Ammunition
"Shit." Kaiba muttered under his breath as he braked seconds before slamming into the car that had just lurched into his path, the power of the brake shoving his and his brother's heads into the plush leather of their seats. He tried to remain patient as the tiny car jolted and jerked in front of his silver Ferrari, struggling it's way around the evening's traffic, but his temper flared up for the fourth time that afternoon and he ended up honking his horn and revving the powerful engine irritably until the car dodged out of his way.
He was being an asshole, he knew that, but after his terrible day it felt good to take out some of his frustration on innocent passers by.
Within he was a furious wreck, but he tried to ensure that on the surface he was calm. Even with his attempts to keep his anger contained, Mokuba knew him far too well. If he turned to face his brother, all the boy needed to do was sweep a quick gaze over Kaiba's features to be able to easily gauge his emotions. Luckily for him, Mokuba kept his eyes trained forward, settling instead on glaring a hole in the windscreen.
Unlike his brother, Mokuba lacked the reflex to disguise his emotions and was making no move to mask his own displeasure. He had matured in the past year, sure, but his sulky expression and refusal to meet Kaiba's eyes were just a few of the juvenile traits that surged to the surface in times like these.
"Times like these" being one of the common disagreements between the Kaiba siblings that, for any number of reasons, deteriorated into the much more rare fully-fledged fight.
They were closer than most brothers could ever be, and they shared a unique bond wrought from years of pain and the shared endurance of it. But regardless of their bond, they were still two very different people.
With his difficult nature Kaiba clashed with most people without much provocation, and while Mokuba's personality usually corresponded with his brother's well, other times it opposed it fiercely. Their fights were few and far in between, but when they did occur they were usually unavoidable.
To make things worse, Kaiba's temper, self-importance, and stubborn nature were traits shared by them both. So now, with both of their colossal egos fighting for dominance in the tiny space of the sports car, the air was so thick with tension Kaiba felt the urge to crack a window. But he resisted; in this moment of stillness even the smallest thing could set his brother off and open the floodgates again.
That was another reason that Mokuba refused to look at him and neither of them dared to speak. Right now, everything was static, they'd reached something akin to a stalemate, and while they were quietly licking their wounds in their territories at either side of the car neither of them wanted to disturb it. So they sat in silence.
The calm would be broken eventually, that was certain. After all, soon they would be at Kaiba Corp. In the workplace, they'd have to interact in one way or another and every time they'd attempted so far it had been seconds before they were both fuming and spitting venom. Kaiba wished that they could fight and make up before they got to work, but considering the magnitude of his brother's anger, an argument in his office seemed unavoidable.
He wasn't looking forward to it, but he wasn't one to prolong the inevitable either. He just wanted to get there and get all this over with, but the afternoon traffic jam had other ideas.
It was grating on his nerves, and he kept subconsciously revving his engine, trying to ignore the tiny itch at back on his skull urging him to floor the accelerator. With the twitch of a peddle, his shiny Ferrari could reach 100 kilometers an hour in under three seconds, and it felt a crime to surround such a fast car with the grinding metal sludge of a traffic jam.
The Ferrari had been an impulse buy in an expensive dealer on the outskirts of Domino, in an area reserved only for the wealthy. He hadn't been there to shop, but the sleek silver vehicle had caught his eye at almost the exact same time it had caught his brother's, and Mokuba had whined and nudged until Kaiba gave in to his own materialistic hunger for the car and bought it then and there.
It wasn't nearly as ridiculous as a few of his other purchases that sat lonely in the underground garage back at his mansion, but it was excessive all the same.
It had been a good day. He'd sent the limo home ahead of time and sped his new toy along the highways leading in and out of Domino so fast the roads seemed to shred and peel away under the wheels. And when he'd opened the roof, exposing them to the harsh, slapping wind as they tore through it, Mokuba had hooted and squealed like a delinquent next to him. He hadn't cared that his neatly preened hair was everywhere, or that they were breaking several traffic laws, he'd simply let the happiness swallow him up, and every time he'd settled into the leather seats since, the memory had lingered warm around him.
That memory was lost on him now. He wanted to embrace the joy of it, he really did, but his anger repelled it. He wondered if his brother felt the same nagging nostalgia, or had his memories of happier times had been abandoned in his rage? Kaiba hoped they hadn't. They were key to this ending well.
He gently pressed down on the accelerator, feeling the engine rumble through the car with gentle whispers of its immense speed and power. In this clogged traffic, the speed that made it unique was useless.
Trapped by its surroundings and the laws that kept its power bound. Just like him.
A short while later (but not as short a while as usual), Kaiba was immaculately parking in his reserved space in the Kaiba Corp parking lot.
He reached down to unbuckle his seat belt and jumped as the door slammed loudly beside him. Mokuba had moved fast. He'd probably been itching to spring from the seat the moment he buckled himself into it.
When Kaiba peered through the tinted windows he could see Mokuba marching towards the elevator. While grabbing his briefcase from the back seat, he wouldn't have time to make it into the awaiting elevator with his brother, and the boy knew that. They'd ride separately.
Fine. Great, actually. Being trapped in an elevator together would be even worse than being trapped in the tiny sports car.
The separate elevator rides also gave Mokuba plenty of time to shut himself into the private room installed on the left side of Kaiba's office before he even got there, which Kaiba was absolutely sure he'd do.
What a forward thinker his brother was, preparing ahead to avoid contact, to shut him out. Intelligent.
He felt his lip curling at that.
'He learned from the best.' A cruel voice snapped at him from within, and he found himself unable to deny it. It still pissed him off, though.
Thankfully for him, his separate elevator stopped only once on it's way up. It rolled to a stop on the twenty-third floor and its gold doors parted to reveal several employees, all cocky men in suits chuckling among themselves, but they halted at the sight of the elevator's single passenger.
All Kaiba Corp personnel already knew better than to pester their boss, but after the fight his frustration was unusually potent. Left alone to stew, it had collected in the cramped space and when the doors slid open, it rolled over the men like tear gas. They all took a collective step back.
When none of them made the suicidal move to enter, Kaiba pressed the close doors button and examined their awkward fidgeting and sheepish dodging of his gaze. As the doors slid shut again he caught a brief glimpse of the relief on their faces.
He reached the top floor and immediately marched over to his receptionist to ensure he wouldn't have to deal with anyone else that afternoon.
With the click of his office doors behind him, he immediately began to calm. The sense of the routine of work washed over him and the security of repetition smothered the afternoon's stress. He set his briefcase on the floor beside his desk and eased into his plush leather chair, unwinding.
As he'd predicted, Mokuba had shut himself into the private room on the left side of his office. It seemed that he'd taken a vow of silence that would last longer than Kaiba had expected, and was content to prolong the fight until they got home. That suited Kaiba just fine, since he had a reputation to uphold and intended to keep his employees as far from his personal life as possible, not to mention the potential danger if word got out that the relationship between the once inseparable Kaiba brothers was strained. Some may interpret a fight between them as chinks in Kaiba Corp's armor, then they'd gather like vultures as they always did.
On the other hand, the longer they were left to stew in their anger, the worse the fight would be. Neither of them could withstand the tension of an unresolved argument for long, so it would have to be dealt with eventually, preferably sooner rather than later.
Kaiba could recall one particular argument where they'd gone home, eaten dinner and went to bed without a word, the pressure steadily building. Then, at midnight Mokuba had stomped into his room, unable to sleep with his anger as a bed mate. So, intent to reboot the argument and loaded with new found ammunition after hours of thought, his brother screamed at him until he woke up. Then screamed some more.
The fight had lasted the rest of the night and been resolved at around the crack of dawn, and he'd woken up late with Mokuba snoring peacefully next to him and a migraine rumbling beneath his temples.
He'd rather not deal with that again. While neither of them were capable of surrender, he held on to the hope that this could end well, and soon.
After a while of checking stock shares and sending emails, Mokuba appeared in his peripherals, stepping back into his office. Rather than facing him, he fixed his gaze at his laptop and continued working, resisting the urge to give in to the seething energy his brother was giving off.
When the kid finally spoke it was with a mix of annoyance and self-importance. "Have you seen the blueprints for the extension of Kaiba Land?"
Kaiba blinked. 'So he's working. Or wants me to think that he is. How mature.'
Mokuba had personally volunteered to oversee a small extension of Kaiba Land and he was fiercely proud of the developments that had been taking place thanks to his leadership. His pride was appropriate too, the extension was particularly tricky as it included a brand new Kaiba Land ride with a design that had never been released to the public before.
The ride especially was close to Kaiba's heart as its main energy source was a direct reinvention of the old Kaiba Corp's crowning achievement in weapon technology: the successful prototypes of directed-energy weapons that began their testing in small scale battle scenarios when Kaiba was still growing up under Gozaburo's tutelage. "Direct reinvention", meaning that it borrowed directly from the weapons themselves. Was that legal? Probably not, but his original concept was based exclusively off the weapons in question and he wanted to bring it to life.
Conceptualizing the reworking of dangerous weapons into devices of joy is complicated, but rather easy, Kaiba found, when trying to escape the sight of something as horrifying as combat footage.
Hours of old Kaiba Corp weapons blasting men on the battlefield to bits.
Hours of never ending gore with Gozaburo's beady eyes fixed to his face, gauging the length of every blink, anticipating even the slightest flinch.
Seto watched the bullets of chattering machine guns shred through soldiers like paper. He watched the glowing dots of laser sniper scopes dancing on men's backs and heads before blasting through flesh and bone. Then came the star of the show: the directed energy prototype that they unleashed on the unsuspecting ground troops. The huge truck rolled forward, the antenna twisting to face it's target, and then the battlefield erupted into beams of light and balls of flame. When the attack had finished, the camera was rushed in to record the aftermath before the bodies settled.
And he'd thought advanced calculus was bad.
The old man's hand crept over his neck and landed like a dead weight on his left shoulder. "One day this will become your legacy." whisky breath swept over his cheek. Seto stared ahead, eyes watering, and nodded.
He would take on Kaiba Corp's legacy, but not in the way his adoptive father hoped. He promised himself he wouldn't just destroy those weapons, he'd mutate them into something good. He'd twist those devices of horror beyond recognition.
The film ended on a proud close up of the machine, still thrumming with energy, the shiny Kaiba Corporation logo on it's side splattered with blood.
It'd all be unrecognizable by the time he was finished.
Years later when the time came to make his idea reality, he couldn't resist the satisfaction of using the machines themselves in the official design. He got many raised eyebrows and feeble inquiries from the decision, especially considering that Kaiba Corp's active weapons and prototypes had been removed from the battlefield and destroyed on his very orders, but, in regular fashion, he went through with it anyway to a grand result.
He couldn't have been happier when Mokuba decided to incorporate it into the Kaiba Land extension. It always gave him a thrill to watch as another piece of Gozaburo's empire was broken down and reconstructed to build his own, and it made him swell with pride to watch his little brother conquer the man's abuse with almost as much passion as he did.
Kaiba was more than pleased with his brother's performance, but he let that slip now, taking a light stab at his ego.
"No, I haven't seen the blueprints. Aren't they supposed to be your responsibility?"
Mokuba's cheeks turned pink at that and he ground his teeth and shot Kaiba's own signature scowl back at him.
"Yes, they are my responsibility. That's why I put them somewhere safe, but now they're just gone. In fact, a lot of the documents on the extensions are missing. Mostly documents on the new ride." He growled, his voice taking on an accusatory edge.
It was nothing to panic about. All of the documents were safely on Kaiba's computer and could easily be printed again, but the silence between them had been interrupted and Kaiba could feel the calm atmosphere of his office crashing down around them.
"Are you accusing me of something?" Kaiba quirked an eyebrow.
"No, I'm asking if you moved them."
"I haven't touched your documents Mokuba."
"Really?"
"Really. What would I get out of that?"
"Oh I don't know, maybe you just want to piss me off?
"I'm not going to go around hiding important documents just to irritate you. Stop taking on a false sense of importance, my whole world doesn't revolve around you."
They both knew that wasn't true, but the comment spurred something inside Mokuba and his eyes flashed angrily. For a few seconds they just stared at each other furiously, like two volcanoes threatening to erupt, until Mokuba whirled on his heel and stomped back into his room, slamming the door behind him.
'And there goes the maturity.' Kaiba quipped to himself while he still had the nerve to be smug.
He lent back in his chair, allowing his rage to cool off and dissipate. As soon as his anger left him, all of his common sense came flooding back and he found himself regretting the way that he'd acted. Not just in this instance, but all afternoon.
He kept hoping to himself that this would end well, but it was the responsibility of both of them to ensure that would happen, and rather than taking the high road, he was behaving like an idiot. Of course Mokuba was too, but that was beside the point.
He'd essentially told Mokuba that he didn't matter to him. In his bitterness, the words had tumbled out before he put any real thought into them. Considering them now, he knew that they would cut his brother deep, and he hoped that the kid would remain too angry to come to the same conclusions before he had time to correct them.
Of course it would be best to ensure that his brother wasn't hurt by apologizing now, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. His pride was too large to swallow.
Grumbling to himself, he stood and approached the room to the right of his office. Thank god for private bathrooms, he needed to cool down.
The minute he swung open the door the bathroom's many mirrors sent his chiseled features ricocheting about the room, and he was reminded of the toll that the fight had taken on him when he was greeted with several reflections that highlighted every line and crease on his face.
He never quite knew why the room had so many mirrors. It was a fairly large bathroom, but nowhere near the size of the elaborate ones in the mansion, and yet the mirrors in it seemed to dominate the marble wall's surface.
The wide mirror fixed above the sink had a body length twin on the wall opposite it that sent reflections bouncing off each other in a dizzying, never-ending illusion that seemed to swallow up the room, and they allowed Kaiba to simultaneously see both his front and back as he approached the porcelain sink and began splashing cold water on his face.
He supposed the mirrors might have been an indication of some deluded sense of vanity that Gozaburo held when the office belonged to him. Or maybe they were a deliberate choice, because they proved quite useful for someone as high-maintenance as Kaiba, who liked to ensure that not a hair was out of place when he left the office.
The state of his hair now, messy and saturated, was a testament to how worked up he'd become. Mokuba was and always would be one of the only people remaining on Earth who could manage to get under the stoic Seto Kaiba's diamond-hard skin.
He lent against the sink and shook water droplets out of his hair, breathing deeply. Eventually he located the thrum of his heartbeat and concentrated on counting his beats per minute, easing into a state of relaxation.
He was entirely oblivious to the rest of the world for the first time in his wild day, which made the series of events that followed all the more impossibly lucky.
In the end it didn't matter why the mirrors were there, if they were indeed a result of Gozaburo's vanity or just some strategic design choice. They saved Kaiba's life. Because seconds after he swept the water out of his eyes, he glanced up at his reflection and saw it.
The tiny red dot.
It trembled over his chestnut hair, looking almost like a crimson fairy dancing at the back of his head. But fairies didn't exist and he knew the laser scope of a sniper rifle when he saw one.
It was about then that his body went into autopilot. He didn't even register having ducked, all he knew was that one second he was staring at his reflection and the next he was crouched on the floor with the mirror exploding above him. Glass fragments rained down on him, and even with the sound of the mirror shattering around him he still heard the distinctive sound of a window smashing in a room nearby. If he had the time to realize what that meant he may have begun panicking, but his adrenaline didn't allow for that.
It flooded his veins and the euphoria of it overwhelmed him until he felt nothing else, and then he was flying.
He sprinted from the bathroom and fireworks followed him and blew holes in his wake. The air filled with wood chips and shards of glass. He was drowning in the sound of bullets tearing his office apart and his heartbeat pounding in his in his ears. The only thought in his head was to run. Because if he didn't…
Gozaburo's combat footage flashed into his mind, and he recalled the way that the men had died, bullets tearing them to pieces, if he hesitated even for a second that would be him. Suddenly fear spiked through him, sharp and cold from his groin to the pit of his stomach. But rather than freezing him, it fueled him and he ran even faster.
As he sprinted across the office, he was too occupied by the bullets exploding on his tail to even know where he was headed until he was already tumbling through the door. When he did, he stopped dead in his tracks.
He hadn't been prepared for what he saw, and it slammed into him so hard every coherent thought that his dazed brain had been struggling to form flew out of his head and he grasped for the first thing that came to him.
Mokuba's hair was getting dirty.
He had to clean it before it dried, and got them in trouble.
It had always been getting them in trouble at the orphanage. After playtime, the caretakers would drag him over to Seto with knots everywhere, peppered with sand from the sandbox or matted with dirt from the playground, and leave him to untangle them as best as he could. Mokuba would shriek and cry when they tried to brush his hair, and he always made such a fuss that they threatened to cut it all off, so Seto always took extra care to make sure his brother's hair was perfectly clean.
It was dirty now. Covered with blood, floating in it. He needed to clean it before…
'Before what?'
His office lay in pieces and the machine gun was still wrecking havoc behind him and creeping closer, but at this moment time stood still. And Kaiba didn't care. All he cared about was his baby brother lying on the floor.
In a pool of blood.
Updated 9/7/16
Minor changes in sentence structure and spelling throughout. Also added. flashback sequence and more information on Gozaburo's weapons.