"Rivalry Reborn"
The so-called 'private airfield' Kaiba wanted to meet and pick them up at turned out to be no more than a particularly flat piece of desert with a few makeshift tents pitched to provide shelter. It was good landing turf, to be sure, but waiting under the pressing hand of the unforgiving sun was proving to be more than just a chore – and a trying one at that.
"If I had known that SOB was going to be late," Malik grumbled, fanning his dark, sweat dampened face and neck with a folded roadmap, "I would have brought a deck of cards… or a sedative."
From where he sat perched in a lawn chair brought along for the occasion, Atem stared at his friend, perplexed. "A sedative?" he repeated, absently wiping the perspiration dripping into his eyes. "What ever for?"
"What ever for?" The youngest Ishtar slapped the map against his thigh, aggravated. "I'd rather be passed out than being forced to have to stand around on a hot airstrip all the bloody livelong day, that's why!"
The Living Horus chuckled heartily. "I think you have been spoiled by too much modern day air conditioning. It is not so bad."
"You call 114 degrees of pounding solar punishment 'not so bad'?" Malik exclaimed incredulously. "I'd hate to see what you would consider 'worse.'"
Worse would be Kaiba not arriving at all. Atem tilted back his head and gazed into the flawless blue canvas spreading out as far as the eye could see. A short distance away from their meager shelter, Isis scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars. Like them, she had taken a departure from her usual attire. Today she was wearing Khaki slacks, a wide brim hat, and a white shirt unbuttoned around the neck, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She was an extraordinary sight, and had robbed both her brother and himself speechless when she had run from the house to hop in the back of the Fiesta.
Isis simply smiled at their stunned expressions. "Is it no less shocking than when Atem chooses to wear leather pants in such heat?" she quipped.
She had made a valid point. It certainly had prevented Malik from cracking wise about it! On the plus side, Atem privately thought it revealed the generous figure Isis often hid behind voluminous dresses and skirts. Who knew pants made Isis, of all people, look even more womanly? But never mind that… Somehow even the smaller joys and perks of life darkened in the shadow of Yuugi's kidnapping. How could he be happy about anything anymore when for Yuugi every minute that passed by might be his last?
Please do not give up, Yuugi, keep fighting! he called out into the mind link, knowing it was fruitless, but doing it because it was something to do and not this… this wretched forced helplessness! I do not know if what I'm trying to do now is going to help you, he went on. Truly I do not know anything anymore, except that I have to find you, and I am going to do that by any means necessary. It was a fair compromise in the wake of his fallen pride.
A stirring cry from Isis made both Atem and his heart rise. "It's coming! Kaiba's plane!" she pointed excitedly at the horizon. "I see it!"
Malik laughed and pointed as well, mimicking the small actor on the opening credits of Fantasy Island. "The plane! The plane!" He grinned when Atem punched him lightly in the arm, without removing his eyes from the great silver-white jet circling the expanse above them. Atem couldn't help the small grin trembling and threatening to break his face wide open as he watched the plane settle into a landing pattern. It was a brief, exhilarating moment of release of the tension for the three, all of them laughing, until the radio crackled to life in Isis's hand. Immediately she set to business, conversing with the pilot in the language of aviation, filled with terms and directions that were foreign and alien to Atem's ears.
Malik shielded his eyes with his hands, watching the plane bank in low and nodded when the landing gear emerged. "All right, he's coming in for a landing!" he called out, not caring if anyone was listening or not.
Atem watched, fascinated, as the metal bird's wheels first skidded, caught the ground, and spewed up dust clouds of sand and grit as it smoothly rolled along the earth in a neat, slightly bumpy manner. The former god king hesitated, watching with round, astonished eyes as Malik and Isis hurried after the thing, ignoring them at first when they wildly beckoned that he follow. They of course had no idea that during his time in Yuugi's body, despite the fact he had ridden in cars, trains and boats, he had no memory of ever having ridden on a plane. No, he had missed out on that one when Yuugi had taken a shuttle to Egypt for the Ceremonial Duel, preferring instead to sleep within the Puzzle for much of the journey. He had figured why bother, since soon it was no longer going to matter anyway.
How the tides of fate do change… Atem slowly smiled and gradually his legs allowed him to break into a run after his companions.
The second the plane rolled to a stop, the passenger side door was flung out with as much pomp and dramatic circumstance the owner of the long, lanky arm pushing it open was capable of exerting. The dust had not yet even begun the settle before Seto Kaiba; arguably one of Japan's richest CEOs - and certainly one of its youngest and most arrogant - stepped out to stand upon the desolate airfield.
"The cost of overseas travel these days is criminal." Kaiba greeted the Egyptians in his customary gruff manner. "What you have to offer in helping find Mutou better be worth all of this."*
Since his greeting was aimed at Isis, whom his gaze Atem had seen look for and immediately gravitate upon, the second he emerged, told him yards about Kaiba's respect for Isis. She claimed the man reviled her, but now Atem suspected it wasn't completely true. He may not personally subscribe to her "hocus pocus" beliefs he clearly despised, he thought, but he accepted Isis as an authority figure as he would any of his fellow business people. He smirked and folded his arms over his chest when Kaiba's gaze next swept over next Malik and then himself. Show-time, he thought, stepping forward when the paler man's stare narrowed speculatively over the shorter man as he approached.
Kaiba was decked out just as Atem expected him to be: in a long, white, oddly unremarkable trench coat, its coattails sweeping behind him in the desert breeze like a low-hung flag. They fluttered in typical theatrical manner as his gaze ceased lingering over Atem, and focused back on Isis and Malik respectively. Isis offered the man her upturned palm in greeting, which Kaiba grasped automatically and shook.
"Thank you so much for coming to Egypt on such short notice," Isis began with as much warmth as she was capable of exuding – this was Kaiba after all – after releasing the man's hand. "I know taking the time out of the search effort to come here is a large sacrifice for you."
Kaiba all but impaled the woman with a sub-zero glare. "I consider no time spent in this effort an 'out,' Ms. Ishtar. You can dispense with the pleasantries and chit chat. I am not the sort of person who hobnobs during emergencies."
Malik smirked. "That's obvious enough. I'm surprised you decided to come yourself."
Kaiba's glare found another target. "If I wanted to listen to smartass remarks, I would have brought the dog along for the ride." Malik frowned and folded his arms peevishly over his chest. Ignoring the younger man's sullen reaction, Kaiba returned his attention to Atem, who stood with his hand on one hip. The second their gazes connected, Atem moved forward and closed the gap between them before stopping a short distance apart.
Kaiba stared down at the shorter man and tilted his head. The speculative expression had returned. Atem could practically see the wheels turning in the other gamer's head as his brain attempted to make sense of who he was looking at. There was recognition in Kaiba's face but the furrow between his eyebrows was telling the former pharaoh the man wasn't putting the pieces together yet.
After several silent moments of staring at one another, Atem let out a quiet sigh. "Quite honestly, Kaiba," he began in his trademark baritone, literally causing the eyes of his rival to widen and nearly bulge from their sockets, "is it the hair or the face, because I do not know about you, but I would have thought you would at least recognize your own rival!"
Kaiba wavered, one foot sliding back, before he hardened and clenched his fists at his sides in an effort to recover from his brief lapse of composure. "You are not Mutou!" he ground out.
Atem rolled his eyes. "Clearly not." This was going nowhere fast.
"But…" Kaiba stopped, stumped, and shook his head slightly. "Then how can you have the same… and…" He trailed off almost thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, Yuugi has not acted… or has spoken…" He growled and pulled a photograph from his coat and glanced at it and then back up at Atem. "I thought this was a joke when she'd sent your photograph to me to create your identities and passports," he spoke through clenched teeth, and tucked it back in his pocket. "Clearly not," he imitated Atem's words and stepped right up close to the former god king. He peered up close and personal into his face and deep into his eyes. Atem folded his arms and remained expressionless and unmoved.
"Don't think for one second this means I believe you were a spirit that used to inhabit Yuugi's body," he began in a low voice so the other two couldn't hear him. "Nor does it prove you were a pharaoh from the ancient past and that that hallucination that the rest of you call your 'memory world' was anything but a fabrication. Yes, Yuugi told me all about it," he replied to the perplexed look on Atem's face. "I was there too. He still insists that you, the idiot with the purple cape who rode around like some sort of Batman on a horse, were also the spirit who lived inside the ancient Egyptian artifact he wore around his throat." He lifted an index finger and stuck it nearly between Atem's emotionless crimson eyes. "Do not imagine yourself to be any kind of rival of mine." He produced a leather bound passport and handed it to Atem. "As far as I am concerned, you and I have never met… Atem Ishtar."
Atem smirked as he opened the passport and perused its contents. I suppose it was too much of a stretch to have expected Kaiba, of all people, to finally accept the truth about who I really was. Still, he couldn't resist getting in a parting shot. "What about the Ceremonial Duel, then?" he challenged as the Japanese man retreated from his personal space. "Can you offer an explanation for what happened there?"
Kaiba opened his mouth and then closed it. His lips tightened and his jaw tensed. "No," he spoke at last, "and you will never hear one from me."
Ah-ha. Satisfied, Atem smirked again before he handed his passport over to Isis when she came up to him to have a look at it. She nodded and handed them back to him. "All of it appears to be in order." To Kaiba: "You have done a fantastic job. These look exactly like our own."
Malik came up and grabbed one of the Atem's wrists so he could have a look at them. He let out a low whistle. "Wow, that's the best forgery I've ever seen! Hey, do you think you could make me one for…"
Kaiba cut him off with a blunt: "No."
"You didn't know what I was about to ask!" Malik snapped forthrightly, flushing with anger.
"You're right. The answer is still no." Surveying his passengers, he nodded. "If the rest of your paperwork is in order, I would rather take off sometime today. Save whatever you need to say to me for the duration of the trip." He canted a last suspicious eye at Atem who had not taken his own off of him the entire time before swirling around to step back into the plane. He could see from the way Kaiba had regarded him, he was going to be living under the man's microscope for a while. Maybe it was a good thing Kaiba doubted him, he thought, because if he came around to realizing that it was Atem that had been his true rival, the man would stop at nothing to make sure a rematch happened. Nothing like a second chance against the best rival he'd ever had… once he accepted Yuugi and Atem really had been separate from each other and not the same person!
No matter. Atem smiled when Isis touched his shoulder and responded to her gentle reminder that it was time to leave. That – and anything else - is going to have to wait. Still, it was great to see Kaiba despite the fact the man had the personality of a lizard. He fervently hoped that maybe, this time, in this incarnation, he could find a way to cultivate some sort of friendship with the man. It would be a long stretch, he thought, but as I am now, one man cannot have too many friends.
*This is a parody of a line out of an episode of The X-Files, in which Mulder greets Scully with: "Four dollars an hour for parking is criminal, what you have better be worth forty-five minutes!"