Chasing the Dragon
Chapter Thirty Three
Cry, 'Havoc!'
- Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus -
Mokuba could hardly breathe for the shock of it all. He couldn't reconcile the idea that it was his blood painting the helipad that watery shade of red, that all of that garishly bright, hot liquid spilling over his hands was not a cool effect from the horror movies he watched while Seto was working.
It was real, it was his and there was far too much of it escaping through his fingers no matter how tight he clenched them.
The pain came like a flash, bright and sudden as the lightning that was drawing ever closer, a vicious whip that tore through his belly until he choked on the rain and gasped into the air. It was how he imagined it would feel to burn but how anything could burn under that sky he didn't know.
He forced his hands against the source of it, following scraps of words cobbled together from a First Aid course Seto had once insisted on (essential, it would seem, for all the danger that a Kaiba brother attracted) and the plethora of Hollywood movies that Seto rolled his eyes at.
Stop the bleeding, a dashing, square-jawed man would declare, summoned as if by magic by the desperate cry of, 'Is anyone here a doctor?' The every-man's superhero in a blindingly white coat.
But this wasn't like the movies and their leading men made it seem and scarlet welled between his fingers, soaked through his shirt and he didn't understand why the strange man in his odd, foreign clothing would want to kill him. He was twelve years old and he didn't want to die.
The man paused in his determined, careful steps, chanting ancient words against the elements that stilled the furious weather, if only for a moment, where he stood. His head craned around, neck twisted to an unnatural angle to stare through the rain at Mokuba and after a moment he smiled.
"You do not understand that your fate has been many millions of years in the making," his voice was soft and stern, as if Mokuba's behavior was somehow disappointing to him.
Stay awake. That was another one from the movies; if you fell asleep you might never wake.
Mokuba forced himself to find his tongue, his breath rattling disconcertingly as he stumbled over the only word that would form between his chattering teeth, "Wh-why?"
As the man looked at him, there was something so far removed from humanity in those strange, vacant eyes that Mokuba wondered if the thing before him had ever resembled a human being. He watched the water pooling around the Mokuba turn a sickly pink, his expression distant and distinctly unimpressed, before he eventually spoke.
"Long ago, when this world was young and the stars were new, there were two brothers. The first of these was a noble king. He was wise and beloved by his people and under his rule the vast lands of Khemet were united into one, powerful kingdom. But, he had a wicked brother.
"This brother dwelled in the harsh, unforgiving desert-land outside of his brother's kingdom and over time he came to covet the empire that the king had built. The wicked brother devised a plan to betray and murder the king and take the great kingdom for himself. He persuaded the king to visit him in his desert home and there he murdered him, hewing the king's body into sixteen pieces and scattering them far across the vast kingdom. He returned in the king's place, wearing the crown and took up his throne.
"But what the wicked brother had not known was that the king had a son, the rightful heir to the throne. The son vowed that he would take revenge against his treacherous uncle and many, fierce battles were fought between them, but neither could ever rightfully claim the victory. In one battle the uncle ripped the left eye from his nephew's head, in another he was forced to flee to his desert home and hide as a serpent from the fury of his nephew.
"The battles continued until, at last, the nephew drove his uncle into exile and claimed his throne, he was Horus, the God-King, and his treacherous uncle, Seth, was forced to hide in defeat, but always with the threat of his return. It was said that when next Horus and Seth did battle, the whole world would be covered in darkness, that chaos would overrun Ma'at and the waters of Nun would swallow up the world.
"Many thousands of years after the defeat of his foe, another Pharaoh faced the same treachery. A great darkness had spread over Khemet and monsters roamed the lands, this Pharaoh sacrificed his own soul to seal away this darkness, but little did he know of the danger he'd left behind. The serpent had been waiting a long time to reclaim his throne but the Pharaoh's advisers had recognized him for who he was. They sealed him away as the Pharaoh had sealed himself, to wait for the day when the final battle would come. When the gods would once again walk this earth and all the empires of men would fall."
Vacant blue eyes watched, unblinkingly, as Mokuba writhed against the wet concrete, his breaths sounding in loud, strangled gasps and one hand pressed hard into the wound in his belly. He took the few steps to Mokuba's side and bent to peer intently at his face.
Mokuba watched as the hems of his robes were slowly stained pink and tried not to show the fear that was building beneath his pain.
"Do you understand now?"
The man's words were spoken softly yet Mokuba could hear him clearly over the roar of the storm around him, "History will always repeat itself, one way or another, Mokuba Kaiba. If Setekh had done his duty, my interference would not have been necessary."
For the first time since Mokuba had met him the man's face changed, an ugly flash of a smile as lips curled back and teeth were bared. The High Priest's name slid like a curse on his tongue.
"Begun by blood, by blood undone," he murmured to himself as he rose back to his full height, began retracing the same steps he had walked earlier with careful precision, "You, Asar, are the key, your blood will rouse your sleeping brothers." (1.)
That horrible smile never left his face as he retraced his steps, the ancient words he chanted sounding out louder against the rage of the storm that was drawing ever closer.
Thunder crashed, so close that the building's great rivers of glass shuddered in their frames and the giant Kaiba Corp logo was briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning.
Mokuba had the sinking feeling that things were going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Set cut an imposing figure, wild and fey and steeped in darkness of the same ilk that taunted the crumpled man at his feet. The shadows had found a home in him, he who had spent so long in their company, they crept the length of his calves, burrowed into the buckles of his boots and stirred restlessly in the darkest depths of his eyes.
The stranger in their midst was a curiosity, a folded heap on the ground that they crept and snuck and edged toward. They were hungry (always hungry) and this stranger with his quivering, gaping jaw and trembling fingers, was an offering, the very stench of his fear an invitation. They bode their time, creeping and shuffling, held back only by the stern, amused wave of a hand by the man who had summoned them.
Not yet, those eyes commanded and like chastised children they retreated, waiting.
Dawlish had heard reports of the darkness that had enveloped the area outside the Leaky Cauldron that afternoon which seemed a lifetime ago, the day that a London street had been torn apart by a terrifying creature that living witnesses had seemed to agree was a dragon (a dragon that not one of them had been able to identify as a known, living breed).
He remembered the bounty hunter who had confronted Kaiba alone and now kept a permanent bed in the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's (which, he realized somewhat deliriously, brought a whole new meaning to the phrase you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley). He had seen for himself the group of Death Eater's that had been found alone in a Muggle suburb, chattering nonsense and lost within their own minds.
Dawlish had known the moment he set eyes on Seto Kaiba that he was a danger to the wizarding world. Only now was he beginning to realize just how dangerous he actually was.
For the first time in years he saw clearly, like a fog that had accumulated in his mind had suddenly dispersed and left him now, naked and aware. Seeing that face poised above him, pale and unnaturally bright amidst the stark darkness that wreathed his form, Dawlish suddenly knew that his actions had been guided. That everything that had brought him to this point had been a carefully choreographed dance and he had taken up his role without even the slightest attempt at resistance.
He was a fool, he realized, and now he was going to pay the price for it.
He pressed his eyes shut, tight, and gold seared his eyelids as those words taunted him, soft and menacing; Would you like to play a game?
Because, for the strange not-child in front of him, this was a game. All of this, life and death, destruction and chaos, was a game and all that they'd done, all that he'd fought for was about to be wiped clean and the board reset for the next match.
With a bored, permissive wave of Kaiba's hand the shadows crashed into him, over him, pulling and tugging and yearning. Hungry, desperately needy little things that clawed through the flesh and went straight for the soul and as he opened his eyes to see for the last time before all that he was could be snatched away into the black, he saw only cold and calculating blue.
He saw his end.
Sirius Black had learned the hard way not to believe in coincidences.
After all, when a childhood friend's animagus form turns out to be a rat there was a certain amount of foreshadowing that really had to be taken into account. When said rat turned out to be the double-crossing turncoat who told a murderous Dark Lord exactly where to find your gone-to-ground best friend's family and then set you up as their (and his) murderer, you begin to think that, really, you should have seen it coming.
It had been a hard learned lesson, but Sirius thought that he'd gotten the message: Sometimes a rat really is a rat.
So when the day that Sirius Black (or rather, the part of his soul that had been moping around the gloomy confines of Azkaban) had first sensed the presence of Otogi Ryuuji, he had known that it was no coincidence.
Sirius, with all the historical wealth of hatred and bigotry of the purest of Pure-Blood families behind him, had known the moment he'd felt it what the kid was. His spirit had been a blinding force straining against the ugly confines of that dismal place and even a shredded, miserable soul like his could feel it.
A long time ago, Sirius' ancestors had played their part, with gusto he was sure, in decimating, disgracing and then disbanding the Gypsy clans from the British Isles. It had been an odd twist of fate that the last named descendant of the Black family, whose participation in the historic wars was somewhat legendary, would come to owe the very fate of his soul to a half-cast Gypsy kid who was more interested in flirting with anything that had a pulse than raising hell with wild and untamed majicks like the Gypsy clans of wizarding history books.
It was of no great surprise to Sirius when, at some ungodly hour on that desolate island in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean, Ryuuji Otogi's cell had been blasted half to hell and a decidedly dashing figure of a Weasley had quite cheerfully asked if he would like a ride the hell out of there.
Sirius (never one to pass up an opportunity) had hitched himself a ride out of there and been less surprised than he should have been that it had landed him right back at the ancestral family home. Like his whole life hadn't been spent trying to escape his family's influence, his not-Death had apparently decided to follow suit. (2.)
More than that, upon finding the old homestead had been beset by similarly strange foreigners (whose violent majicks made the kind he had grown up with feel like he'd brought a gun to a goddamn bazooka fight) Sirius had, for the first time thought that maybe there was a reason he was (sort of) alive. That beyond easing the suffering of his last true friend and his godson, beyond sneering in Snivellus' face one more time, he had thought that there was an honest reason for his continued (almost) existence.
And if it had something to do with those damn kids, well, he could (sort of) live with that.
Needless to say, Sirius was not pleased to discover that he had survived the very painful process of having his soul torn apart, the frankly kind of exciting task of searching out all the missing pieces, just to face what was apparently a very final ending to everything he knew, in an apocalyptic kind of way.
It seemed ridiculously unfair that the battle that they had fought for so long, the endless slog of death and agony in the name of saving the magical world had suddenly been supplanted by a bunch of foreign teenagers and their melodramatic, world-ending style of grudge-match.
Sirius couldn't bring himself to reconcile the idea that so many friends and not-quite-friends, so many allies and enemies that had died (and in some cases, mostly died) during the two violent wars that Voldemort had waged against their world had done so in vain. That it all meant nothing now that these teenagers with their flashy gold trinkets and doom-saying prophecies had nanced their way into the magical world and were about to bring it all to an end.
Really, Sirius found himself thinking as Ryuuji Otogi stalked the corridors of Grimmauld Place, What was wrong with a Chosen One and a somewhat clichéd Dark Lord deciding their fates in a winner-takes-all duel to the death?
Sirius had come to realize that prophecies were strange, pesky things and sometimes they were best left on their dusty little shelves in the Ministry of Magic, lest someone accidentally realize that they were supposed to happen. (3.)
Unfortunately, too many events had been set into motion that day in the Ministry of Magic when a bunch of dusty prophecy orbs had wound up in Death Eater hands and now that group of teenagers had the fate of both the Muggle and Magical worlds in their hands.
Sirius knew, somehow, that nothing he did would be able to put a stop to what was coming. He also knew that the plan that he and Otogi had tentatively begun to hatch was equally worthy of attention, yet somehow it didn't have quite the same ring of importance to it as something that could be cheerily labeled as the apocalypse.
Otogi, however, didn't seem the least bit worried. He was, to Sirius' eyes at least, completely focused on the goal he had set himself, paying no mind to the fact that, should things unfold the way they were intended to, his own role would be utterly irrelevant.
"I'm not sure you understand the full implications of the word apocalypse," Sirius observed out loud as he planted himself firmly in Otogi's path..
Otogi waved a hand airily as if to disperse Sirius' presence as he continued straight through him, lips cracking in an amused smile.
"I get the gist," he threw over his shoulder, his dark hair swaying dramatically as he pushed through the kitchen door.
"A-poc-a-lypse," Sirius enunciated after him, doggedly pursuing him and trying his best to ignore the way the door swung shut through him. That kid had no respect for the mostly-dead.
"Heard you the first time," Otogi said as he assessed the assembled group of wizards and witches in the kitchen with a thoughtful eye.
"Now isn't the best time, Ryuuji dear," Molly said, her eyes darting to where Dumbledore sat at the head of the table.
Otogi threw a flippant, charming smile in Mrs Weasley's direction as if he hadn't been listening at all, before promptly ignoring her in favor of Dumbledore's keen stare.
Sirius, never a character to be easily dissuaded (and also, never stupid enough to dismiss a Prewett in such a fashion), swept straight through Otogi to stand in front of him. A small, smug corner of his mind sneered, see how he likes it, before he cocked his transparent head to the side.
"You realize this plan of yours won't mean diddly-squat if the world ends, don't you?"
Otogi gave him a look that did it's best to imply that Sirius' inability to move passed this fact was boring him. His voice was dripping with sarcasm as he replied, "Yes, I'm aware, but I didn't realize you'd decided to join the amateur drama club that lot seem to be forming."
Sirius scoffed at the idea that Otogi had the audacity to imply anyone was being melodramatic.
Clearly catching the implication, Otogi's face twisted in a scowl before he spoke again, "The balls of the situation, as Bakura so eloquently explained, is that the entire premise of this apocalypse, as you keep calling it, rests on the idea of Seto Kaiba accepting his destiny."
Otogi, overrun by the decidedly inappropriate desire to laugh, glanced around the room for someone to share in his amusement, let out a beleaguered sigh at the complete lack of comprehension and settled on a decidedly condescending smile. "Forgive me for not pissing my pants with fear."
Ignoring Sirius' arched eyebrows and the awkward silence from the rest of the kitchen (that had, coincidentally, settled around about the time the word apocalypse had been mentioned), Otogi strode down the table (pointedly through Sirius) to plonk himself into the non-space between the bemused figures of Charlie and Bill. He elbowed himself some additional room before directing his attention to Dumbledore, flashing a broad smile before he declared, "We need to chat."
As a rule, dragons were not the easiest of creatures to deal with.
They were temperamental, possessive creatures with a hankering for creature comforts and shiny objects. They liked what they liked and hated what they didn't. They were difficult, highly intelligent and dangerous creatures and it had been with good reason that the Ministry of Magic had declared it illegal to keep them as pets.
Wizards had (mostly) learned, as some parts of the Muggle world hadn't, that keeping wild animals as pets was a very bad idea. You never knew when they might rip your face off. (4.)
Kleidon did not like water. He didn't like the way that the thick, plush carpeting squelched beneath his paws or the water pooled in the folds of his wings. He didn't like the sour, acrid taste that the smoke inflicted on his tongue and he didn't like the screeching, wails that were assaulting his sensitive ears.
But most of all, he did not like the solid oak doors that were blocking his chosen goal.
It was a rare thing for a dragon to regard any other creature with anything but contempt, but over the past few weeks Kleidon had taken a very unlikely liking to the tall human and his shiny buckles. It was thus that the unfortunate fate of the very expensive doors was to be reduced to very charred ruins.
Until that point in time, Kleidon had yet to intentionally utilize his fire-breathing abilities.
The fire took to the heavy wood with considerable gusto and the dragon, decidedly pleased with his accomplishment, moved in close to the flames to enjoy the warmth while they did their work.
The miserable downpour of fire-sprinklers failed to douse the new source of fire as it took hold of the largely dry doors and it took a depressingly short time for the dragon fire to render the doors unrecognizable.
Harry didn't really know how he got himself into these situations.
Some people (Hermione) would say that he had an insufferable need to insert himself into other people's business. That he couldn't leave well enough alone. That he was a typical Gryffindor with more bravery than sense and, no, that wasn't actually a compliment, thank you very much. Others (Ron) would probably say, I dunno mate, clap him on the shoulder and cheerily follow him into the fray, because that was what best friends did in Ron Weasley's world.
All Harry really knew about his incessant need to get in the middle of every dangerous situation within reasonable proximity of his location at any given time, was that it had become kind of a regular thing and maybe he should think about that.
His heart was jack-rabbiting in his chest and his gut was squirming, his subconscious murmuring, reckless, even as memories of the ill-fated chase through the Department of Mysteries whirled through his head. Death and pain and Voldemort were on a spin-cycle in his head. It had been mere months and already he was throwing himself into another impossible situation. He should feel guilty, sneaking out from beneath the Order's noses yet again. He doesn't know what to make of the fact that he doesn't.
Ron's face was stormy, the tips of his ears red and his eyes almost as thunderous as the skies overhead while Ginny, by comparison, was utterly triumphant and Hermione, well, Hermione just looked worried. Her eyes constantly skittered from a vigil of their surroundings to the hunched, unenthusiastic shoulders of Rabastan Lestrange who was firmly ensconced in the middle of the group they were trailing through unfamiliar streets.
Harry's hand was wrapped around his wand, stuffed in his pocket in an attempt to seem less conspicuous to the people that were already staring blatantly at their odd group. It was, he was certain, an entirely wasted effort.
Bakura was at the head of their group, long spindly fingers holding the glowing Ring before him, occasionally crooning nonsensical words into his hands as if it were a small child that needed cajoling to do his bidding. If their unruly appearance hadn't been enough to ensure stares, what with crazy Ishtar arm-in-arm with the bedraggled, sinister looking Lestrange, or Yuugi's hair alone, Harry was fairly certain that the fact they were following a bloody necklace's directions around London would be.
"Not the power of the gods," Bakura snarled as he stalked ahead of them, his dark growl cutting through wind and rain alike, "The gods."
He seemed particularly enraged about that part, if his constant snarling was anything to go by, and Harry couldn't quite believe how cavalier the rest of his little clique were being about the whole thing. Even crazy Ishtar, who'd been alternating between moments of lucidity and chattering away about pretty, pretty birdies from what Harry could gather, seemed to have reached a surprisingly Zen place concerning something that was potentially world-ending.
Lestrange was the only one amongst them (and, really, he was only amongst them because Ishtar had hooked elbows with him and muttered something about a matching set) who seemed suitably worried about the whole thing. Though, from the paranoid jerking of his head to all sides, Harry would guess that he was more concerned with stray Avada Kedavra's popping out of the woodwork before they got the chance to meet any old gods.
It was, upon second thought, a fairly reasonable fear.
Harry's own fingers tightened around his wand and he cast a quick glance over the gawking faces that they passed. He could hardly believe they'd managed to escape Grimmauld Place without incident, each passing minute seemed like they were pushing their luck a little too far.
"Wrapped up tight in pretty human flesh," Ishtar crooned into Lestrange's ear, leaning close so his lips were only inches from the Death Eater's ear.
Harry watched as Lestrange jerked away from the intrusion and got laughed at in response, a dark, unsettling sound that caused Yuugi to whip his head around and cast a reproving glare in their direction. It was decidedly unclear to Harry who, exactly, was supposed to be babysitting who there.
"Keep your crazy to yourself would you," Ron muttered, more to himself than the pair in question, and scuffed his soaked sneakers against the pavement as his words were lost to the roar of rain.
The downpour had dampened Ron's enthusiasm for the task at hand but Ginny, armed with an impervious charm and Ron's clear dismay at her presence, smiled brightly at him when he met her eyes.
Harry had started to think that every single person he knew was at least partially insane.
He didn't know how long they walked for, how long Bakura's ring guided them down endless streets of people tilting their umbrella's against the wind with varying success. All Harry knew was that the storm was slowly getting worse, turning into something that the word storm seemed ill-equipped to describe.
The roar of the wind was primal, the rain that pelted their skin leaving it red and raw in its wake. The rolls of thunder seemed to grow longer and louder the further they walked, the buildings shuddering and groaning with each fresh assault.
The longer they walked, the more Harry noticed that something wasn't quite right. After twenty minutes Yuugi had started to veer off in odd directions as he walked before hurriedly correcting himself. After forty minutes he was weaving an awkward line back and forth, occasionally veering enough to bump shoulders with Ishtar before stumbling back into his own space with an apologetic flash of a smile.
Harry was beginning to think that this was all some convoluted, terrible joke when several things happened in quick succession.
The first was that Bakura jerked his head up from where he had been intently following the Ring's directions, his eyes trailing up, up, up and Harry followed them, his eyes fixing on the stark KC silhouetted against the stormy sky at the very top of one of the tallest buildings Harry had ever seen.
The second was that a brilliant flash of lightning struck the top of a building immediately adjacent to Kaiba Corp, London, and sparks filled the gloomy sky in a flare of blinding light, immediately followed by thunder so loud that Harry found himself instinctively covering his ears and thus completely missed the coinciding crack! of multiple apparitions simultaneously taking place in their immediate vicinity.
The third was that Yuugi Mutou stumbled abruptly in mid stride, swaying awkwardly in place, his hands clawing at thin air before he landed with a muted thud upon the pavement.
The last and, ultimately, the least important, was that Malik Ishtar turned his head up against the rain, let out a quiet sigh and announced, quite clearly, "It's time."
It crashed over him like a wave, a solid, reeling mass that left Set staggering drunkenly, clutching impossibly at the shadow-drenched air as though that could hold him. For a moment his heart stopped, his breath stuck in his throat and all he could do was sway and gasp for breath as something ancient, something powerful flooded him whole and tried to consume him.
In an instant it had subsided, leaving only a tingling numbness that burned his limbs and made him sway drunkenly as he tried to walk and ended up crashing into a wall.
'What was that?' Seto breathed, straining through Set's consciousness to make himself known and resume control from Set who couldn't even seem to think for the power that burned in his veins.
'I don't know,' Set gasped back and he seemed much closer, much more tangible than he'd ever been when Seto had firm control of his own body.
The Rod burned like fire in his hand but Seto couldn't bring his fingers to release it. Instead he leaned hard against the laboratory wall and tried to breathe through the aftershock of whatever that had been.
He stood perfectly still for quite some time, only disturbed by the rise and fall of his chest and the burn of gold that flooded his eyelids. The strange tingling sensation that had overtaken him raced through his blood, a niggling, burning itch that left in its wake a trail of euphoria.
Slowly, finally, blue eyes cracked open and he caught sight of the limp, catatonic form that was crumpled nearby. Dawlish lay motionless, alive in that he breathed and existed, but his mind was so far gone that what was left was little more than a vacant shell.
Seto felt a brief surge of nausea, staring at that still form and forced himself to look away and focus on the next big challenge.
We need to leave.
He stumbled awkwardly on limbs that suddenly felt too long, ignoring the slapping of his boots against the wet floor and the water that was plastering his hair to his forehead as he jabbed a finger at the button next to the elevator doors. He suppressed the strange compulsion to laugh as they slid open immediately with a cheerful, 'ding!'
There was a red light flashing in the elevator but Seto ignored it. Jabbing at the designated button for the top floor he slumped against a corner and fought to control the jitters that were suddenly trembling through his limbs.
"What the hell is going on?" Seto demanded aloud, only able to still his fingers by gripping handfuls of his damp trouser legs and leaning forward to soothe the soaring, dizziness that had left him lightheaded.
Set was suddenly at his side, his spirit oddly tangible as they brushed arms. Seto was pleased to note that Set looked no better than he felt. His eyes were feverishly bright, translucent skin flushed pink and every few seconds he would flicker and disappear from sight as if he were a badly projected hologram suffering static interference. The effect was disconcerting to say the least.
As the elevator shuddered to a stop and the doors rolled open, Seto was hit by a wave of acrid smoke that hit the back of his throat and burned his lungs until he was doubled over, coughing and stumbling out of the elevator.
"Mokuba," he gasped as he stumbled into the hallway, keeping low as he squinted through the haze of dark smoke and the mist of water that was responsible for the squelching beneath his feet.
"Mokuba!" he roared again, as loudly as his burning lungs would allow.
But instead of the replying yell there was a low purring growl before something with sharp claws was traversing his trouser leg. His eyes were stinging from the smoke but he only needed the brief flash of watery white to recognize the creature that was nuzzling its way beneath his collar in search of shelter from the water.
It was a brief distraction, a confusion that registered only briefly in the back of his mind as he hastened his steps, peering through the smoke for those distinctive double-doors. Instead he found a smoldering wreckage of wood, still glowing bright in places with the heat that had rendered them unrecognizable. The apartment beyond was thick with smoke.
'Not in there,' Set insisted, his presence close and heavy as Seto made to kick the doors remains away.
"Mokuba," Seto insisted right back, his thoughts distilled already to nothing more than his brother's name and the single, pure compulsion to find him.
If there was one thing that Set had learned about his reincarnation it was that while there was very little that Seto Kaiba could not achieve when he put his full, undivided attention to task, there was absolutely nothing that could stop him when it came to his little brother.
Thus it was expected that when Set decided to seize control over Seto's body to stop him from entering the apartment that there would be a struggle. That Set probably would not win.
There was no struggle, no battle of the wills as Seto struggled to retain the control over his own body or Set used every trick he'd ever learned to overpower his reincarnation's sheer bull-headed stubbornness.
Instead, it was much like a key fitting into a lock.
There was a moment of terse inaction, where Set felt his entire being shudder, felt the surge of violent power trembling through his limbs, felt Seto's own being echoing his discomfort and then it all stopped.
There was nothing. It was the snap of something fitting neatly into place. Heat. Light.
On the top three floors of Kaiba Corp, London, all of the windows simultaneously exploded out of their frames in a shower of glass that hit the ground with a great crash, scattering the chaotic masses further. The streets shuddered and groaned beneath their feet, as if suddenly loaded with an unbearable weight.
Thunder rolled and crashed, so loud it was like the sky itself had split open over the building.
Atop the very same building, Mokuba Kaiba let out a low moan and curled into himself as the pinkish tinge to the rainwater around him continued to expand outwards.
When Seto Kaiba opened his eyes, they were black.
AN: Cue the lolwut's and the Is this bitch for real?s cause yeah, that's right, another chapter. After how long? I'm such an awful person. lol. So for those of you who have stuck with me (oh you poor souls), I'm making a promise right now: Chapter 34 is already being written. There will be, at most, three more chapters (including the epilogue) and they will be finished.
And lastly, a giant thank you to everyone who has ever reviewed this, I've been awfully slack in replying to your reviews and messages which makes me feel terribly ungracious, but you're all adored.
Footnotes:
1. Go on, Google Asar. You know you want to. This isn't me hinting at anything interesting at all. (Hinting would require me being subtle..)
2. I feel kind of bad for shutting Sirius right back up in that moldy old house after it drove him half-insane. Well, I say kind of..
3. Um, this is going to sound ridiculous, but whatever, you've made it this far. This is my favorite line of the chapter.
4. Chimpanzees. Just saying. D:
"Oh, you meant spectacularly ignorant in a nice way."