Chapter 6

(Fuck hope. Seto is giving up and becoming a steampunk sky-pirate. Who drinks TEA.)

Eventually, Seto calmed down enough that Yami deigned to allow him to accompany Yami down into the bowels of the tower to find out what the hell caused the explosion.

What they found, once they'd walked down about a million stairs and fought their way through the piles of debris surrounding the basement level R&D labs, was...

And here Seto had to pause for another deep breath because the sight before him was both mind-boggling and ridiculous, and his brain was having to process it in increments to avoid total shutdown.

In the center of the former R&D lab in which she had first appeared, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon was comfortably ensconced on her nest of battered computers, office chairs, and lab equipment. Apparently not content with the available offerings, she had somehow added to her nest in the form of every bit of coffee-related paraphernalia in the tower. In fact, as Seto watched, a slinky shadow form oozed into the room with a bag of French Roast in its mouth and deposited it onto the hoard with a little bow of its slender head. The Blue-Eyes accepted this as her due and used her snout to reposition the bag to her liking.

Looking more closely, Seto could see many more bags of coffee beans and ground coffee, even jars of instant coffee, tucked into the mess piled in the center of the room like a giant layer cake with the Blue-Eyes as an oversized cake-topper. He'd never seen so much coffee in one place; in fact, he wouldn't be surprised to find it was every bit of coffee in Domino City.

Coffee, coffee everywhere and nary a drop to drink, sing-songed a mad little voice in his head.

"Well," said Yami, from where he was observing more shadows arriving to lay their coffee offerings at the feet of the Blue-Eyes. "This certainly explains a lot."

"On what planet?" Seto demanded. Though if Yami thought this made sense, it definitely explained a lot about why Earth logic never seemed to apply to him. "What the hell does she think she's doing?"

"Hoarding coffee, apparently."

"No, really? I thought she had taken up knitting." Seto curled his fingers into claws and just barely stopped himself from attempting to strangle the pharaoh. "Why is the Blue-Eyes White Dragon hoarding coffee in my basement?!"

"Because she wants to, I presume." Yami's eyes twinkled with far too much good humor for Seto's peace of mind.

Seto opened his mouth to say something that would probably get him Mind Crushed, when one of the shadows slithered up and bowed deeply to Yami. He looked down at it. "Yes?"

The shadow nudged its "nose" against Yami's boot. Yami bent down and let the thing twine itself around his hand and wrist like a pet snake made of pure darkness. He brought it to eye-level and stared at it for a long moment before returning it to the floor, where it slithered off to, presumably, steal more coffee for the Blue-Eyes.

"Are you aware that the employee health office is on the level directly above this one?" Yami asked, apropos of nothing.

Confused by the non sequitur, Seto nodded.

"It seems that some dragons have particularly acute hearing," Yami said, continuing his streak of making zero sense and apparently going for some kind of record.

"What does any of this have to do with coffee hoards and-" Seto's eye caught on the melted remains of his Deluxe Coffeenator 3000. He fought the urge to sob. "-my coffee maker."

"Apparently she overheard some of your employees talking about giving up coffee due to health problems and-" Yami paused to clear his throat and Seto realized the bastard was trying not to laugh. "-decided to preempt any ailments you might acquire from your coffee habit by removing your source of the beverage."

His gaze wandered to the extremely defunct Coffeenator. "Someone must have let it slip that that-" Yami pointed to the puddle of sludge formerly known as Seto's coffee maker. "-was your favorite method of making coffee and she, um, eliminated the enemy with extreme prejudice."

"And took most of the tower with it." And they'd only just replaced the ceiling in the test lab, too.

The smirk Yami had been suppressing broke free of containment. "She meant well."

"You do realize this means I have to relocate everyone while the tower is being rebuilt."

"Might I suggest you use the opportunity during the renovation to construct a more appropriate home for your dragon?"

"I've got a suggestion for you-" Seto bit back said suggestion (which included the words "your", "shove", and "ass" (not necessarily in that order), and would definitely get him Mind Crushed). He sighed and tried to look on the bright side.

At least he now had a perfectly good excuse to ship Yami off to Kaiba Corp Antarctica.