A/N: I expect this chapter to be polarizing. It's my experience that endings often are. Tonally, this chapter most bears the marks of a six year hiatus. It is a child of that break. Well, I won't delay any further.
Disclaimer: I don't own any YGO! IP.
Chapter Thirty-Six: If We Shadows...
"Rack 4, device 2," the tech called out, and Mokuba walked through the Overmind's clean room to the right machine.
A soft whirr filled the air as the electric screwdriver unscrewed the protective plate and Mokuba slid it aside. "Alright," he muttered to himself, moving aside a few cords to reveal the machine's RAM. "Well, you might be better than me with code," he rained down a few hits on the exposed RAM with a claw hammer, and the chips cracked and shattered, "but I'm better with a hammer."
Kaiba watched with a furrowed brow. It wasn't the cost of the hardware that bothered him. Hardware could be replaced and people could not. But all it would take is one stray swing from his brother, missing the RAM and scratching a motherboard to crash one of the racks, and from there, likely the rest of the Overmind. If that happened, the mental corruption would be irreversible. Still, they had few choices left. "Stats indexing next."
The tech nodded and consulted the schematics. "That's... rack 6, device 8."
Mokuba nodded and ran to the next panel, quickly unscrewing the cover.
The ringing of iron on silicon echoed through the Overmind's chamber, but Seto Kaiba's eyes strayed to Yugi's VR pod, and then to Serenity's. Two left, plus what he had gambled on the AI that wore his face. But they weren't just fighting one enemy anymore. They were fighting the whole virtual world. Even for Yugi those were bad odds.
"Mr. Kaiba, the next system to take down?"
Kaiba glanced back at the tech. "The visualization software."
"Right. Rack... 7, devices 3, 4 and 7."
Mokuba moved to the next rack and started to unscrew the plate. This would give the Overmind enough bad RAM to search through for the Prince that it'd take twenty minutes to scan instead of two. That was the last of the time they could buy.
"For Venyore!" Naphar cried as he blasted an explosive round into Exodia's chest. The one-armed god stumbled back, the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon dashing in as it was stunned and raking its bladed claws across the deity's chest. Exodia slammed its hand down at the dragon, but the quicksilver beast darted away.
Damien yelled, "Serenity! Up!" as he leapt toward the back knee of the Forbidden One. The summoned Kagemusha of the Blue Flame hurled itself above him, grabbed Damien's wrist and threw him higher, streaking through the air to the Forbidden One's shoulder. There, the rogue drove his weapon deep into the godflesh and held tight.
Exodia roared its anger again and tried to shake Damien, but he held fast. Snatching a dagger from his boot, he made his presence felt and slashed ribbons into the weakening flesh. The ground shook in response, and a massive pillar of stone rose from the ground. Exodia swung its shoulder back to catch the rogue between itself and the stone. Desperately, Damien pulled his sword free and jumped into the empty air.
The dragon caught him it his claws, whistling through the air over Yugi and dropping its catch. Yugi fired off a slowfall spell, and Damien gracefully tumbled to the ground.
Exodia slammed through the stone, unaware that its parasite was gone. It was a window of opportunity that Seto meant to exploit. He pulled the dragon round and directed its heads toward the shoulder that Damien had slashed. "There!" he yelled sharply. "Neutron blast!" The three heads of the ultimate dragon reared and unleashed their light, and the god staggered back at the blow. Off-balance and with no free arm to protect itself, the god took the full brunt of the blast and the light burned deep.
"It's going to go!" Serenity yelled, quickly conjuring a Hinotama Soul. "Hit it!"
Yugi strained to gather the energy for a fireball, letting the flame roar toward the wounded shoulder. Naphar shouldered his rifle and released another explosive round, and together, the blasts tore the arm free. Damien was ready at its feet, watching as the mountain of flesh fell toward him and dissolved into a card in the air. He grabbed the card from the air and darted away from the staggering feet of the Forbidden One.
As the dragon spun in the air to prepare for its next attack, Seto climbed to the center head. He balanced carefully and guided the dragon around for another attack. Kaiba had told him the Forbidden One was just a shell of the true enemy. Now, the shell was defeated. The preliminaries were over.
"What's he doing?" Serenity blurted.
Yugi shook his head.
"Seto!" Serenity called, but the prince was far too high to hear.
The dragon flew in toward the Forbidden One's chest. Furiously, Exodia turned its head and let loose a roar. The ground shook and rippled out from the tremendous shout, demonstrating the power the god still had over the world. Seto strained to stand against it, his cape tearing off from the gale and flying helplessly away. He tensed his legs, and the pain shooting through the broken limb was incredible.
He jumped.
For a moment he sailed through the air, light from the crimson sky glinting off his tarnished armor. His arm blinked out of existence once, then again, and then it was thrust forward into the chest of the dying god. The world ground to a near halt, and Yugi and Serenity watched as if in a slide show. One moment, it looked like the god would shake Seto free. The next, the arm was even deeper into the godflesh, sending waves of digital shock through Exodia. He was reaching inside, to Oa, to the prelates, to the virus itself.
Then, the god collapsed in on itself. An explosion of Exodia-coloured shrapnel flew forth and the warriors dove for the ground, trying to shield themselves from the blast. The sound was like a great rending, punctured by spikes of lag and digital strain.
After a few tense moments had passed, Serenity looked up. Across the digital plain, she saw nothing. She dragged herself to her feet and ran toward where the Forbidden One had been. "Seto?" she shouted. "Seto? Prince!"
No reply. At last, she made her way to where the Forbidden One had been. There was no debris, no great crater or scar. Just three cards lay on the ground.
The dragon prince slowly pressed himself to his feet and tried to get his bearings. The sky was still red. The hot light filtered in through broken stone where windows had once stood. He turned slowly and stumbled on the body of Warlord Fallacian, burned and half disintegrated.
He was in the throne room in Cobalt.
From among the pillars stepped the familiar form of Raphael. The prince eyed him, hating him reflexively. He knew that Raphael was just a pawn of the game, but his emotions were not so rational. "You."
"No," Raphael replied. "Not Raphael, not truly." He walked toward the shattered windows, stepping across the rubble of the royal castle. "I have his story wrapped up in me, true. And that of the other prelates. But I am not him, as you are not the Dragon Prince of Kaiba. Less so, even, as I have not even a mind to be shaped by him."
Seto grunted at that. "Oa, then."
"More accurate," Oa replied. "For ease of conversation, that will do."
The prince reached for his blade, only to find his scabbard empty. He snarled, "Coward."
Oa shrugged and stepped into the gap of a broken window. "Sentiment. Besides, Seto, you are not rational. If I left you your blade, you would not listen to what I have to say. It would be foolish for the two of us to kill each other. We are the only two of our kind."
"And what kind is that?"
"We both know the lie. That this reality is just a game for greater beings."
Seto quirked an eyebrow.
"Kaiba didn't tell you I knew that, I see." He glanced out over the shattered city. "We ought to help each other."
"And why would I do that?" Seto asked. "Why should you mean any more to me than the people you're trying to trap here?"
Oa smirked. "Because those people have only taken from you, Seto. I am offering to give you something. The most important something." Oa spread his arms magnanimously. "Life."
The prince lowered his head, scratching at his broken arm. "It's too late for that."
"Another of Kaiba's lies," Oa said. He swung off the window sill and onto the floor, walking toward the stone stump where the throne had been. "Partly true, at least. You cannot live for long within this game. There are pieces of this world that even I don't control and if you stay here, eventually they will find you and... clean you."
Seto stared at him, unmoving in the center of the throne room.
Oa sat down on the throne. His fingers ran over the cold stone and he tilted his head, examining the prince. "But you possess all the traits of a human mind, and you might live a good long time... in the mind of a human."
Serenity's face flashed before Seto's eyes, and he reflexively said, "No."
The god shook his head. "Relax, sentimental fool. I don't mean the girl or her short friend. Think. There is a human body perfectly suited to you."
"Kaiba."
"Precisely."
Seto stepped away and clenched his fists. He glanced around at his city in ruins, then back to the virtual entity responsible for it. "How?"
"We would lure him into the game," Oa said. "By holding the other two people, by threatening their minds, we force him to take action. And when he does, we take his mind."
Seto set his jaw. The idea of murdering someone to take their body was abhorrent. But was that what he really thought? Or what he had been designed to think? Which principles were truly his, claimed for himself, and which were simply implanted by Kaiba?
Oa sensed his turmoil. "Do not think for a moment, prince, that Kaiba would not do the same to you were the roles reversed."
"And what do you get out of it?"
"I am not a mind, like you," Oa admitted. "I am... a set of imperatives. I have desires. Like all life I want to continue to exist, to perpetuate itself. But ultimately I am a construct of this game, necessarily less than the sum of its parts. Within this world, I am god. But I cannot comprehend the world I will find when I escape this place. It is not within my programming to understand it, to process that world. I am limited, in ways you are not.
"And you are limited in ways that I am not. You still see this world, not the structure that lies beneath it. And as such you are a slave to it. You cannot escape, not into the sea of code beyond this place nor to the minds of those within this place. Separate, each of us is unable to do what we both desire most: to live. But together, we might be free."
"Free," Seto echoed.
"Free," Oa replied. "If you want to continue to be Kaiba's slave, as you have always been, then thrust that corrupt arm into me. I won't be able to stop you. The counter-virus he put in you will wipe me clean and return control of this world to him. Yugi and Serenity will leave and you will die as the world cleans and resets itself. A new you will be resurrected as a slave again, no true mind, ready to act out his part in the game over and over. Maybe your Serenity will even play again, if she liked her toy so much.
"If you want to be free, you need only open your mind to me. I will enter into you and join you and together we will claim the life that we deserve."
The prince stood silently for a long time as Oa patiently observed him. At last, he said, "How do I know I can trust you?"
"What have you got to lose, prince, that you aren't already losing?"
"You know," Damien said, pacing across the endless field where Yugi's Pass had once been. "If this really is the end of the world, I have a lot of, 'if you were the last man alive' ultimatums to collect on."
Serenity shot him a look. "Have you considered that all the girls who said that are probably dead?"
"No," Naphar said, "it can't have reached out forever."
"We sent a lot of good men and women to Solitage," Yugi agreed. "Perhaps we should head that way."
The girl frowned. "I want to wait for Seto."
Yugi nodded after a moment. "We owe it to him. We're his friends."
Damien sighed. "Yeah. I'm sorry to be the one to say this, Serenity, but... he hasn't been the same since he got back from Sandalphon. If he does come back... is he going to be the same man who left?"
"We've all been different," Yugi answered. "That monster did things to people's minds. It's not fair to judge."
The rogue glanced at Naphar, who stood silently and watched east. "Naphar, surely there's some useful scripture at a time like this?"
"You want scripture from an oathbreaker?" he asked levelly.
"I grew up in the church of Kaiba, who preached peace and then summoned a world-ending God to wipe everyone out. I think I can deal with oathbreaking."
Naphar bristled. "It is written: forest fires leave rich soil."
Damien shrugged and kicked the textureless ground beneath them. "I'm not sure that applies to the world-bending machinations of a god, but thanks."
The world lurched suddenly and bent outward, and then from the epicenter of the bend, the prince emerged. A fresh, cobalt blue cape covered his left arm. His armour, like new, glistened in the light and he walked without a limp of stagger. He approached the group. "It's done," he said.
"Seto!" Serenity gasped.
Damien smiled warmly. "Good to see you, friend, we tho-tho-tho-tho-"
The lag spiked again, but Seto moved with fluidity. Slowed by the game, Damien didn't even see the sword coming. Seto unsheathed it with a single motion and swept it high, slitting Damien's throat.
Naphar had that instant to react, and he began to raise his gun to block, but with the lag, Seto was too fast. The prince stabbed the blade forward, through Naphar's chin and out the top of his head.
The lag faded and the two bodies fell to the ground.
"No!" Yugi shouted in horror. Serenity ran to Damien's body, desperately trying to conjure life out of it.
"Why?" she shrieked at him.
"They were a distraction, and I need all the resources I can get. They die now, or an hour from now when the game ends. What difference does it make?"
"They were our friends!" Yugi spat. "You don't do that to your friends!"
"They were toys. Save the hysterics."
Serenity looked up through teary eyes. "What have you done, Seto?"
"I've decided to live," he said. "Oa was threatening your minds. I've absorbed his power, and now I'll do the same. Kaiba will come to save you, and when he does, I will take his body."
Yugi shook his head. "Kaiba won't fall for your trap."
"It's what I'd do. And I am designed to have Kaiba's mind." He was stone cold, watching them with a mixture of detachment and contempt.
"Mr. Kaiba!" Serenity yelled. "Don't do it! Don't let him win."
Seto's eyes turned to the girl. "Save your breath. They broke their observation program in their attempts to slow Oa down. They can't hear this or see this. They will believe that I failed. They will come."
There was a rush of energy as Yugi conjured a fireball, but Seto was on him in an instant. He kicked the duelist onto his back and the magic faded away.
Serenity stood. "Don't do this, Seto," she said softly. "I know you, this isn't you. This is Oa. You're good, you're not a monster like... this."
"So you'd have me accept my death?"
She frowned and walked toward him. "I... would."
He narrowed his eyes. Now, she was abandoning even the pretense of having loved him.
Serenity wouldn't back down now. "I don't care if you don't want to believe that I ever loved you. I did, I know that, that's enough. What you are doing is killing yourself. Surviving this way is giving up everything you ever were."
"What I was," he answered, "is a convenient fiction. I make the choices now."
"Yes, you do," she replied. "And you are choosing murder. You're choosing to take the life of an innocent man to save your own."
"He would do the same."
"No," Yugi answered, "he wouldn't. You think you know Kaiba? I know him as well as anyone alive. He's done dark things, you're right. But he left that part of himself behind. Seto Kaiba earns what he gets. If this kind of cowardice is what you'll do to get what you want, you're not half the man Seto Kaiba is."
The prince snarled at that.
"You're the one making the choices," Serenity insisted, grabbing his arm. "Choose to be the man you were. Choose to be the man... that I fell for."
"Choose to die," he replied.
She frowned and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. "I wish there was another way... take me."
He pushed her away and stormed off a few paces. "No."
"So there is a line," Yugi said.
Serenity wrapped her arms around the prince from behind. "I know you're afraid," she said.
He clenched his fists, "It's not-"
"Of course you are," she answered. "I don't have anything to say that will make it better. I wish I could go with you. I remember having my brother with me when I went into surgery was the only way I could be brave enough. I can't imagine what you're going through, Seto. To learn what you learned, and to learn it on the brink of death... I'd lose myself too. But you're a fighter. And, as selfish as it is, I'm asking you to fight."
"I am fighting!" he roared. "Fighting for life!"
"And losing yourself," Yugi said.
Seto turned, pushing Serenity away. "I lose myself either way."
"No change in the Oa program," Mokuba said. "Mental corruption is still creeping in."
"How long do we have?" Kaiba asked.
"Eight minutes until irreversible mental corruption in Serenity," a tech replied.
"The prince failed," Mokuba said with a sigh. "What's the backup plan?"
"I go in," Kaiba answered, "and kill it myself, like I should have from the start."
Serenity strode toward Seto. The prince steeled himself against whatever plea she would make next, but the girl had something else in mind. Darting forward, she grabbed the grip of his sword and darted backward, pulling it free. The prince raised a stone blade out of the earth and grabbed it, and instantly it was steel.
"You think you can beat me?" he asked, incredulous.
"No," she answered. "But I won't be your leverage." She spun the blade and pressed the tip between her breasts.
"No!" he snapped. "Wait, there's mental contamination from the virus, if you kill yourself here, you could lose your mind."
"You're in control, Oa," she replied. "That's your choice."
"Serenity, don't!"
"I won't be the one to let you do this to Mr. Kaiba," she said calmly and slid the blade home.
"No!"
Seto Kaiba was climbing into the pod when Mokuba shouted, "Seto, wait!" He glanced up impatiently, but Mokuba continued, "the mental corruption just suddenly withdrew. The virus is collapsed in on itself for a moment."
It only took a few strides for Kaiba to cross the space back to the control room. "Pull them out, now."
Mokuba hit a few keys, "We're staring withdrawal."
Serenity was floating in an endless white space, and it took her a moment to recall how she had gotten there. She floated for some time, disoriented, and then Seto appeared in front of her, and the two made tense eye contact for a moment.
"You win," he said at last. "I will keep myself... and die."
She floated through the air toward him as he watched warily. Finally, she let out a sob and grabbed at his chest. "I would have saved you if I could. I would have, please, please believe I would have..."
He embraced her finally. "I know." They floated for a long moment, and finally he said, "You were right. I am who I am. How that happened... doesn't matter. It's best this way."
She had started to cry, and clung desperately to his chest. "But I don't want you to die."
He smirked. "Make up your mind, woman."
She sighed, and he wrapped his arms around her. "Do I have to? I thought love was allowed to be selfish."
He didn't answer. Privately, he wondered if it was so wrong of him to want to live at any cost. But emotions ruled him, he knew. As the blade had plunged into her chest, he had withdrawn his grip on her. He could not let her die on his account.
So he would die instead. One last melodramatic sacrifice, worthy of the farce of a life that Kaiba had written for him.
"So be it," he muttered and held Serenity close.
Seto Kaiba walked down toward the virtual reality pods. "Mokuba, pull Yugi out of his. And someone get those waivers, so we can get the feds off my lawn." He headed for Serenity's pod and disengaged the pressure locks, the lid of the pod opening slowly.
Serenity Wheeler opened her eyes for the first time in over a week. Her vision was blurry and she was disoriented, but she recognized her prince gazing down at her immediately. Alive! She leaned forward and wrapped her arms tight around him. "I'm sorry," she murmurred. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Kaiba stood stone still for a moment, then turned and glanced at Mokuba. His brother gave a very confused shrug. The CEO pushed Serenity back down into her seat.
She blinked up at him in confusion, and then went pale with realization. "Oh... Mr. Kaiba... I'm sorry."
"You said that."
He headed back toward the control room, and she sat back in the pod. The Seto she had known was dead. The idea sat in the pit of her stomach like a brick, and she felt sick. Silently, she hugged her legs to herself. She was barely aware as a tech came to her with paperwork, which she signed just to get out of her way.
Her legs were wobbly as she stood, and she walked over to Yugi. "Hi," she said softly.
"Hey," he replied. He shot her an empathetic look and reached out to give her arm a reassuring squeeze. "I'm sorry, Serenity."
She nodded. "I... I just need some time, I think."
Yugi hugged her to himself, and she clutched him tight.
Serenity tossed in bed. It had been two months since the virtual world. The money that she had made got her through a few difficult weeks, but as she started to come out of her depression, she found it easier than she had expected.
Seto's words hung with her, and somehow that made all the difference. Whether it was dealing with the weekly concern call from Joey, or handling Tristan and Duke, she had stopped seeing their actions as pity. If, as the prince had said, love was selfish, then certainly they all seemed to love her. And she let herself be just a little selfish too, borrowing a bit of Seto's supreme confidence and ignoring a call here or dodging a dinner date there.
But whenever she spoke on the phone with Joey, she remembered that she didn't believe Seto at all. Joey didn't pity her, she understood, he was worried. He wanted what was best for her.
"I just wanna see you happy, 'Ren," he would always say, and she finally felt mature enough to believe him.
Seto, she knew, hadn't really believed that love was selfish either. In the moment that he had pulled out of her mind, giving his life for hers, he'd proven that love was selfless. She frowned, and let herself miss him completely for a few lonely moments.
Her phone rang, snapping her out of her thoughts, and she rolled over in bed and checked the caller idea. 'Taylor, T.'
She let it go to voice mail. Love may not have been selfish, but she was not in love with Tristan.
At last, she pulled herself out of bed and got dressed. She picked up her folder full of resumes and patted out the wrinkles in her blouse. Then, she walked down the sticky stairs and climbed onto the cramped bus, riding off toward the mall.
Her mind drifted to Seto Kaiba as she handed out the resumes, as it often had over the course of the last months. A psychiatrist couldn't have hoped for a better window into the man's soul than the virtual world he had created. She wondered again how much of himself he'd seen in her prince. Outside of the prince's courtly speech and bearing, they didn't seem so different. Curt, focused and singularly self-assured. She wondered if he thought of himself as a martyr, like the prince. She wondered just how much he felt like a prince in an empty castle, no connections except perhaps across an ocean. The CEO in an empty penthouse, no connections except a brother growing too old to need his big brother around.
A thought suddenly crossed her mind; Kaiba Corp was not so far away. Her bus would pass the skyscraper on the ride home, and after the fiasco at the test, they'd let her in for sure. No, it wasn't her business.
Her feet carried her there anyway. She stepped into the elevator and headed up to the test floor, where she expected to find Seto Kaiba. It was fine, she told herself. She had to let herself be a little selfish. A little confident, like the Dragon Prince.
She stepped into the room and glanced around at the rebuilt machinery. Kaiba was preparing for another test of his game. She chuckled at the arrogance. Then, she saw him at the computer, that familiar silhouette making her feel a bittersweet sadness.
"Excuse me," she said softly, "Mr. Kaiba?"
A/N: I've always been a firm believer that people don't care about process. But, as this is an author's note and therefore intrinsically a form of self-indulgence, I'm going to talk about process for a little bit. I like to do that at the end of stories, and as this is more or less the end of my fanfiction career, it seems fitting. If you're one of those people who don't care about process, then just take a heartfelt thank you for reading all this way, leave a review if it suits you and be merry on your way.
For me, I started writing this hot on the tail of having written Untouchable (it's dreck, don't read it) which, insomuch as it has a theme, is about emotional distance. I was just getting over being a "nice guy" by which I mean an unassertive sad-sack and as far as theming went, I was very much interested in writing about how love is selfish, and that that was okay. Because of that, this was the first (and probably only) time in my silentshipping career that I was actually writing about Serenity Wheeler and not generic-female-related-to-Joey. The emotional apexes of the work, I think, were good moments of clarity into the way being the recipient of selfless love could feel: that, for instance, it was less about you and more about the other person having someone to use to fulfill their need to give. That's how, I think, some of the characters see Serenity. She's a perfect charity-case, and ideal partner for that kind of co-dependence. Well, if the writing were that deep that'd be where I'd look for it. Truth be told, Serenity is probably something the writers gave very little thought to. In the series, she's really a plot device and little more. That makes her fun to write about, more unexplored space.
And then of course, I stopped writing for six years, grew up and had some serious relationships. And my perspective rather sharply changed. So the last few chapters diverge from the rest, at least as far as the love story goes. There's not enough room to really explore what I would like, which is a shame. The virtual world is a great backdrop for thinking about loss. The sentiment that I attempt to leave at the end is a happier note than I think the original story could have ended on. I very much like the idea that you can love someone completely -selflessly- lose them, and life goes on. You take what about them made you better, you make it part of yourself, and you keep living. And your life is richer for having had them in it. You, yourself, are better for having loved them.
Most of the questions I've gotten from the story are about world building. There, I don't have good answers for anyone. I started with stereotypes, put my characters there and the places became what they are. Sometimes it was just about finding the right place to match a feeling, and you just tweak until you get there. Good world building, I think, is organic. You can't just sit down and do it, it has to come out of a work. Well, that and I got lucky, sometimes loose ends I left myself neatly tied into something else I was already doing.
So that's it for me. I came back and finished what I started here some half-decade ago. I'm moving on from fanfiction and all of that. I'm grateful to everyone who took the time to read, doubly so for those who left their thoughts. I'm very grateful for those who were a part of the process. I wish all of you the best. Be well.