PART 2:
RETURN

"LOOKS weird after so long, huh?" Mokuba asked his stepbrother after noticing his gawking stare at the interior of the mansion he'd lived in for the entirety of his "first" life. Noa could hardly recognize the place, it was so different! The entire mansion had been redone, no longer looking like a modest (cheap) home bought simply for its size and used only as a base of operations, as Gozaburo had used it. Noa remembered the place feeling like a prison with dark red carpet and white walls, with simple furniture that served its purpose and nothing more. There were only two rooms he remembered that were actually decorated: the main parlor, which lay on the second floor for some reason Noa had never been able to figure out, and the dining room. The only reason these rooms had been decorated was that those were the places where guests were allowed to go. If someone came to dinner, he went to the dining room. If someone came for business, he went to the main parlor. That was it. Nothing else.

Now, the place no longer looked like a prison. It looked like a palace!

Marble floors, textured walls, paintings hanging at regular intervals through the halls, potted plants, beautifully crafted furniture, everything was astounding! The Kaiba Mansion now looked to Noa like a place befitting the king of a fantasy novel where practicality was thrown to the wind for the sake of the whimsical.

"I…can't see Seto living here," Noa said.

"Oh, he didn't design anything. He just couldn't stand the sight of everything Gozaburo had picked out, so he had a professional designer come over with a blank check and told her to revamp everything. I don't even think he really notices how everything looks."

Currently, Seto was still in the limousine outside, screaming into his cell phone.

"Who's he talking to, Mokuba?" Noa asked. "Do you know?"

"Yup. Guy's name is Enoch Franks. Seto hates the guy. I mean really, really hates him. He's been tryin' to find an excuse to fire him for a couple of months. I think the reason is 'cuz Franks is a communist, or something. Either that or he wants people to think he is. I don't know. He talks a whole lot but he never says anything. I've gone to sleep every time I've actually been around to hear him give a speech."

"What's he do for the company, exactly?"

"I don't know…director of something or other. Whatever it is, Seto doesn't think we need it. But he can't fire him…some bill they passed a while ago or something. I don't understand all that political stuff."

Noa nodded. He didn't either, not much of it, anyway.

When he turned to look back at the limousine, Seto was walking briskly up to them, briefcase in hand, face still contorted by fierce anger. He stopped in front of his brothers and took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself.

"Problems?" Mokuba asked.

Seto groaned in irritation and nodded. "I'm beginning to think I should hire a professional assassin…that man does not need to be on this planet. He's completely useless, not only to me, but to everyone else. He's adulterous, abusive, his wife hates him, his children hate him, I hate him, why doesn't he die?"

"Did you make that up?" Mokuba asked, crossing his arms.

"Well, I've never met his children, but I would assume they hate him. Look, the man is a parasite. There's some way he's keeping his job, and I don't know how. I'm not in charge of personnel, they say, even though I'm in charge of everything, so I can't fire him, which is the same reason they started whining about my hiring you, Noa, to fix the VRPG prototype."

Noa frowned, worried. "You got in trouble for that?"

"Trouble? Not the right term for it. It's just a minor annoyance."

Seto waved his hand at the door, inviting the two boys to go inside (actually, he probably just wanted them to get out of the way so he could go inside). Following the implied order, Noa and Mokuba stepped inside, allowing their elder brother to set his briefcase on the table by the door, which he closed with a slam. "Damned idiot…" he muttered.

"Maybe you could frame him for something," Mokuba offered.

Noa grinned. "Yeah. Plant a virus into the mainframe from his computer or something."

Seto seemed to seriously consider that option. Then, as he removed his dark trench coat and set it on a hook on the wall, he shook his head. "No, that would cause too many problems, as no one is competent enough to fix anything. I'd be alone. I suppose you could help me, Noa, but even with the two of us, the work would take too long, what with how many systems we have connected at Kaiba-Corp…it would take months. Months I don't have. So, I guess I'll have to deal with him until I find a better, less time-consuming way to get rid of him."

Noa smiled. He was noticing a change in Seto's demeanor. Even angry, he was more…playful, Noa supposed, than he had been. He was sarcastic, but not hurtfully sarcastic, funnily sarcastic. He had loosened up a bit. Thinking back, Noa thought that it had started after he'd done the work on Seto's virtual reality project. He still wasn't exactly friendly, still rather stand-offish, but he wasn't as bad as before.

"So," Seto said, looking at his green-haired brother, "you've been allowed to leave the hospital, finally. I can't stand that place…" he looked away to the side, "but at least it's over now…I won't have to deal with that idiot Frederica Delmont again…why is the world filled with morons?"

"Was that the doctor that thought you should have pity on me?" Noa asked. He still remembered the woman, because after he'd told her off, no one else had treated him like a crippled beggar.

"Yes," Seto said, "and she didn't leave me alone after that, either. Kept spouting off self-righteous drivel about how we're all here together and we need to help each other, and we have to learn to accept that some people don't hold the same views that we do…hypocritical bitch…"

Before either of the two boys could reply, Seto looked back at Noa and said "Anyway, now that you're here, you'll need a room. You know your way around the place, so I don't need to give a tour. I had the staff make up a room for you on the ground floor. Mokuba, it's next to yours, so you can show him. I'm supposing you don't need any sort of introduction to your own home, so I'll leave you to yourselves. Lunch should be prepared within the hour. I'll be in my study."

And with that, he was gone.

"He's always in his study…" Mokuba said, somewhat disappointed. "He needs to stop working so hard. I wish he could find some people who'd actually help him run Kaiba-Corp instead of trying to take it away from him…"

Noa shrugged. "Don't know…I mean, I could hold my own if he gave me a position, but…I can't really do much to help him with the board of directors…that's the problem, isn't it?"

Mokuba nodded. "Yeah."

"He replaced the Big Five, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but these new guys are just as bad as the old one. And one of them always looks at me funny. But, even if Seto did manage to find out a way to get rid of them, he needs the positions filled for the company to run. He can't do everything himself. I might technically be vice president, but that's only 'cuz that's how things are supposed to be set up according to Gozaburo. I don't do anything. When I'm older, I'll start doing work, but right now I'm next to useless. Only thing I can do to help Seto out is carry his briefcase for him every once in a while. I don't know computers like you do."

Noa walked over to the couch sitting in the middle of the vast room and sat down. "I don't know…I don't think we can really do anything. Seto seems to handle things well enough by himself."

"Still…" Mokuba said as he sat down next to Noa. Sighing deeply, the young Kaiba leaned forward, propped his head up on his open palms, elbows on his knees. "Wish I could find some way to help him out…"


Here it is, chapter 9, for your viewing pleasure. I don't have anything important to say here, so I'll go with: enjoy! And leave a review...if you feel like it.