Chapter 44: Goading

Joey had never dueled in silence. If his opponent wasn't blustering, then he was. He'd never had a match with just the announcements—two cards facedown, summon Baby Dragon [1200/700] in attack mode—and nothing else. But in the Battle City finale, everything inside him tingled, and it seized his voice, and all he could manage was the cards. He felt the pulsing power in his deck, the reminder of all the months, all the wins and losses, that had paved the road to this moment, and it was overwhelming, bigger than anything he'd faced in his life. So full of promise.

His dad had laughed when he'd walked out the door.

If Joey came home a champion—

—would he maybe smile?

Kaiba's lifepoints were impossible to scratch, hidden behind a wall of pure, terrifying power. He had a deck of the most expensive cards in the world, the strongest attack points. But Joey had known that going in. When he'd fought Kaiba on Duelist Kingdom island, he'd been embarrassed to be so weak; he'd tried to pretend more raw power than he had, all the while wishing he had fancy expensive cards, too.

Now he knew better. Each card in his deck was chosen. Each card had a story. Maybe Joey Wheeler's brand of power wasn't found in attack points. Maybe it was in timing and luck and digging his heels in to stand when it shouldn't have been possible.

Kaiba drew first blood. Joey's lifepoints dropped to 3000.

People in the audience cheered or booed. They shouted encouragement.

Joey held Kaiba's kill-cold gaze, and neither of them said a word.

And then Joey drew his first blood—his roulette gamble paid off, leaving him with Thousand Dragon [2400/2500], which destroyed Kaiba's YZ-Tank Dragon [2100/2200]. Kaiba dropped to 3700.

300 points was hardly a victory, yet at the same time, it meant everything. It was the impossible.

In their last battle, no matter how Joey clawed, he hadn't put a single nick on his opponent. Not even a 10-point damage. Now it was 300.

And he was just getting started.

They battled five rounds in silence. Joey nicked another 200 lifepoints. Kaiba took another 1000 of his. Even at half health, Joey looked out at the field and smiled. There was no fear inside, nothing but the thrill and the knowledge that the impossible had become possible.

Especially because in the battle of silence, Kaiba cracked first.

After Joey played Jinzo [2400/1500] and destroyed all of Kaiba's carefully laid virus traps, Rich-boy's voice cut across the field, cold and sharp as ice:

"My tournament has done wonders for your deck. Now you have three real cards in with all the trash. Almost a hand."

Joey laughed.

Kaiba's eyes narrowed to the slits of a snake.

"Man, you hated me from the first instant you laid eyes on me." Joey grinned. "You put more effort into hatin' me than you put into plannin' this here fancy tourney."

"Don't flatter yourself, Wheeler. Hating you takes no effort at all."

Clever. Always clever.

Joey didn't have the brains of a big-kid CEO, but that was okay. Just like it was okay that his deck didn't have the same raw power. There were other ways to win. Yuugi had known that from the start, and Joey had finally learned it too.

"I think I figured it out," he said. "I figured out why you're so bent on making me pay."

"Finish your turn," Kaiba growled.

But Joey went right on talking: "I'm a threat to you. You got ahead in life because you got extra special brains and a giant bank account, things you didn't work to get. Take those away, and what are you? Where would you be without your brains and your money, Rich-boy? Nowhere. But me, I ain't got those things."

"Nice to hear you admit you're brainless."

"But I still got ahead in life. And you can't stand that."

"'Got ahead?'" Kaiba scoffed. He gestured at the field. "Where exactly have you gotten to, Wheeler? Failing out of high school, eating the scraps of victory tossed to you from the champion's table by Yuugi because he's soft."

Joey opened his mouth, but Rich-boy plowed on:

"You have always been a nobody pretending to bigger things, skating by on lucky guesses until you fall on your face, and I can't wait to see the day you have a fall you don't get back up from—the day I never have to waste my time on you again."

Joey ran his tongue across his teeth, felt the edges. He should have been fuming at Kaiba's words, but instead, he felt a heavy certainty settle in his stomach.

"That's it," he said. Slowly now. Confident. "That's the real thing there. It ain't about the brains and money."

"You can't even stick to a hypothesis! I hate you because you're the worthless cockroach that keeps crawling back. There's the truth. End your turn, Wheeler."

"Yeah, that's it there. It's about skill. I got a skill that you don't." Joey met Kaiba's burning eyes with a level gaze. "I know how to lose."

"Congratulations. Maybe someone else gives out trophies for being a loser, but it isn't me."

Joey laughed once more, drunk on so much impossible in one day—to have the upper hand on Kaiba in both the field and the conversation.

"That must be the scariest thing in your life, Rich-boy. Losing. 'Cause like I said before, who would you be without all those things? You lose your company, your money, your mind, you wouldn't ever recover. You wouldn't know how. What would you do if you lost your brother?"

A chill settled over the field. Joey just grinned at it. Months before, it had been him kneeling at Kaiba's feet, him taking all the insults full-force, weaknesses bared to the world.

Table's turned, Rich-boy.

"Shut up," Kaiba snarled.

Off to the side, someone said Joey's name, but he barely heard.

He went on, "My mom packed Serenity up in the car when I was eight and just drove away. Wasn't a thing I could do about it. That kind of loss hits you deep. Yet here I am, still standing. Would you be?"

A cold wind swept across the tower.

Behind Kaiba, the blue of the ocean and sky seemed to join forces with his eyes. Like he had the whole world at his back.

"You don't know a thing about me," he said.

But Joey still wasn't afraid.

"Nah, I know plenty about you now. I get it. Truth is you don't know a thing about yourself because you won't admit it. You're a kid, Kaiba. No different than me. And you're balancing all these plates up on all these poles, and the whole time they're spinning, you're just sweatin' your heart out because one of 'em's gonna drop, and if you can drop one, you can drop 'em all. If you can lose in a game, you can lose in business. You can lose in life." Joey scoffed. "And, man, has Marik made you lose! He smashed that plate so hard, it sent pieces to Egypt."

"I didn't realize you were blind, Wheeler. That duel—"

"Sure, you won the duel, but he's made a mess of your tournament from the start. Kicked over all your special sand castles. Backed you into corners. I ain't blind, Rich-boy. I been watchin' from the start. What's everyone gonna say when we get back to Domino? All those shiny camera crews and newspapers that love to shout, 'KaibaCorp's the bread-and-butter!' What'll they say about your tournament when they ask what happened and you can't even tell them because you can't even admit it? That's what Marik's done. He's wrecked it all for you."

Joey shook his head. "And if it were me who lost? Man, I shake that right off like water. A loss don't mean nothin' in my book. I take a dose of defeat every four-to-six hours with meals. But you? You can't swallow it. That's why you hate me. For all your riches, I got the one thing you need that you can't buy."

Silence returned to the field. Joey basked in it until the ref called out a time warning on him. He finally ended his turn.

For several moments, Kaiba didn't move at all.

He didn't speak.

But when he drew his cards and played out his turn, Joey realized he'd poked a dragon.

And he'd far overestimated his new-found winning streak.

"I'll teach you the fate of losers."

Gozaburo Kaiba's last words to him. Seto couldn't forget them even if he tried.

Wheeler wanted praise for losing. He wanted the world to go easy on him simply because he existed. While the winners clawed their way to the top through stone and thorns, leaving a path streaked with blood, Wheeler demanded the same prizes having paid none of the price. And Yuugi had been granting that wish for far too long now. He'd taken in the stray and fed it table scraps until it forgot its place in life.

But Seto would teach it the fate of losers.

His turn began with only one monster on his field, Vorse Raider [1900/1200], with no special abilities or attributes. He had only three cards in his hand. One of those was the magic card Forced Fate. If he played it, the effect would let him pull any one magic card from his deck, activating it immediately. But in order to do so, he had to discard a monster from his hand. It had to be a monster of seven stars or more.

Seto had two monsters in his hand. One was Obelisk. One was Blue-Eyes.

Wheeler wanted to talk about progress and loss. He trumpeted strength when all he'd done was survive the same unfairness life dealt to every person on their pointless, crooked planet. He said his mother had taken his sister, boo-hoo. He wanted to know if Seto could stand through such a thing? Seto would have slashed his own mother's tires before she took Mokuba. He would have hunted for his brother to the ends of the earth.

Pegasus had taken Mokuba. Seto had pulled himself out of a coma, survived the assassination attempt left for him, piloted a helicopter right into the mouth of a trap, sacrificed his own soul, nearly his own life.

He didn't need to ask if Wheeler could do that. Wheeler knew nothing of actual loss. More, he knew nothing of sacrifice.

Seto knew the sour taste all too well.

With steel in his soul, he plucked Blue-Eyes from his hand and slid the dragon into his graveyard.

"I activate Forced Fate."

The magic card he pulled from his deck was Soul Exchange. It allowed him to sacrifice Wheeler's Jinzo [2400/1500] and Gearfried the Iron Knight [1800/1600] along with his own monster.

Obelisk shook the tower as it roared. Blue sparks lit the air.

Wheeler trembled, as he should.

"You're so proud of losing," Seto snarled. "Then lose."

Wheeler activated a trap. Useless against a god.

Seto had 3500 lifepoints. Wheeler had taken 500 by luck. If he wanted so badly to pretend to the winner's path, the path of thorn and stone, Seto would make him pay for each point in blood.

"Obelisk," he said coldly. "Crush him."

Note: My baby boy is here and we couldn't love him more. Being a mother is both harder and easier than I imagined, which I feel like is the truth of most everything in life, haha. Happy New Year, everyone!