Chapter 4

Yuugi sat in an uncomfortable stool that was set behind the counter in the shop. He was waiting for Kaiba to arrive, as he had said he would do so when he had called earlier that same morning. The remains of a blueberry muffin lay in crumbles on a small plate before him. He picked at them idly and yawned into his sleeve. Briefly wondering how many hours Kaiba had been up before phoning him, he slid off the stool and stretched his arms over his head. There came the smooth rumble of an engine outside. Yuugi blinked his eyes and looked at the black limousine that was rolling up to the shop. A man in a suit got out of the driver's seat and walked around the vehicle to open the door closest to the shop. And there was a man he knew well: Seto Kaiba swung his legs out of the vehicle and sauntered up to the door. His younger brother trailed behind him in his shadow. The bell jingled as they entered the shop.

Seto's eyes landed on Yuugi. But Mokuba stopped the conversation before it had even begun, rushing forward. "Hey, Yuugi!" He cried out, swinging his arms around him. Yuugi's mouth twitched into a smile. "It's so good to see you. I'm sorry we don't visit often. Seto is designing a new duel disk, and we're quite busy with a new theme park that's opening up." Mokuba grinned, pulling out of the hug.

"I understand, Mokuba," Yuugi assured him, "I've been busy too, with my studies at school. Actually," he hesitated, returning his gaze to Seto, "I was wondering if you could give me a lift, and we could talk on the way. Is that all right with you?"

Seto shrugged. "It's acceptable. Come along, then." He pivoted on one foot and was out the door much quicker than he had come in. Mokuba waited for Yuugi as he reached behind the counter to gather his bag. They exited the shop and the driver waited with the limo door open for them as they climbed in. It was shut quietly. "To the college." Seto ordered before closing the divider, and the driver started the engine. They pulled away from the Game Shop.

"So," Yuugi shifted in his seat, his glance drifting between the two brothers sitting across from him. He had no idea what to expect (the Kaiba family had never ceased to surprise him, they were people he knew to be completely unpredictable) and so he wasn't sure whether this visit should make him wary or not. "What did you come to see me for, Kaiba?" He asked, addressing the eldest. Mokuba was, as far as he could tell, the only one who addressed his brother by his first name. And Yuugi wasn't about to break that boundary yet, despite all that they'd been through.

Seto pulled a briefcase onto his lap, unlatching it. Removing a laptop from within, he turned the machine on and answered easily, "Earlier this morning my computer detected a hacker in one of my corporation's labs in the downtown area. This intruder had managed to get past all of the guards surrounding the perimeter, and then had bypassed the software that would have prevented him from going through the front door and many subsequent doors." He tapped at the keyboard, bringing up the recorded video files. "After that, he gained entry into a room that housed a number of my virtual pods, and then somehow escaped with the blueprints for the virtual pods, as well as the access codes necessary to link a system to the virtual world." Yuugi listened without moving, taking in everything that he had said. Mokuba had also remained mostly silent, with only one involuntary gasp at his brother's words.

Yuugi adjusted his grip on his bag, and thought about how to phrase his question. "Well," he said finally, "I'm sorry to hear that all this has happened, Kaiba, but I don't think I would be able help you very much. So why—"

"I'm getting to that," Seto interjected smoothly. He turned his laptop to face Yuugi, which was currently showing a black screen. After Seto touched another button, though, Yuugi could see that he was looking at camera footage. There was the tell-tale sign at the bottom of the screen: white characters representing the camera's exact location on the grounds, and the time flashing slowly beside it. Mokuba turned himself in his seat to get a better view of the screen. It was clear that he had no idea what he was going to see, either. And as the video started playing, it wasn't much. They could see that this was a camera watching the main entrance, as the screen showed the outside of the building. There were wide concrete steps leading up to the bottom corner of the screen, where they could see the edge of double glass doors. These were obviously locked by a computer, as there was a little black box which needed a pin code and a card set beside the doors, in the brick of the wall. It was night in the footage, and not much was visible beyond the singular lamppost standing on the far side of the bottom of the steps. There were three uniformed men standing in a group beneath this post, chattering idly away, although the camera was too far away to hear their voices. They carried guns in the holsters at their belts, as well as handheld radio devices to contact each other if needed. So these were the guards Seto had mentioned. Yuugi wondered how on earth this intruder was supposed to take out three armed men.

There came the approach of a cloaked figure on the screen. He approached the stairs with confident steps, but then paused as the guards stopped speaking and one came towards him. There was a minute of conversation, before the guard appeared annoyed and gestured for him to leave the area. The figure did not seem inclined to do so, and with one hand drew forth something from a hidden pocket. Yuugi shared a confused look with Mokuba. The image was dark, and he could not make out what the figure held in its hand. Something else was revealed from the cloak (again, it was too dark to see), and suddenly both objects were glowing in unearthly light. And then the light died down.

All of a sudden, they knew exactly what he held in one hand, though the view was blocked by the individual's fingers. There stood on the ground before the guard a being resembling a great, green ogre, drool dripping from its jaws. "Terra the Terrible," Yuugi whispered, his breath caught by the very real image on the screen. Mokuba was equally as shocked. The fiend monster wasted no time in knocking the guards unconscious. The first was caught in its giant gnarled hands, and with barely a yelp he was flung to the ground, head hitting the hard cement and silencing his voice. The other two guards were quicker to respond, drawing their guns to raise them at the monster. Terra lumbered forward with a growl. They gave a shout and began firing: shots hit the ogre, but it did not stop. It reached the guards and with one fluid motion cracked their heads together. They slumped to the ground, guns dropping uselessly from their hands.

Seto stopped the footage, causing them to both look up from the screen. "I will skip forward to another camera's view in order to show you a better view of the man you just saw," he told Yuugi. Yuugi nodded, speechless. Seto turned the computer around on his lap and tapped the keyboard for a while before he turned it around again. Yuugi and Mokuba leaned in, peering closely at the screen. This camera showed a view of a hallway. The corridor stretched off beyond the screen to the left, but to the right was a metal door, locked. There was the intruder again, now a man, as they could see. The image was frozen on the screen: the man was no longer wearing the hood that had covered his head. They could see that he was an older man, perhaps early forties. His hair was short and dark, and his eyes were deep-set. There were circles under those eyes, as though he had not slept in quite a while. The man had a grim expression on his face.

"Now," said Seto in a formal manner, "I'm going to slow down the viewing for a little while. But I want you to watch what he draws from his cloak." The footage started up, and Yuugi and Mokuba watched hesitantly as the man seemed to repeat the same thing as before. He drew from his cloak the duel monster card that was Terra the Terrible, and then he reached with his other hand into another pocket. Yuugi did not know what to expect. What was Kaiba so adamant about him needing to see? Surely there was nothing more to shock him.

He was horribly wrong. The man revealed the Millennium Rod from beneath his cloak. Yuugi found he could not breathe. Despairingly, he looked at Kaiba. His expression revealed nothing. Yuugi's glance was drawn back onto the screen, so that he now knew how the fiend monster had been unleashed from its domain within the card. The Rod glowed golden, and then so did the card. The duel monster removed itself from its confines, and then the Rod went silent —the light dimmed and winked out. He and Mokuba proceeded to watch the fiend tear a hole through the thick metal door and then yank out the electrical circuit. When the recording ended, Seto enclosed the computer in his briefcase once more and waited patiently for Yuugi's response. "This was the only door that he did not hack into."

"This is all so overwhelming," Yuugi said at length. He stared blankly at Seto. "Somehow, someone has taken the Millennium Rod from Egypt...I thought that it had been buried under all that sand and rock when the Chamber of the Millennium Stone collapsed. I remember...the rock beneath the Millennium Stone split apart and it fell down into the hole, bringing all the Items down with it. We barely managed to get out, ourselves," his sentences came out haltingly, as Yuugi tried to string together his muddled thoughts.

Seto nodded. "That's what I thought as well. But we can skip the 'somehow' for now, Yuugi, and just focus on the fact that, regardless of how it got here, it is. And now, this man is using the Rod to steal from my company. That is the part I'm concerned about." His tone betrayed none of the anger Yuugi was sure was just beneath the surface. He had faced multiple takeover attempts, and Yuugi knew this attack on his lab was striking more than just a few nerves. He felt a twinge of guilt that the stolen technology was not the first thing to bother him, yet he knew that the Rod was much more dangerous in the hands of an enemy. And that was what they were facing, of course. A new enemy.

Seto and Yuugi eyed each other across the space of their seats. Each saw the challenge in the other's eyes, the strong determination. There was no uncertainty in the violet or blue orbs, only a willingness to do whatever it took to win. Perhaps this was not so unlike a game, after all. The rules were not so plainly stated, as of yet, but there was a definite plot and sides had been chosen. Round one had begun. It was time for their team to answer the opening move. "The Millennium Items do not answer to just anyone, Kaiba. This is a person who has learned to tap into the Rod's powers, and in doing so, call upon the spirit of a card so that it can materialize into our world." Yuugi rationalized.

Running a hand over the front of his suit to even out the imaginary wrinkles, Seto responded. "Not only that, Yuugi, but thinking over his motions makes me think that he has done this before. Furthermore, when the monster came out of the card, even though my security shot at it, it did not seem affected."

Yuugi was nodding. "Do you remember when Dartz summoned all of those duel monsters into the city? How we got rid of them by using our own monsters? I think a monster can therefore only be destroyed by another monster."

The elder brother scowled in response, while the younger spoke his thoughts out loud. "But the monsters can attack us just fine," Mokuba protested.

"Exactly," Seto said sternly, "which means anyone without a duel disk is at his mercy. And finally, our monsters are unable to have any affect on the real world —we, unlike him, don't have the ability to give our monsters a real presence in this world. So they will only be able to affect other monsters, real or otherwise."

There was silence as the three considered all of this. "Do you think..." Yuugi began, but one look at Seto caused him to stop. There was a certain sense of uneasiness at his thought, and maybe, just maybe, if he didn't say it aloud then the danger wouldn't be there to plague them. Seto had an expression that he had come to recognize on his face. He was planning something, going over all of his options, making a note of all possible outcomes. This was not a man who made mistakes readily, who threw himself into a situation without planning on coming out the better for it. He had decided something, then, before phoning him. Yuugi sat back in his seat and relaxed. "Whatever you want me to do, Kaiba," he offered. Kaiba would sort it out.

The white suit contrasted well with Seto's autumn hair, accentuating his high cheekbones, the pale skin. He looked attractive, but few could see past the cocky smirk and the sharp tongue. Seto used those attributes now, flashing his pearly white teeth. "I don't know what this guy's after or what he wants with my virtual technology, Yuugi, but you can bet I'll find out. You don't need to do anything. I just want you to be aware of what's happening. You'll tell the rest of that geek squad of yours, I assume." The humour was back in the conversation, and Yuugi decided to keep it there, not bothering to give an answering retort. The confidence in Kaiba's voice was reassuring. "And Yuugi..." Seto slid one hand into an inner pocket of his jacket, then pulled it out again. "You keep your deck close at hand, am I right?" His duel monster cards were in his grip. The brown faces with the swirling vortexes peeked out from beneath his fingers.

Yuugi heard the underlying meaning in his voice. Be careful. Trust Kaiba to say it like that. He moved the bottom of his black coat up, revealing the card holder on one of his belts. "Of course, Kaiba," Seto nodded in satisfaction, returning his deck to its pocket. Something occurred to Yuugi. "Could you possibly try to contact the Ishtar family, or find out how so that I can get a hold of them? Since the Chamber of the Millennium Stone was in the land that the tomb keepers have been taking care of for generations, they might know something about how the Rod came to be removed from it. Who knows, maybe we can get a lead on the man who stole your technology." They had parted with the Ishtar family long ago, not expecting to see them again. So they had forged no link to contact each other. However; if anyone could find out how to speak with them, it would be Kaiba. He had contacts all over the world from the expansion of his company, and he would know exactly where to start searching to find the information they needed.

"Yes, I'll do that. And as soon as I have an update, I'll call you with the information." Seto agreed.

They pulled up in the bus loop beside the college's parking lots. The limousine rolled to a stop, and Yuugi moved to open the door, but he halted when he caught the startled looks the brothers gave him. There was a moment of waiting, and then the driver opened the door. Yuugi couldn't help but be glad Joey wasn't there. He would absolutely be making some comment about rich snobs right about then. As it was, he had trouble holding back the smile that threatened his features. Kaiba would take it as an insult. He raised himself out of his seat and exited the vehicle. "Thank you for the ride," he told the driver and Kaiba jointly. He focused on Kaiba's face, partially hidden by the brown locks framing it. "And thanks for letting me know," Yuugi added.

The young businessman would not let him leave with the parting remark. "Your connection to the Millennium Items will undoubtedly make you a target for whatever this man has in mind," Seto advised him.

Yuugi turned away from the limousine. "Same to you." He motioned to the driver, who tipped his head, and lightly closed the door. Yuugi walked away.

Grinding his teeth together slightly at the insinuation, Kaiba stared at the closed door. He certainly could not be referring to that ancient Egyptian priest that he was supposedly the reincarnation of. The Shadow Realm he could accept. The Millennium Items and the powers they contained? Very well, he could accept that too. The spirits that had once dwelled within two of those items...that was something that he had also gradually come to terms with. It was the idea that fate, that destiny had caused him to be related to all of the crazy situations that he had found himself in over the years that he could not accept. He could not allow the thought that he was not in control of his actions, that destiny had caused him to be the rival of Yuugi. That destiny had caused him to wield the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. That destiny had anything to do with his life disgusted him. Never mind the visions he'd had. Never mind the Memory World he'd experienced.

Mokuba sat a little distance away from his brother on the same seat. He had been mostly silent throughout the entire exchange, taking in everything that had been said, knowing that he should keep quiet. He thought his brother wouldn't have liked it. Seto was in one of those moods, he could tell, the same one from earlier that morning. It was a mood he'd been in when he'd decided to host the Battle City Tournament. He could see the single-minded determination on his brother's face. Something was stopping him from being the best. Something was in his way. He'd do whatever it took to bring that person down. Mokuba straightened his back. And he would support Seto, no matter what course he chose to take. Even if it was a dangerous course. Because that had never stopped his big brother before, so of course it wouldn't now.

"Seto," he spoke up, his serious tone discordant from the hopeful look on his face. Seto turned, distracted from his thoughts. "Is there anything I can do for you, to help?"

Blinking, Seto's fingers came up to his cheek, and he brushed a stray strand of hair away from his face. "Hmm. Yes. Yes, there is. I want to send you to the lab to check out the scene. I want you to see the damage this man has caused first-hand, and see if you can't find out anything more about him. I have the technicians combing the building, of course, checking for clues, but I don't trust that they won't miss anything. I want a full report on everything you see when you're finished."

Mokuba was only too happy to have a place in his brother's plans. "Sure, I'll get right on it." With that, Seto reached over his shoulder and touched the button that rolled down the divider.

"Take us to the downtown laboratory complex." He demanded. The driver nodded and they pulled away from the college. Seto rolled the divider up again for privacy. Then, he reached below the seat for a bagged container that Mokuba had seen him bring into the vehicle earlier. His face scrunched into a sour look as he realized it to be a plastic food container. Seto tugged off the lid, revealing the contents. Two sets of porcelain chopsticks rested on silk napkins on top of an array of food. Seto offered a set to Mokuba, who took them awkwardly.

"It's going to be one of those days, isn't it," Mokuba muttered with a sigh.

His brother started, then let out a half-laugh. "I do believe my cooking isn't that terrible," he informed him. Then he glanced down at his attempt at breakfast and found himself grimacing in admittance. "Very well," he sighed as well, "it is not completely terrible, should I say." He set the container down between them, and placed the napkins beside it. He waited for Mokuba to take a bite before changing the subject. "I'll head back to the mansion while you're at the lab. I have some research to do so as to find out a phone number I can reach the Ishtar family at." Mokuba nodded at him.

"Why didn't you tell Yuugi that that guy had stolen the technology for Noah's virtual world? What I mean is, he probably thought that it was just your virtual game world, the one which you designed back when Pegasus was still having his Duelist Kingdom tournament." Mokuba questioned around a mouthful of food.

Seto started again. Of course his brother would catch something like that, though he was still surprised that he had recognized the building from the footage. "It is unimportant information," he said only. What was running through his mind was completely different. By telling him that information, Yuugi would ask if this was the building where Noah's body was held. And then Yuugi would think of him entirely in another way, thinking that he was after this intruder for fear of Noah's safety. For fear that by gaining access to the virtual world that Noah's mind had once resided in, this man would now have an opportunity to harm whatever vestiges of Noah that still resided there. Which was ridiculous. Yuugi did not need to think of him like that. He only needed to know that he was trying to protect his company, nothing more. After all, that's all it was, wasn't it?

He had yet to take a bite of his breakfast. One other thing had come to his mind. What was it that Yuugi had started to ask him, but had then stopped, mid-sentence? "Do you think..." Did he think...what? It came to him suddenly.

He tried to breathe, but found the air wouldn't come. Do you think that the other Millennium Items have been removed from the Chamber as well?

There was an image in his mind, an strong picture of an upturned golden pyramid, the Eye of Wdjat standing out in the middle of its surface. It was a symbol of power and protection, a ward to evil that would have used the Item for its own. He tried to block out, but couldn't, the long brown cord that was threaded through the golden loop at the top of the pyramid. It rested around the neck of someone. He could make that person out, now. The spiked maroon hair, the blond highlights. The violet eyes so unlike Yuugi's own. The skin was much darker, fitting the clothing that he wore. Gold jewellery around his arms, his wrists, his legs; rings on two fingers, on both hands; a golden circlet about his forehead, again carrying the symbol of the Eye; a white linen tunic; a long blue cloak wrapped about his shoulders. The Other Yuugi was just as imposing in his mind as in person.

He shook his head impatiently. He had no time to dwell on such thoughts. That person was long gone, and would never return. Even should that particular Millennium Item return, that person still would not. Still, he thought absently, it would have been good to see his old rival once again. In spite of all his efforts, he still had yet to beat him in a duel.

He wondered faintly if the Egyptian gods had granted him a good afterlife.