Chapter 6

In another part of the KaibaLand theme park Hathor reappeared once more. Originally she had planned to return to the elders once she had spoken to the pharaoh, but she felt a feeling deep inside herself that wouldn't allow her to leave without seeing Kaiba first. She looked up at the duel doom that was in the shape of the head of a Blue Eyes White Dragon, and began to walk to its entrance when she was passed by the younger Kaiba brother Mokuba.

Mokuba walked straight by her but suddenly stopped and turned to face Hathor. A smile flashed across his face before he turned and continued on his way.

Hathor wondered if the boy had seen her or not. She wasn't allowing herself to be seen by anyone else but the older of the Kaiba brothers, so why had he smiled at her? She shrugged it off as it had happened and there was nothing that she could do about it now.

It took a while for her to find the room where Kaiba himself was sat watching a screen with the latest information about his tournament displayed on it. Like always, he was alone in the room.

"It's rude to enter a room without knocking." he said as he turned to face Hathor. "Who are you anyway?"

For a guy who didn't believe in the supernatural, Hathor was surprised that Kaiba had sensed her presence. "It's been a month since you last saw me and already you've forgotten me?" she asked as her appearance changed to that of Emma's.

"No, I haven't." Kaiba replied calmly and turned back to his screen as he quietly said; "But you're gone now."

"So you know of my death?" Hathor asked as she took a few more steps closer to Kaiba.

"I was informed a week after they had found the body since they were unable to contact any next of kin I was asked to identify it." Kaiba spoke not wanting to associate Emma and the corpse as the same person.

"That must have been hard for you to do." Hathor said still making her way closer to him.

"I never did it." Kaiba told her. "Eventually they managed to make contact with Pegasus so I was no longer required to help them with their request." He leaned to rest his chin in his clenched hands, his elbows on the table.

"Why didn't you tell the others about my death?" Hathor asked as they were all right there in the amusement park and within Kaiba's reach. From the reaction that she had got from the pharaoh she knew that they would have wanted to know. "Do you really despise them that much?"

"How am I supposed to tell anyone else when I don't even fully accept that you're dead?" He lowered his head so that his forehead was resting in his hands. "Maybe things would have been different if I had seen the body, but right now I'm still convinced that I'll see you when I return home."

"But you won't." Hathor told him. "You can't change what has already happened. You're in denial."

"You think I don't know that!" Kaiba shouted as he turned to face Hathor again. His voice sounded angry but was in fact the result of him holding back the pain of losing his friend. "Why else would I be talking to you? I don't converse with dead people."

"You used to with your mother." Hathor told him one of the many secret things that she had been told as Emma.

"I was a child and didn't know any better." Kaiba turned in his chair away from Hathor and back to his screen. Even though he was staring straight at it his thoughts were elsewhere.

"It doesn't mean that she's not still out there watching over you." Hathor told him, hoping that he'd realise that he was never truly alone.

"Nobody is watching over me." Kaiba stated. "It's just myself looking out for Mokuba, because if I don't then no one else will. It's been like that since the day he was born." he sounded bitter.

Hathor decided not to say anything else that she thought might try to help Kaiba come to terms with his feelings as what she had tried already had only seemed to make matters worse. She viewed the screen with the tournament details on. "You're holding another tournament I see, but you don't seem to be participating."

"I've given up duelling." Kaiba simply replied.

"Why?" Hathor sounded shocked to hear that Kaiba had given up on one of the things he loved most.

"Life's too short to waste it on pointless non-achievable things." It was almost as though Kaiba was admitting that he would never be able to defeat Yugi in a duel ever. "I should be focusing on building a future that I can leave behind for Mokuba. My company has already taken many blows recently so I'm trying to re-build it back up to repair the damage that has been done."

"And you're doing this by sacrificing your dream of being the greatest duel monsters champion of all time?" Hathor still couldn't believe that Kaiba wasn't going to duel anymore. "Are you sure that you're not going to regret this?"

"I don't do regret." Kaiba said bluntly staring at the profile of a duelist named Zigfried.

Hathor sighed heavily as she changed back to her normal self. "Before she died, Emma, had struggled to come to terms with emotions that she felt for you. She was even ready to confess her undying love for you the next time that she would see you, but fate was cruel and took her before she had the chance. She died regretting that she hadn't done it sooner whilst she had the time to do so. This was the only regret that she had when she died, and as a result I am left to feel the pain of the love that she had for you." Light appeared behind her and she turned to leave and finally return to the elders. "Just make sure that you don't do something similar to your brother."

Kaiba listened to what Hathor had to say. He found it hard to believe that anybody would have been able to care about him so much, as he was too familiar with the loneliness that he had let consume his life so far. "Wait!" he called as he turned around, but found that Hathor had already gone. He began to question whether what had just happened had been real or not. Had it just been part of his imagination thanks to his denial of Emma's death?

There was a knock at the door before it opened and in entered one of Kaiba's men. "What is it?" he asked rather annoyed that he had been disturbed while he tried to make sense of everything that Hathor had said to him.

"We've completed our investigation in to Mr Zigfried Lloyd, and your assumptions were correct, sir." the man told Kaiba as he handed him the piece of paper that contained all of his findings.

Kaiba stared down at the paper he had been given and focused on what he had been doing before Hathor had shown up. What she had said could wait till later. He stared at the screen which now displayed the final round as 'Leon Wilson Vs Zigfried Lloyd'. "Zigfried, your little game is over."

"Sir, shall I alert security to escort him out of KaibaLand?" the man in the suit asked.

Kaiba thought to himself for a moment about what Hathor had said about regret. "No, that won't be necessary. I'll deal with him myself." He rose from his chair and walked to a safe at the far end of the room, where he opened it and removed his metal briefcase. "Nobody crashes my tournament, sabotages my company's systems and gets away with it."

The End