Of Trench coats and Duel Monsters
A/N- OK, this should be the penultimate chapter, according to the plan. Thanks to reviewers, and I'll get onto the story before you all leave. Ooh, and any language that looks new from now is Russian, because I'm learning it- nya ha ha! However, I'm sure that the site won't appreciate the Cyrillic alphabet, so I'm going to put it in phonetics to make everything easier.
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The school week had finally ended, and it was Saturday morning. Aurelie was attempting to read the heavy textbook she'd had thrown at her on Monday evening (she was optimistically hoping it wasn't meant to have hit her, but then, it was a birthday present as such, so she wasn't complaining), but when looking at her laptop, she noticed she had email. It had come around 2 am that morning, so it must have been from someone abroad… but it wasn't. The sender was one S. so it could only be one person. Namely, the stepbrother. Aurelie hadn't quite achieved what she'd wanted to (no ticket to France was forthcoming,) but since the email was from someone she was likely to see at some point, she supposed she'd better read it.
Dear Aurelie,
We're having a research excursion today, and Mokuba wondered if you'd like to come with. If you could get over here by 10:45, we can be out of the house by 11.
Regards,
SK
Snapping the textbook shut, Aurelie glanced at the clock, swore loudly, and ran for the shower.
At 10:42, after getting dressed and writing a note to her stepfather to the effect of, 'I'm buggering off today- I'll see you later', Aurelie was running for it, to at least get there by five to. However, a black car with tinted glass pulled up, the window open a crack, and a cold voice sounded.
"Knew you'd be late. Want a lift? You're very lucky, Mokuba hasn't deigned to get out of bed, so I felt there'd be time to come and get you before we have to go." Cocky baka, Aurelie thought, but still replied in the affirmative, stepping through the recently opened car door into a white interior.
"Spaseebo, Seto", she said, fully aware that she couldn't address him properly, because she didn't know his fathers' first name, and wasn't about to ask. Suddenly aware of how nerdish she looked, she found out how interesting her knees were, and began to stare at them until the vehicle stopped.
Walking into the house, Seto stood on the bottom step of the flight of stairs, and shouted up "Mokuba? Are you up yet?"
A small figure with severe bed hair emerged on the landing, blinking at the light, and yawning profusely. "Have you ever heard of a lie in?" However, noticing the other person on the floor, he yelped, tried to flatten his hair, and ran into his bedroom.
"You have 5 minutes," Seto yelled at the closed door, and he began to make his way up the stairs. "Give me a moment to get a couple of things, will you?" Without an answer, his bedroom door slammed shut.
Aurelie sighed and seated herself on the stairs, opening her necklace pendant. She was just logging into a website when a door slammed and someone came downstairs, pausing only to look at the game Aurelie had logged onto.
"Seriously, that site needs a recode. Everything's doubled up." Seto blinked, and then realized the problem. Delicately, he plucked a lens out of his eye.
"You wear contact lenses?" Aurelie watched him pick out the other contact out and place them in a small box, as he shoved a pair of thick rimmed glasses up his nose. Finally making it to the bottom of the stairs, she couldn't help staring at him.
Admittedly, this was a change from the only 'casual' (if you could call it that) clothing she'd seen him wear. The tight clothing he'd worn then had been exchanged for a baggy outfit, although it was all the same colour- black. The dragon on the front of his T-shirt was resplendent, and although he was still wearing a trench coat- unfitted as it was, he somehow managed to look unbelievably unlike a normal teenager.
"Stop staring. These are the only un cool pieces of clothing I possess," he said, eyeing her. The Grim Fandango top she was wearing, although it looked good in her opinion, was probably out dated (she'd got it when she was at a convention ages ago), her warm top had a thumb hole cut in it (for warmth reasons) plus the bottoms of her jeans were slightly ragged. But then, for someone who didn't get out buying new stuff very often, she could have done worse.
"What is it with you, Mokuba and dragons?" It was true; they were all over the house- especially a silver one with blue eyes which seemed to follow you around when you were navigating through the corridors.
"What's wrong with my Blue Eyes?" Seto retorted, hurt. No one insulted his taste and got away with it. "I own the only three in the world, thank you very much, and I've got the Duel Monsters World Championship title to prove it."
Aurelie nearly fell off the stair she was sitting on. "You play Duel Monsters? You nerd! No one plays that! It's like completely taboo because the person who created it's well, that way inclined."
Seto was getting extremely annoyed. He spent his time duelling petty competitors because a, he was good at it and b; he was in a partnership with Crawford, making holograms of the cards for millions. He'd got the deal quite some time ago, but always managed to find time to make the coding better, or improve the technology to decrease it in size- his duel spin 1.0 was progressing very well. "You don't insult what I do with my life, and I won't say anything about you. Are we clear?" Aurelie got the death stare, and nodded, as Mokuba slid down the banister and landed at the foot of the stairs.
Seto tutted, but knowing that he'd done it before so couldn't say anything (no matter how long ago that was), turned to the smaller figure.
"Right, I'll take the bike and take her with me, whilst you get someone to drive you in. Well see you in about half an hour, in the normal place." Aurelie got the feeling that she wasn't in favour at the minute. "Come on, you, lets get over to the garage," really confirmed the fact, as Seto normally managing to use her name.
25 minutes later, however, they were making their way up Domino high street, towards the KC main office. Seto wasn't talking at all, until a gaggle of paparazzi went past, talking about 'how readers of Scoop magazine were going to see the hottest new gaming couple', and discussing whether Kaiba Corp stocks would fall in this new development. Seto smelling a rat, talked for the first time in about half an hour, as he passed Aurelie a coin, and asked if she could buy a copy of that magazine, but when she got back, and handed the bag to him, Mokuba had joined the party and the real reason that they'd come out started. Namely, trawling every game shop to see how Kaiba Corp games and gaming supplies were selling, and to see if any other companies were coming up. After splitting up- Mokuba and Aurelie went together, and Seto set off in the other direction; the idea being, that they could start in different game shops, gather information and then see when they'd finished if they'd both got the same information, each party having been in the same shops, but in a different order.
So, three hours later, they were sitting in the park, eating Chinese food and comparing data (Aurelie having got a reasonable hang of using chopsticks by now), when Seto remembered the magazine he had in his pocket. Whipping it out, he stared at the front cover, flicked through the pages to the inside Scoop, and after scanning a page, threw the object down in disgust. A huge headline proclaimed 'Seto Kaiba and ?' and there was a black and white photograph of a back view of a trench coated figure, carrying another person, their fringe flopping…
"Merde! Where did they get that from?" Aurelie asked in dismay. This must have been taken a couple of weeks ago, that day she'd been incapacitated, as such. She had told Philippe the last time she'd talked to him (over MSN naturally), and he'd told her to tell the police, social services, had completely panicked, despite the fact that she wasn't telling anyone- doing so would probably result in her having to stay in Japan permanently, and although it would mean getting rid of the evil pig, she wouldn't be getting back to France any time soon, no matter how much her current place of residence had become her second favourite place to be (England being her last- as that was where she'd first encountered him), and the fact that she had a sort of family unit (no matter how dysfunctional) here too, plus virtual reality at constant disposal.
"Of course, they had a hidden reporter somewhere, who took that picture- and they didn't catch you bleeding everywhere, so jumped the bandwagon. This is why they think stocks will fall, and they won't, trust me." He suddenly got a scary glint in his eye, and stood up.
"Has anyone else got anything else to do?" There was a general shaking of heads. "Good. Let's get home then. Aurelie, I've got a VR game that's shorter than the others, I want to see your time- and we can see how well you're doing too, Mokuba."
Hence, at 6 pm that evening, Seto dropped Aurelie off at the opening of the street where she lived, giving her a plastic bag containing what he said was something she'd forgotten, but what was actually a birthday present- a trench coat (if you were a Kaiba, you had to have one.) He had refused to let her walk on her own- on the grounds of 'look what happened last time I let you', and he watched her literally be yanked into the house- not wanting to get her into even more of a pit by being with her, or to see the living nightmare again for as long as he lived, as Gozaburo disgusted him. The idea of beating up someone for doing nothing wrong was despicable, and although he hoped that it wouldn't happen, there was nothing he could do.
Turning back to his motorbike, he was putting his helmet on when a loud voice came out of the doorway that Aurelie had just disappeared into.
"Hey, you!" Footsteps were running down the road, as he swung himself over his motorbike, and drove away. Scheizer, he thought, I should have stayed. However, there was nothing more he could do, as he entered the miasma of the dark, trying to put him behind him and hoping that the email he'd told her to send to him at 8 pm would come, confirming that all was fine.
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Translations and explanation time:
Spaseebo- means thank you in Russian (I'm not that good yet…) phonetically.
In Russian, when being polite, you address someone by their first name, and their father's first name (like a middle name), but since Aurelie doesn't know it, she can't. Odd fact for you!
Grim Fandango- an ultrally cool PC game by LucasArts. It's all about getting to the underworld Mexican style, with lots of witty charaters, and so many plot twists you wouldn't believe!
See you next time- I hope this explains any questions that any of you had about earlier events. Please remember that this happens before the anime begins, so Seto still has his championship title, and Gozaburo is still alive (he hasn't thrown himself out of a high window yet…). Thank you for reading!