Hee, such great reviews! So much fun, that people are getting into it enough to try to figure things out. You guys rock! This little story will soon come to a close - but no worries, there's more where this came from. ...or should that perhaps be cause for concern after all? At any rate, please enjoy!

"Kid?" the clerk asked. Possibly genuine worry in his tone now, in his eyes. And still no hatred.

"Excuse me," Kaiba said, formally, digging his fingers into the table's wood as he strove to cross back over the yawning gap separating himself. "I just--remembered something."

"Uh-huh. Something more than you forgot to run the dishwasher, I take it."

"Nii-sama!"

Kaiba raised his head, met the clerk's concerned gaze steadily. "You were saying about Kaiba?"

"Yeah. Though that's pretty much it. He bought out Industrial Illusions maybe a year after his brother's death, and the rest--is history, that I just told you. Kaiba mentions his brother occasionally, dedicates all the Kaiba Lands he opens to him, I've heard, though I've never watched one of those speeches. But he never says anything about Duel Monsters in those. And I doubt he ever poured his heart out to the bounty hunters. So there's no way to really know why.

"But if he was working with the cards when he lost his brother--if he decided it was the cards that killed him, and not whatever experiment he was running..."

White fire, impossible magic.

"Nii-sama!"

Kaiba had moved temporally before he had been burned. But now he could taste the smoke in the back of his throat.

The clerk had trailed off again, was looking at him again like he was expecting Kaiba to say or do something, but what that might be, Kaiba couldn't imagine. Before he could ask, they were interrupted by a squealing rock guitar riff.

"I better get that," the blond man said, getting up. "Be right back." He turned the key and hurried out of the storeroom, closing the unlocked door behind him. The noise cut off as the clerk answered the phone, Kaiba deduced, hearing the low, unintelligible mumble of his conversation through the door.

Alone in the cramped little room, he closed his eyes, exhaled a long breath as if he could force the taint of smoke in his memory from his lungs. That fire--not part of the card's magic.

"Something went wrong. There was an accident. And his brother..."

When he returned to the past, it might not be to the exact time he left. Possibly a few minutes ahead, enough time for the flames to mostly burn out, so that he wouldn't be in the heart of that blaze.

A few minutes too late. By the time he returned, Mokuba would be--

No.

It would happen. It had already happened, over thirty years ago.

But there had to be a way to change that. Kaiba had never believed in fate, never accepted the demands of destiny. This could not be the only possibly future, not the only possible way. He would not allow it to be.

And yet it had happened. Would happen, will happen. This future he had made, that the cards had brought him to.

Kaiba dropped his deck on the table, stared down at it with his hands resting on either side. The last Duel Monster cards on Earth.

Really, that was unlikely. Even he wouldn't have been able to find all of them. Some duelists would have hidden theirs, at least their most precious cards, where no one could find them. As he had lied about his imaginary father doing. Though hidden cards, unable to be played, would they have any more worth than the blond clerk's absurd marked suits? The game was ended. His deck, however strong, was nothing, with no others to duel against. Powerless.

Kaiba withdrew the thin metal case from his pocket, flipped it open and removed the three Blue Eyes cards. But he hesitated before returning them to the deck where they belonged, holding them, fanned out, before his eyes. Three identical prints, overlapping, the white dragons silently roaring against one another.

Just cards. Thrown onto an open flame--white fire--they would burn in less than a minute, for all the unknown power within them.

Impossible, Kaiba had wanted to say. He would never do such a thing as what he had just been told, would never so completely end all of it... But he knew that wasn't true. He had destroyed one Blue Eyes already, ripped it to shreds. He might tell himself he wasn't now the same Kaiba Seto he had been then--but then, the Kaiba Seto of this now was not the same, either.

"Nii-sama!"

These cards, the dragons, had saved him before, the dream of them, the dream that Mokuba had held, too, that his brother hadn't allowed him to forget. But could that dream mean anything at all, without the one who had shared it with him?

No. He wouldn't allow it. Unacceptable.

But if somehow, in some timeline, he had failed; if Mokuba had been lost...

He closed his eyes. Not impossible, after all. All too terribly possible.

None of them had stopped him. Not any duelist in this future world true enough to try and succeed. To win against him. Instead they had just withdrawn. Set themselves safely in defense and waited for time to attack instead.

And Time had worked its special power, sacrificed a card and summoned him here.

Kaiba straightened up, opening his eyes. They might be powerless, all these pathetic players left. But he was not. His hand slid into his pocket, felt the curved metal band of the new card disk. He pulled it out, strapped it back on around his wrist. Then he swept together the three Blue Eyes cards, set them on top of his deck and returned it to his breast pocket.

The new disk only had slots enough for three cards, but three were all he would need.

Kaiba opened the storeroom door and walked out into the shop. The blond clerk waved at him, muttered something into a headset that was no more than a thin wire and then called over, "Hey, where're you going, kid?"

Kaiba had no reason to answer. But no reason not to, either. "Kaiba Corporation headquarters. I presume it's still located in the KC building downtown."

"'Still located'? Uh, yeah. But why do you want to go--oh, man, you're not planning to sell the deck, are you? I mean, Kaiba would probably give you your own island, if you wanted one--unless he decides it'd be easier to take them without paying at all--but, please--"

"I'm not going to sell any of them," Kaiba said.

"Oh. Then, why--"

"I'm going to end this. Once and for all."

"You're gonna--what?" The clerk vaulted the counter to scramble between Kaiba and the shop's exit, arms raised to bar his way. "What are you talking about?"

"It's not my father's deck," Kaiba said. "It's mine."

"Yeah, I figured that much out. Though how the hell--"

"Get out of my way."

"Kid--"

"Out of my way," Kaiba repeated, staring down at him and wondering why he didn't feel more furious at this mediocre man, this would-be duelist who had never had the chance to truly play.

The blond man sighed, lowered his arms and stepped aside. "I hope you know what you're doing, kid."

"You should hope I do, since no one else does," Kaiba told him, and strode for the exit, his duster flaring behind him. The bell on the frame chimed as he opened the glass door, the noise and heat of the street washing over him.

In the doorway, one foot over the threshold, he stopped, looked back into the shop. The blond man still stood in the aisle, brown eyes watching him with an emotion that might have been apprehension, or regret, or something else entirely.

There had been no turtle on the signboard, Kaiba knew, but he didn't recall what the shop's name had been. And it wasn't that the man's face was especially familiar. Except perhaps those eyes, though they watched him too calmly. And something about his voice, not the timbre so much as the way he spoke.

No reason to ask it. But Kaiba did anyway. "It's Jounouchi, isn't it."

"Eh?" The clerk blinked, then nodded. "Yeah, I'm Jounouchi Hiroto. Sorry, have we met--"

"No," Kaiba said, "we haven't," and he strode out of the shop onto the street, ignoring the blond man calling, "Nice to meet you, kid!" behind him.

Kaiba Corporation's tower was four kilometers from the game shop. He walked. Evening was falling and the city streets were more crowded than before, people hurrying home in a twilight washed out by bright artificial lights. The traffic was quieter than he was used to, he realized, the cars' engines roaring in softer pitches than those of the past.

He didn't look at any of the people he brushed by, their faces indistinguishable blurs. He didn't care if he recognized any of them anyway. Around his wrist the card disk's weight was a slight, unforgettable drag. Compared to the bulkier duel disk system, the device felt unnatural, too light, as if it were broken.

If he blinked, he saw white flames. Could smell the smoke.

Getting into Kaiba Corporation shouldn't be difficult, and once he was in the upper levels at least a couple of the old passages should still be open. Voiceprint readers and retinal scans shouldn't care that he was missing a few decades. And if he were stopped, he could show his deck. Or his face. Either should be enough to win him an audience with his opponent. Face to face with himself.

That would be enough. Kaiba Seto would recognize the card disk on his arm, but no security man or bodyguard should, or would suspect it was a weapon. He would easily have a chance. And a chance was all he would need.

Three Blue-Eyes White Dragons, brought to incredible life, and the cleansing blaze of their triple Burst Stream would be his victory.

The first floor of the KC building was open to the public, even as it had been thirty years ago, and the arcade that took up most of the floor was just as brilliant and loud. A crowd of kids were gathered around a virtual fighter stage, all cheering on a boy with thick black hair, and for the single moment Kaiba glimpsed him out of the corner of his eyes, before he turned to stare directly, the stranger might have been his brother.

Kaiba looked instead at the game, a fantasy knight in shining armor swinging his sword in a complicated maneuver against a giant robot. Mokuba would enjoy a game like that. Might invent one very like it, if the notion occurred to him.

He looked away. Touched his breast pocket where his deck sat above his heart, and the locket under his coat. He didn't tell himself it wouldn't happen; there would be no point. He already knew he would prevent it. Somehow.

He passed the arcade's open doors, approaching the security desk before the bank of elevators. Easiest to just present himself, claim he had an appointment. The tech division's turnover had always been so high there that it wouldn't be surprising if he didn't know the right names. He knew just the pitch of temper to present that would get him hurried along inside with minimal questions.

Just as he crossed under the circle of florescent lights around the desk, he heard a cough behind him, and a quiet voice said, "Seto-kun."

Kaiba stopped, turned around.

The man standing before him would be going on fifty, and showed it in the gray streaking his spiked hair, though his face was still round and youthful, mostly unlined. His violet eyes were raised to Kaiba's face, a long way up; he was shorter than half the kids in the arcade. But there was no hint of intimidation in his expression, no acknowledgment of their seeming difference. There never had been. Just understanding, as if merely looking at Kaiba he could read every intent.

He knew why Kaiba had come here, unmistakably. It had to be why he was here as well.

"Do you really believe you can do this, Seto-kun?" Yugi asked.

to be continued...