Chapter 5: Dress Shopping
Note: You reviewers are seriously the best. I still plan for this story to be just 8 or 9 chapters so things will start moving faster. Chapter 6 is pretty much written and Seto gets a little carried away sooo I might bump the rating up to M… it's really not too graphic and I don't think it will offend anyone but I'd rather play it safe.
Rebecca was getting ready to leave the Kaiba mansion after a long night working on her spring semester project – writing a business plan for the Kame Game shop – with Mokuba when Seto walked in.
Rebecca grinned. Seto had been dating Anzu for the past month, and her plan was going swimmingly – no way was Anzu seeing Yuugi now. Of course, she herself hadn't spent much time with Yuugi lately… she was pretty busy with the project with Mokuba. When this is done, I'll ask him out for dinner, she told herself.
Seto pretty much looked in one of two moods when he came back. He looked like someone had smacked him upside the head with a baseball bat – that is, distracted and unfocused – or annoyed. The first mood usually meant that he and Anzu had concluded the evening with a make-out session, the latter that they had started with the make-out session and ended with a fight.
I REALLY don't know why she puts up with him, Rebecca thought. I wouldn't have thought that she would get along with such a grouch – and they don't even seem to get along, that's the thing – but maybe she's one of those girls who enjoys squabbling with her guy. Some girls think it puts spice into their relationship. Anzu's always been very passionate, so I guess that must be it.
The idea that she, Rebecca Hopkins, was also the kind of girl who would enjoy a relationship characterized by lovers' tiffs never occurred to her.
Tonight Seto was distracted. "So, how'd it go?" she asked loudly, knowing from experience that it would only take a second to snap him out of it, now that he was away from Anzu.
"Huh? Oh, hi, Hopkins." Seto frowned. "Don't you have your own house?"
"How was the date?" Mokuba asked pointedly.
Seto sighed. "I think Anzu and I are ready to take the next step."
Mokuba and Rebecca exchanged alarmed looks. "Marriage?" she gasped. "Sex?" Mokuba asked. They glared at each other.
"No, no, nothing like that, you drama queens," Seto scowled. "I invited her to KaibaCorp's next office party. It's going to be a big night – we have a very important potential client planning to attend."
"Oh, that's great!" Rebecca enthused.
"You'll need a date too, Mokuba," Seto added.
"No problem. Becky will come with me," he said offhandedly.
She glared again. "I most certainly will not! I have a reputation to maintain."
"You want to keep an eye on Anzu and Seto, don't you?" Mokuba asked. "Besides, they always have really good food at these things."
She folded her arms. "Is there dessert?"
"A huge selection, plus I make sure they have chocolate parfait," Mokuba reassured her.
"Well, fine," Rebecca caved.
"Wow, Hopkins, you need to stop playing so hard to get, people will think you're frigid," Seto said, taking off his jacket and throwing it over the back of the couch. "Maybe you can go dress shopping with Anzu. I need to make sure she picks out something appropriate."
"She's going to get a new dress for this?" Rebecca asked.
Seto rolled his eyes. "She dresses like a farmer most of the time, of course she needs a new outfit." He remembered his conversation with Anzu… "So this is a very extravagant occasion," he said, eyeing her pink cotton skirt with distaste. "You should wear a nice dress."
Anzu looked down at her outfit and looked outraged. "Nice by my standards," Seto clarified.
She looked like she was going to pick a fight with him, but he distracted her by handing her his credit card. "It's on me."
"Oh, no, I couldn't…" she protested, and her voice trailed off. Really, she couldn't afford a dress as fancy as he would want her to be dressed, and if she was going to be his date for this thing, she ought to make a good impression.
Seto watched the train of thought go through her head as easily as if he were reading a book and nodded. "Look, Anzu, it's not like I can't afford it."
"Fine," she sighed.
"Well, I don't want a new dress," Rebecca was saying. "I have one that I bought for graduation that will be fine."
"I remember that dress, and it was cotton," Seto said, walking into the kitchen. "You're buying a new dress, and I'm paying. I don't want to hear a word about it, either. The Kaiba brothers need well-dressed dates. We have a reputation to maintain," he added, echoing her words from earlier.
"I'm going to eat too much chocolate parfait and puke everywhere, just to spite him," Rebecca mumbled to Mokuba. "Anyway, I'm out of here," she said in her normal tone of voice. "I'll call Anzu and tell her that I was also roped into dress hunting. I mean shopping. Ugh."
"See you in class tomorrow," Mokuba said as she left. He followed Seto into the kitchen, where his older brother was helping himself to chocolate cake for the third time this week. "Got a craving, huh?" he asked with curiosity.
"I hate chocolate cake," Seto informed him, stuffing a huge piece dripping with frosting into his mouth.
"Uh-huh," Mokuba said, shaking his head. "So, you're taking Anzu to meet the KaibaCorp staff. That's a pretty big deal."
"And the staff of Tokyo Tech, which is an even bigger deal," Seto said with a groan. "I'm really not sure that I want to do this – she just can't keep that damn mouth shut – but I do need a date."
"No you don't," Mokuba reminded him. "There's nothing wrong with being single."
"I have an image to maintain, and I need a date," Seto said firmly.
"Get over these reputations and images," Mokuba groused. "I think you'd be a lot more interesting if you ran naked down Main Street."
"I wouldn't want to cause such injury," Seto said with dignity. "All those fainting girls could hit their heads on their way down."
Mokuba laughed and stole a chunk of cake with his bare fingers. Seto tried to stab him with his fork, but Mokuba was too quick.
"You know, you're well on your way to losing this deal," Seto said to his little brother, eyes narrowed.
"I doubt it," Mokuba informed him. "Anzu isn't the type of girl to be impressed by your fake charm and riches."
"She seems to be capitulating so far," Seto said smugly, to which Mokuba just shook his head.
"Anyway, even if I do lose, I think I'd be okay with that," Mokuba said thoughtfully. "Because it would be worth your happiness."
"Happy because I could finally dump Mazaki?" Seto asked with his eyebrows raised.
"No," Mokuba said, ignoring Seto's snark. "Because you'd finally have found someone."
"Remember the terms of the deal," Seto said, scowling. "I win if she tells me that she loves me. The moment that happens, this thing is over. Me finding someone is not in the equation."
"No, I know Anzu," Mokuba grinned. "She won't say that she loves you until she really does, and until she's convinced that you care for her too."
Seto looked worried for a moment, before he shook his head. "I don't care about her at all, but I'm sure that she's already falling for me," he told Mokuba. "I'm too good an actor for her – it helps that she's so naïve and wants to believe that everyone has good intentions."
"Sure." Mokuba stole another piece of cake with lightning speed. "Time will tell, eh, brother?"
"Time will tell." Seto picked up his cake and carried it out of the room.
"Hey, look," Mokuba said, picking a dress up. "This one is see-through. I found a good one for you, Becky."
"Too much fabric," Rebecca said with a glance. "I want something skimpier."
"Why not just wear your bathing suit with some nice jewelry?" Anzu suggested.
"Perfect!" Mokuba said with enthusiasm, slinging an arm around Rebecca's shoulders.
"Well, that's settled," Rebecca said, shaking her head. "Now we just need something for Anzu."
"Can I assist mademoiselle?" the French owner of the shop asked in a disapproving tone, glaring menacingly at a laughing Anzu through his pince-nez until he caught sight of Mokuba, and his eyes widened.
"No thanks, Claude," Mokuba said disinterestedly, waving him away. "We'll let you know if we need anything."
"Very good, monsieur Kaiba," Claude said, disappearing as fast as he'd come.
"Try this one on," Rebecca urged, handing Anzu a bright orange dress. Anzu stifled a giggle. "Would your brother have a fit?" she asked, looking at Mokuba, who reluctantly nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, he would."
"Maybe I should be safe and stick with black," Anzu sighed, thumbing through the racks of dresses.
"No," Mokuba said immediately. "Shina wears black exclusively, and she looks like the mistress of death."
Anzu laughed again. "Seto's told me about her," she said, shaking her head. "I've met Shina a couple of times in staff meetings and I just don't get her. Does she take any joy from life?"
"Robots don't feel emotion," Mokuba informed her.
"It's so weird that Seto went from dating her to me," Anzu said with a frown, stopping to examine a deep purple dress with off-the-shoulder sleeves. "She and I are pretty much opposites."
Rebecca, who had never been a very good actress, went into a coughing fit. Anzu turned to look at her, concerned, and Mokuba rolled his eyes and stepped between them.
"Luckily for you, Hopkins, I have standards a lot more lax than my brother's," Mokuba announced. She stopped coughing to immediately frown and started to say "Yeah, we all figured that out after you stuck your tongue down that last Barbie's throat-"
"And I like women wearing orange dresses," Mokuba interrupted hastily, before she could go further along that train of thought. "So I think you should try that dress on for the party."
"Oh." Rebeca looked back at the dress. It wasn't purely orange, it faded to yellow at the hem and was a much deeper orange, almost red, at the top. Spaghetti straps held up a princess neckline; the cut was elegant but the colors were bright and beautiful, and she did like the dress a lot.
"Well, I'll try it on," she said off-handedly.
"And I'll try these on," Anzu said, coming up with the purple dress and a dark green one.
The girls entered the dressing room, and Anzu came out first, wearing the purple dress. "What do you think?" she asked with a grin, placing a hand on her hip and striking a pose.
"I like it," Mokuba said honestly. It was elegant and modest without being morbid. The dress had a full skirt that would trail behind Anzu as she walked, and he knew that Seto thought that style was very dignified. And purple was a very pretty color on Anzu; it picked up her rosy cheeks and blue eyes.
"MK, can you help me with the zipper? I think it's caught," Rebecca said, emerging. Mokuba turned toward her and then froze, slack-jawed.
The dress clung to her every curve, accentuating assets that Rebecca usually preferred to keep masked underneath jackets. The princess neckline hugged her big, round breasts, dipping slightly into a vee to give him a hint of cleavage. It was tight around her hips and upper thighs, then dropped straight down to mid-calf, leading to vivid fantasies about the excellent pair of legs under there. Even better, Rebecca had yanked her hair out of its usual ponytail, and now it tumbled in loose curls around her shoulders. She had eschewed her usual glasses for contact lenses today, although Mokuba was secretly disappointed; he liked her in glasses.
But he really liked her in that dress.
And uh-oh, he was afraid that he was going to start drooling.
"Hell-o? Zipper?" Rebecca put her hands on her hips, but Mokuba couldn't quite focus yet.
"I'll get it," Anzu said, hurrying over and trying to hide her grin. Rebecca turned around, lifting her hair up so that Anzu could reach the zipper. The dress was low in the back, and Mokuba stared at her shoulder blades, at the little freckles dotting her back, and gulped audibly.
"You okay, MK?" Rebecca asked, spinning around. Mokuba groped behind him for a chair and sat down quickly. "Uhh, yeah."
"What's-" Rebecca stopped mid-sentence and eyed him narrowly. Mokuba could do nothing but stare dizzily back, until he finally reached up and slapped his own face. That brought him back to earth.
"Stop gawking, Kaiba Mokuba," Rebecca said dangerously.
"I'm nineteen years old, what do you want from me?" he asked, spreading his hands.
"Respect," Rebecca snapped. Mokuba wisely remained silent. She stormed back into the dressing room, and he couldn't help but ask, "Does this mean you're not getting the dress?"
"Of course I'm getting the dress," Rebecca said smugly through the closed door. "I look hot."
"Ooh, let's stop in here," Anzu said, pointing at a toy store.
"There's a better one down the block," Mokuba said, glancing over. They'd dropped their dresses off in the car – Anzu had tried on the green dress, but settled for the purple one ("And it's cheaper," she'd pointed out, and Mokuba said "Great, just don't tell Seto"), and Mokuba had pointed out that both girls needed matching shoes, so now they were walking the few blocks over to a designer shoe shop.
"But this one supports charity," Anzu said, darting inside. Rebecca shrugged and followed her.
Once inside, Anzu stopped to look around, then headed right for the bucket of plushees on the far wall. She grabbed the first one she saw – a tan puppy – but paused, seeing a second bin marked Duel Monster plushees.
"I can't believe it," she giggled, pawing through the bin. "I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone decided to make stuffed Duel Monsters. I'm sure Pegasus was all too thrilled to give some company the rights."
"This is disgraceful," Rebecca said, gingerly holding up a Dark Magician by its hat.
"Come on, there has to be a Blue-Eyes White Dragon in here somewhere," Anzu said, scraping the bottom of the bucket.
"There won't be," Mokuba assured her. "Seto paid a ridiculous amount of money to Industrial Illusions to secure the patent for Blue-Eyes. He didn't want it mass marketed."
"Damn!" Anzu crossed her arms and frowned. "That figures. Well, I'm sure there's another good one in here." She continued digging through the bin until emerging, grinning, with a Saggi the Dark Clown plushee.
"That's horrifying," Rebecca said flatly.
"That is… horrifying," Mokuba agreed. It looked like the makers had tried, sort of, to make Saggi friendly and adorable, but it still looked like a demented clown. The stuffing made it even creepier.
"It reminds me so much of Seto," Anzu said with a grin, carrying her prize up to the cash register.
"750 yen, please, and would you like to donate 100 yen to charity today?" the smiling woman asked, ringing the purchase up.
"Actually, I'd like to donate one million yen, please," Anzu said politely, handing her Seto's credit card.
The woman froze. "A million…?"
"Yes," Anzu said firmly.
"I… I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't just put that through on a credit card…" the woman stammered, then looked down at the name on the card and her jaw went slack. "Er—Kaiba?"
"My boyfriend," Anzu said sweetly. "You can put that through, he won't mind."
"I-" now the woman looked really hesitant. "I'm sorry, but I still can't ring that up without Kaiba-san himself…"
"I'm Kaiba Mokuba," Mokuba interrupted, digging through his pocket for his ID and flashing it. "You can go ahead and put that through." Then he nudged Anzu and whispered, "His credit limit is actually two million yen, you can donate a little more and still have enough for the shoes."
"Okay, I'd actually like to donate one and a half million yen," Anzu corrected, still smiling sweetly. "Where do I sign?"