Alright, I know I haven't updated in a good long while…I'm so sorry! The time between Thanksgiving Break and Christmas Break was filled with a bunch of last minute projects and a bunch of stuff to learn, and, the worst, tests. Yes, I had tests in every class but band on my last day. Actually, supposed to, since we didn't have time in one class, but I still studied anyway.

And now that it's Christmas Break, I've been trying to do more of what I'm not able to do at all during school—drawing something good and spending time on it, spending time with family, practicing some clarinet stuff to play for my family, and I'm also trying to do more of what I don't have as much time to do during school. So, everything's being pushed around, and one of them as of now is fanfiction. Sorry…

I wanted to put this up earlier, originally, but because of the afore mentioned, I was not able to. The next chapter was supposed to be up by today…whoops.

Well…I've forgotten the disclaimer in many of my previous chapters, so here it is once more. The characters and places in this fanfiction are the property of…the guy who wrote Yugioh. Yes, sad, I don't know his name…

Okay. Enough rambling. On with Chapter XV!

"What happened?" Kaiba asked softly for the second time. They were still standing out in the rain, dripping wet and soaked. She hadn't wanted to talk at first, simply crying and clinging to him. Knowing that it might take awhile for her to tell him, if she even would, he stopped asking her. However, it seemed that she had stopped crying. Maybe she would feel good enough to talk now.

He was right. She began to talk, but he couldn't hear a word she was saying. "Serenity, stop mumbling. I can't hear you." He pulled her away from him and put a companionable arm around her shoulders. "Just tell me while we're walking. It should make you feel better."

She wiped at her eyes. "Well, you know how my brother picked up the phone? When I came back, he was angry with me. But he wouldn't tell me the reason."

"What do you mean?"

Taking in a breath to calm what remained of her nerves, she told him the event with all the details she could remember. Her friend listened without interruption, though questions formed in clusters in his head. There would be no use asking all these questions, anyway. It wasn't like she would know the answer to most of them, anyway. They were all reasons, and not hers.

When she finished, he kept silent for awhile, staring up at the sky. It was dark, but he could see the faint outlines of clouds reflected in the sky. He thought he could detect the moon's light behind a thin blanket of clouds, a small, dim glow. That must have been most of the rain that would fall for awhile.

He looked back down at the girl beside him. "Well? What do you want to do about it?"

"I don't know…" she said softly, looking down at her hands clasped before her.

"You haven't thought that far yet, have you?" he chuckled softly. "Well, you have awhile. I'm not in much of hurry right now."

"Where were you going?" she questioned, looking up at him. "I mean, before I ran into you."

He shrugged. "Home. I had enough of work for awhile."

"Walking?" she asked, surprised. "In the rain? But I thought…"

"That I would take a car? Probably. No, I needed some time to think. Driving requires too much concentration." The corners of his mouth twitched up. "And you're lucky I decided to walk. Or else you would probably still be running around."

"Yeah," she admitted. They stayed quiet for a while longer. Suddenly, she said, "Are you still going home now? I thought your home was"—she pointed behind them—"in that direction."

So she had finally caught on. He was starting to wonder if she had forgotten all the trips to visit Mokuba so long ago, or if she simply had never paid attention. "No, I'm not."

Those few words were enough to give her a pause. "But you said…"

"What did I say?"

"You said that you were heading home…" She sounded uncertain.

"You asked where I was heading before you ran into me, and I said home. I never said anything about now." Amusement tinged his words.

He could tell from the slight frown that was lightly wrinkling her forehead that she was confused. "Then…then where are you going now?"

All signs of amusement and cordiality disappeared. "I'm taking you home."

She stopped suddenly, and he had taken a few more steps before he could stop. He turned around to consider the girl, who now had her head down and her hands clasped before her in a shy manner once more. "I'm not going."

He sighed, knowing even as he had spoken the words that she wouldn't just give in. He ran a hand through his wet hair and walked over to her. "Where else do you plan on going, then? It's not like you have anywhere else to go. You don't have any relatives living near, do you?"

She stubbornly refused to answer, simply standing on the middle of the sidewalk and looking down. He could see that she was trying her hardest not to cry again from the unfocused look in her eyes and the set of her mouth. However, she couldn't keep up the pretense for long. Tears leaked out of her eyes again. "I don't want to go," she whispered.

The look on Seto's face softened when he saw her shoulders beginning to shake. Putting an arm around her shoulders once more, he pulled at her slightly. "Well, there's no use standing out here," he said. "Let's just continue to walk, okay?"

Sniffling a bit and wiping her eyes, she nodded.

The sun was hidden behind the tall buildings of downtown when they finally reached Serenity's ex-residence. It left the sky in a colorful glow, the windows reflecting the light like a thousand mirrors. Even when those buildings were nothing more than a fist full of thick sticks pointed towards the sky, Seto could still see the light it made. A few extra lights lit the street around them, preparing for the night to come.

He had not intentionally wanted to come this way, knowing how she felt, but he had ended up coming this way anyway. After a few blocks, it finally occurred to him that even though she didn't want to return home, he had to let her brother know that she wasn't injured somewhere. As little as he might have shown it today, he still had to care for his little sister. And Joey was her guardian, anyway, and responsible for her.

Serenity hadn't looked up the whole time. He would glance at her occasionally to see her counting the cracks in the sidewalk, or doing whatever she was doing. "You know where we're heading, right?" he asked softly. "Even after all of this, you need to tell him what you want to do. It may not seem like it, but he's probably worried for you."

She didn't answer, but continued to put one foot in front of the other. "If you're mad at me, it's your problem." He sounded slightly amused. "You don't have to stay with me." When she still ignored him, he sighed, giving up. The rest of the walk continued in silence.

"Hey, we're there," he said, taking his arm from around her. Putting his hands inside his pockets—they were pretty cold from being out in the wind for so long—he started to walk to the door of the Wheeler residence. He didn't turn around to check if Serenity was following him. Instead, he rang the doorbell.

He was almost about to ring the doorbell once more when the door finally opened a crack. "What do you want?" Joey's voice demanded.

Kaiba mentally shook his head. He hadn't even seen his sister—who had walked to stand behind him. "I don't want anything, Wheeler."

The door opened further, and Joey's now-visible eyes narrowed. "Then what are you here for?"

"I thought you might want to know the whereabouts of your sister." His face remained impassive.

Joey hesitated for a slight second, then said, "She'll come back soon enough when she feels better." Indecision flickered across his eyes.

"That's what you think." Kaiba stepped over so Joey could finally see that his sister was right behind him. "I had to persuade her to come back."

"And she ran to you?" he sneered. "All the way to your precious KaibaCorp? I find that hard to believe from a person like you."

Kaiba's eyes flashed. "Why don't you ask the story from her? I'm sure you'll trust Serenity more than you trust me." He felt a head bury itself in his purple trench coat. "Do you think it's my fault that she came to me and not you?"

"Stop it," a muffled voice said. "Stop it." Kaiba turned around as he felt the pressure removed from his back and saw Serenity's tear streaked face staring at her brother. He followed her gaze to see the uncertain look back in Joey's eyes once more, which slowly became a look of no emotion. After a moment's silent battle, Serenity pulled at Kaiba's sleeve. "I want to go somewhere else," she said.

He looked at her brother once more, then turned around, staring at the darkening sky, a deep indigo and violet gradient. "Fine," he finally said. "You can stay at KaibaCorp for tonight."

They were walking away when they heard a voice behind them. "Hey, Seren, you'll come back sometime, right? I mean, you won't stay away from me forever?"

She stopped. "I will," she said softly. She pulled on his sleeve once more. "Let's go."

A soft sigh broke the silence in the quiet room. A single shaft of light penetrated the darkness like a fat, glowing rod, casting long shadows on the walls and ceiling. The window was now covered in the heavy curtain that was usually seen as open. A head was bent over the large desk near the center of the room.

Kaiba put his head in his hands. What was he doing here, at this time in the night? No, it was morning, he corrected himself, glancing at the numbers on the bottom corner of his screen. It was fifteen minutes past one. He should have gone home instead.

Of course, though, this was really the only time he could correctly analyze all he had learned about Mokuba's disappearance. The last couple of weeks had been busy, and there was still so much work left to do. If he didn't do it now, he would never have time to do it. How he wished he could skip all of this company work and find Mokuba instead. Though no one fully realized it, he missed Mokuba badly. All he wanted to do was find his brother.

But that wasn't possible. This company wasn't just about him, and neither was his life. He had hundreds of employees to keep employed so they could support their families, and had hundreds of blueprints for new technology for kids—and adults, he admitted—who played duel monsters and other such games. Most of all, this company needed the profit from all of this to keep it happening.

His tired eyes wandered to the girl who had taken his couch for the night. Serenity was nothing more than a shape in the darkness that was illuminated faintly from the lamp on his desk. Lucky girl, allowed to sleep.

The alert of new mail brought his concentration back in line again. He watched the little alert pop up from the corner of the screen, and clicked on it. The sender was hidden, and he wondered who it was.

But he was immediately awake when he saw the subject of the email. Mokuba.

"What is it?" a sleepy voice said from behind him.

The voice momentarily startled him. He turned around to see Serenity's eyes, not yet fully awake, looking over his shoulder at the screen. "Information about Mokuba," she read.

He didn't answer, but clicked the subject instead. The email inside was fairly short.

"Seto Kaiba:

Meet me before the city hall on Christmas Eve, at precisely 8:00 pm. We have your brother."

There was no name on the bottom, or anything else to have signified who it had come from, only an icon with the crossed blades that Serenity had found on the chip that day that had seemed so long ago. Kaiba scanned over it once more, hoping to find anything he had missed, hidden words in the text, something not in the body of the letter. Nothing. No news is good news, his mind whispered to him.

"Are you going to go?" Serenity asked from behind him.

"Yes," he answered without hesitation.

"That's two weeks away…" Serenity mused quietly. He heard a small gasp. "Oh! Two weeks! I just realized that I haven't even bought all of my friends their presents yet!"

He couldn't help the small smile that crept up to one corner of his mouth, even after the unpleasantness of the news he had gotten. He hadn't bought anything either, since Mokuba wasn't here. A thought from yesterday evening popped up, brought up from that voice mentioning friends, but he pushed it away.

"Well," he said, closing the window and getting ready to turn off the computer. He felt in a much better mood, now that he had found something he was looking for—even though it wasn't the best to hear, it was something, and probably as good as he could hope for—and he still had time to sleep. The anxiousness and doubt hadn't come to his mind, not yet. He would save that for when he woke up tomorrow and had time to analyze through it.

Yet when he tried to fall asleep on an extra bed he had kept in a small room for the purpose of late nights and early mornings, he found the dreaded feelings and thoughts creeping through to him already. Instead, he found himself tossing and turning until the sun's light slowly crept into the room from between the curtains, when he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.

So that's it for this chapter…I'm sorry it's shorter, too! But I can't put too much in, or it'll seem like a drag…especially when what's coming up has to be exciting. Well, I hope it wasn't too bad…review, please! Um…constructive criticism on my overall writing would be nice.