"Your brother? I don't know what you're talking about, President Kaiba," the masked man facing them said, pleasantly. "But even if I did, and weren't going to call the police to arrest you for breaking and entering, I could still point out that we're armed and you are not." He gestured with the pistol in his hand.
Kaiba studied the gun. Small caliber, easily concealed. The weapon of a small-time hood; the yakuza could afford to be more impressive in their illegal arms, and wouldn't wave them around with such inexperienced bravado. The larger man with him had a similar pistol in one hand and a length of metal pipe heavy enough to shatter kneecaps in the other, but his grip on both club and firearm was as amateur as his associate's.
And they had recognized Kaiba instantly on sight. Ghouls for sure. "Shooting either of us will only compound your crimes. Get out of my way, dogs."
"You're not in command here, Kaiba," the Ghoul snarled back, the pleasantness gone. Kaiba didn't need to see the man's face to know he was the renter of the office where Mokuba had been held, where his brother had been tied to that folding chair with bloody bonds. His looming compatriot was likely the lessee of this place.
Maybe it was only the two of them, foolishly assuming that Kaiba would be an easily managed threat. That a couple guns would be enough to stop them. Kaiba glanced down at Yugi, his rival standing silent and still, his stare fixed on the Ghouls. No fear in his face, naturally, and his anger was restrained. He was letting Kaiba take the lead, and Kaiba was, for an instant before he could contain it, grateful that he was here. Jounouchi or Honda were uncontrollable in their idiocies, but Yugi was as quick to evaluate and master a situation as he was. Reliable. Maybe the most reliable Kaiba knew, after his own brother.
If there were no more thugs left upstairs, then Jounouchi and Honda would have a clear path through the building, as long as they had wits enough to take advantage of this distraction.
Though he probably shouldn't be counting on that. Nor on the Ghouls' small numbers. But if he got these two out of the way now, there would be that fewer of them to obstruct him. And these were two of the men who had kidnapped his brother. Who may have hurt him; who may have done worse. If they even had made it here in time...
His brother might be right overhead at this very moment, and every muscle in Kaiba's body screamed for him to charge forward, but the men were as yet too far away. He wouldn't be able to bring down both in time, even if the Ghouls fumbled their first shots. The kevlar lining of his trenchcoat would stop the bullets of such small caliber pistols, but Yugi had no such protection, and he would need Yugi's assistance.
It was all Kaiba could do not to charge all the same, but the necessary self-control had been beaten into him years ago. He forced himself to lean back, casually non-threatening. Goading. "If you're going to shoot us, go ahead. Do it. The gunshot will alert my personal security outside. Unlike the police, they're paid enough not to have any compunctions about returning fire."
"Don't need to shoot you to shut you up, rich boy," said the bigger Ghoul, starting forward swinging the metal pipe one-handed, the pistol still in his other. Kaiba took a step back, using the pretense of a retreat to set his stance. Just a couple more steps and he could grab the man's wrists, twist the pipe and gun out of his hands and swing around his thick body to block his boss's bullets.
Yugi sidled back a step himself, clearing the way. Kaiba didn't spare him a glance. Yugi would be no trouble to shield; protecting such a small frame came more naturally to Kaiba than breathing.
Except before the Ghoul could advance the final step into range, his boss called, "Stop." He raised his gun again, aiming square between Kaiba's eyes. "You better not be thinking of trying something," the Ghoul said. "See, even if your security takes us down, there's only one entrance to the office upstairs, which might be where what you're looking for is. But if our friend who's up there now hears anyone trying to enter but us, he'll...make sure that you have no reason for being here at all. So, if that matters to you, act carefully, President Kaiba."
He wouldn't sound so confident if that threat didn't carry real weight. Which meant that Mokuba must still be alive, for them to be able to threaten his life, and Kaiba felt a rush of something like adrenaline, revitalizing him. Like light, blinding him; he had to blink to see, his vision momentarily inexplicably blurred.
Couldn't let them see that reaction, too dangerous to his brother to give away that much--but it might be too late for that. Better, then, to let them think they had the upper hand, and underestimate him. "What would I try?" he said, and heard his voice come hoarser than ever with a rasp of exhaustion that was not quite deliberate. "You're the ones armed, as you said."
"I'm glad you understand," the Ghoul said, the ugly smile back in his voice. "So please tell your men on the stairs behind us to stand down."
"What men?" Kaiba kept his tone impassive. He had heard the footsteps, had hoped the Ghouls had not. But hope was, as ever, a worthless tactic.
"Kaiba-shachou, my friend upstairs is expecting to hear back about the situation within fifteen minutes." The Ghoul showed the celphone in his other hand. "If he doesn't get any word from me, he'll be forced to take measures. Now, it's already been seven minutes, and he's probably getting impatient--"
Yugi sighed, almost silently. "Hold on, hold it, don't hurt the kid, okay, we're coming down!" Jounouchi called down. The Ghouls stepped back as a door beside them opened and Jounouchi and Honda emerged, their hands held in the air. Honda spared a glance back long enough to meet Kaiba's eyes and mouth, "Sorry."
"What the hell are you doing?" Kaiba snarled.
"Uh, trying not to get anyone hurt?" Jounouchi said.
"We knew Mokuba's upstairs! I didn't think even you could be this stupid, bonkotsu--what are you doing here? You couldn't trust Yugi to leave him alone long enough to do what we came here for?"
"We went upstairs!" Jounouchi shot back. "And found the right door--the one with the big-ass padlock on it, and no other way in, so we went looking for the key, and found you guys. You rather we would've tried to break through it? You heard what this guy just said his buddy would do if we had. We were worried about something like that, that's why we didn't try."
If they had--Kaiba knew the difference between a bluff and a true warning, had heard the genuine threat in the Ghoul's voice. Desperate men. They had failed, they had probably realized they had failed the moment the Blue Eyes had been played. Now they were looking for any way out, and the fewer witnesses the better. That threat was not a matter of if, but when, and had Jounouchi and Honda pushed them--Kaiba was already cold, too cold to shiver, but the chill that went through him was sharp enough he drew an abrupt breath. Forced it out in strangled words, "I apologize. You made the right choice."
He couldn't see Honda and Jounouchi's faces, facing the Ghouls as they were with their hands still over their heads, but they both stiffened. "Did Kaiba just apologize to us?" Honda hissed.
"Did Kaiba just admit we were right?" Jounouchi hissed back.
Kaiba ignored them, stared past them to the Ghouls. "What do you want?" he asked. "Ransom? A promise of amnesty?"
"Amnesty? Like we'd trust something like that from you!" Kaiba didn't like the rising note of panic in the Ghoul's voice. The man was having trouble determining the best strategic angle to aim, swinging the pistol back and forth between all of them with unnerving unsteadiness, his comrade trying to compensate by pointing his own gun wherever his boss did not. "You already told us your security's around this building--we let our hostage go, and the moment you get what you came for, we're as good as dead."
The chill mixed with the heat of anger, a rising storm front roiling inside him. "If you murder my brother, you are dead," Kaiba promised him. He flexed his fingers, felt them tighten again into fists. If Mokuba were killed--there would be nothing to stop him from diving at their throats. Nothing at all. "So we're at an impasse."
The Ghoul rocked back on his heels uneasily. "Guess so."
"In that case," Yugi said suddenly, stepping forward, and that bold creature was all the pharaoh, no trace of the other Yugi in the crimson tinge of those narrowed eyes. His lips were curling in a smile the likes of which Kaiba hadn't seen since their very first duel, so long ago, when he had issued a challenge to the death. "How about a game?"
"A game?" The Ghoul gaped. "Does this look like a playground, kid?"
"This is all over a game anyway, isn't it?" Yugi asked. "You're duelists, are you not?" --In the loosest, lowest sense of the word, and Kaiba could hear the disgust with which Yugi called them such, but the Ghoul was listening, had relaxed enough to train his gun solely on the pharaoh's short figure. "So why don't we play a game to decide this? If you win, Kaiba will send away his security. The police haven't been called, so you'll make a clean escape."
"A game." The man barked a harsh laugh. "You are kids, aren't you. So if you win this game, what will you get?"
"If we win, you'll give us what we came for, of course."
"Of course." Glaring at Yugi narrow-eyed, the Ghoul demanded, "And what are we gonna play--let me guess, Duel Monsters? You take us for idiots, Duel King? Yeah, I was at Battle City, I remember you. You seriously expect me to agree to duel the reigning world champion?"
"Nothing so complicated," Yugi said smoothly. "How about we leave it up to chance?" and from his pocket he took out a 500 yen coin, glittering gold as he twirled it between his fingers. "We two, you and I, will play for all our comrades, a single round. The winning team will take the best two tosses out of three. The losing will take a penalty. Do you accept, for all your men?"
The Ghoul's head tilted back toward Kaiba. "How do we know the president here will really call off his security?"
"You can trust in his honor as a gamer. Do you agree to play, Kaiba?"
Something shone in Yugi's eyes, bright and dangerous and unconquerable. Kaiba had seen it there before, standing before Malik, before Dartz; had risked putting his faith in that intense spirit more than once before. It had yet to fail him. He nodded. "I agree. I'll call them off. If we lose."
The Ghoul glanced at his henchman, who shrugged; cocked his head in calculation of the odds, then at last nodded. "Fine. We'll play."
"First toss is mine," Yugi said. "You call." He flipped the coin into the air.
At the apex of the throw, the Ghoul snapped, "Heads."
The coin hit the floor, bounced once and came to rest with a swirling clink. Yugi leaned over it with his hands carefully out of reach behind his back, studied it expressionlessly, then retreated a step as the Ghoul waved his compatriot with the pipe forward to check it, his own gun still aimed at Yugi.
"It's heads," the larger Ghoul said, his smirk audible behind his mask.
"Give it here." The Ghoul extended his hand and his henchman dropped the coin into it. The Ghoul turned the 500 yen piece over, examining both sides, then shrugged in satisfaction and tossed it up.
As soon as it left his hand, Yugi stated, calmly, "Tails."
The coin rolled a few decimeters when it hit the floor, finally fell to one side. Kaiba craned his neck to see, but the big Ghoul blocked his view. He leaned over the coin, then cursed. "Tails," he told his boss.
"Final toss," Yugi said, impassive, as he crouched and retrieved his coin. "You remember the rules of the game? If you call it correctly, you win. If you do not, you and your men lose, and take the penalty."
"We remember the damn rules," snarled the Ghoul. He gestured imperatively with the pistol, but his hand was trembling almost as much as his voice. "Toss the coin!"
Yugi flipped the coin again, higher than before, almost to the ceiling. All eyes followed the course of its twinkling arc, and Kaiba could hear the others holding their breaths, as if not to risk any exhalation disturbing that spinning gold. He felt the tension himself, more than just the weight of everything at stake in this game. Even the rustle of the unseen monsters behind him had gone silent, but he could feel the intensity of their attention. Like atmospheric pressure, invisible forces gathering in the air.
Then, just as it became unbearable, that tension was broken. The Ghoul didn't call; instead he lunged forward, knocking the coin spinning off into the dark shadows down the hall, and grabbed Yugi by the throat, pressing the pistol to his temple. "Screw this game," he cried. "Call off your dogs, Kaiba, if you don't want your friend's head blown off!"
Jounouchi and Honda made inarticulate enraged noises, their simultaneous rush stopped in its tracks.
"My friend?" Kaiba repeated in flat disbelief, mostly at the audacity of the man's assumption. Though it was true that having his rival's brains splattered on his trenchcoat was not the victory he desired. Completely unacceptable.
But then Yugi hardly looked as if he were prepared to have any part of him splattered. If he was not exactly smiling, it was because the danger shining in his eyes obscured the twisted curve of his mouth. "You didn't call it," he said, with a calm so perfect it was gloating. "You lost. There will be a penalty game, for all of you."
The light overhead flickered, blinding bright, then died with a pop, plunging them into darkness. Kaiba heard the Ghoul grunt, guessed it was Yugi freeing himself with a well-placed elbow. Kaiba shoved forward himself, only to be stopped by a flashlight beam in his face, blinding him.
"Stop!" screeched the Ghoul, somewhere behind that light, "or I'll call my man upstairs!" He brandished the celphone, its square display blinking blue. "You're going to let us go--no, you're gonna help get us out of here, Kaiba, you're gonna give us a car, and money, unless you want your brother's body--"
"It's too late," Yugi said, with that same absolute, vicious calm, climbing back to his feet. "You lost."
"Shut up, kid, we're not playing games anymore." The Ghoul was looking at Kaiba, must have noticed the color drain from his face; there was triumph in his snarled, "So that is getting to you, Kaiba. Should've guessed, the big CEO comes personally to fetch his brat brother, the kid must mean something to you. You hear me, Kaiba? You're gonna help us, now, if you want your precious baby brother back unharmed."
The Ghoul's voice changed, stretched by an arrogant, sickening smirk. "Or at least, not any more harmed. The brat took some persuasion, and still wouldn't listen. Just lied to us, and whined for his big brother whenever he thought we couldn't hear. But if you're cooperative, at least you'll get back what's left of him..."
Something in Kaiba Seto snapped. He wasn't sure what it was, but he heard the crack. It sounded like a stick being broken in two. Not his sanity; he had let that go, legally over twenty hours ago. In practice almost four days.
Not his sanity, but something. He smiled, a real smile, not the false mask but one he felt in his eyes as well as his mouth. And yet the Ghouls recoiled from it, pressing back to back as they stared at him.
Kaiba raised his hand. "Blue Eyes White Dragons, come," he called forth.
"What are you talking about, you don't even have a duel disk!" Jounouchi hissed frantically. "Don't completely lose it here on us, Kaiba--"
"Uh, Jounouchi?" Honda whispered, a hoarse, dry-mouthed gasp. "If he doesn't have a duel disk, then what the hell is..."
And here came his dragons, one rearing up on either side of him, white scaled necks arching back with serpentine grace.
No holograms, these; Kaiba had designed the Solid Vision system personally, and these were not its productions. More real than any prior hallucination--he had only seen a Blue Eyes like this once before, in that very first duel with Yugi, and that had been an impossible nightmare. These monsters here were too vivid, too alive to be mistaken for anything but reality. Even if only the reality in his own mind--though Jounouchi and Honda both were gasping like they'd forgotten how to breathe, and the Ghouls were cowering back like a pair of whipped dogs, trembling, the guns and celphone fallen from nerveless fingers, lying useless at their feet.
Behind him, Kaiba could hear the muted murmurs and growls and hisses, and knew his Blue Eyes were not alone, but they were all he needed. Yugi turned back, his face illuminated by the dragons' white shine, and nodded to Kaiba, a slow, somehow permissive nod.
Without his third Blue Eyes there could be no fusion, but this dingy hallway was hardly big enough for just the pair as it was, and these sniveling cowards didn't deserve the Ultimate Dragon. Kaiba extended his fingers toward the two masked men. "Blue Eyes."
Great jaws gaping, the dragons roared in answer, and were in turn answered. Jounouchi jerked up his head to stare at the ceiling, where the matching roar shook the building. "Holy shit, the third one's upstairs--"
Twin spheres of white light were gathering in the quivering jaws of the dragons, brighter and more blinding than the sun, and Kaiba knew that the third Blue Eyes with his brother above them had also heard his command, was also attacking. He could hear Honda beside him, muttering, "This can't be happening--this totally cannot be--"
The Ghouls were speaking too, the big one mumbling incoherently, what might have been a prayer; his boss screaming, a thin, muffled sound after the dragons' thunder, with his hands up to uselessly shield his eyes, "No, please, no, no--!"
Kaiba stared for an instant at their trembling figures, starkly lit in the white corona of the dragons' power. This was no duel; these were not monsters, just men, petty and helpless.
The men who had stolen his brother away, who had hurt him, had threatened his life, as if he were nothing more than a card to be discarded, a worthless monster to be sacrificed. They didn't deserve this honor, but it had been four days and he would wait no longer.
He tore his gaze from the darkness of the Ghouls' silhouettes and raised his eyes to his brilliant dragons. Drew a breath and commanded the Blue Eyes, "Horobi no Burst Stream!"
The dragons' jaws shuddered wider; synchronized, they twisted down their heads and released their double attack, unleashed energy pouring from their mouths. Engulfed by that shining power, lost in the rush of the blasts, the Ghoul's continued scream was barely audible, soaring to a shriek--
Then, over the noise of the attack, sounded a percussive boom, echoing down from the floor overhead. A single gunshot, and Kaiba Seto heard it and was deafened, no longer able to hear the Ghouls' cries, or Yugi's or the others' voices, or his dragons' roars; unable to hear anything but that single brutal pistol shot, by which he might have finally failed, might have finally lost, even with his dragons beside him. Finally lost such that he would never win again.
"Mokuba!"
to be continued...
Almost there! Thank you so much as always for the reviews - I apologize for my lack of individual response, I haven't had much time online of late and figured most of you would prefer me writing more story anyway! But it's always wonderful to know anyone's reading.
