Next chapter is up and it's a doozy!

Enjoy!

In the Company of Wealth
Chapter 11 --- Redemption

"I hope they're okay," Mokuba mumbled, curled in the driver's seat of the car. "Ever since Joey and Yami went in there, there hasn't been a single sound . . ." he turned to Noah. "Do you think . . .?"

"Of course not," Noah replied causally. "He's up there getting his body back, of course." Shaun and Celine nodded hopefully. Noah only downcast his eyes. "I didn't earn my body like he will, I used . . . different means that I am sure to repent for."

Celine saddened. "Yes, you will. But you have turned to the right side again, so maybe the punishments ---"

"What?" Mokuba jumped up on the seat. "Punishments! No way! He's done nothing wrong ---"

"I sided wrong, Mokuba," Noah interrupted.

"But that doesn't mean ---"

"I should pay for it." He licked his chapped lips. "And I'm ready. He'll take me back, and He'll judge me." His wings flicked unintentionally as he lowered his head even more. "But I do not want to go. I want to stay here and live here. I want to go on living."

Mokuba dived into Noah's chest. "I won't let anyone take you!"

Noah replied the action with a hug of his own. "I wish you could."

"Think fast!" Malsworth roared and charged before Seto could raise his sword. The two steels barely clashed in a shower of red and blue sparks, sizzling and spitting at one another until the red sparks died away. On the upper hand, Seto gave a throaty growl and shoved Malsworth to the wall and staggered to the desk, leaning against it heavily from the sudden, unexpected attack.

"Yo! That ain't fair!" argued Joey. "At least warn him a bit ahead of time!"

Malsworth spit to the ground, wiping a stream of blood from his lips. "Why should I? He's nothing but a worthless soul." Sneering, he held his sword up again, "A worthless piece of shit."

Yami glared. "Not as worthless as another thing I know of."

"Watch your mouth, insolent King!" the demon shouted and charged again, only to be caught, wrapped around, and sent into the swivel chair by a quick flick of Joey's black sword; the mutt's eyes gleamed a bluish-brown.

"I don't think you need to try that again. Three against one is not good odds." Jonathan, who was harbored inside of Joey, spoke lowly. "Besides, you leave your left side open. Better cover it up before someone takes the steel to your ass."

Malsworth growled yet again, stood from his chair, and bounded onto the table to charge for Joey, who held his sword up to the muscular middle-aged man with a satisfied grin. "What are you grinning at!"

"You're stupidity." Then he lowered his sword and retreated, glancing to Seto. "This isn't my fight, all though I would love it to be. To get your body, life, and possessions back, you need to defeat him --- drive that demon from him. And remember me. That is all I ask."

The black sword vanished, leaving a befuddled Joey grasping thin air. Glancing to Seto and Yami for a moment, he was about to ask a question when he fell back, eyes rolled up into his head, and fainted from pure exhaustion. Yami looked down to his friend, his sword vanishing also. He staggered back, eyelids droopy.

"It's a spell . . . that demon --- that soul . . . put on us." In a flash, Yugi stood instead of Yami, and fell to the floor beside Joey, unconscious. Seto figured he had tried to mention that Nathanial as the demon/soul, but his mind couldn't process the thought of a sword in his hands, a demon standing on his desk, and his only backups more or less dead.

Seto grumbled inwardly, "Damn it."

Malsworth only cocked his head and laughed. "So he did me a favor! Stupid mortal soul. Now it's our turn. Let's have it!" He lunged, sword in fist to Seto who ducked, turned and pressed his back against Malsworth's back. "Sneaky little spirit, aren't you?"

Seto only grunted, spun with his sword and attempted to take the top of Malsworth's head. An invisible shield rocketed up just millimeters before Malsworth's skull that sent Seto's sword flying through the glass window and into the outside air. "Double damn it!"

"Not having any trouble I hope," the demon said mockingly and swung sharply at Kaiba, who miraculously got his whole body to dip below the sword in a limbo move and stand straight before the second swing at his abdomen. "Slippery thing too!"

Seto dodged three more of the same attacks before resulting to a summersault --- yes, a summersault --- across his desk to the other side, where the cracked window was. A sparkling piece of metal caught his eyes just in time for him to duck again as his own sword flew through the air.

Malsworth gave a cry of agony, pinned against the back wall by the blue sword. "You hit me! You hit me!"

Angrily, the former CEO stalked forward and rested his weight on his sword, driving it farther into the man's stomach just to hear the demon squeal. No organs were punctured, Seto immediately knew, but found out just the same it hurt like hell. "Do you want to surrender yet?"

The demon spat into his face. "Not by the likeliness of you!" With his free hand, Malsworth swung again to catch Seto unexpectedly in the chest. With the hardest energy he could muster, Malsworth took the young man by the collar and thrust him forward. The flaming sword cut straight through Seto's chest, stopping his breath in his throat for a mere second before he screamed out in pain. Malsworth watched him turn a pale white. "Hurts? I bet it does. This silver will kill any soul, but to a body, it's harmless." He drove the steel out to the other side. "I picked it just for you. Soon, you'll be roasting with my Master down in ---argha!"

Seto shot his free hand to Malsworth's throat and squeezed. His mind was hazy for some reason . . . hazier then he had ever felt. It felt like . . . like --- a flash erupted in his mind, of a road, a car, and the unbearable pain before the darkness consumed him, then bathed within an earth-shattering light, the memory of when he died --- that night. That sore night which had rubbed a wound onto his soul that would never be replaced, a wound that cut deep within him just as this sword did, piercing his body with every breath he took, digging deeper and deeper until it ultimately reaches his core. And then it will be buried there for all eternity . . . all eternity.

He didn't want to live --- or die with the fact that his own life was taken . . . taken by himself. It would never go away, and he did not want to live with that burden, with that atrocious feeling which had burdened him ever since he had come back to earth.

Mokuba had healed it, but it was a fresh wound, soon to reopen again to only cause more suffering to himself, only to himself. His brother would not be able to mend his wound forever, he would not be able to kiss the pain to make it go away. Only he could do that, only Seto Kaiba could drive the past away and focus on the present; the undying future.

Of the miraculous tomorrow.

Seto craned his neck forwards, blood trickling from his mouth as the pain numbed his senses. "I will kill you, so you will never see tomorrow." Even if I might die as well . . . he added as an afterthought.

Malsworth grinned as his eyes slowly turned hazy. "Kill me? I will always return. You will kill an innocent man who has a wife and children, not me. I will live on. I am that voice that whispered to you that night, remember?" He watched as the young man's eyes widened. "How could you forget, after all? . . . you are nothing. Nothing."

Seto looked to the demon inside of Malsworth with neither hate nor love, a melancholy, placid look that sent shivers down the demon's spine. "I am," the teen began, "more then you'll ever be." The fingers loosened from Malsworth's neck. "You will never know your worth."

The demon shuddered inside of the empty shell, shivering for Seto's fingers glowed with a godly light, but then he realized that the teen was not glowing at all, but reflecting something from the window. Something pure, something beautiful, something untainted by the hands of blackness.

Yet when the demon looked, he was only blinded, for the light which he saw was stronger than the darkness he held, stronger than any force in heaven or earth.

Seto let his hand down and lowered his head. The piercing screams of the demon pounding the walls and scraping the flooring echoed in his head, but was driven out by a melodic, strong and wise voice.

But he couldn't hear the words, he couldn't understand what they said, but each syllable lifted his spirit higher and higher until the pain in his chest was forgotten and his worries washed away in a flood of purity.

Outside, Mokuba gasped as a flood of white splashed down from the heavens onto the building and washed through the whole town like a massive tidal wave. It looked, as people would later say, like a new sun.

Scarcely, he heard the shrieks of demons throughout the town, the light vanquishing them from every nook and cranny of Domino. His body stiffened as Noah's hand, which before had been firmly planted on his shoulders, faded away, and his hand which interlaced with his mother's fell empty.

Then the light faded and Mokuba began to wail with tears of grief, falling to his knees on the cold concrete.

Yami Bakura, who incidentally still had control, folded his arms over his chest, tugging down his right sleeve to try and hide the silver and gold glove which laced up his arm, making itself as the last of the light filtered away from his skin. He didn't know how it got there, but then again, neither did Ryou by the sound of the befuddled gasp. Bakura flexed his hand, then looked to the little boy on the concrete.

Go talk to him! Ryou persisted impatiently, still somewhat marveling at the bracelet. He needs a bit more than tears right now.

I know! Bakura shot back with a sting as the bracelet pulsed, the golden jewel flashed. But, he guessed he couldn't prolong it any longer, so he sighed heatedly, rolled his eyes, and did at his aibou told him to.

Slowly, he walked up to Mokuba and bent down beside him. "At least, up there, there is someone waiting for you."

Unexpectedly, the youth pelted into Bakura's chest in grief and agony. Bakura didn't know what to do. Shove him off or hug him? He decided on the general moody, surprised mode, the one he was best at these days. "B-But what a-about n-now? W-Who's w-waiting now?"

A realization spread of Bakura as he relaxed his stiff body, pulling away from the hug as if it was poison. He gazed to Mokuba in sheer wonder. Could this stupid child think that . . . no, of course he won. "You're brother's the one waiting."

"He won?" asked Mokuba softly, trying to calm himself down as quickly as he could, but only to get the hiccups in return and his hands clasp again to Bakura's shirt.

"Yes! Of course that idiotic mortal won!" Bakura sneered, relating the youth to a leech. "Now get the hell off of me and go see him!"

Without any such warning, Mokuba jumped up, grabbed Bakura's hand tightly and shot off towards the building with the aghast Tomb Robber in tow. They raced into the building and waited for the elevator impatiently.

And as the elevator came down and dinged at the bottom, a willful hope came with it, a hope Bakura in general never felt before. That maybe everything would be okay. That . . . just maybe there would be a light at the end of this dark tunnel.

That maybe, the small minutiae which had been forgotten would come flooding back; the feeling of family.

The worth of what is.