"It's ringing."
They had ended up returning to Kaiba's office; Yugi had forgotten his celphone there, which had the number, and Kaiba preferred to make the call on a secure line anyway. They, as it transpired, included not just Yugi and his pair of idiot friends, but a veritable crowd that was now filling up his office like some outrageously exotic masquerade. Flame Swordsman was talking up Black Magician Girl, his own Lord of Dragon was apparently nursemaiding the Baby Dragon, Black Magician was in unexpectedly serious conversation with Kuriboh and two bobbing Scapegoats, and Kaiba supposed he should be grateful that Honda didn't duel.
And that was just inside, to say nothing of the menagerie outside. If he had known this would be the case he might have reconsidered stacking his deck with so many dragons. Or else seen to it that his office had more windows. The first Blue Eyes had been joined by a second, as well as Emerald Dragon and Twilight Zone Dragon. Curse of Dragon was curled around the top frame, and he thought he had glimpsed Magician of Black Chaos riding between Red Eyes' black pinions, despite there having been no proper summoning ritual. If the third Blue Eyes showed up, there wouldn't be much space left for it to land.
He just hoped the God Cards kept out of mortal affairs. There definitely would not be room for their mass. Sturdy as the KC Building was, it had been designed to withstand earthquakes, not perching deities.
"Um, guys, it's ringing," Yugi said again, barely audible over the hubbub.
"Silence," Kaiba barked, and the room went quiet, everyone and everything present shutting up as they turned toward the desk.
Jounouchi and Honda blinked at him. "No need to shout, Kaiba, we're sitting right here--"
"Hello?" Yugi said suddenly into the phone. "Is that you, Malik-kun? It's Yugi. How are you? How's Egypt right now? ...Yes, I'm fine, but we have a problem--you see, Kaiba-kun's brother--oh, you heard?"
Kaiba hit the button to put the call over the speaker. "Rishid saw it on the news from Japan, and told me and my sister," Malik's disembodied voice sounded through the office. "We've all been worried. So he hasn't been found yet?"
"No," Yugi said, "but we're hoping you can help us."
"Of course," Malik said warmly, "however we can, though since we don't have any Millennium Items anymore, I'm not sure how much we could do--"
"Not like that," Yugi told him. "You see, the guys who have Mokuba-kun--we think they're your Rare Hunters."
There was a pause, and then Malik said, slowly, "Yugi, I swear to you, I disbanded the Ghouls. I haven't seen any of them since I left Domino after Battle City, and I would never order them to do anything to hurt you or any of your friends again--"
"Malik." When Kaiba looked, it was the other Yugi in place of his partner, regally straight even sitting in a chair high enough that his feet barely reached the ground. "We don't hold you responsible," the pharaoh declared. "We never suspected you were behind this now. But while you stopped leading them, there will always be criminals willing to exploit dueling for their own ends. The Rare Hunters would continue even without their leader. They'll not be redeemed, though you have been. Whatever new plot they needed Mokuba for, it had nothing to do with you."
"No. It is my fault," Malik said quietly. "I'm the one who organized them to begin with; they wouldn't be plotting at all if I hadn't..."
This would be faster with the Egyptian's damned lunatic personality. Less whining, at least. "How organized were you, Ishtar?"
"Kaiba?"
"Do you have records of the Rare Hunters who were under you?" Kaiba demanded. "Names, aliases, addresses? I'm guessing you didn't keep a club membership directory, but you were directing the Ghouls here from Egypt; you must have had contact information at least, listings of the places in the Domino area that were Ghouls property. Do you still have any of that?"
"Yes," Malik answered, after not too insufferable a pause. "I have everything. I turned my lists over to the police, but I still have copies. I'll fax them over immediately. Though..." He hesitated. "It has been going on a year, and a lot of the men I...used, they were criminals to begin with, that's why they were willing to join up at all. A lot of them would have gone underground, maybe gotten new identities..."
"I'm aware."
"Kaiba, if it is Ghouls who took Mokuba, if it was because of anything that happened in Battle City, really, I can't tell you how sorry I am--"
"I don't care about your contrition," Kaiba snapped. "All I need from you is information. I'm standing by for the fax." He gave the number, then shoved back his chair, stalked over to the fax machine on its shelf on the other side of his office. The cards stumbled and scurried out of his way.
Behind him he heard Yugi on the phone, babbling, "I'm sorry about that, Malik-kun, any help you can offer will be wonderful--Kaiba-kun will appreciate it, I know, he's just a little stressed right now."
"A little stressed?" Jounouchi interjected, dropping his voice approximately three decibels lower than his usual ruckus, either in deference to the phone or to Kaiba's presence. "The guy is this close to totally--"
"Geeze, can it, Jounouchi, he's still in the room!" Honda hissed.
Not that he was paying attention. Kaiba couldn't care less what they thought; if ever their opinion of him had mattered, he probably would have spontaneously combusted in front of Jounouchi by now. The fax started coming through; he grabbed the first page off the feed, scanned the hand-printed list. Malik's notes were in a mix of Arabic, English, and Japanese, but his handwriting was legible enough, and for a revenge-bent punk he had kept a thorough accounting of his underlings. Perhaps keeping close track of them had simplified the brainwashing process.
Malik sent twenty-two pages total, including several pages of property listings, most of which the leases had run out in the last year. Along with the few dozen aliases and personal details of Rare Hunters, it was a start, at least. Kaiba seated himself on the couch by the television, opened his laptop and started entering the names and associate information, cross-referenced with his own databases. Once the data was in the computer, he could run a pull from the city's property records and locate where the Ghouls' present hideouts might be.
Yugi and the others were still on the phone. Yugi was pushing, gently, as was his way, "Please, Malik, if you can think of anything you might've overheard, recently, or before..." But Malik wouldn't know anything else; he had severed his ties completely, closed that book of his life. He wouldn't remember much, not of what he would now be trying so hard to forget. Which Yugi couldn't understand, because the Ghouls had once been Malik's comrades, and to Yugi a comrade was a friend, someone to keep close in mind and heart. He wouldn't understand how deeply one could hate one's previous associates, one's previous existence.
Kaiba wasn't supposed to be listening to them anyway. Didn't have time for that; he shook his head, dropped his eyes down to the page again and forced his vision to focus. He typed rapidly, double-checking each line with a finger resting under the careful scrawl to mark his place, tuning out Yugi and the others thanking Malik for his trouble and the hallucinatory whisperings of the crowd of cards. Working focused and fast and efficient, and still when he completed one entry and checked his watch, more than three minutes had elapsed.
Three minutes for a single entry, and over forty left to do. More than two hours just to enter them, and then running the searches might take even longer, and he didn't have time for this. It was past one AM of the fourth day. Three and a half days that Mokuba had been in the hands of Ghouls.
Corpse eaters, in the old myths, but this modern breed had different tastes. Without Malik's mad ambition guiding them, the Rare Hunters wouldn't be motivated by revenge, but greed. And they hadn't demanded a ransom, which meant they wanted something else from his brother. The Ghouls had been at Battle City; they had seen Mokuba at work, would have a good idea of the kind of information he knew. Information they would have use for.
Three and a half days, and Mokuba would never tell them what they wanted, not if he thought it might damage Kaiba Corporation.
If Mokuba hadn't been the games commissioner at Battle City--but there was no point to second-guessing now. Nothing could change what had already been. Besides, even if his brother hadn't volunteered for the job, Kaiba would have asked him anyway; he had needed someone he trusted in a position that important.
Three and a half days, and now another minute and a half gone, when he should have been working, instead wasted gaping motionlessly at his computer screen like a halfwit. Kaiba reached for the current page, accidentally brushed the whole pile to the floor and cursed through clenched teeth, leaned down to pick up the papers.
Behind him he heard low voices. Yugi had hung up on Malik, and he couldn't identify the speakers now. That whisper might be Yugi, or might be his Black Magician; that mumble could be Jounouchi or Honda or Flame Swordsman or Lord of Dragon. Kaiba couldn't tell without looking and he didn't have time to look. Didn't have time for any of this, but it was hard to shut out those whispers when the sound of his own name kept catching his ear.
"--starting to look like he's just going to fall over. Seriously, have you gotten him to sleep at all?"
"I've tried, but...at least he's been eating, though--"
It shouldn't matter, he should just ignore it, but Kaiba was used to being alone in his office this late at night. Almost alone. Just the two of them should be here, not Yugi and the others jabbering. He gritted his teeth at the tone of those mutters, soft sympathetic bleating, like fingernails on a blackboard.
Gozaburo used to mimic that tone. "Is this too much for you, boy? Will you be able to complete the assignment in time, or will you need an extra day?"
Weak, that tone said. You're not strong enough, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough to win. And there was always a cost for losing, that tone reminded; always a punishment for failure, promised in that grating, mocking voice.
That was irrelevant now. His failure was irrelevant; that Yugi and his friends and all those hallucinatory cards knew he was failing--none of that mattered.
But he couldn't afford an extra day, or an extra minute. Mokuba didn't have time for this. Every wasted second was another second the Ghouls had his brother. All those myriad voices behind him were reminders of the only other voice he should be hearing in his office, that he wasn't, that he hadn't heard for more than three days.
"--the look in his eyes right now, I almost wouldn't be surprised if he just started--"
Weak.. He had to focus.
One hand continued to type on the laptop's keyboard; his other reached to the coffee table for the next page, and fell instead on a knobby, hard lump. The paperweight Mokuba had given him a few months ago, a stoneware mold in the shape of a dragon curled around a rock. A stylized Blue Eyes, naturally. "I saw it in a catalogue and knew you needed it," his brother had said, grinning at him, all impish mischief, "you've got to collect them all, right?"
"--no way can he keep up like this, even if it is Kaiba, at this rate, he's going to--"
There were two Blue Eyes outside his window, but his office was filled with people who didn't belong here, and beings who didn't belong in this world at all, and the buzz of their unwanted voices filled his ears until he couldn't concentrate enough to read the words written before him.
"Be quiet!" The paperweight was a good half a kilo, hefted in his hand. Kaiba threw it, hard, at Black Magician's head.
His aim wasn't too badly compromised by fatigue, but naturally it didn't have any effect, passing through the card's nonexistent face without a ripple, much less a change in expression.
Outside one of the Blue Eyes roared, over the satisfying chime of glass breaking. Not the window, that was bulletproof anyway; the paperweight had smashed into one of the framed certificates on the wall, some award or another thanking Kaiba Corporation for its generous contributions to charity. One of Gozaburo's or one of his, Kaiba didn't know.
The roar died away, and there was, finally, complete silence in his office, but for the tinkle of a few last cracked shards of glass slipping from the wooden frame, and the ringing in his ears. The paperweight was hard enough it probably hadn't even chipped.
Everyone was looking at him. Yugi and his two friends. The cards were gone, no figures or furballs between him and the desk, nothing outside the window. Just Yugi and Jounouchi and Honda, staring at him open-mouthed.
Kaiba felt his lips twist into something that might be a smile, one like he hadn't made for a long time. Not the kind of smile Mokuba would return; the kind his brother would turn away from. But his brother wasn't here to see him lying with his face, the old deceptive charm. Except that back then Kaiba used to tell himself that he was feeling something. At least pleasure that his plans were working accordingly, satisfaction that he had the people around him duped. Now he was feeling nothing at all.
"Hey, Yugi," Jounouchi said into the silence, getting up from the chair, his clumsy footsteps loud and his hushed voice louder. "Where's the break room? If we're gonna be pulling an all-nighter I need coffee."
"Down the hall, second door on the right," Yugi said quietly.
"C'mon, Honda." Jounouchi gestured to his buddy and they sidled out of the office, glancing back over their shoulders at Yugi. Apprehensively, like they were wondering whether the next time they saw him his spiky-haired head would still be attached to his neck, but they left him behind anyway. True friendship only went so far, apparently.
"Kaiba-kun," said Yugi, after they were gone, still quietly, but audible, with no cards in the way.
"Do you think I have time to take a damn nap?" Kaiba growled, reseating himself before his laptop.
"I wasn't going to tell you to sleep, Kaiba," and that wasn't Yugi, not the ordinary Yugi, at least. The pharaoh, when Kaiba looked, but only him, opaque and physically substantial, his other self relievingly nowhere in sight. "I wouldn't presume to command you, and we're not here to interfere with what you have to do." Yugi spoke as seriously as always, but the note of challenge with which he usually addressed Kaiba was conspicuously, consciously absent from his tone.
Weak. Too weak for Yugi even to bother challenging him now, and Kaiba glared. "If you're not here to interfere, then why do you persist to?"
"I'm not meaning to," and that was almost an apology. Unheard of from him. "Just tell me what I can do, Kaiba." His sharp gaze was still the pharaoh's, but the careful manners made him sound disturbingly like his politer self.
"What you can do? Shut up and let me work."
Not so much as a flicker of answering irritation in the pharaoh's eyes. He didn't blink, just nodded. "All right."
And that was a challenge, even if not obvious in his expression. A dare, but Kaiba had long practice working with worse than the likes of an ancient pharaoh standing over him. Yugi was hardly tall enough to loom anyway. Kaiba bent back over the keyboard again, the current page spread on the table before him.
As he typed, Yugi came around the couch, picked up the papers still on the floor and shuffled them straight, carefully quiet. He waited until Kaiba had completed entering the present page and brushed it aside one-handed while rubbing his eyes clear, then asked him, "Should I put these into any kind of order for you?"
"Just give them to me." Kaiba yanked the pile from his hands.
The pharaoh let them go without protest, but said, "What are you actually doing with these papers, Kaiba?"
"Why do you want to know? " Kaiba flicked him a momentary glare before turning his attention to the next page. "So you can enjoy understanding how completely I fail?"
Yugi jerked, his calm patience disrupted, and that should have been a victory, but there was no satisfying rush of triumph. No feeling at all. And Yugi was so easy to provoke it hardly counted anyway.
"We want to help, Kaiba," Yugi said, mastering his temper with a visible act of will. "Perhaps I could type some of these in?"
"What does that read?" Kaiba shoved the page at him, pointing to a line of Arabic. "Or the English here, can you translate it? No? Then how do you expect to enter it correctly?"
"You must have KaibaCorp employees who knows English," the pharaoh said, calm, that brief spark of temper faded. "And Arabic as well. Couldn't they help?"
None of this pettiness meant anything anyway and he was too tired for it. Too tired even to taste the bitterness of surrender, as he gave in and answered, "Once everything's entered, I can run a pull from various sources to get lists of the property they own locally, registered automobiles, anything that might be traced. But it'll be useless to cross-reference the information if there's any names entered incorrectly or aliases or notes missed."
"So it has to be perfect," said the pharaoh, nodding. "No mistakes. But that doesn't mean you have to do everything all yourself." His gaze was sharper than ever, not with anger, but a penetrating intensity that was far worse. Far more difficult to comprehend. "Relying on the help of others isn't failing Mokuba, Kaiba."
No. He hadn't failed his brother. Not yet. Not until he knew for certain it was too late, with or without their help--but none of that would come, when he opened his mouth; he had no words left to match Yugi's calm assurance.
He had never once defeated Yugi in a fair duel. No cards now, but he still was losing, defenses stripped away, broken down, ignored, and he was too exhausted to be devising new strategies this late in their game.
But at least there were no cards here now. Kaiba pushed back his laptop, stood. "I'm getting coffee," he said, by way of explanation. Not running away. The caffeine was overdue anyway, by the pounding of his head. Thankfully at the moment there was no Black Magician Girl around to stop him. And Yugi made no attempt to, just watched him leave the office, saying nothing at all.
to be continued...
Concerning Ghouls: in the Japanese version, the Rare Hunters seen in Battle City were also called Ghouls. The manga goes into greater detail, stating that "Ghoul" was the general name for Malik's Duel Monsters criminal operation, with Rare Hunters being the duelists of the Ghouls. I'm not sure what they were called in the dub; I apologize for any confusion.
Also, for the record (and Gnine's benefit), while Malik does not visually appear in this story, he was totally wearing the lavender belly shirt while on the phone here.
Thank you so much for the reviews, I hope I (and Kaiba-kun) continue to entertain!
