Supplyshipping (Sugoroku x Gozaburo)
"I thought I said that I didn't want to see your face in my shop ever again."
Sugoroku didn't have to turn around to know who he was saying these words too. Only one person could snap a door shut with such perpetual irritation.
Gozaburo Kaiba didn't seem too perturbed by Sugoroku's words. He just smiled dryly and walked over to lean his elbows across the counter. Sugoroku turned around with a frown, folding his arms.
"That wasn't a very warm welcome, Sugoroku."
"It's Mutou to you, Kaiba. At the very least stick a -san onto it," Sugoroku said. "Heard you were dead a while ago."
Gozaburo gave Sugoroku a sardonic smile.
"Good. I had hoped I was convincing enough."
"I actually heard that you were dead twice over from my grandson," Sugoroku said, pretending to be busy dusting the counter so he wouldn't have to look at Gozaburo directly. "Threw yourself out a window. Then got your brain data deleted when a nuke blew up your computer."
"You think I'm that stupid?" Gozaburo said. "It's an easy enough task to catch oneself after a fall; they do it for jumpers all the time. And if you think I'm stupid enough to waste opportunities in the physical world by completely uploading myself into a network, then you must be losing your touch."
"Hmph."
Sugoroku turned back around to act like he was dusting more shelves.
"It seems more cluttered than the last time I visited."
"That was because I hadn't fully stocked yet. Now do yourself a favor: turn around and walk out the door. I don't want you in my shop."
"Heh. Charmer as always, Sugoroku," Gozaburo said, emphasizing the old man's given name to annoy him. "Don't even want to know why I'm here?"
"I never cared what you were doing, Gozaburo. I thought I made that clear in Brazil."
"I don't remember you saying anything like that until India."
Sugoroku almost dropped the Hindi game he had been angrily dusting. He shoved the piece back into its shelf and turned on Gozaburo with a glare.
"What do you want, Kaiba?"
"Thought you'd want to know."
"Whatever will get you out of my shop."
Gozaburo reached down and pulled up a suitcase. Sugoroku groaned.
"If this is another treasure map, wild story, or so-far-unseen bit of archeology that will lead to a mythological temple, then I don't want to hear about it."
"You used to like it when I found adventures for you to go on."
"And they usually ended up with me in a quicksand pit while your pockets got a little heavier. Now hurry up, I want you to finish this so you can leave."
Gozaburo clicked open the suitcase and spun it around. Sugoroku gave a cursory glance to the contents: a bit of broken pot pieces with old languages on them, a set of arrow heads of strange make, and a small glass dragon, which Sugoroku took a bit longer to look over.
After a few moment's consideration over his word choice, Sugoroku spoke.
"This is to help you rebuild your fortune since you've lost KaibaCorp, isn't it?"
"Heh. You'd like to think so," Gozaburo said.
"Don't play games with me, Gozaburo. You've never been good at it. You have dummy companies, don't you? You have since you started KaibaCorp."
Gozaburo shrugged.
"I do what I have to if I want to stay on top of the market."
"And what do these have to do with anything?"
Sugoroku turned back to the shelves to actually dust while Gozaburo continued.
"Interesting thing, actually. They might lead to an ancient civilization that could still be living in Asia. What do you say, Sugoroku? Think of the history."
Sugoroku paused. Then he slowly, slowly put down his dust rag. Through the open back door of the shop, up the stairs into the house, he caught a snippet of conversation, a wisp of laughter, the pad of several pairs of slippered feet running around the living room. He caught the hint of baking bread from the kitchen, breathed the dust rising from the cluttered game shop, absorbed the quiet silence of the room around him.
"No, Kaiba," he said after a breath. "I'm old. I can't go running around anymore."
"Well, I'm sure your son would love to go on this adventure –"
"Jin is dead, Gozaburo. He has been for years. You just haven't been in touch with real life long enough to notice."
Gozaburo's pause was enough for Sugoroku to know that he had hit a nerve. He filled the silence before Gozaburo could make an angry reply.
"Things have changed. There's not room for adventures anymore. It's enough to just live on with what you have. Maybe if you had looked away from the numbers and the finances for just a few minutes, you would have what I have."
"And what exactly do you have? A dusty, floundering game shop? A rickety old house?"
"Family," Sugoroku said. "Friends. A safety net, you could call it. Gozaburo, did you know that Seto, Mokuba, and Noa are upstairs right now with my grandson and his friends?"
The slight dropping of Gozaburo's jaw was enough for Sugoroku to regain his lead.
"Yes, Gozaburo. I did say Noa. Noa came back. He could because he realized that he had something more to live for than a company and a pile of money. He came back because he found what you were ready to toss aside."
The old man turned back to the shelves. He could sense Gozaburo boring holes into his back for a long moment. And then he heard the click of a suitcase, the clopping of feet, and the snap of the door closing.
Quietly, the little ethereal form of the Blue Eyes White Dragon crawled from the card box and onto Sugoroku's shoulder.
Now I know where Seto gets it, she said scathingly. This one's an even bigger prick.
Sugoroku chuckled, but didn't reply. She watched him for a moment with big, mirror-like blue eyes. Then,
You did know where those pieces came from, right? They were from my world. Do you think the prick realized it?
"No," Sugoroku said, putting down his dust rag and moving towards the stairs. "And he won't. He doesn't have the guts."
A/N: This turned out kind of weird, but I imagine Sugoroku as like an Indiana Jones kind of guy when he was younger. And I thought it would be interesting if Sugoroku knew Gozaburo from that time in his life, like Gozaburo was his sponsor a couple times or something and that's how Gozaburo first built his fortune. Gozaburo doesn't really show up much in the manga, and his personality is rather flat in virtual world arc in the anime, so he was hard to work with. I couldn't even figure out his speaking style; I was caught between a British formal tone and a New York drawl. Next is Summonshipping (Yami no Marik x Rishid x Marik).
