Glass
"And you're still winning," Pegasus said, flat and stunned.
"Mokuba hardly knows what those cards do."
"I'm getting much better," Mokuba said. He leaned forward to rest his forearms on the kitchen table and stared up at Pegasus. "I'm not as bad as he claims I am."
"I'm not claiming you're bad. You just need more practice," Seto said.
"I almost beat you that last time."
"Yes, you're a brilliant strategist with a deck handed to you already strategized," Seto said. Mokuba's eyebrows raised, but he didn't argue it. All three of them knew Seto was right, but Mokuba and Pegasus both had wanted to watch him lose.
"Maybe I'll borrow the deck. See if I can do it justice," Pegasus said.
"But not today," Seto said.
"Oh no. You've got a match to get to. The library is all set up and wired for my viewing pleasure. Did you want to watch with me, Little Mokuba?"
Mokuba glanced at Seto and smirked. "I would like to join you."
Very likely to ensure that Seto didn't break his promise by talking over an escape or filling Yugi's head with notions of a brighter future off the island. It just had to be a duel or at least seem like nothing more.
Because obviously it had to be more.
"Grab your cards, Kaiba-boy. It's time to duel!"
His deck was on the kitchen table where he and Mokuba had dueled last. Mokuba used his elbow to knock Seto's hand when he reached for it, bringing Seto's attention to the seriousness of Mokuba's expression. Seto nodded once and backed up with his deck.
"The library is just down the hall. I don't suppose I need to give you any rules," Pegasus said. His hands were clasped in front of him like the excitement was too much and his hands were holding it in. This duel should not be that exciting for him to watch through a camera. Maybe it was just the excitement for the potential outcome, for Yugi snapping out of his daze.
"I want beat him just as much as you want to see it," Seto said.
"Then let's hop to. Try to beat him in under an hour. I have other stops."
"Lead the way," Seto said. He hung back a step for Mokuba, then followed out through the door. The guards in the hallway hardly glanced in their direction. It must have been a boring job. Maybe boring enough that they would slack off on keeping completely alert.
The library was only a few doors down. Pegasus sent Mokuba into the room one over, where he mentioned the recording devices were all set up. The viewing room, he called it. Mokuba went in with a final glance to Seto, then closed the door behind him.
"Promise you'll be good?"
"I'm not going to do anything reckless."
"You say that, but I know you, Seto. You're planning something."
Seto shook his head, then leaned it to the side. "I'm doing this as a favor because Mokuba doesn't think you trust me enough. I can walk back to my room and forget this if you'd prefer."
"No, no. Yugi-boy does need this. You were right there, but I don't want you to accidentally sacrifice yourself for him."
Seto laughed and crossed his arms. "I didn't know you thought so highly of me, the unintentional martyr."
"I'm just saying that you should be careful. Don't give me a reason."
"It's a duel."
"We'll see," Pegasus said, taking a step back before adding, "And hear. Don't forget that part."
Seto didn't wait for more warnings or threats, but opened the door Pegasus had led him to and scanned the ceiling for cameras. Two. They both pointed toward the window directly across from the entrance, where a table and two chairs were set up.
Yugi sat in one of them, barely glancing over when Seto walked in before turning back to the window.
"Muto."
"Kaiba."
Seto crossed the room, checking the titles of the books on the shelves he walked between. For being called a library, the room wasn't much larger than a bedroom. The walls were all lined with shelves, and a few were set up in the middle of the room. Seto didn't stop to give them more interest.
He sat across from Yugi and began to shuffle his cards. Yugi's were stacked on the table, face up and skewed.
"I expect you to take this seriously," Seto said. He put down his cards and crossed a leg under the table.
"I will."
"You sound so convincing," Seto said, and then added, "You could at least look me in the eyes as you say that." Yugi looked over from the window, holding his gaze long enough for Seto to say, "I've found that what people say when they meet your eyes is usually the truth."
Yugi's eyes narrowed before he nodded. "I understand."
He looked back to the window, but ran his fingers over his cards. The stall lasted just a moment before he flipped the deck and started shuffling. He handed it over to be cut and Seto did the same.
"How have you been?" Yugi asked.
"Fine." Seto passed the cards back and met Yugi's gaze. "You seem down."
Seto's cards slipped from Yugi's hands and glided across the table. None of them fell off, but Yugi sighed, "That-" he started, eyes facing Seto as he forced a smile and said, "-was my fault."
Seto gathered his cards back together and Yugi looked down at his own before counting out five of them. "Sorry. I just haven't been feeling myself." He got his drawing pile into position and let Seto know where he'd stack his graveyard.
"Yes, because moping will help your case." Seto drew his hand and scanned over the cards before looking up to Yugi. "That's absurd."
Seto went back to looking at his cards. Not a terrible first hand, but there wasn't much strategy to set up with four spells and a defensive monster.
"You can go first," Seto said, then reached for the notebook and pen resting on the tabletop. "I'll keep score. Four thousand?"
"Four thousand is fine," Yugi said. He placed a card face down and set one.
"I hear Pegasus hasn't beaten you," Seto said. He matched Yugi's move.
Yugi lifted his gaze for a second, "It's true," and drew a card.
"Do you think he's really putting in effort? Because-" Seto paused to play his hand and look at Yugi, "It's not-" he said idly, looking down and tapping his fingers to indict which of Yugi's cards he was attacking, "-like I'll go easy on you."
Yugi moved his destroyed card to the graveyard, keeping it face up and sideways to set it apart from the other cards.
"You never have."
They played a few more hands and Yugi took three hundred points of damage. Seto made note of it on the score sheet and drew his next card, glad to have more than just spells turning up.
"You spent the holidays with Gardner?"
"I did."
"She seems off too."
Seto surveyed his hand and the field, spotting an opening to steal a few hundred life points. He took it, but a trap cut the damage in half. Yugi would have to start hitting back eventually, otherwise a win here wouldn't count.
"She's tired."
"That's an excuse," Seto said, setting two cards.
Yugi glanced up. "Then what-" he looked down at his hand to play a card, "-are you expecting?"
"Not this zombie act."
Seto thumbed a finger over the cards in his hand and tried to think of a way to answer the question Yugi had actually asked without tipping off Pegasus. Any mention of anything unrelated to dueling would certainly raise flags. They would have to work back around to it. Yugi needed to know why there were here, however Seto could get the information across.
"Your family is here," Yugi said. He stared at his cards before folding his hand and shaking his head. "Mine's not."
"You're going to have to start attacking me if you want to win," Seto said. He thought through where that train of dialogue would lead and thought he could tie it in.
"Sorry. I'm sure you wanted a better match than this."
"Our duels don't seem to happen under the best of circumstances," Seto said. He met Yugi's gaze. "Remember Duelist Kingdom?"
Yugi lifted a shoulder, gaze still on Seto. "Yes."
"That balcony duel was hardly fair for either of us," Seto said, attention back on his cards. Then, as if remembering what he meant to say, flickered his gaze back up to add, "Do you know why he did it?" He glanced down to place a card in attack mode. "Why he made us duel?"
Yugi nodded and attacked Seto's monster. An added spell gave him the advantage, and Seto lost his first life points of the duel. He wrote it down with less bitterness than he thought he would have. At least Yugi was putting in some sort of effort.
"Yeah," Yugi said, looking down after he spoke to straighten his deck. "I never did apologize for how we acted after that. Should've realized it wasn't just to win a tournament."
"I still can't believe any of you thought I'd kill myself over a game," Seto said. He looked up after making his move. "But you won."
Yugi frowned and quickly started looking through his hand, like his cards were new and he didn't know what to do with them. Seto felt his foot tapping underneath the table. He would have to catch on more quickly than Seto had if they were going to work this discussion into the span of a tabletop duel.
"I guess we all thought Battle City was-" Yugi paused to lift his face back up. His gaze met Seto's, confused, conflicted. "-I don't know, revenge?" He shook his head and looked back to his cards. "Because you lost at Duelist Kingdom."
"I'm not saying I didn't intend to beat you in that tournament," Seto said. He set another card and ended his turn. "But it wasn't revenge. That's such a petty notion."
Yugi smirked down at the table and Seto hoped Pegasus had been able to catch it on the cameras. It had to give some credit to Seto, prove even a bit that Seto had done his best to wake Yugi up. A smirk was a start, slow and at Seto's expense, but a start.
"Is it my turn?" Yugi asked.
With a quick glance up, Seto said, "Yes."
Yugi's turn went by with Seto's life points intact. He sighed and shuffled the few cards in his hand. "Have you seen the others? Joey? Ryou?" He paused and met Seto's gaze. "Duke?"
When he went to set a card, one fell from his hand, face-up, on the table. He put it back in his hand and said a simple, "My mistake," and catching Yugi's eyes for the last word.
Seto and Yugi went back and forth a dozen more hands, finally having worked their way into the final stages of the duel. Yugi got his Dark Magician on the field and Seto had a Blue-Eyes in his hand that could be summoned the next turn. His life points were up by five hundred. It was still anyone's game though.
Seto sacrificed his monsters on the field to summon the Blue-Eyes. Seto felt Yugi's exhale graze over his hands. In Yugi's current state, it might not have meant anything, but Seto wanted to believe Yugi didn't have the cards needed to get his Blue-Eyes off the field.
Winning under these circumstances wouldn't be a true victory. This wasn't the Yugi Seto cared to beat. The broody depression wasn't reflective of Seto's rival. Actually winning would only happen if Yugi had his Puzzle. Magic or not, that was how Seto had to win for it to count.
"How are things with," Yugi said, pausing to set a card in defense and another face down. He glanced up once finished, "-Mokuba?"
Seto nodded and tapped to indicate his attack. Yugi slid his card over to the graveyard. "About how you'd expect. Moody teenager adjusting to a new life."
Imagining Mokuba's reaction on the other side of the wall was well worth the earful Seto would be getting once they were back in their room.
"And how are you?" Yugi asked.
"Treading," Seto said. He surveyed the field and took a moment to question Yugi's two face down cards. He would likely have some sort of a defense set up to protect the small number of remaining life points. Seto placed a trap card to negate damage to his own life points before attacking the Dark Magician with his Blue-Eyes.
Yugi lost the card but had a trap waiting that raised his life points by the difference in defense points. But his card was out of play, so Seto shrugged it off and still made note of it on the scoring sheet.
"You know he bought KaibaCorp," Seto said, catching Yugi's attention for the end of his sentence.
"I didn't know that," Yugi said. "Mokuba hadn't mentioned."
"I doubt he cares as much. Probably glad it takes away my ability to return to work."
"I'm sorry to hear that though," Yugi said, messing with the cards in his hand before looking up to Seto. "There's nothing you can do though."
Seto held his gaze and lifted a shoulder to shrug for the cameras. "Won't know until I've tried."
All that should have meant to Pegasus was that Seto would like to return to working again at some point. It might have been too on the nose for their current train of conversation, but there was nothing to be done about it. Seto finished his turn and waited on Yugi. Neither of them had more than a thousand life points remaining, but if Yugi kept taking so long for each of his moves, then the game would continue for at least another hour. Seto had the cards set up to win, so long as Yugi couldn't magically pull out the one card that would save him, which honestly, wouldn't have surprised Seto that much anymore.
Yugi glanced up at Seto for a moment before making his move. "I can't-" he said, looking down to put his card in the right spot, "-imagine what that's like for you."
Seto drew another card and added it to his hand. He didn't have the means to hit Yugi's life points directly, but he could clear the monsters from that side of the field, so long as neither of Yugi's set cards interfered. And the monster Yugi had in play was defensive, so when Seto attacked, after summoning a third monster in defense, their life points remained the same.
"I'm sure you can," Seto said, meeting Yugi's eyes for just a moment before returning to the game. "It's not that hard to think on."
Yugi tapped the table a few times to draw Seto's gaze back up. "How do you?" He smiled apologetically before looking at the card he drew. "That is, how do you handle knowing he has your company?"
Yugi got a monster on the field, but didn't have any other monsters to prevent Seto from hitting his life points directly once it was gone. Maybe the remaining face down card would stop him. Maybe not.
"He has it. Nothing I can do to change that."
Seto indicated his attack, and the face down card reflected it back to Seto's Blue-Eyes and destroyed it. But that left two monsters on Seto's side of the field, one of which easily took Yugi's remaining monster out of play. The third had to stay in defense because the attack was too low to risk letting Yugi hit it. If Yugi got a decent monster on the field, then Seto's life points would hit zero.
"Besides," Seto said, then brought up his gaze, "I've got Mokuba."
Yugi folded his hand to give Seto his full attention, which Seto hadn't intended for them to do at any point in the conversation. But there wasn't any way to tell him that, to stop him before he gave everything away in just a sentence.
"It can't be that easy," he said, and Seto breathed in quiet relief.
"I'm handling it how I can."
"How?"
Seto folded his own cards and leaned forward. His elbows rested on the edge of the table and he kept his eyes locked onto Yugi's. "If you don't want to play, to win, just say so."
Yugi fanned out his hand and played a monster, defense higher than Seto's attacking power. Another set card, probably a trap.
"Okay," Yugi said, "Let's finish."
Seto drew his next card—another Blue-Eyes. He played another monster instead to get ready to sacrifice on the next turn, adding a trap face down to prevent Yugi from messing with his strategy. They had gotten to the last few moves of the duel and Seto had the current advantage, even if Yugi didn't know it.
"How are you really expecting to win?" Yugi asked, just as Seto glanced up to indicate that his turn was over. Yugi turned down to his cards while he added, "It's not like you've ever beaten me before."
Seto smirked because although the last bit tacked on was more for show than anything, it was what Pegasus wanted to hear. A spark of fight surging up.
It was also what Seto had been looking for, even if it wasn't directed at him at all.
He waited for Yugi to glance back before displaying the back of his cards, gaze locked onto Yugi's. "Play the cards I'm given."
Yugi used a spell to strength his monster and attacked one of Seto's, but his trap cut off the attack and rebounded on Yugi's monster. It set Seto up well for his next turn, so long as he drew a decent magic or trap. Additional monsters wouldn't help.
"You'd better have a good hand then," Yugi said, examining his own before adding a card into play.
"You're a bit late to the game to start mouthing off," Seto said. He summoned his Blue-Eyes, sliding the two sacrifices and used trap to the graveyard.
Yugi played a monster reborn. "Blue-Eyes from your graveyard," he said.
Seto put down his hand to flip through his graveyard for the indicated card, handing it over with a strict warning about not bending it. Yugi nodded and put it into play, straight across from Seto's.
"It's weird," Yugi said, tracing his finger along the table beside the Blue-Eyes on his side of the field. "Playing like this isn't nearly so intense."
"I'm surprised we're not down in one of his dueling arenas. I guess it's too much technology for me to be around."
"Or he's worried I'd jump to my death," Yugi said.
"That too."
Seto drew his next card, Shrink. Yugi's side of the field had a Blue-Eyes in attack. No potential for a trap or a spell. Nothing to stop Seto from winning on this turn. Use Shrink on Yugi's Blue-Eyes and attack it straight on. Simple. Clean.
He won.
He beat Yugi.
More than that, Yugi agreed to play along with Pegasus. He was talking more, acting more like himself. He might not have been back to how he acted before, but Seto got it started. He did what he came out to do.
Winning might be a step in the wrong direction.
But he won.
Seto set a worthless trap card and ended his turn. He watched as Yugi drew his next card and grinned. His magical ability to draw had been a single hand too late. He played his Alpha the Magnet Warrior in attack mode before setting a magic card.
"Brave attack. Combines their attacks. Attack."
Seto slid his Blue-Eyes from the field and into the graveyard, drawing a zero under his life points.
He met Yugi's gaze for a final time. "You win again."
Yugi looked down at the cards still in Seto's hand. "What'd you have left?"
"Nothing much," Seto said. He shuffled all his cards together and took back his Blue-Eyes from Yugi.
"Did you beat me?" Yugi asked.
Seto held up the score sheet. "I've got the zero."
"If you would've won, you should tell me. I can't count this otherwise."
"What does it matter? Your perfect record lives another day."
"Kaiba!" Yugi got to his feet, hands on the table, and leaned forward. It might have been somewhat intimidating if Yugi wasn't half a foot shorter than Mokuba.
"What?"
"You let me win."
"What would that accomplish?"
"I don't kn-" Yugi paused and rested back on his heels. "You think it will make me complacent for whenever we make a show of it?"
Seto liked the wording, glad that Yugi had caught on to the need for careful word choice so quickly. But he looked over to the door as if waiting on Pegasus to come in for him. "That's assuming I let you win. Which, let's be honest, doesn't sound like me."
"Of course not."
The door opened for Pegasus to sweep in, grin as bright as his tie. "Congratulations, Yugi-boy! It seems you are truly undefeatable."
"Sure," Yugi said, "I'm sure that I won that based on skill."
The sarcasm alone proved that Seto had done his job. Pegasus smiled in response to it and clasped his hands together excitedly. "Well gather your things," he said, adjusting the position of his hands like staying still was too much for him, the same way he had held them before the duel. "We've got to be getting back to our rooms."
Yugi sat down for a moment to collect his cards, shuffling them once before standing again. He already looked more himself, expression clearer, posture straightened. It might fade once Seto wasn't watching, but at least it was some sort of effort. That had to mean trust for Seto. He was three for three in getting Pegasus's visitors moving in the right direction, or at least, the direction Pegasus wanted them to move in.
If Yugi played along, it would be a win for the both of them.
"Kaiba-boy, you can get back without me, I presume?"
Seto nodded and stepped out of the library, meeting Mokuba in the hall. He and Yugi greeted each other shortly. Croquet led Seto and Mokuba back to their rooms while Pegasus walked with Yugi down the other way. Seto watched to see what door they went into, but he reached his room first and wasn't allowed to linger in the hallway.
Croquet locked them in.
"What was that?" Mokuba asked.
"We dueled."
Seto took off his shoes and left them just inside his bedroom door. Mokuba did the same before crossing his arms and staring down Seto.
"That was not a normal conversation."
"It's not like we are casual acquaintances. Of course the conversation sounded off."
Seto headed into the kitchen, dropping his cards on the table, and started on the dishes leftover from earlier. Mokuba followed him in, but didn't move to help, just leaning against the counter to get a better angle on Seto's face.
"Tell me what you accomplished."
"Yugi now knows why we're here. He agreed to play along."
"How did you tell him that?"
"You were listening to the conversation."
Mokuba groaned and pushed back to stand a few feet away. "Seriously, Seto? You lied to me. You said it was just a duel and that you weren't going to risk anything."
Seto dropped the dish in his hand and turned around, hands dripping. "You saw Pegasus. He was happy with the outcome of the duel. Yugi was talking more. I did what I told him I would."
"You lied to me."
"Not really."
"A little lie is still a lie, Seto."
Mokuba backed up when Seto tried to take a step toward him. His lips set firmly but his hands moved like he was trying to express his point without adding anything else.
"I told you I wouldn't risk anything. I didn't."
"And when he watches the conversation back and figures out what you were really saying?"
"He got what he wanted out of it. He's not going to analyze it."
"But he might. And you're going to ruin all of this."
"Give me some cred-"
Mokuba walked out of the living room. Seto threw up his hands and went back to the dishes, scrubbing harder than necessary.
Thanks for reading!
You can expect an update on Saturday, July 16th.
