence, he rose gracefully to his feet and stalked to the door, where he paused to say, "See you at the meeting," before swanning off, no doubt to spread his special brand of terror and mayhem to other parts of the Kaiba Corporation tower.
See you at the meeting.
Seto had never heard five more terrifying words spoken in his entire life.
o0o
(3)
The next few hours pass in something of a blur. Seto may have gotten some work done - or he may have stared at nothing for those however many hours, lost in a haze of worse case scenarios. His brain felt like someone had shoved a stick blender in his ear and hit frappe.
At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because he woke up with his face smushed into the surface of his desk and that damned stuffed penguin snuggled against his cheek. He stared at the penguin in horror. This was prime blackmail material; he was just lucky no one had seen him cuddling a stuffed toy.
He really should throw the stupid thing away-
Determined to suit action to thought, Seto snatched up the toy and held it over the trash can, a move he had made at least once a day since Yugi had foisted the accursed bird on him. And, as he did every time, he slowly placed the penguin back in its preferred spot.
Damn you, Yugi Mutou, he thought with a kind of weary resignation. Damn you and your insidious "friendship" and all the adorable stuffed animals that apparently come with it.
He was almost grateful when the intercom buzzed and his executive assistant informed him it was nearing time for the meeting with the Pricevol International representative. As much as he was dreading the meeting, at least it was better than this not-so-slow descent into insanity he was being sucked into thanks to Yugi, Yugi's Yami, and everything else that went along with them.
If the Geek Squad turned up to darken his doorstep, Seto decided, he was calling it quits and becoming a pirate.
o0o
Ten minutes into the meeting and a carefree life on the high seas was looking better by the second.
Dunamis Guttler, the unfortunately named Pricevol representative, spoke with a nasal drawl that seemed designed specifically to irritate Seto. The sunlight pouring into the conference room from the window wall made the man's blond hair gleam, framing his head with an angelic halo at odds with his unctuous manner and plastic smile. His piggy little eyes, squinting out from beneath what was either the world's worst toupee or a comb-over requiring at least a gallon of hairspray, watched Seto with the cold, soulless cunning of a hunting shark.
Seto had to fight the urge to start humming the theme from Jaws.
The one speck of brightness in this otherwise gloomy morning was that, so far at least, there had been zero sign of Yami turning up to further rain on Seto's parade.
And then dark clouds blotted out that bright speck as a new and terrifying idea rose up in Seto's brain like a kraken from the depths, surfacing to crush the ship of hope. Because if Yami wasn't here, where the hell was he and what migraine-inducing thing was he doing?
There was no telling what Yami might be getting up to without Seto's supervision. Seto knew that he couldn't rely on his fickle employees to handle the situation in his absence because, for some unfathomable reason, they actually seemed to like Yami. This disturbing fact had proven to be an unforeseen obstacle in Seto's campaign to remove Yami from Kaiba Corp once and for all. (Or at least transfer him to Antarctica.)
"Kaiba? Are you hearin' a word I'm sayin', son?" Guttler's grating drawl broke through Seto's dark reverie.
"I'm not your son." The denial was automatic; at this point in his life, Seto wasn't allowing anyone to call him 'son,' and certainly not in such a condescending manner. "And you're not saying anything I want to hear."
"This proposed merger would benefit both our companies, son."
It wouldn't. Seto wasn't even sure how they'd gotten this far into negotiations. Something to do with the board of directors, probably. Those sleazeballs were always causing problems, even after the so-called 'Big Five' had gotten themselves trapped in a VR game during their last bid to take over Kaiba Corp. Their defeat (and subsequent removal from the board after their "disappearance") had not, unfortunately, meant that everyone left on the board was a member of the Seto Kaiba fanclub. Or anyone left on it, really. At least most of them weren't actively trying to kill him.
Too bad he couldn't transfer the board to Antarctica.
"Look, Guttler-" he began, only for Guttler to cut him off.
"Now, now, son. We both know that this is what your shareholders want, so why are you fightin' it?" Guttler had smug down to an artform. "With Pricevol buyin' your little 'dueling technologies' division-"
"Oh, hell no." Whoops. Did he say that aloud? Oh, well. "I am not selling any part of the gaming division. Most of the company is the duel tech division!"
The board not only hated his guts, clearly they were out of their damned minds. Or on the take, which was probably the more likely explanation. No doubt Pricevol was offering them shares in their newly acquired and ill-gotten gains, should their schemes succeed.
And why the sudden and specific interest in the dueling tech? Sure, it was profitable, but not as much as some other aspects of the company. And some of the dueling stuff was an outright loss, like the VR pods.
Voice lowering to a threatening growl, Seto ground out, "What exactly are you up to, Guttler?"
"Why, I'm sure I don't know what you're refering to, son." Guttler looked as if butter wouldn't melt in his lying mouth. He reached for his briefcase-
-And the room plunged into darkness.
On the side of the room where the wall of glass should be was a roiling plain of purple-edged shadows and, at the center of the storm, a glowing golden eye.
Yami's voice rolled out of the shadows like distant thunder heralding an approaching storm. "Let's play a game."
(4)
Seto wasn't likely to ever forget the last ten minutes, but he was sure as hell going to try.
He didn't even know exactly what had happened in the time between Yami challenging Guttler and Guttler beginning to scream. The man had been frozen, staring at nothing, and then... He had just started shrieking as if in mindless terror or pain, though there wasn't a mark on him, and hadn't stopped until the ambulance arrived. That screaming was going to feature in Seto's future nightmares.
By the time the sunlight had returned and Guttler had been removed from the room, strapped to a gurney and sedated for his lovely trip to the nearest emergency room, Seto had gotten a grip on his own urge to shriek. He was resentfully downing the cup of hot tea that someone had set in front of him, while wishing it was something substantially stronger. What did pirates drink, anyway? Grog? Maybe he should have Roland order a keg or two (or twelve).
Seto was in the middle of mentally designing his hypothetical pirate outfit (of course there was a trenchcoat. The white one would work with a little tweaking, and he rather liked the mental image - though, for some reason, the obligatory shoulder parrot kept morphing into a stuffed penguin...) when someone plopped down in the chair beside him and shoved a stack of papers into his field of view.
He looked up and groaned. "Oh. It's you."
Yami gave him the smirk of a cat that had not just eaten the canary, but had caused a canary extinction on a par with the Cambrian one (except with little yellow birds instead of brachiopods).
"Why?" Seto asked, more because he thought he ought to than out of any real curiosity, and rubbed one hand over his suddenly aching temple. Yami was a walking migraine waiting to happen - and he seemed determined to happen to Seto.
All he got in reply was the Eyebrow of Amused Superiority, to which Seto responded with the facial equivalent of a clenched fist.
Yami sighed and, in a patient voice that only amped up Seto's urge to punch him, said, "'Why' what?"
Why anything, Seto thought despondently. Why are you here? Why are you you? Why do you do everything you do? As far as Seto was concerned, Yami was an entire universe of 'why' wrapped up in a five foot package of weird hair and incomprehensible motives.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the mental energy to put any of that into words, so he just shrugged listlessly. In a world-weary voice, he repeated, "Why?"
Yami seemed to get the drift, at least, because he tapped his fingertips on the stack of papers he had placed on the conference table. (For some reason, there was a shallow dish holding what looked like a small bamboo plant next to Yami's elbow. The words 'Citizen Cane' were painted on the dish in neon yellow calligraphy. Seto wasn't going to ask.)
"Guttler," Yami said, "was a member of a cult of sorcerers plotting to get their hands on the power of the Millennium Items for their own nefarious purposes. The 'merger' was simply a ruse."
"...To get to you?" Seto perked up a bit at hearing that particular fact. If true, it could provided the excuse he'd been looking for to finally rid himself of his least-wanted employee.
"And you," Yami said, dashing Seto's hopes like the hope-dasher he clearly lived to be. "They know you're involved."
"How?" Seto demanded. "How do they know I'm involved? I don't even know I'm involved! In fact, I'm not. I refuse. I am not involved in any kind of hokey magic bullshit, because logic is a thing that exists! I like logic. It doesn't give me migraines or blow up my coffee-maker."
"Or save your company from magical takeovers and stop yet another attempt at world domination. Legal has the relevant details." Yami shoved the papers at him with flick of his wrist and stood, still smirking. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I spent all morning working on this, so I haven't been to visit the Blue-Eyes, yet today." The smirk widened into a scary grin. "I promised her a treat."
Just for a second, a glowing third eye seemed to flicker on his forehead. Then Seto blinked and the illusion vanished. Yami gathered up his plant and strode from the conference room, leaving Seto to contemplate the merits of logic versus live dragons, and whether he ought to be grateful (ugh) that the Pharaoh was apparently smiting Kaiba Corp's enemies, now.
And how had Yami even known that Guttler was up to no good (in more than a mundane 'corporate greed' kind of way)? Did he have 'I'm an evil sorcerer' printed on his business card or something? Seto glanced at the stack of legal documents, which he supposed might hold the answer to at least a few of his many questions somewhere in between the dense paragraphs of legalese.
"Fuck it."
He dropped the paperwork on his PA and headed for the elevator. He'd leave the utterly terrifying notion of Yami anywhere near Kaiba Corp's legal department as nightmare fuel for another day. As for now?
Well, for now, he thought he'd wander down to the R&D department (recently remodeled via Blue-Eyes* and still lightly smoking in some places), and see if he could design a pirate ship that looked like a dragon, while looking at - and possibly feeding fish to - an actual dragon.
* The sudden appearance of the huge reptilian creature in the relatively small space meant that R&D now had a skylight (or, at least, a large hole in the roof), wing-damaged walls, and several severely flattened computer stations which the Blue-Eyes White Dragon insisted upon using as a nest. They were just lucky she hadn't felt the need to actually do anything other than materialize out of thin air. If she had utilized her White Lightning Attack, there wouldn't have been enough of the room left to even think about repairing.
Notes:
The title is from the Bangles' song "Manic Monday" (written by Prince), even though most of the story takes place on a Wednesday. Which makes about as much sense as anything else in this series.
"Pricevol" is an anagram of "Evil Corp."
Thanks to AnonWrites for beta-reading chapter 4.
[For whatever reason, when it came time to give Guttler a physical description, he morphed into a Donald Trump clone. *shudder* I guess when I think of corporate evil, I think of Trump. :D]
And the telekinetic powers/head explosion thing is a vague reference to the movie "Scanners."
"Dunamis Guttler" basically means "power hungry" or "glutton for power."
The "Gainful Employment" series can be found on my profile or on AO3 (where it is linked and much easier to read) under the username Lucidscreamer.
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi. All original characters and situations belong to Lucidscreamer.