Whew. Sorry about the lag in updates; school got out of hand! Also sorry if this chapter's kind of slow... hit a block... //shrugs

Should be back to normal next chapter ^_^

Disclaimer: come on now, seriously. It's a fanfic for a reason.

'I refuse.'

'It'll be safer.'

'No.'

'Oh, come on, it's not that big a—'

'I will not!'

Yugi groaned.

An hour after their discussion, Raven had come out of her room to join them in planning their next move. They'd attempted to get her to be their chauffer—while Kaiba, Joey and Tristan could drive, there was no arguing that Raven would be a better driver, especially during run-ins with the Doma crew—but she'd flat-out refused.

'Why not?'

'Because I'm not your nanny. Get moneybags to drive. Or the mutt. I'm not driving.'

'But you have the most experience!'

'I also have a perfectly-functioning bike of my own, and I'm not going to be seen dead in a car with you lot.' She flicked her hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms. 'Next topic.'

Yugi sighed and slumped down as Seto, smirking a little, spoke up. 'The next problem we have is our next place of investigation. Now that the warehouse is destroyed, we have no signal to track and no leads.'

Raven chuckled. 'You underestimate me, Seto. The warehouse had a few… interesting things in it. Explosives—'

'No joking,' Joey muttered.

'—files, pictures, Orichalcos junk and a computer tower,' Raven continued.

'But you brought nothing back.' He crossed his arms. This is what I get for giving her free rein.

'Again, Seto, you underestimate me.' She reached into her bra, sending all the boys into a deep blush and making both the girls huff, pulling out a small USB-key. 'All the data I could pull from the tower is on there. Photos of important files are too. Same goes for pictures.'

'Like you could pull anything from a computer except the wiring,' Tea huffed.

Raven fixed her with an icy glare. 'For your information, I am perfectly capable when it comes to computers. How the hell do you think I stayed off the radar for so long?'

He could almost have smiled; something had carried over from her time as Ravana. Ravana had been a computer genius.

He opened up his laptop and booted it. 'I take it you've been through it already.'

'Of course. Lucky for us, Doma's a business, and they actually come up as legit. Records, transactions, everything. Their HQ's over in Florida. Oh, and you might be interested to know that Doma's been buying a lot of your stock recently—at the request of Alister.'

'What?'

'Apparently he blames Kaiba Corp for the deaths of his family, or something like that,' she said carelessly. 'There's a whole log of emails and messages between him and Dartz. Unfortunately for you, Dartz listened to him. They're trying to take over your company.'

He cursed. People trying to take over his company wasn't something out of the ordinary, but this time, it could end very badly for him. 'Bastards… at least it gives us a location. That's good.'

'Not quite,' she said. 'The Florida HQ isn't their centre of operations, it's only the centre of Doma's operations. The Orichalcos thing is somewhere else entirely.' She looked over his shoulder and pointed to a folder on the screen. 'There's pictures in there. Open it.'

He did as ordered, and leant back, blinking. 'What the fuck is this?'

'It's their true centre.'

'I know that. What is that?'

'Don't ask me. They're stills taken from video footage, but that's all I got out of them.'

The companions crowded around the laptop. On screen was a photograph of a large, Grecian-style temple with rapier-straight spires. More images followed. A wall of stone rectangles, each with its own image carved on it, and a number of blank ones; a chamber with chains set into the wall; another room, circular this time—like the one in the warehouse—with carvings stretching around its walls.

'What is that place?' Mai whispered.

'You were with them. Wouldn't you know?' Tristan asked.

'If she did, she wouldn't remember.'

'And just how do you know that, Raven?' Tea said.

'Because when I freed her from the Orichalcos' control, all the memories she'd gained under its influence were wiped along with it,' Raven explained, in a tone one would take with a five-year-old child. 'She won't remember anything she did or anywhere she went while she was with Doma.'

'Another good example of acting without thinking,' Seto grumbled. At this rate, everything useful they'd find would be rendered useless in two seconds flat.

'It was either wipe them or let both her and the mutt get taken by it,' Raven replied. 'In any case, by the time we'd have defeated Dartz, she would have had those memories wiped anyway. Or she'd be dead.'

'You don't mean that.'

'Speak for yourself. When I catch up with Valon, he's going to—'

'Enough,' Ryou hastily interjected. 'Since we don't know where this place is, why don't we head over to the Florida place, see if we can't find some new leads?'

'Sounds good,' Yugi agreed. 'Will we be driving again?'

'No,' he said. 'We'll be flying this time.'

'Only if I can bring my bike.'

He sighed; he'd guessed as much. 'Alright, you can bring that thing. We'll have to drive to the nearest airstrip though.' Noticing Raven was about to speak up, he hastily added, 'I'll do the driving. If you're concerned about anyone finding out your real background—'

Suddenly an alarm blared from his laptop and he cursed, swinging around to it. Then his eyes widened. Already?

'What is it?' Joey asked.

'Seto!' Mokuba's voice chirped. 'We were starting to get worried about you.'

'There was no reason,' he replied. He'd missed three calls while the laptop was off, all from Mokuba. Said brother was now sitting in his office beside Solomon Moto, face a picture of relieved glee.

'I take it you guys kicked ass?'

With a sideways glance at Raven, he shook his head slightly. 'The warehouse is no more, and we've got a new lead.'

'But…?' This time it was Solomon's voice that spoke up. 'Something happened. What?'

'Grandpa?' Yugi asked. 'What are you doing there?'

'We thought it would be best to check in on you as often as possible,' he replied. 'Serenity's watching the shop with Duke—' Joey muttered under his breath—'So it's just Mokuba and me for the moment. Now tell us what happened.'

Seto looked up at Yugi, who in turn glanced over at Raven. She frowned.

With a glare to the both of them, Seto turned back to the screen. 'When we got to the warehouse, Valon was revealed to be working for the Orichalcos group. Mai was, too, but Raven managed to wipe the Seal's influence from her. She's back with us now.'

'That's good,' Mokuba nodded.

'The Orichalcos group have a business front, called Doma, and we have their HQ location—we'll be travelling there shortly.'

'That's also good. So what happened that wasn't good?'

Seto opened his mouth, but Yugi spoke up. 'No, Kaiba. This is something I've got to do.'

'I'll let Moto explain,' he said quietly, turning the laptop to face Yugi. In his mind, he said sorry to the old man; sorry that he'd done the digging, sorry that he'd outed Raven to the group. He kept his face blank, though.

'We were right, weren't we, Seto?' Mokuba asked.

'Right about what?'

Yugi sighed heavily. 'You remember Raven Astarte?'

The old man visibly stiffened. 'It's her, isn't it? Yugi, I don't care how much she's helped, I'm ordering you to take a knife and—'

'She's Ravana.'

Seto could have sworn he heard the old man's mind snap. 'What?'

Raven turned her back.

'She's Ravana,' Yugi repeated, voice dull and heavy. 'Raven is Ravana.'

'That's impossible.'

'She's got the scars. And she admitted to it. It's her, Grandpa.' His voice cracked. 'I'm sorry.'

'That's not possible, Yugi. Ravana was—' he cleared his throat— 'It's not possible.'

'Oh, fuck it,' Raven snapped. 'I didn't want to do this again, but I guess I have to now, don't I?'

Yugi glared at her, but turned the laptop to face her and quickly left the room. Taking his cue, Tea and the rest of the group followed, leaving Seto alone with Raven in the kitchen. He quickly turned to face the wall, only half-listening to the conversation behind him. Denial, unwilling acceptance, hatred, he sighed to himself. From the sounds of it, the elder Moto had just shifted from 'unwilling acceptance' to 'hatred'; Raven's angry screams had changed from English to Egyptian—he'd noticed she tended to slip back into her native tongue when she was particularly furious—but the old man, either through lack of knowledge or better temper control, was still using English.

After a minute of ever-loudening screaming, he quietly slipped into the hallway, leaning against the wall.

Finally he heard a chair crash; either Raven had jumped up too quickly or—more likely—she'd thrown one of the battered objects at the nearest wall. 'Fuck you, old man!' A sudden, horrifying thought occurred to him: my laptop. Would Raven have thrown that too?

He strode back down the hallway, but just as he reached the door to the kitchen something heavy slammed into his stomach. It didn't feel much but the force behind it was enough to knock him off his feet and into the wall behind him; his head cracked against the wall and the breath was driven out of him.

Groaning, he propped himself against the wall, panting heavily. Stars swam in front of his eyes. What the fuck was that?

'Get off me!' A voice snarled, and his vision cleared just in time to see a black-and-red mess of hair stalk off down the hall. Raven. She must've been running out of the kitchen to knock him that hard—no, maybe not. She's damn strong, and you know it.

He still had a bruise on his ass from where she'd thrown him a few days ago.

Breath slowing returning he looked down at his chest. It felt like there should be a hole where she'd hit him, but there wasn't. Only—

Teardrops?

He wiped the glistening droplets from his shirt and glanced up the way Raven had left. Odd. Against his wishes, he went back into the kitchen. Thankfully his laptop was still on the table—a chair was the only casualty of Raven's anger. From the speakers a heavy panting could be heard, along with Mokuba's apologies.

'You both still there?'

'Solomon's gone back to the shop,' Mokuba replied softly.

'Guessed as much.' He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. 'Could you please arrange for one of my jets to meet us at the nearest airfield tomorrow? One with luggage capacity for a motorbike?'

'Sure thing, big bro. Anything else?'

He sighed heavily. 'No, that'll do.' With a customary goodbye he shut the lid of his laptop and put it back in his briefcase. For the rest of the night he sat silently at the table, mulling over numerous coffees; not really thinking, but not completely out of it either. He heard the others have dinner, say goodnight, but he remained at the table. Raven hadn't made an appearance for food yet.

He'd already accepted the fact that any relationship he'd have with Raven would end in tears and blood. She probably wouldn't live past twenty. God knew he already had enough to pine over. All he wanted right now was to comfort her, for her to be his, but that wasn't going to happen. It wasn't ever going to happen. So for both their sakes, it was best that the relationship was ended before it could begin. In other words, make her hate him even more than she already did. Hopefully somewhere along the line, he'd end up hating her, too.

He doubted it, though.

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!'

In a flash he was down the hallway and in her room. 'Raven—'

'NO—NO—NO—'

He heard the sheet being thrown aside.

'Kaiba, what the fuck happened?' Joey yelled.

'I don't know! She—'

'NO!' she howled, bolting upright. Her eyes were wide and unfocussed, the pupils pinpricks. Tears were beginning to form, and she was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

'Raven, it's alright,' Ryou shouted, but she paid him no heed. She curled herself into a ball and starting rocking back and forth, screaming and sobbing.

'No—no—'

Another night terror, Seto realised. Shit. What had he done last time that had made her stop?

Throwing caution to the wind he crawled over to her and put his arms around her shoulders, holding her tightly. A pair of pale hands appeared on her shoulders—Ryou knelt beside him—and began rubbing them. Slowly, the other companions joined them, stroking her hair or offering comforting words; even Yugi joined in, eyes strangely softer than before.

After about half an hour, she'd calmed down enough for her eyes to return to normal, and to stop hyperventilating. Eventually she fell into a deep sleep.

Seto lay her gently back down and tucked her in.

'This can't keep happening,' Yugi said. 'It's not healthy for any of us.'

'We'll talk to her in the morning,' Ryou said.

As the seven made their way back to their beds, Seto took one last look at the sleeping girl. Hope you're alright.

Aaand cue the patheticness. Update should be in a week, fingers crossed.

x~