Book I | Rent in Half
Duelist Kingdom Arc
Part I
Seto Kaiba: 18 years old
Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old
…
Kaiba watched the light above the elevator move, indicating that the Mutou boy had arrived. Sure enough, as the doors slid open, the pipsqueak brat and his trusty loser patrol spilled into the room. The pipsqueak did not see him, but only his grandfather, sprawled on the floor before them all. "Grandpa!" he cried out, multicolored spikes of hair waving in every direction as he stumbled to the old man in the middle of the room. "Grandpa, are you okay?"
Oh yes, he's just fine. Can't you tell? That's why he's hyperventilating on my floor. He was going to have to call in the janitors, what with the way the old man was spluttering everywhere.
"Yugi," Oh? So he could talk now. If only the brat had arrived a few minutes earlier, when Old Man Mutou had been left blubbering nonsense before the holographic beasts Kaiba had set upon him. The senile failure was now muttering about his Heart of the Cards. Kaiba had his ear-full of that already. Tish. Relating a card to a living creature. Ridiculous. The old man collapsed again.
"Grandpa!" The boy wailed like a suckling pig. Strange how Kaiba both despised melodramas and yet reveled in them.
Brushing a nonexistent speck of dust off his uniform, Kaiba sighed, pushed himself off the door frame, and stepped into the light. "So, how's the old man feeling, mh?"
Oh the indignation that ripples through the crowed. Villain music if you please, Maestro.
"Kaiba!" One of Yugi's cohort cried out. It was the blond boy who had wanted to 'play Duel Monsters together.' Yes, he was definitely going to have to call the janitors. "You sleaze, what have you done to him?!"
We danced the waltz. Isn't it obvious? Kaiba's smirk widened. "We had a duel, that's all, with each of us putting up our most valuable card as the prize." It was actually a very good idea, really. He would have to store it away in his memory for when he decided to host a Duel Monsters tournament – one of the many things he had always dreamed of and which he could now accomplish with money and influence at his fingertips. "But," he shrugged – Look how remorseful I am – "I guess playing against a champion like myself was just too much stimulation for the old fool."
"Kaiba!" The girl of the group now howled out his name and threw her arm out at him, pointing, as if to pronounce everlasting damnation! It's a finger. Help. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"
… Wow. Wow. Now there was a statement.
"It was fair." He shrugged, reaching his hand into his pocket. Heart of the Cards. Give me a break. "And look," It was true, he loved this card better than any other. But to attribute it human qualities…
Those eyes, looking at him through the bars of… of what?
…Ridiculous. Four cards. Only three allowed in a person's deck. He was eighteen now, and had long overthrown his beast of a stepfather and taken his place as CEO of KaibaCorp. And hadn't she promised to protect him? It was 1996 now. He had waited years. Millennia. She had never fulfilled that promise. Broken it! He felt no regrets at taking what was owed him. No regrets about kidnapping this old man and practically wrestling this last card from his quivering fingers. And hadn't he once given up everything for her? Watched it burn to nothing?
Millennia? …Nothing? …Everything?…Had he? …When?…
…'Her?'…
"Look," he said loudly, overriding his own thoughts, "at the sweet prize I won." Almost convulsively, he jerked the Blue-Eyes White Dragon card from his pocket, and tore it in half before their eyes.
…
Kisara kept her gaze fixed on the red-carpeted staircase before her as she ascended, one hand loose on the railing. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek, thinking. Something was strange. Her father had been uneasy lately. More so than usual. He was always giddy, but now there was almost something… sinister about his actions. Giddy, sometimes sorrowful, and sometimes alarming, he had never been sinister. But now… It was as if he was a tiger waiting in the brush. Crouched… tense… eager.
She shook her head, trying to rid herself of such thoughts. Two strands of her hair tousled free and flopped before her eyes. She sighed, still climbing the stairs, and took her hand off the railing to tuck the strands behind her ear again. No matter what I do they always, always fall back in front–
She was rent in half.
That was what it felt like. It was as if some giant arm had taken her in hand, and twisted, as if she was nothing but paper. She did not know if her foot landed on the next step. The searing pain tore through her sides. Her sight turned to white fire. It was as if her legs were cleaved from her torso. Her back arched, her hair splayed, her blue eyes, sightless, stood wide with pain and fear, and from her throat was wrenched so anguished a scream that everyone in the castle – everyone save one individual, calmly sipping wine in his chambers – was shaken to the bone and chilled to the heart. Such a scream… it was not human.
Kisara collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, her body still whole. Her soul, however, ripped in half.
"So," Pegasus swiveled the wine in his glass thoughtfully. "It begins." Now all he needed was to hear Croquet's report on the outcome of Kaiba and Yugi-boy's duel.