A Past and Future Pharaoh
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Original Beta: White Swan
Updated Beta: Me
A/N: All Kaiba's mental fun house... Hopefully I wasn't as lame with this arc as I was with the end of the last one.
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Kaiba reclined in his personal limo, ruing the absolute annoyance that Yugi created by his very existence in the world of Duel Monsters. Yugi had the fewest points on the face of the planet which, by logic, meant he was ineligible to be holding the title of King of Games. Granted most of his wins were against the highest of point members of the Dueling leagues. But even with those boosts of points Yugi was still far below people like Mai, and himself. The rules had been created at the start of the game so that everyone had to earn their way to the top ranks. It meant that a person couldn't just cheat their way through... Unless you had a Sennen Item apparently; stupid eye, even worse, Rod. In reality Yugi only had enough points to warrant a second star status in the game.
The points issued for defeating top ranking Duelists was not major enough to give a person a five star rank. After all, top ranking duelists had more important things to do with their time than defend it from every single kid who thought they got a pretty good deck. Besides anyone could get lucky, just look at the Mutt. But everyone got a series of points, from entering a tournament as well as from winning one. In fact, had Kaiba been more a stickler for the rules of his own tournament rather than getting his hands on the God cards, Yugi and the Mutt wouldn't even have been allowed to enter. Only now, to the world Yugi was the King of Games, he held a title that anyone in the competitive side of Duel Monsters wanted.
Save Yugi himself; who had defeated everyone that stood in his path in all the tournaments that he had willingly joined, unless someone threatened... say suicide, if he didn't back down. But it couldn't be helped; the world already saw Yugi as the King of Games, so all he could do was maintain the normal stability of the selection process for the next tournament. And that meant using up his computer's considerable time, tallying up the list of high ranking Duelists for his next tournament.
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Ahh peace, at long last; the private jet was empty of all but himself and the pilot. No herds of fangirls storming the Limo like the beaches of Normandy. No Yugi cowering like some stupid American Cartoon dog, needing snacks to be coaxed out. In fact Kaiba himself was no longer even in Japan, making the odds of him running into the geek squad even less likely. After all Mokuba still had the ability to call up a jet if he wanted. With Yugi around there Mokuba had proven able to resist instinct to just join him. Mokuba wanted to hang out with Yugi so that the teen felt more comfortable living in Kaiba mansion, which gave Kaiba more time to work in peace then if he had to watch over his brother.
He had almost forgotten how studious Mahaado was by nature, given the duty to lay Noa to rest discreetly. The Magician had taken the opportunity to read books on various Japanese methods of interring the body. Followed up by, apparently, visiting various morgues to study the 'actual' method of dealing with bodies. Which was more than enough for Kaiba to make him want to throw the Magician out of the mansion forever and a day. But said Magician had to top that act by bringing Noas' corpse to the mansion to do an autopsy because he thought 'all' bodies needed one.
No Maha, just put the body in an oven, cook to ash, stuff with his dad and be done.
Depending more and more on Mahaado to look after things, despite said magician being 3000 years dead was turning into an existential crisis for Kaiba. He didn't entrust things to anyone he didn't consider an equal, and the fact that he kept trying to put the mage in that position. Reminded him of things he didn't want to face or deal with. But Mahaado was the most dependable being he had ready access to, who knew anything of what was going on. Sure Isono or Fugata could look after Mokuba, but they weren't trained in arcane defense. The group that kidnapped the Kaibas, Yugi and his mutt was still free and there was the people who bombed the Game Shop.
Like it or not. And he didn't. Mahaado often felt the most trustable source he 'could' depend on, what with Yugi not really trained to defend himself physically. Not everyone was going to have a deck on hand for Yugi to challenge in a duel as a means of self defense. And as limited as Mahaado currently 'was' given how much power Yugi could supply the Magician and the furball. Well, the alternative was to trust Isis and Rashid, which, while realistic... Still the pair were staying on their luxury ship, not at Kaiba Mansion. For which made sense because Kaiba staunchly did 'not' want his home to turn into some type of bullseye, an easy mark for anyone after either the Kaibas or Yugi.
Then there was Mokuba. He was leaving his little brother for the first time and it was taking time for him to get used to not hearing Mokuba nearby. There was a growing emptiness where the feeling of his brother bouncing around echoed around him. Pushing his thoughts into his work, he began reviewing and writing up the rules for the tournament that he was planning and scanning maps of the Park, for he had to plan out the clues for where each duel would take place for the chosen duelists. Suddenly the email icon sprang to life on his laptop's screen and he turned his attention to it, finding an email from his brother with an attachment. He knew it wasn't spam; people tended not to send him much when he tended to retaliate with virus infested replies.
Instead what he got was an email festooned with images and not just of Mokuba... Oh no Yugi was almost in every single one of them... While. Wearing. His. Coat!
While anyone else would have been amused by the pictures of Yugi acting out silly parodies regarding Kaiba's tendency to be overly involved and worry about Mokuba, it was the fact he had violated Kaiba's closet. Not only violate but also run off with a coat to do this stupid stunt, that annoyed Kaiba. Bringing in the mage didn't lighten Kaiba's mood at all as he stared at the pictures of the trio... He should never have left Mokuba with them. But, though he would never admit it to another living soul, or even a dead soul, he felt more reassured that the Dark Magician was there to look after Mokuba. Humans could fail, but that mage had held on for over 3,000 years. If his Blue Eyes couldn't be there, then at least the the Magician could look after the boy.
Wait, call forth the Blue Eyes White Dragon? On the one hand Kaiba did not want to believe in magic; he didn't want to believe in a world that he could not see clearly, which was exactly what magic was, something he couldn't see clearly. It was easy to assume that he didn't believe in magic, or that because he was always focused on the present that magic felt like a fairy tale. Yet the truth, if he was honest with himself, was that he had seen the worst sides of magic. People would rather focus on the self gain of magic, with little to no thought about the downsides. Say, lingering enslavement, imprisonment, torture, that extended long, long, ages long after the body had rotted and turned to dust.
Even the threat of Noa was a programmed recreation of a long dead child. Once deleted the issue was gone.
Yet there was Mahaado hovering in a room reading a book translated through spells to a language he could understand.
There was Yugi, harboring such power within his being making him a target for those who knew and believed in True Magic.
Pushing his thoughts away from the improbable and towards revenge, he turned on the programs he used to create 3-D images. Considering his plans involved a relatively 'simple' design he figured his laptop could handle the stress. After all Yugi was already on file in his current more adult form, all he had to do was strip the boy down to his leather pants... put a bell on that collar, some ears and a tail... And Volia! Anzu gets her own personal Yugi-neko screen saver with a kitsune Mahaado to look after him. By the time he was done, stripping Yugi down, giving him a very large ball of yarn to play with, and more feline personality traits, short of licking himself, hacking Anzu's computer and overriding her normal screen saver, his plane landed in America woe to the stars and stripes.
The drive up to the large American hotel was uneventful, though without Mokuba there to distract him from work, Kaiba missed most of the sights. It wasn't until the limo stopped and the doors were opened that he realized that he had arrived at the Stanley Hotel, one of the few locations he found befitting his needs, providing him the peace and quiet he preferred to work in. This would be his first time being separated from Mokuba while working. On one hand it meant not having to drag Yugi along for a weekend in another country with nothing to do while Kaiba worked, even if having the two of them around meant that they would have each other for company. It would have also meant not having his closet defiled which would have been nice as well.
He stepped out of the limo, his eyes already scanning the area to ensure that there were no outside disturbances to his time there. It wasn't exactly cheap to buy a whole hotel for a weekend even though the arrangements had been a year before. So, as far as he could see, the hotel looked exactly as he expected, peaceful, grand, and private. But he knew well enough not to be taken in by outward appearances and stepped up to the front doors, past the well tended to garden and slipped the private key he had obtained for his weekend stay into the lock.
With a firm click of the door, Kaiba walked into the Stanley Hotel with his suitcase and laptop, ready to work. His eyes zeroed on the front desk, where his key with the room number rested. A maroon colored key chain with a key attached and with a letter under it. He picked up the letter, sighing in annoyance as something that was brought to his attention via Yugi before he left came back to his mind. The hotel had a reputation for being 'haunted'. Oh charming, with his luck they didn't turn off the usual assortment of devices such places employed; to ensure that 'each guest is sure to meet one of the ghostly residents'. He pocketed the key and strode down the hallway towards where his room was while tossing the 'letter' away like so much trash.
"Please enjoy your stay and please stay out of room 6277."
The sheet burst into silent flames burning its way out of the sheet to the edges until nothing was left before it even hit the floor.