Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi. Clockwork Angels belongs to Lea Hernandez.

This story nearly killed me.

That being said, there is a limit to the amount of research I am willing to do for a ficlet. Becoming an expert in Japanese sex crimes laws is beyond that limit. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would suspend disbelief while reading -- especially because if Kaiba did have enemies in the government, he would have to have enough friends to counteract them (thus preventing him from seeing the inside of a courtroom), or he wouldn't have gotten KaibaCorp the game company started in the first place, because there would always have been a permit he was denied or a zoning law he broke or an inspection he failed, etc.
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"I suppose an orphan would love anyone who would love them back."

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There hadn't even been any rumors, like most scandals had in their first stage. The news just exploded onto the front pages.

It had all the ingredients for a scandal of mass proportions: high-profile subjects, taboo discussion of incest, homosexuality, a minor, and the fact that everybody thought Kaiba was an asshole anyway.

Seto Kaiba, only seventeen, was technically a minor as well; but because he was legally independent, the court had decided to try him as an adult.

The newspapers and tabloids had a field day. The principal had kicked out the reporters who tried to get interviews with their class, but a few succeeded before that. Most of the interviews were negative, save for two. The first good one came from Yûgi, who'd said flatly that the idea was ridiculous and the photos were an obscene prank.

Wherever the photos had come from, they'd started the whole mess. Joey was willing to buy the claim that they were doctored because he just couldn't believe that Kaiba would drop his guard long enough to let someone get a photograph of him that he didn't know about, and especially not in his own bedroom. Kaiba was an asshole, but he was an asshole who was obsessive about his privacy.

That was why Joey had given the only other favorable interview, much to the rest of the class's surprise. He'd told the reporter that Kaiba was a lot of things -- a jerk, a snob, a dense moron -- but he cared about Mokuba and would never abuse him in the way that people were trying to make it look like he was.

(Joey privately thought that if Kaiba were having sex with his little brother, he would never be stupid enough to get caught; but he didn't mention that.)

He also didn't mention that the whole thing reeked of a set-up, because Yûgi had done it for him; but that didn't change the fact that the prefecture that Domino City was in was one of the liberaler ones -- the age of consent was thirteen -- and Joey had a vague idea that Mokuba's birthday wasn't more than half a year away. If the rumors were true, Joey thought it was suspicious that Kaiba hadn't managed to keep it under wraps for just six months more, when Mokuba wouldn't have been underage any longer.

Considering the way Kaiba lived, it didn't seem surprising that he had contingency plans set aside in the case of his imprisonment or sudden death. Mokuba would be named the temporary head of KaibaCorp for the potential length of time that he was in jail. That, plus school, plus the dregs of the trial and the paparazzi, would be a hell of a burden to lay on a twelve-year-old; but Mokuba didn't show any outward signs of being overwhelmed. He was a Kaiba, after all -- he could handle it. And unlike his brother, Mokuba understood what the phrase "delegation of authority" meant.

Joey didn't know anything about the legal system, at least not the version that applied in courts and didn't cover the streets, but the whole thing seemed vaguely wrong to him. Mokuba wasn't pressing charges -- Mokuba seemed incredulous that anyone would believe the case in the first place -- but because he was a minor, the court stepped in and said that they were going to act for him, because he was too young to think for himself. That didn't seem compatible with the fact that Mokuba would be running KaibaCorp if the trial did take place, but everyone ignored that.

Plus, Joey couldn't figure out why someone as rich as Kaiba was actually seeing the inside of a court room. Devlin told him it probably had something to do with the enemies Kaiba had made in the government when he'd changed one of their main weapons manufacturers into a games producer. Joey still thought that was wrong, but Devlin said he could bring in a law book and prove it, so he let it go.

It wasn't like the Kaiba brothers needed his concern, anyway. Both of them had painted on a perfect façade. When the inquiry began, Kaiba had picked one facial expression, cold but faintly amused condescension, and had kept it ever since. Mokuba continually stated that the whole thing was absurd. But he didn't do it frantically, or repeat it too often, which would have implied the opposite. He just said, "This is stupid. They can't charge Seto for a non-existent crime," with a slight sneer and the complete calm of a person who knew there was no evidence to base a charge on.

The trouble was that both Kaiba and Mokuba were very, very smart, and they could just as easily be lying as they could be telling the truth. Joey couldn't decide.

He wanted to believe that Mokuba was being honest, because hell . . . as mature as he might be, he was still just a child. And he was a child who was scarily devoted to his big brother -- anything Kaiba wanted from Mokuba, he could probably get it.

Which was why he really, really wanted Mokuba to be telling the truth. Though Joey had never liked Kaiba, he gave the guy credit for not being that much of a sick bastard.

But eventually, the inquiry turned into a trial.

Despite the claims that the pictures were photoshopped, the specialists looking at them couldn't determine that they weren't real; and that seemed to be enough proof for the prosecution to have their way. If Mokuba had been willing to testify against Kaiba, the trial might have gone smoother; but he was being stubbornly disagreeable on that point. He had publicly stated that he had no interest in committing perjury just to help the enemies of KaibaCorp.

From the very beginning, both Kaiba and Mokuba had been speaking as if everything was deliberately set up by someone out to destroy their company. Since the police had been unable to determine who had sent the photos to every respectable newspaper in the prefecture (the packages had come from a mailing company out of Tokyo), their statements could very well have been correct. Kaiba's lawyers had picked up the claim immediately and used it at all possible moments.

But, as Tristan had commented the morning he and Joey were watching through the windows as the reporters got kicked out of the school, their statements were also a really good way of twisting the purpose of the trial to a different angle.

That hadn't helped Joey let go of the lingering doubts he had. Kaiba knew how to work the law, after all.

Because Mokuba wouldn't testify, the prosecution started talking about taking "tests" to determine whether the two had had intercourse recently. That started a riot from the defense about the rights of minors, which prompted a counter-riot from the prosecution about obstruction of justice and the Child Welfare Law, and around that point Joey got lost in the legalities. He gave up trying to follow the trial and just skimmed the paper during his deliveries every morning, looking for the announcement of a 'guilty' or 'not guilty' verdict.

In the end, because both Mokuba and Kaiba denied the charges of statutory rape and corruption of a minor, it came down to which set of lawyers could out-talk the other. It took a week's worth of deliberation from the jury, but Kaiba's lawyers won. The idea of whether or not bribery was involved was brought up, but eventually discarded.

And so Kaiba was released from prison. He went back to school and back to his company, treating the whole incident as an uninteresting farce not worth remembering, and he continued his work as efficiently as ever.

But KaibaCorp's reputation, especially internationally, was irreparably damaged.

And neither the police nor Kaiba himself ever figured out where the photos had originally come from.