Chapter 18 – Chaos Unleashed

Chaos, the final frontier. Be afraid, be very afraid.

The last chapter, folks. Thanks for all of the awesome reviews. They were great encouragement when I started to lose faith in what I was writing about. Now it's time to start a new story. If you would like a sneak preview, just check out my profile page. Should be highly entertaining.

It's called "Advice from a 5,000-year-old Pharaoh". The title alone should give you a big hint… ;)

Now, on with the story…

Recap

Moneybags had called her Téa. Not Gardner, as he usually did.

Not Gardner.

Whoa…

Joey's eyes widened as the mantra in his head came to a screeching halt. No more excuses or reasons.

Joey knew.

Tristan watched as Joey's eyes burned and his nostrils flared. Something had just pissed him off beyond reason.

Yugi saw Joey's back stiffen and his hands clench around the handles of the tray he still carried. In fact, he was holding it so hard that his knuckles had turned white. If he didn't ease up soon, the tray was going to crack under the pressure.

Mokuba blanched at the soft curses Joey whispered under his breath. He was suddenly very afraid for his older brother.

Silence ruled in the hallway as Kaiba's words trailed off into nothingness.

Soft rustling noises seeped into the hallway from Téa's open bedroom door and an even softer voice damned everything Seto had been doing his best to try and hide.

"Seto, come back to bed. I'm cold…"

"You BASTARD!"

The echo of Joey's words reverberated through the hallway and time seemed to stand still. The only thing he saw then and there was red. The crimson silk of Kaiba's pyjama top was a cape waved by a matador. And that little red spot on his neck was his focal point. It had to be a … Joey wouldn't even let himself think the word. It was too horrendous a thought. That she… and him… had done… stuff… A growl of unparalleled proportions broke the silence in the seconds after his outburst. The urge to bash him around with his head and toss him over his shoulder and down the stairs, breaking every bone in Seto Kaiba's miserable, traitorous body, viciously pulsated through his veins. How dare he!

The restraining hand on Joey's arm was the only thing that saved Kaiba from his wrath. Probably from having the breakfast tray thrown at his head as well. Tristan pulled hard, almost throwing himself off balance in the process. He knew how his blonde friend thought and the murderous rage in his eyes had given him enough of a warning to grab him before he made a complete ass out of himself. There was a time for anger and a time for rational thinking.

Joey was the type to hit first and ask questions later.

Not that Tristan didn't want to join in on the 'fun' but there had to be an explanation of some kind.

Mind-control, alcohol, drugs or… or… something. There was no way that this had happened voluntarily.

NO way.

"SETO!" Mokuba pushed past Joey, who was still fighting Tristan's hold on his arm, to step in front of his brother and spread his arms wide. There was no way anyone was going to hurt his big brother while he was around. He'd gone through enough trouble to try to keep everyone from finding out while giving them some 'alone time' that he wasn't going to have it ruined now by watching his brother get killed.

"Joey, calm down, man. What has gotten into you all of a sudden? Give me the tray before you hurt yourself, or someone else, with it." Tristan made a grab for the slipping tray without realizing that he'd given Joey a brilliant idea for getting Kaiba to bleed. With a ferocious twist that must have hurt like the dickens, Joey freed his arm from Tristan's grasp.

"You wanna know what's gotten inta me? Kaiba's been messin' wit' Téa!" The words were fairly shouted across the intervening space and Seto almost winced at the underlying venom he sensed. "Dey slept together last night!"

"What are you talking…?" Joey's growl cut Tristan off mid-sentence.

"Look at him, Tris! He's not even tryin' t' deny it!"

Yugi's fruitless attempt to recapture Joey's arm only succeeded in making him overreach just enough to knock shoulders with Tristan. Both boys fell against the wall, the dull thud ricocheting down the hallway. No one could save Kaiba now.

"Mokuba, move! If I have to defend myself, I don't want you anywhere near here." Seto's only reaction to Joey's threat of violence was to widen his stance, giving himself better leverage should Joey decide to rush him. By the mad look in his eyes and the heavy grunting of his breathing, it was a serious possibility.

"No way, Seto. Joey's gonna kill you with his bare hands. Can't you see the crazy look in his eyes? I'm not going to let him murdalize you!" Mokuba spread his arms even wider, feet shoulder width apart and a determined look in his young eyes. Seto sighed as he realized that Mokuba was being serious. It touched him that his little brother was so protective but now was not the time for niceties. Shoving the younger Kaiba aside and behind, Seto stepped in front of him. One step closer to his own doom, or so it seemed.

"Joey, no! Téa'll kill you if you start something with that guy in the middle of her hallway on Christmas morning!" Yugi exclaimed, struggling to free himself from the tangled mess of Tristan's arms and legs. Nothing seemed to reach Joey. He'd gone beyond them all into a world of his own creation, one where he was going to satisfy his primitive, barbaric urge to beat Kaiba to a pulp for messing with his friend.

With a wordless, ear-splitting shriek that would have made a banshee proud, Joey prepared to launch himself at his own worst nemesis. It was high time that Kaiba paid for being such a jerk.

Everything seemed to go into slow motion right at that exact moment.

Téa's blue eyes, once blissfully closed in peaceful slumber, lazily drifted open as a particularly loud noise reached her ears. Her questing hand had come up empty as it searched fruitlessly for the comforting warmth of a solid wall of chest. A hazy memory of calling out to him surfaced in her mind as she shifted aside the comforter and awkwardly dragged herself out of bed.

'Maybe he got lost,' she thought sleepily before shuffling her feet forward to find her pink, fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy. That's exactly how her mind felt. Sleep still fogged her head as she ran her fingers through her hair, putting it into some semblance of order. The strange noises she was vaguely hearing didn't even register as she carefully made her way to her bedroom door.

Joey cocked his arm, heedless of the dishes clinking together, and prepared himself to throw the tray like a Frisbee. Gnashing his teeth together, he looked Kaiba straight in the eye. Not a single mote of fear crossed the other's vision and Joey's blood pressure rose another fifty points.

"NO!" Several different voices merged as one as a shadow crossed the light seeping in from Téa's open bedroom door. Yugi stretched his arm out, desperate to stop the impossible and hoping that somehow his arm would grow another three feet.

Alas, that didn't happen.

The door was open so Seto must have slipped out for some reason. The washroom was a possibility but she really hoped it was to go make a pot of coffee. That would be almost as good as snuggling with him would have been. Maybe there was a way to combine the two. Coffee and Seto together would be a deadly combination but so worth it. A quick glance at her bedside clock showed that it was 8:09 am. It was too early to be up but she was determined to find out what had happened to her boyfriend. He wouldn't leave her willingly, not with the possessive way he'd held her last night as they both drifted off to sleep.

Stepping across the threshold of her doorway, her eyes beheld a sight for sleepy eyes…

Crimson silk, dappled in the rays of morning light streaming from her room, draped the upper body of the man she was looking for and Téa smiled right then. The object of her deep affections must have been just about to come back to bed with her. Seto had heard her call for him after all. Only two feet separated them…

"There you are. I missed you," she mumbled happily, her bright, half-lidded eyes settling on Seto. Two steps closed the distance between them and he felt her arms gently encircle his waist and her cheek come to rest softly against his chest.

What was she thinking? Couldn't she see the bone-breaking, flesh-rending rage in Wheeler's eyes? Breaking eye contact with the mutt for a split second, Seto glanced down and noticed that now her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow and steady. It hit him then, why she was acting so strangely.

Téa Gardner was not a morning person.

She wasn't even fully conscious of her actions at that particularly tense moment in time.

Air whistled harshly between Joey's teeth. The tray trembled in response to his madness, coffee and water delicately splattering the linen napkin folded next to the plate of pancakes. If only his eyes could shoot laser beams and incinerate Kaiba where he stood… The bastard didn't even have the grace to be scared of Joey's towering need to obliterate the very essence of Seto Kaiba.

The muscles in his arm tensed and the shot was milliseconds away when the unthinkable happened.

Téa.

She wandered out of her room, mumbled something and calmly wrapped her arms around the biggest jerk in the world as if it were the most natural thing for her to do. By the look of her eyes, she didn't know where she was or what was going on. She didn't even see the rest of them in the hallway. Hadn't even looked, acknowledged their existence or anything like that. All of her attention had been focussed on Seto Kaiba.

Yugi and Yami looked on in absolute delight as the resolution in Kaiba's eyes changed. No longer chips of ice, they had softened as the girl had slipped her arms around him in an affectionate gesture. And they didn't have to hear her words to know that something special had passed between the two of them.

Mokuba wasn't impressed with Seto. He was old enough to take care of himself and to be shoved aside like that was almost an insult. Then again, he had better things to hold on to now that Téa had made her appearance. Guess he couldn't be too upset at his attempt to save his brother's life.

Then there was Tristan, who just couldn't comprehend what was happening in the first place. Kaiba should have been dead, or at the least completely comatose on the floor, by that point in time. Joey was unstoppable when he was that mad. Even Téa appearing like magic out of her bedroom shouldn't have been enough to deter him from his objective. Unless…

Seto could see tomorrow's newspaper headlines already. "KaibaCorp. CEO Killed in Breakfast Tray Frenzy" Now there was a perfect way to be remembered by the world. Note the sarcasm of the thought. Not for his legacy as the creator of the Duel Disk System or one of the greatest players of Duel Monsters in the world. Definitely not. He'd much rather have the headlines read "CEO Killed Protecting Loved One from Fatal Attack". Love. Another word that shouldn't have existed in his vocabulary and yet it did. Strangely enough, he didn't mind it. One small four-letter word had skewed his entire world. That one word meant that he would rather take the brunt of Joey's attack if it spared Téa a single second of pain.

And he had done just that.

Mere seconds had passed since Téa showed up and yet, Joey's shot had never taken place. What he'd seen Kaiba do next had made his head reel in utter confusion.

Seto Kaiba, normally the cold, unfeeling bastard who made his life a living hell on a regular basis, had wrapped his arms around Téa and turned her away from Joey. Kaiba was offering his back as a target to the onslaught of the tray he figured was coming. There was no way that Kaiba could have missed Joey's intentions with it. And yet, he was letting himself continue to be the bullseye instead of putting Téa in harm's way.

Joey had seen the look in Kaiba's eyes just before he'd touched Téa and he could have sworn he'd seen something akin to the protectiveness he usually reserved for his little brother flash across them. Kaiba was shielding Téa from him. He was putting his own life in danger.

A braver act Joey had never witnessed which is why the tray had never left his hands. Kaiba could have done something completely different – shove her out of the way, shove her at Joey instead – and yet he hadn't done anything of the sort to save his own skin. He was willing to risk his own pain in the face of keeping her safe from harm.

Whoa.

Maybe he wasn't such a jerk after all.

Mokuba, Yugi, Yami and Tristan watched as Joey's anger simply melted away. The tenseness in the atmosphere dissolved as he lowered the tray from its' ready position.

A collective sigh of relief from all gathered echoed around the hallway.

"Kaiba, you're all right," Joey said, his voice soft with wonder at the noble gesture the elder Kaiba had made.

Half an hour later…

"… and that's how it all started," Téa finished before taking a sip of the coffee that rested in front of her. Seto squeezed her knee under the table and she couldn't help the flush that bloomed on her cheeks at the private gesture of affection. From what he'd said, he'd saved her from the wrath of a pissed off, tray-wielding Joey Wheeler. She honestly didn't remember anything until a few minutes after that supposed incident when she'd woken to find herself being held in his arms in the hallway with everyone staring at the two of them. Yugi had explained the reason for the staring – both of them had survived.

"Man, I still can't believe dat I didn't realize it from de beginnin'," Joey groused, his hand tousling through his blonde hair. "I just thought dat he was harassin' ya for info on Yugi's deck or sumptin' like that. Should have known better."

"Well, they did try to keep it hidden, Joey," Mokuba replied, trying to make his friend feel better for being so oblivious.

"At least I was right when I said I saw Kaiba at de mall." Joey turned to look at Kaiba as he sat next to Téa. From the blush on her cheeks, Kaiba had just done 'something' to her without anyone seeing. Great, now Joey had to protect her from the fact that Kaiba was guy. Being a guy himself, Joey knew what was on his mind.

"At least we know you're not a total ditz brain now," Tristan quipped, eyeing Joey sideways as he took a sip from his own mug of coffee.

'What is a ditz brain? Is this another reference to the fact that Joey has blonde hair?' Yugi didn't even hear the Pharaoh's mental question as laughter consumed the table.

Merry Christmas.

There. It's finished. All done. Hope that everyone was satisfied with it. It's taken me a while to get it out. I had it half written before I completely re-did Téa's part in the whole scenario. Please leave a review and tell me what you thought of it.

It's only taken me an entire year to get the whole series out and now I have ideas for other stories that need to be worked out. Hopefully, those won't be nearly as long to finish. As I stated above, my profile page contains an excerpt from my next fic "Advice from a 5,000 Year-Old Pharaoh".

Thanks for everything – you guys rock!

Aphrael21;)