This may not be how anybody anticipated, or wanted, this little sojourn to end. Maybe you wanted it to go on longer. Maybe you wish I'd never bothered with it in the first place. I don't know. All I know is, I wrapped it up as best I could.
There have been those in the past who have accused me of simping too hard for Seto. Of singing his praises too often, and basically making him into a Mary-Sue. And you know, when I was younger, I would worry about that. I would think to myself: is that what I'm doing? I don't want to do that. I don't want to lean too hard in either direction.
But as I've gotten older, I've realized … y'know, life's too short.
I'm not going to worry about that anymore.
If Seto is too woobified in my stories for your tastes, if he's too heroic, or if I'm too easy on him, I would never say you're wrong to feel that way. But I'm not going to apologize for it, either. I came into this fandom as a kid with precious few heroes, and Seto Kaiba fast became one of them. So there was always a bit of worshipfulness in how I portrayed him.
And now that I'm 36, and even my baby sister is older than Seto is in canon, I write him this way mostly because … he's just a kid, man. He's just a kid, and he's been through enough. I won't refrain from giving him hard shit to deal with, but I'm gonna give him some wins along the way.
It just feels right to me.
I hope y'all can find something worthwhile in that.
1.
The Leviathan descended like divine condemnation, wrapping its bulk about Obelisk and hissing like a steam engine out of its massive, too-large maw. Compared to the God of Orichalcos, even Obelisk was tiny. But tiny though he was, he did not buckle. The great soldier's gauntlets wrapped about the Leviathan's body, and the gargantuan serpent began to melt at the touch, though it regenerated itself just as quickly.
Kaiba closed his eyes. "So. It begins."
You will witness the retribution of the countless lives sacrificed to the foolish crusade of your continued existence. Bear witness to their fury, pretender, and understand the greatest of all Divine Truths.
Kaiba did not shy away from the tempestuous fury above his head, but stared at it. Dared it to blind him. "Divine truths," he repeated. "The nerve of you, ghost of forgotten glory, to claim any kind of divinity." His voice was low now, too low for anyone to hear. It didn't matter. "Cast down your judgment, then, and we'll find out together what retribution looks like."
On another planet, he heard his brother walking Mokuba through the nature of the battle they had walked into; watched as Mokuba worked his way up to understanding what he had to do, what would see him through the day, as more and more beasts came flooding out of the rift in the sky after the Leviathan.
Demons, scores of them; imps, balrogs, undead juggernauts; dragons, from the smallest hatchlings to the greatest of wyrms, all sweeping through the air like dancers in a frenzy. Kaiba watched them descend, almost casually, and heard the words that—in any other context but this one—might have sent a shiver of horror up his spine.
"Dragon Killer."
Mokuba Kaiba—the head of the dynasty in this far-flung world, child of trauma and regret and so much blood—hunched low and let every sliver and synapse of anger he'd ever felt sing through his veins. The earth crunched below his feet as he shot into the air and met the onslaught with fang and claw.
2.
Training. Precision. Self-preservation. Reasoning. All cognition burned to ashes in a ravenous blaze of bleeding, snapping, ripping glory. Gone was any and all understanding of Mokuba Kaiba, the man. Mokuba Kaiba, the brother. Mokuba Kaiba, the bodyguard, the soldier, the warrior.
All that was left was the Dragon Killer. The primeval hunter.
The myth-eater.
Above, in the star-scape of Heaven, a soldier wrestled with a god, and neither could tell which was which. But below, on the earth where mortal creatures lived and died, killed and survived, was where the blood spilled.
The Killer's claws ripped through scales, while his teeth sank deep into serpentine necks. He drank in the carnage, showering the soil below him in a cataclysmic baptism, as wings he had never used before spread wide and carried him forward, upward, inward. There were no thoughts, no mental treatises on the morality of his actions; there was only instinct, the one thing he was born to do, and the need to see it done.
The two younger Kaibas worked together to protect Téa and Isono, Seto with the confidence of a tournament duelist and Mokie with the confidence of a warrior prince. Any beast, any stray spells, any gout of fire, any gust of cutting wind, was met with spell and shield and saber.
There was none of the laughter, none of the cocksure smirks, now. The arrival of the Great Leviathan banished all levity from the moment. Yet as two civilians watched four soldiers on the field, protecting them, inadvertently if not purposefully, they couldn't help but sit in awe of what was unfolding.
Isono thought, for perhaps the first time, that all the proselytizing that Seto did on the importance of his favorite game was well-deserved. Magic & Wizards wasn't just a dramatic name chosen for brand recognition; it was a literal call to action. He thought, in a kind of liminal way that would find no purchase later, that any duelist in Domino City could summon their creatures, could cast their spells, if they but lifted their cards and called for them to answer.
It would work.
Isono didn't know how he knew, but he knew.
The electricity in the air that made his hair stand on edge wasn't just a product of the storm crashing through the sky as the Leviathan and Obelisk vied for control; it was magic. Raw, unfiltered, pure. Wishes and nightmares would walk into reality this day. Promises made this day would bind people together with something deeper, stronger, denser than words.
And here. On this lawn. Of all places.
Was the nexus of everything.
3.
The grim, cast-from-granite face of Gozaburo Kaiba stared out from a screen that seemed more like a window into Hell than anything physical. His eyes, like coals from a dead fire, flared. "Explain the meaning of this," he growled, looking like nothing so much as a disappointed principal in some grade school for the damned.
Noa tilted his head to one side, crossing his arms over his chest. "I don't think there's much to explain, Chichiue. I need to do something, and you're in my way."
One thick eyebrow raised over one glittering eye. "Excuse me? Where, precisely, did you pick up the notion that it's acceptable to speak to me in that manner, boy?"
Noa blinked. "I'm pretty sure I can speak to you in whatever way I please, considering you aren't in any position to stop me." Noa did not smile, he did not smirk; he did not put on that old Kaiba arrogance. In its place, he was grim, cold, and unflinching. Even as the earth shook around him, and dust fell from the corners and settled on the equipment like insects, Noa invoked his brother's example and stared straight into the old man's soul—or what remained of it.
"You forget yourself."
"Chichiue, I love you, a part of me always will, but I'm afraid I don't have time for this." Noa placed his hands on the central keyboard for the console in front of him. "You're operating under some idea that you have power here. The truth is, you don't. You haven't managed to retain yourself, nor your reputation. You've only made a, frankly, mediocre copy of yourself."
The malignant software that once called itself Noa's father made to stop him, but couldn't. Gozaburo Kaiba was a genius, with a mind like a steel trap, but his firstborn son was beyond genius. The workings of technology weren't just a field of study for Noa.
They were the keystones of his soul.
"Bold words from a mediocre copy of my son."
Noa shrugged. "Noa Kaiba is dead. In this world, and in the one where I hail. I have merely taken his name and his face for my own purposes. As to my mediocrity," here he looked up and his eyes narrowed, "feel free to extoll the virtues of your opinion. Just not too loudly. I have to concentrate."
A year ago, perhaps even a month ago, Noa would have been intimidated by the incandescent fury of his father's words as he thundered throughout the room and sent shivers of electricity snapping through the air. As it was, however; this day, however; this Noa, however, had no time nor tolerance for any such thing. He wondered, idly, how much influence the old man would have over him if he'd remained a hologram.
If the influx of magic radiating throughout the entire city of Domino right now hadn't rendered him corporeal.
It probably would have taken him a lot more grit, a lot more courage, to face his father with any kind of nonchalance. He was quite certain that, if he'd been a hologram, Gozaburo would have managed to corrupt him by now, to render him helpless by now, to shape Noa into whatever puppet he wanted.
But the magic had made him corporeal.
And that made him untouchable.
"I think," said Noa, almost to himself, "it isn't just Aniue's example that's influencing me right now." He glanced up at Gozaburo, his father, the ghost of everything he'd once admired. "Do you know? In the world I'm from, Mokuba is the younger one? It must be strange for you to consider that. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe you've considered what life would have been like if you'd been interested in the older brother, and if you'd bent your . . . attention . . . toward him. I don't know. And you don't look particularly inclined to answer me, especially since I've had to mute you."
Now Noa offered a smile.
It was a sweet little thing, bright and chipper and so, so angry.
"I'm sorry about that, Chichiue. I have to focus. There are things of actual import happening up on the surface, and if I'm going to be anything resembling useful to anybody, I need to make sure I get all this handled as soon as I can."
He turned his attention back to his work.
"Mokuba doesn't like talking about you. He doesn't say your name. It's not that he's scared of you. I don't think so. I think if anyone was ever afraid of you, it was me. I was the only one who really held onto the idea that your approval meant anything. Aniue started out that way, but he figured things out pretty fast. He's like that. No. I think the reason Mokuba doesn't like saying your name is because he doesn't want to give you the satisfaction of being remembered. You aren't important to him, to them, to us. You're that man. Just like any other man. No more or less remarkable than a stockbroker or an office jockey. I wonder how that makes you feel. No, no, you don't have to tell me. My curiosity is hypothetical."
A window popped up on-screen, and Noa's face split in a grin.
"There you are."
4.
The Orichalcos fed off the darkness in human hearts. So Dartz often said, and so his cult had long believed. The Master, as Dartz often called himself, would claim that the Orichalcos purged negative emotions from its users, but he knew better. He knew full well that it fed off such things, and that his followers were only ever weakening themselves.
He knew, even if he had long since deluded himself into forgetting.
The proof of this came to fruition when he invoked his unholy power not to use against the God Obelisk, but upon him. Hidden in the pocket between dimensions, watching like a puppet-master in his own private theater, he saw that old seal carve itself into Obelisk's bulk and waited for the pyroclasm.
Of all the things to cause the insufferable Kaiba clone to smile again, this was the most confounding.
But smile he did.
"You have read old words, and relied on older wisdom, for too long," he said. There was no chance of anyone hearing him over the cacophony of violence surrounding him, as the Dragon Killer ripped through Dartz's cavalry and the wunderkinds' forces fended off his infantry.
But Dartz heard him, all the same.
"And what do you know of wisdom?" Dartz asked, voice echoing as it passed the veil.
"Enough," said the pretender. "Consider: how is it that I have staved off your onslaught for so long? The others, the warriors about me, they have been playing by the rules. They are acting as they should act. But what about me? How have you not managed to remove me from your gameboard, despite all you have done?"
"You have ever been marked by prophecy," said Dartz. "That you would be a troublesome obstacle was never in doubt."
"Wasn't it?" The pretender sounded earnestly confused. "What of your dragons? What of the knights you cast out from your court? Why are they not here? Why are they not required for this to unfold properly? Why have I not called upon Critias? Why have my compatriots not cast their lots with Timaeus and Hermos?"
Dartz did not want to admit frustration. He did not like the way his jaw set.
"I do not pretend to understand the mental workings of lesser beings."
The pretender laughed his grating laugh. "Oh, I'm sure you don't. I'm sure you don't." He paused. Then gestured vaguely. "What of your darkness? Should Orichalcos not have ruined Obelisk? You clearly expected it to, else you would never have cast it upon him. Yet still he stands. Still I stand. We are not corrupted. I wonder. Why is that?"
Every time he sent more soldiers into the fray, the damnable Dragon Killer simply redoubled its efforts and tore everything to shreds. The children, even the civilians, had no fear. They did not dread the coming end, they did not comprehend the future, they simply sat there like cattle and watched.
"You honestly believe yourself to be untouchable," said Dartz.
The pretender rolled his eyes. "You are quite possibly the single most shortsighted cult leader I have ever heard of, and considering just how stiff your competition is, I suppose I have to congratulate you for that."
"You continue to speak only for my amusement. It would do you well to remember that."
"Sure. If you say so." The pretender rolled his shoulders, and the white dragon's wings flexed. "Your magic feeds off fear, first and foremost. That, when all sentiment is stripped away, is the center of evil. The true father of sin, that which makes everything you claim to hate and wish to purge, is insecurity."
"Is that so . . . ?"
The pretender flexed his fingers, and lightning cast from his body in a sweeping arc that incinerated a host of demons closing in on him. "I am the worst opponent you ever could have come against. I have wrestled with my demons every morning for fifteen years. There is nothing you could say, or do, or represent, that could shake me. You ought to have anticipated that. You ought to have prepared for it. But the idea that anyone could be stronger than you, stronger than your Leviathan, is so repulsive to you that you cannot bring yourself to conceive of it. That, in the end, is your fatal flaw."
"Fatal, is it? Then this will kill me. You believe that you can kill me, when thousands of better men than you have tried and have only stoneless graves to show for it."
"No," said the pretender. "I don't believe that I can kill you."
Obelisk growled, a sound so deep, so steeped in dark things, that Dartz felt it in his bones.
"But we can." The pretender's eyes went wide. "Noa! Now!"
The universe flinched.
5.
"How'd you figure it out, Niisama?"
Seto shrugged. "What game could possibly exist without stakes? The goal was never to live through our old traumas, the goal was to conquer them. How close am I?" He directed this at Noa, who sat all prim and pretty on an ottoman and looked quite thoroughly pleased with himself.
"I just thought it might be fun for you guys, if you got to be the overwhelming force this time."
Mokuba frowned. "So what about the whole . . . me being older thing?"
"Oh, that was just for me," Noa said.
"So the real goal," Mokuba said, "was in the old console under the house. That was like. The finish line. We were supposed to figure that out? Go down there and work it out ourselves?"
"It was an option," Noa said. "But you both went whole-hog into protecting the innocent, so I decided to change course. Aniue knew there was something going on, that's why he waited so long. Why he kinda . . . y'know. Stretched things out."
"I am nothing if not a master of dramatic timing," said Seto.
"So wait." Mokuba looked confused all over again. "You just said, what would a game be without stakes? But then you said that the whole idea was to curb-stomp our pasts. I mean, not literally, but that's basically what you said. Isn't that the opposite of stakes?"
"That's why he acted like he couldn't get us out," Seto said, jabbing a finger at Noa. "Sleight of hand to make things more realistic. If we're worried about that, we won't notice any seams and cracks. Well played, new kid. Well played."
"Some people call me a genius," Noa said.
"Man, whatever." Mokuba rolled his eyes and stood up. "You geniuses can congratulate yourselves. I'm gonna go find something to eat." He swept out of the room in a huff.
There was a long beat of silence.
Noa broke it: "I don't feel good, lying to him."
"I know," said Seto. "I like it no more than you do. But for the moment, it's our best course of action. He'll figure things out soon enough." Seto chuckled. "The first time he notices you can actually interact with things, or if the power goes out and you don't flicker out of existence."
"Do you think they remember us?"
Seto shrugged. "I have no idea," he said. "I haven't put near enough research into the multiverse to know anything about it with certainty. But I have my doubts that anything occurred over there the way that we perceived it."
"Did Dartz ever try to tempt you with that Orichalcos nonsense? Here, I mean?"
Seto shook his head. "If he did, I never noticed. The Orichalcos means nothing to me. I already tried selling my soul for power. It's overrated, and anyway, once a God Card chooses you it influences you whether you're holding it or not. Obelisk never would have allowed me to succumb to that. Too insulting."
"The magic in the God Cards. It's real, isn't it?"
"Real enough," Seto said.
Noa considered this for a time, then sighed. "The real world is confusing."
"Mm," said Seto. He paused. Then he said: "You did well. Dealing with your father." Noa flinched, but then favored his brother with a look bordering on awe. "Yes," Seto said, "I know about that. I heard you." Another pause. "Do you feel better?"
"I think so."
"You didn't deserve what he did to you. None of us did."
"I—I know, Aniue. I know that."
"I'm going to say it anyway. And you're going to remember it."
"Yes, Aniue."
"Now that you're corporeal, you're going to have to brush your teeth. You know that, right?"
"Yes, Aniue."
"We're going to have to set you up with a room."
"Yes, Aniue."
"You aren't listening to a goddamn word I'm saying right now, are you?"
"No, Aniue."
Seto laughed. "Shall we follow Mokuba's example? You're too thin. You should eat."
"Okay."
As they stood up and made to follow their brother, Noa—on impulse—reached out and hugged Seto's waist, pressing himself against Seto's side. Seto looked surprised for a moment, then his face softened and he put an arm around Noa's shoulders.
"You're home now, Noa," Seto said. "It's safe here."
Noa sniffled, pulled back tears, and nodded.
"Y-Yes, Aniue."