Disclaimer: I don't own Yu Gi Oh!. Never have. Never will. Darn… Also, JRR Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, whose second book (The Two Towers) Mokuba is reading after finishing his math test. The only part of said series that I own is the copy sitting up in my bookcase.

"And… checkmate."

Mokuba scowled at his older brother. "No fair! You always win!"

Seto smirked at the younger boy. They'd been playing chess since their returned from Kaiba Corporation Headquarters. It felt good to just relax with his brother for a change. But it was late, and they both had school the next day.

"C'mon! Let's play another! Maybe this time I'll win!"

"Not tonight. Time to go to bed."

"Aww, but Seto…" Mokuba gave his brother the infamous "puppydog eyes," which he usually couldn't resist.

"Not this time, little brother. It's a school night, and it's already late."

"Puh-lease?"

"No." He made shooing gestures with his hands. "Go on."

The younger boy scowled again. "But you're gonna go to bed, too, right?"

"…"

"Seto…"

"Oh, all right. Come, we can both use a good night's sleep."

Mokuba glanced curiously at the CEO. Seto never came even this close to admitting he was tired. Is something bothering him? With a start, Mokuba remembered the woman who had been in Seto's office earlier that night when he had brought him dinner. He was sure that he had heard Seto yelling just before he came in - and it took a lot to rattle his brother into losing his cool and yelling.

"Is everything okay, big brother?"

Seto looked at the boy, surprised. "Everything's fine. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing. Just a feeling."

Seto gave him a half grin, half grimace. His brother almost seemed to have a sixth sense: the ability to detect how people, especially him, were feeling. He again reassured the twelve-year-old that he was fine, but as he followed him up the stairs, he couldn't help remembering that crazy woman who had come to his office earlier that night. He was more disturbed by the incident then he liked to admit. Not only had she made that abominable claim, but also there had been something… almost familiar about her. Something that tugged at the back of his mind, demanding his attention, when all he wanted was to forget about the whole thing.

He pulled a face behind Mokuba's back. No use dwelling on it now. He'd sent her on her way; hopefully, she would take the hint and leave him to forget about her.

He was jerked out of his musings by his brother's cheerful, "Good night!" He bid the boy good night in return, watched the door to tbe bedroom close, and headed down the hall to his own room.

He swiftly changed into pajamas, and with a tired sigh flopped down on the bed. He was asleep before his head had even touched the pillow.

He was sitting in a warm, fire lit room. Shadowy figures that struck a cord in his memory – the same cord, he realized with the absentmindedness that always came with such dreams, that the stranger earlier had struck – drifted into and out of his vision. He saw that he was sitting on a couch, wrapped in a warm blanket, and that he was feeling a strange contentedness that he had not felt in many long years. He also noted that he was a lot smaller than he should be, younger than he was now. Another look around the room showed him a dog lying in front of the fire. The pup, a golden retriever, was yet another strangely familiar piece in this puzzle. He shook his head, trying to remember.

There was a whimpering next to him; looking down, he saw his brother – also much younger, perhaps two years old – curled up at his side. The little boy was sound asleep. He smiled fondly, putting a hand on the child's head to chase away whatever bad thing had plagued his dreams and caused the mewl. The tiny body stirred, murmuring something unintelligible, before smiling and once again sleeping soundly.

He grinned, happy to do him this small favor, when he was suddenly jerked into wakefulness by a loud blaring sound.

Seto sat up in his bed, blinking as he readjusted to his surroundings. Looking around, he saw that the source of the sound was his alarm clock.

Alarm clock? Just what time is it, anyway? He almost never slept until his alarm clock woke him up. He automatically woke up at five o'clock a.m. every morning; the only reason he even bothered to set the clock was for days when he, for some generally nonexistent reason, overslept.

Six o'clock… Not a lot of time, then. He scrambled out of bed, hurriedly showering and throwing on his school uniform before striding down the hall to Mokuba's room. At least someone's still on schedule, he thought wryly. He normally let his brother sleep until this hour, anyway.

He gave three sharp knocks on the door. "Mokuba! Time to get up."

There was a groan from inside the room.

Three more knocks. "Mokuba, I'm not kidding. It'ssix o'clock– time to get ready for school."

"Mmfff." From the sound of it, Mokuba had stuffed his head under the pillow in an attempt to drown out the sound of his older brother's knocking.

With a sigh, Seto opened the door. He stalked over to the boy's bed, grabbed the covers, and yanked them off.

"Ah! Cold! Seto!"

Seto smirked down at Mokuba's scowling face. "Are you up yet?"

"No," was the stubborn reply.

"Come on, Mokuba. You need to get ready for school."

With a melodramatic sigh, Mokuba rolled out of bed and stood up. "What's for breakfast?"

"Gruel," Seto said, keeping his face serious with practiced ease.

"Yippee, my favorite. C'mon, Seto, 'm serious."

"I haven't decided yet. Get dressed; if you hurry you can help me make it." Despite what one might think of someone with as much money as Seto Kaiba, he preferred to cook his own meals. They had a cook of course, but only for when he was unable to make something himself – he was at the office and Mokuba needed dinner, or something like that.

Mokuba's cry of, "Yeah!" was somewhat hard to hear above the thumping of his footsteps as he ran off to do as he was bid.

Ten minutes later found the two brothers down in the kitchen, the sharp smell of cooking bacon wafting throughout the house.

Mokuba was about to crack open a couple of eggs to add to the meal when Seto snatched them from his hands.

"Uh, why don't you let me do the eggs, Mokuba?" The memory of the last time Mokuba had tried to make eggs was painfully sharp in his mind. That had been the first - and only - time either boy had been late for school. The entire kitchen, including the two of them, had been completely covered in gooey egg. It had taken a long time to clean that mess up, and an even longer time before Mokuba was allowed anywhere near the kitchen again.

"Aww, c'mon Seto, I won't use the electric mixer this time, I promise…"

"Absolutely not." Seto cracked the eggs in a bowl and started to beat them with a whisk.

"Aww…"

There was a moment's pause, before, "Well, can I flip the bacon, then?"

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Mokuba was too busy stuffing his face and mentally reviewing for the math test he was having that day; Seto was pondering the dream that his alarm had woken him from.

Was it a dream? Or… a memory? Something told him it was the latter. He shook his head, trying to recall more. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to bring the shadowy figures into focus. Must have been too long ago…

"Seto?" He looked at Mokuba, realizing that he had said something.

"I'm sorry, Mokuba. What did you say?"

"Are you okay? You've been acting strange lately."

"Yeah, I'm… I'm fine."

"…Okay. If you say so." After a pause, he continued, "I was just saying that we should leave for school now."

"Right. Get your things."

The conversation during the ride to Mokuba's school was fairly one-sided, with Mokuba chattering on and on about random subjects and Seto responding with an, "Uh-huh…" where it was required.

"And I was wondering, do you think that… Oh, never mind, we're here. 'Bye, Seto!"

"See you later," Seto said as Mokuba sprung out of the limo.

Let's see… three x plus four equals five x… Collect the variables… And that's a coefficient, which is multiplication, so I want to do the reverse and divide… Then… x should equal two.

Mokuba looked over his work, satisfied that he'd answered every question on the test correctly so far. Just his luck that he had math first period, he had mused earlier. Glancing at the clock, he saw that he still had almost fifteen minutes to finish. For the three questions he had left, there was plenty of time.

Okay… Next problem's five x minus two…

Even in school, Seto Kaiba didn't stop working. He was currently laboring on a document that he had meant to finish the previous night, had that woman not distracted him…

He scowled. Even now, she wouldn't leave his thoughts! What was up with that, anyway? It's not like he believed her – his mother had died over ten years ago. It wasn't like–

Seto just barely got his fingers out of the way before the lid to his laptop came crashing down, folding in on itself. He glared at the teacher whose hands were resting up the top.

"Can I help you?" he asked in an annoyed voice.

"You can put this machine away and start paying attention!"

He slid his 'machine' out from under her hands, carefully opening it and checking for damage. Satisfied that there was none, he replaced it on the desk and glanced idly up at her.

"I was paying attention," he replied.

"Then answer the question!" she hissed.

In a bored voice, Seto rattled off the answer to the question she had just asked the class. It was a skill he was quite proud of; teachers never expected him to be able to answer them correctly when he was working. With a triumphant smirk at her stunned face, he reopened his laptop and returned to work, fingers typing rapidly to make up for lost time. After a moment's pause, she stepped away from the desk and once again began lecturing the class.

The bell for next period rang throughout the hallways and classrooms, accompanied, at least in the algebra classroom, by the groans of students whose tests weren't quite finished. Mokuba, who had been done ten minutes before then, merely looked up from the book he was reading, dragged his mind away from the battle of Helm's Deep, collected his things, and brought his paper up to his teacher.

"Wasn't that hard?" he heard one girl ask her friend.

"Yeah, I know. I couldn't get the answer to number five at all!" her friend agreed.

He heard similar things from around the room, various groups of friends chatting about how they thought they had done. He frowned sadly. The answer to number five, if he recalled, was "x equals twenty-one." It wasn't that which had him so down; he was fairly certain that he'd gotten that one right. It was the fact that they were talking to their friends. He didn't have any friends, at least not in school. Seto was his best friend, and Seto, of course, was too old to go to Junior High with him. Even Yugi Motou and his friends (who he liked, even if his brother despised) all went to a different school. It wasn't that he didn't meet people easily, or that he was a mean person; it was just that no one seemed to want to be friends with the vice president of the most powerful company in Japan. Perhaps they thought he would fire their parents if they made him angry or something, he didn't know. With a sigh, he handed his paper in and headed to his next class.

The rest of the day went much the same for Seto ashis first class had. He worked, the teachers questioned his ability to multitask, he proved them wrong, they ignored him for the rest of the class. Pretty much what he went through every day. The only difference, of course, was that he was never quite able to focus entirely on his work. His mind always jumped to the woman who claimed to be his mother.

Lunchtime brought a much needed break. He never worked during lunch; the risk of spilling something on his computer was too great. If he wanted to continue working, he would skip lunch and go to the library. That's what he usually did, as a matter of fact. Today was different, though. He was looking forward to a break; his head had begun to ache from his many attempts to force himself to concentrate.

He put his computer away in his locker – again, it was too risky to eat around it. Not that he was a slob –just careful.

He made his way through the lunch line, wondering briefly about the nutritional value of the unappetizing… whatever it was they were serving. When he'd paid for his lunch, he found a table in the back corner where he could sit alone in peace.

"Hey! Hey, look, it's Kaiba! What are you doing here, Kaiba?"

"I go to school here, Yugi," he replied with as much patience as he could muster. So much for peace. He did not want to talk with his rival right now. As a matter of fact, if he never had to speak with him again (outside of a duel, of course – he still needed to reclaim his title from him) he would be quite pleased indeed.

"Yeah, I know, but you usually spend lunch down in the library."

"Well, I'm obviously not down there today," he said, trying not to be impetuous.

"Oh. Well, do you want to sit with us then?"

"No."

"Are you sure? I'm sure no one will–"

"Quite sure."

"Oh. Well, okay. But if you change you mind and want some company, we're sitting over there." Yugi pointed. "'Bye, Kaiba!"

He responded with what in any other person could have been described as a grunt and returned to his meal.

Unlike his brother, if anyone had asked Mokuba to join their table, he would have been only too willing. He gazed sadly around the cafeteria. His day so far had been as uneventful as his brother's had been. School seemed to have a rhythm to it, he had noted once. The days were always fairly similar, and each melted together in his memory, creating one big, semi-monotonous section of his life that was labeled, "junior high." Shaking his head, he moved off to his usual table, in a corner next to a window where he could sit and think.

With a rueful smile, he thought to himself, Just another typical day in the life of the Kaiba brothers…

Little did young Mokuba know, later that day, his life would be changed forever...