Seto stalked down the hall with clear intention, flanked by a handful of corporate higher-ups. He cringed when he saw little Mokuba, eleven now, sitting by himself in a corner chair. He was staring out the window to the ground many stories below. The boy looked up as Seto passed and gave his brother his best Kaiba sneer.
Seto returned a scowl – not too dark, nor too transparent; calculated. He'd seen the boy by Gozaburo's side countless times in the past days, standing at the man's heels like a pet, and each time it sickened him. The simple fact that Mokuba now opted to spend more time at Gozaburo's offices instead of home at the Manor was a clear indication that his bitterness toward Seto hadn't worn off.
Seto quickly felt the guilt for scowling back. He had been mean to the child. They hadn't spoken since Seto had shoved him down and accused him of leaking his secrets to Gozaburo. Seto's jaw clenched when he noticed that Mokuba was dressed in business attire, something Gozaburo had been pressing him to make a habit of. Seto needed Mokuba to trust him. It was time to drop the act.
After Gozaburo had denied them time together for six years, he decided to sweep in and take Mokuba for himself? Unacceptable. After six years of pain and humiliation, Seto was determined to show Gozaburo that there was something he could do right.
He made his face neutral again before he was out of Mokuba's view. He stopped walking once he reached his destination, some ten feet past where the boy was perched. Seto made eye contact with him once more before slipping into Gozaburo's corporate conference hall for his private announcement.
Seto seated himself across the long table from his stepfather. The five men had filed in behind him and closed the door. Seto kept his voice raised – partly for dramatics, and partly hoping that Mokuba might overhear the exchange.
"One year has passed since the day we made our deal. To celebrate, I hold this conference."
"You're wasting our time, Seto," Gozaburo smirked, having no trouble seeing through Seto's pleasantries. "Although you want to turn against me, you only have forty-nine percent of the stocks. I have fifty-one percent. I won't give out the title."
The man's mood turned foul as suddenly as someone might have flipped a switch. He rose to his feet and slammed both hands down on the table. Seto reminded himself that he still held cards up his sleeve, but he struggled to keep his calm composure once Gozaburo began dealing out his punishments to the traitorous.
Seto couldn't deny his nervousness over his own fate, if Mokuba didn't step in.
"Now I announce that the Kaiba enterprise is going to apply for an insolvency and transfer all business to the subsidiary, so your stocks will all become wallpapers. You will mortgage your life to me!"
While Gozaburo shouted at him and the employees at his back, Seto tried to listen for the sounds of movement he thought he heard from outside the room. In his mind, Seto was grinning, although he fought hard not to let a trace of it show.
Behind him the door opened suddenly, and Mokuba defiantly stepped into the private meeting and leveled his worst glare at Gozaburo.
"Wait!" the boy shouted.
"Mokuba..." Seto called quietly. He hoped his brother could hear the fondness in his tone.
"I want to give my 2% to Niisama," he declared, stepping up beside Seto. Gozaburo faltered.
"That's impossible. He's the one who abandoned you!"
"That was an impulsive decision. I'm on my brother's side." Seto let out a breath, relieved beyond grasp to hear those words. He finally allowed himself a real smile, for the first time in a long, long while.
"Now the situation turns against you," Seto said coldly, but with great pleasure.
"I don't get it, Niisama. Why are we building the tower way out there?" Mokuba asked. He was pouring over the blueprints covering Seto's office desk. Alongside it was a map pinpointing the coordinates in the ocean where Alcatraz island appeared.
Seto was well pleased with the tower's design. It's jagged edges were like sharp barbs on the tip of an arrow, grounded in the destruction of the past and pointed proudly toward the sky. It was perfect.
"Because, Mokuba," Seto began, "it's the only place suitable. It's symbolic in our lives. Besides, we blew up the weapons laboratory already. Instead of letting that pile of rubble sit and hope it gets displaced by a tsunami someday, why not make some real use out of it?"
He shrugged. "I guess the money has already been spent making the island. Might as well make it into something that serves a purpose."
"That's the idea." Seto scowled. The details of his tournament were coming together smoothly, but something in his gut just didn't feel right. The tournament would begin soon, and he was closer than ever to finally defeating Yugi and reclaiming his lost title. But part of him wondered if it would be enough for him.
Seto imagined his victory over his rival – he even had a powerful strategy worked out to use against him – but once the games were over, he wondered what he would be left with. He would have the title, of course, and the resurrection of his pride was surely an important prize. But something tugged at his mind, telling him that even in the moment of victory, the uphill battle he'd been fighting his whole life might not end. The thought left him with a sinking feeling, and he tried to replace it with his enthusiasm for the duels he would fight.
He had to do something more with this tournament. A public affair was no place to drag out his past for anyone to see – most especially his rival – but there had to be something he could do during Battle City to give himself closure over his past, and allow himself to begin a new chapter.
"Kaiba. It's true... I won and you lost. But we have no difference in skill," Yugi shouted from across the arena. At first he'd seemed to be gloating, but with the added pity Seto's rival ground salt into the wound.
It wasn't a fresh wound. Not at all. It had been scabbed over and ripped open over and over. Yugi wasn't even the first to inflict that particular wound. That was Gozaburo. Gozaburo Kaiba had been the first to truly defeat Seto.
"I recognize your skills as a duelist," his rival went on. "But let me tell you this. What you lost to was the monster called hatred that dwells inside you."
Anger was the strongest emotion Seto knew. He didn't have use for sympathy or pity. Even happiness seemed to be blinding and, usually, fleeting at best anyway. He told himself over the years that it wasn't something he needed. Mokuba could be happy for both of them, and Seto would keep them both safe and strong. Utilizing his anger had helped him succeed.
Yugi had tried to shatter that perception during their duel. He'd said that anger was what held him back, but Seto had always believed that it propelled him forward. He used that feeling of fire in his chest. Yugi's attempt to douse those flames only fueled them during their battle, but once it was over Seto felt differently.
In his victory, Yugi had proven himself right. Seto couldn't win on anger alone, and that was why he had lost. Yugi had said they had no difference in skill. While Seto wasn't willing to buy that line, his mind still churned on it.
The speaker on his lapel chimed, an employee announcing that the detonator had been set. A mechanical female voice announced the start of the countdown over a loudspeaker. The island Gozaburo had created for weapon manufacture was set to explode. Seto had decided to put the explosives in place to go off whether he won or lost the tournament, but his expectations for the outcome had had him imagining a different scene – more like celebratory fireworks than the tantrum of a sore loser.
The remainder of the games were not finished, but Seto no longer cared. When the island blew, he and Mokuba would already be in the sky. He could watch the fire and waves from above, and hoped that the reaction would be enough to satisfy all of the times he'd needed to explode, but never could.
But the words of the others rang in his ears. Yugi had him questioning, and Isis had him sympathizing. Mokuba, the one person whose opinion carried weight, had him reeling. Mokuba didn't want him to forget everything. Mokuba didn't want him to bury his pain under scars and hatred.
Gozaburo had carved his name into Seto's memories and set them on fire, all so he could follow him through even death. The only thing Seto had carried to justify his upbringing was the strength he gained. Now Mokuba wanted him to throw it away. The concept itself, especially so soon after losing again to Yugi, sent heat bubbling through his veins.
He ground his teeth, facing away from his little brother. As always, he wanted to shield the boy from what he was really feeling; from what he was trying to endure. He struggled with the decision Mokuba had presented him with, but the most difficult part was to acknowledge that it existed.
He didn't want to accept that abandoning his anger was even an option. To let go of the hatred, to stop being angry at the man, only left him with one thing: forgiveness. Seto didn't know if he was ready to do that... but he knew one way to figure it out.
He marched back into the lift, steeling himself for what he'd decided to do. If he could help Yugi have a chance against his foe, perhaps his rival could show him one more time if he had really been right. If Yugi, with his way of thinking and fighting, could beat a god card with such impossible odds, then Seto could see it worth considering. The battle would be one well worth watching.
As he rode back up to the sky arena, even with Mokuba beside him, he felt a surge of child-like excitement. Gozaburo's voice sounded in his head, drilling into him that he needed to crush his enemies, but he was on his way to help Yugi instead. The act of defiance took the edge off of the choice he had to make.
Yugi seemed surprised to see Seto return to the apex of the tower. He stepped out of the lift and close enough to the arena to throw a card, Devil's Sanctuary, at his rival. The card was one-of-a-kind, and Seto knew Yugi couldn't win without it.
Then again, should he even care? Perhaps that was the answer he'd come back to find.
"Yugi, take this card!" Seto shouted. He'd said so few words, but the shocked expression on Yugi's face told him his actions had spoken loudly enough.
"Kaiba," Yugi grinned when he slipped the new card into his deck, "I'll believe in you. And I will defeat Marik."
Seto heard Isis step out of the lift behind him. He lowered his voice and spoke to her.
"Well Isis, I lent him a hand just as you wished. But all this will prove is that miracles don't happen."
Isis didn't reply directly. Seto stood back to watch the duel begin. He knew what he'd said aloud, and he knew he believed his stance on the matter. What he wasn't so sure of, however, was whether the duel's outcome would reveal that Seto believed in truth, or a form of his own delusion.
"Kaiba, hatred is a dead end. What you lost to was the monster called hatred that dwells inside you." Yugi's words continued to ring in his mind as the game began. He had to see if Yugi could prove himself right twice.
The view from Kaiba Corp's fighter jet was breathtaking. The timing had been close, but Seto had maneuvered the craft well, so that he and Mokuba narrowly escaped the explosion. From a distance, Seto was able to watch and appreciate as large pieces of shattered concrete and twisted metal burst into the sky. Flames engulfed what little was left to burn, and a billow of smoke saturated the sky. As waves began to form and crash, the very island itself started sinking into the ocean.
Seto watched with hungry eyes as the monument began to disappear. After a final exchange with the rest of the crowd on the airship over radio, Seto's fighter jet stole into the sky. The thick black smoke pouring from what was left of the man-made island was all that could be seen from the distance. Once the last of the rubble sank, Seto knew, the flames would be doused for good as he turned the page to a new chapter, for himself and for Mokuba.
And finally, the brick wall came crumbling down.
A/N: This piece has been a game of connect-the-dots. I wanted to see in greater detail how the sweet little ten-year-old who loves his little brother and wants to share games with the world turned into a cold, apathetic man who has never really been seen getting excited about his childhood ambitions as an adult(/teen), even though he still carries them out. I wanted to see why he'd allowed himself to become someone so akin to a man he clearly hates. I think this answered a lot of my questions.
I hope the transitions between familiar and established happenings seemed logical and meaningful. I tried very hard to get my facts straight, but some of this still had to rely on speculation. I did skip a lot of scenes that we should all know well enough, because those weren't the parts I was trying to focus on. I also found myself struggling a little to put together scenes I'd taken from the Japanese anime, which appeared mainly in this chapter and the last. While I don't speak Japanese, I had to go with the sketchy subtitles since the English wound up being vague and unhelpful as usual. Because of that I pieced some of the dialogue together and moved it around until it made sense, which would be why any of those scenes might not have dialogue matching what you might remember from the 4kids.
Thank you all so much for being with me through another story! This was a short one, but it was important for me, and maybe a little personal, too. As always, I appreciate the support! Thank you for everything,
~ohmygodagiantrock
