Chapter 6

"But da-ad!"

"No."

"It's not fair!"

"You're right! It's not! You deserve so much worse than this! I'm way too nice!"

"But our candy! You can't forbid us from eating candy! Please, anything but that!"

The whole family had for the moment bunkered up in Seto's home office, since Seto was partly e-mailing some of his employees, partly working on a statement to make on the press-conference which would take place the following day. It was the day after "the Incident" and after a good night's sleep, a long, refreshing shower, and a great meal made by Jou himself, the two men had gotten their strength back once again.

And now, it was time for the triplets to receive their punishment.

Natani and Aiko looked up into Jou's stone hard eyes with tears streaming down their cheeks. A fair punishment had never been easy to establish in the Kaiba household, mainly because the three brothers tended to blame each other, so Jou had come up with a teeny, tiny solution he liked to call collective punishment; if none of them confessed, all three of them were punished. It wasn't really a fair solution, but it was far better than the alternatives. Since Kiichi had stayed at Seto's side through the whole ordeal, he was considered innocent and stayed unpunished. (Later on he had asked to be grounded too; it simply wasn't fun playing by oneself, whiled one's brothers served their punishment.)

Natani and Aiko, on the other hand, were both claiming that it was the other who had pushed the Lock-down button, and had both been grounded and forbidden to eat candy or play any video games. For Aiko, the punishment would last for two months, and for Natani, five, since he was also being punished for pushing his youngest brother into a refuse chute. This decision was of course met with a wave of high pitched protests from the two involved. Especially since they were both supposed to spend the time in their rooms, and were only allowed to come out during meals and toilet visits.

"Daddy," Natani whispered and crawled on all fours up to Jou. He nuzzled his pant leg. "We're really sorry! We didn't know better. Please, we promise to never do anything like that again. Please?"

"Jou," Seto muttered warily from his place behind his desk. "They really seem to regret it. You should have seen him when he realised he had pushed Aiko for nothing. He was really upset."

Jou looked at Natani with incredulous eyes.

"You used the crocodile tears-trick on your own father? Have you no shame!"

Natani had the decency to look sheepish. He was silently cursing the fact that the trick never seemed to work on their daddy. Jou seemed to have a sixth sense for things like that. Seto looked miffed.

"Crocodile tears-trick?"

"I'm very tempted to make your punishment even worse right now," Jou hissed between gritted teeth. "So why don't you boys leave before I have the chance to think it over? Off to your room, immediately, and if you even think of sneaking into each other's rooms, I will double the punishment."

All three of them scrambled for the door, but Natani stopped in the opening and peered sadly over his shoulder at Seto.

"Dad? I really am sorry."

For a moment, Seto's face seemed to soften completely. Then he caught sight of Jou's face, glaring furiously at him, and cleared his throat.

"Go to your room, Natani."

With a disappointed pout on his face, Natani disappeared after his brothers. Jou leaned against Seto's desk and raked a hand through his hair.

"The nerve of that kid," he muttered, but it sounded a lot softer than he had intended.

"He is going to give us grey hair before we turn forty," Seto agreed, still a little bothered by the fact that Natani had fooled him all this time. "I can't believe I fell for his tricks."

"You're not the first," Jou tried to console him. "I have no idea from whom he learned that trick, but it's really effective. My main suspects at the moment are Yugi, Mokuba, and Bakura."

"Bakura?"

"He is Ryou's yami, you know. There is a slight possibility."

Seto sighed and leaned his head against the back of the chair. Even though he had everything under control again- the media had been taken care of, the kids had been punished, etc. etc.- there was something nagging him in the back of his mind. An irritation that he couldn't shake of.

"They're my kids. I should be able to read them. I should be able to see through their tricks."

"Well Seto. No offence, but you've always been kinda whipped. It's not something new." Jou suddenly walked around the desk and firmly placed himself in Seto's lap. "But if it's any consolation, I think you should be able to control them a lot better, if you spent more time with them."

Seto frowned as he looked up at the man on his lap.

"Do I sense a bargain coming up?"

"If you call spending more time with your children a bargain…"

"Name your terms."

"Seven to five every day, and the weekends free. No work on holidays, or the kids' birthday."

Seto's frown grew deeper.

"It's on the holidays that our games sell the most. And I never work on their birthday. Six to ten, six days a week, with one free day."

"That's barely an improvement! Seto, we're not seventeen anymore! We've got kids now, and need to take care of them! Seven to six- that's eleven hours!- with weekends and their birthday free. Plus a four-week vacation every summer. Oh, and Christmas Eve free! I won't accept anything less!"

Seto was on the verge of protesting, but pictures of the day before flashed through his mind, and he hesitated. Jou was right; he shared his life with four other people now. He had always whished that he had spent more time with Mokuba when he was young… did he truly want to do the same mistake once more? The answer was pure and simple: No.

"Ok, make that a three-week vacation- I still have a company to run and a family to support- and we have a deal."

The smile that split Jou's face told Seto, without the question of doubt, that he had made the right decision. Jou cupped Seto's face between his hands and kissed him gently. Seto's hands tightened around his waist, and as they broke the kiss, Jou put his head on Seto's shoulder and sighed contently.

"You know, normal fathers work from nine to five."

"I'm not a normal father."

"You've got that right."

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, and Jou was on the verge of falling asleep, lulled by the sound of Seto's heartbeat and breaths, when Seto's voice woke him up again.

"Did you know that when I found Aiko, he wasn't the least bit scared? He had been locked up for more than an hour, and wasn't the least bit scared."

Jou snorted.

"Of course not. Natani and Kiichi must've locked him up in cellar at least ten times. He wouldn't have survived this long with brothers like that if he didn't have some balls."

"They do things like that to each other?"

"Mhm… but don't worry; Aiko got his revenge. He emptied a bucket of spiders in Natani's bed while he was sleeping, and put itching-powder in all of Kiichi's underwear. They got grounded for a month for that. Although I was a bit reluctant to punish Aiko. He was only acting in self-defence, but you know; the whole "turn the other cheek" thing and so on."

"Jou?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"What kind of monsters are we raising?"

"The worst kind, Seto. But at least they're our monsters. That's gotta count for something."

And silently, Seto thought that yes, that surely counted.

Time's 21.43 on September the 16th and "Triple Trouble" has COME TO AN END! I really hope you liked this chapter too, even though there really weren't that much humour in it! Leave a review to tell me what you think! PLEASE!!!!

Since the triplets seemed to be quite popular among you readers, I promise to post more with them very soon! Keep an eye open for "The downside of happiness"! Coming soon! Thanks to those who's followed this story to the very end!

Till next time!!!

R&R!!!