Author's Notes:

The best part of this chapter was that moment before I started writing when I, in a senior moment, asked myself what game Seto was going to have to play to get Mokuba back. Yep, you can insert a "duh" here. I certainly did once I stopped laughing at myself. The kids would have had my head if I had him playing anything else.

This was perhaps one of my favorite chapters to write. This could have something to do with the fact that Seto Kaiba is my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh character. This could also have a lot to do with the fact that I adore the relationship between the Kaiba brothers. It really warms the heart, as it's just about the only time you see Seto show any sort of emotion.

The Red King and the White Queen

Seto Kaiba was frustrated.

He had been searching the castle for several hours. Twelve, to be exact. He'd screamed himself hoarse trying to find his younger brother. At this point, the teenaged CEO had walked through every inch of space accessible inside the castle. He now set his sights on the outside grounds. Getting outside was a trick. Every time he found a door, it led to a dark room or hallway. He soon discovered that the only door that would lead him outside was the one he entered earlier with Yugi Moto. Once outside, he wound his way around the exterior of the castle, trying to repress an involuntary shudder at a familiar parapet. The nooks and crannies of the castle's outside walls were as useless as the interior had been.

I know you're here somewhere, Mokuba, and I won't give up until I've found you.

The rock walls eventually yielded a staircase that led into a hedge maze. Kaiba was furious, "I don't have time for this!" Nevertheless, he wandered the maze, choosing to follow the right hand wall of the maze until he came to a large clearing in the middle of the maze. The clearing had been sculpted into a giant chess board. Red chess pieces filled the two rows closest to Kaiba. The opposite side of the board sported white chess pieces. Kaiba barely noted the life-sized game board as he followed the right wall around the clearing. To his horror, he discovered that not only was there not another way out of the clearing, but the opening he had come through was now gone. He turned back to face the chess board. The kings were as tall as he was, the pawns as small as Mokuba. He walked to the board, and then walked along all four of its edges.

When he reached the side where the red pieces were lined up, he heard a voice coming from the white side of the board, "Care to play a game, Kaiba-boy?"

"I want my brother, Pegasus!"

The man smiled, "Of course. That is easily arranged." Pegasus clapped, and one of the white pawns was suddenly replaced with the Mokuba doll.

Upon seeing Kaiba, the doll cried out, "Seto!"

Kaiba reacted, starting to walk toward his brother, "Mokuba!" An invisible barrier kept him from reaching his brother. He tried to approach the pawn from a few different angles, but ran into the invisible wall every time.

"So, what do you say, Kaiba? Shall we play a little game?"

"What choice do I have?" Seto Kaiba hated the feeling of being cornered. He reluctantly walked back to the edge of the board, away from his brother.

"Excellent! Let's begin." Pegasus settled himself into a chair near the board. "You may make the first move, Kaiba-boy."

Kaiba didn't respond, but instead simply paced behind his side of the board. He made his first move, a pawn to the center of the chess board. Pegasus mirrored his move.

This should be an easy game. This is my game. Kaiba could feel his confidence growing as he strategically positioned key pieces, while Pegasus continually made mistakes. Pegasus was passing up key opportunities for captures in favor of setting up weak defenses. Eventually, the teen tired of being toyed with. He commanded a bishop to capture a pawn. The resulting explosion obliterated the pawn and took a decent chunk out of the bishop.

"What?" Kaiba staggered back a few steps in shock.

"Oh, did I forget to mention that?" Pegasus asked, off-handedly. "A captured piece is destroyed. The capturing piece is injured." Kaiba's eyes went directly to his brother. He didn't like the irony of Mokuba being used as a pawn. Now that he knew the stakes of the game, he realized that he didn't want any part of it. Every move would now have to be weighed against his brother's safety.

He resented having to pull his punches.

Pegasus quickly realized that Kaiba wasn't playing his normal game. He started creating situations on the board where Mokuba had the potential for being captured, and the duelist was responding by giving up stronger pieces in a desperate attempt to protect the doll.

"This is far too easy, Kaiba-boy!" Pegasus gloated as the younger man lost a knight.

Kaiba took a step back from the board and looked carefully at the situation. I've let my desire to protect Mokuba distract me from the game. With some annoyance, he realized that his defensive playing had left him in the weaker position. It was time to go on the offensive. Keeping one eye on the Mokuba doll, Kaiba started rebuilding his strategy. As he started capturing Pegasus' pieces, he warned the man, "If you thought you were going to win this game, you were sorely mistaken." Pegasus merely smiled at the threat.

The game continued until there were only a handful of pieces left on the board. Kaiba had Pegasus on the run, continually cornering the eccentric game designer's king. He failed to notice that Pegasus was driving him toward one side of the board. Kaiba cornered the king once again, carefully setting a series of back-up plans if Pegasus decided to capture a piece.

The older duelist thinly smiled, "So, you think you've won, Kaiba-boy?" He used a pawn to capture the piece closest to the king.

Kaiba gasped. His perfect plan had just fallen apart. The pawn now available for capture, the one he needed to take in order to set his plan in motion, was the Mokuba doll. He looked around for a better move, but never found one. His inherent competitive streak competed strongly with his sense of duty as an older brother. The Mokuba doll saw the struggle within his older brother. While he had never played chess himself, he had watched his brother often enough to understand the dilemma Kaiba was now facing.

"Seto! I'll be all right! Just beat this creep!" Mokuba's words of encouragement did little to help Kaiba.

After thinking long and hard, considering his options, Seto Kaiba made the hardest decision of his gaming career. "Bishop, capture that pawn!" The piece moved over, the resulting blast sending shards everywhere. When the dust settled, Kaiba's heart broke. As expected, the Mokuba doll was gone from the board.

"Bold move, Kaiba-boy."

"Shut up. Let's finish this, Pegasus." The game ended only a few rounds later, the teenage CEO's careful planning paying off.

"Well done, Kaiba-boy. That may have been one of the best chess games I've ever played."

The teenager didn't care. "Where is my brother?"

Pegasus smiled at the younger duelist's single-mindedness. "He's here...somewhere."

Kaiba growled. Behind him, a voice said, "Seto?"

He turned around, eyes widening, "Mokuba!"

"Your attack freed me! When the doll exploded, I was returned to my normal body!" The little boy ran to his brother, who was kneeling with his arms open.

When Mokuba reached him, Kaiba picked him up. "We're getting out of here!"

"But what about the others?"

"They can take care of themselves. We're getting out of here" With that, he stormed out of the opening that had appeared in the hedge wall and made his way back toward the castle and the staircase that would take them away from Maximilian Pegasus.