9: Fait Accompli
His instruments registered the seismic tremors in the distance. A large explosion mushroomed on the horizon like a smoke signal. Turning his sensors to the fighters beyond the imaginary forest, Kaiba easily located the source even among the more than five dozen Gunplas still active at this point in the battle royal.
He opened up the video comm to the navigator's pit behind him and asked Jounouchi, "Why is there a mega-sized Zaku running amok on the field?"
Jounouchi furrowed his brows in concentration as he analyzed the information being piped to his HUD. "It's unmanned, the computer is controlling it. Wait a sec, I'll ask someone for more information."
A prompt popped up— Jounouchi was reaching out to someone outside of the battle arena. Kaiba did a sweep of his surroundings. He spotted a tree rustling several kilometers to the north seconds before [Caution] flashed across his screen. He jumped back, dodging a volley of missiles, and responded with a shot from his beam rifle into the canopy.
A Leo mobile suit lurched out of the trees, before collapsing and going up in flames. From somewhere around the giant battle system's peripheral, a fighter screeched in distress as his cockpit went dead.
"Eh, Jounouchi? Why are you calling?" a familiar voice leaked through Kaiba's still open commlink.
Kaiba narrowed his eyes. What was Adams doing at the stadium?
"Chief, we have an emergency. A computer error seems to have deployed one of the 1/48 MS-06F Zaku II's onto the battlefield. Can you do anything about this?"
"Okay, hang in there. I'll check it out and get back to you as soon as possible."
Kaiba's questions were temporarily laid aside as three additional mobile suits besieged them. He sneered. Did they really think 3-on-1 was enough to take him on? Kaiba would severely disabuse them off that notion. He cut down the first two in a hail of bits. As the last attacker turned to flee, Kaiba drove his beam saber through where the mobile suit's nuclear drive would have been housed.
Jounouchi had a response by the end of the skirmish. "Chairman Mashita arranged for this. He says it's a surprise event. What a mess! You can't just release something like that without warning."
Kaiba rearranged his grip on the controls, already honing in on his next prey. His goal in this round of the qualifiers was to amass the highest body count and assess the other competitors in the tournament. "If they're defeated, then they don't belong on the battlefield," he grumbled.
Jounouchi's response wasn't surprising, but that didn't make it any less annoying. "We should go help them."
"What would that accomplish? I'm not here to play Mashita's immature games. I'm here to win," he spat through gritted teeth.
"It's a matter of fairness."
For a moment, he thought he misheard Jounouchi— except that was exactly something Jounouchi would say. Kaiba bit off the laugh bubbling in his throat and cocked an eyebrow at him through the video. "And if the Legilis gets damaged?"
"Then I'll fix it!" Jounouchi defiantly declared and glared back.
They stared at each other for several long seconds— their equally stubborn wills caught in a deadlock. The Zaku wasn't being controlled by any player, thus there was no point in fighting it. Defeating it, though an accomplishment in itself, wasn't going to score them additional points. Yes, it was unfair of Mashita to unleash a rampaging monster onto the battlefield, but the man was probably only thinking about ratings and drumming up hype. It was an effective tactic, even if it distracted the fighters from engaging with their real opponents. As long as they steered clear of the Zaku, they would be fine.
Jounouchi looked away first, but he delivered the finishing blow. "Oh, I see, you don't think you can take it."
Kaiba gritted his teeth. Jounouchi's transparent attempt to goad him was ridiculous, but even more ridiculous was it worked. Jounouchi might as well have accused him of being "gutless." Given the triumphant gleam in his eyes, Jounouchi knew he'd won too.
Their Imperial Legilis took to the sky. Several Gunplas, including a GINN Assault Type and three Gyan variants, flew out of the treetops like some not-particularly-bright birds pursuing their predators. Kaiba pivoted in mid-flight, shooting down all four with a sweeping blast from his beam rifle and tail cannon and leveling a square kilometer of forest in the process.
Jounouchi whistled. "I'm more worried about what you'll do to the Zaku than what it'll do to us."
He rolled his eyes and didn't reply.
Scans indicated that every other fighter in the immediate vicinity was fleeing from the mega-sized Zaku. They were the only ones brave enough (or stupid enough) to fly toward the damn thing. The forest's vegetation swiftly dropped off, giving way to a rocky desert with sparse shrubbery and low plateaus. From here, the Zaku stood out in the skyline like a hulking skyscraper. Three other machines registered in the area: Ricardo Fellini's Wing Gundam Fenice, the Gundam X Maoh from Japan's 5th Block, and Japan's 3rd Block's Star Build Strike Gundam. He raised an eyebrow at the main camera's view— they were actually trying to fight the Zaku.
At first, Kaiba maintained his distance to study the Zaku's movements and armaments. Conventional beam weaponry dissipated over its surface without scratching the paint. Due to its sheer size, the machine's capacity to store and channel Plavsky particles far exceeded that of the regular 1/144-scaled models. Kaiba might even worry about his Legilis' well-being if it wasn't apparent that the Zaku was only interested in one Gunpla.
Jounouchi noticed too. "It's only going after the Star Build Strike, and completely ignoring the Gundam X Maoh and the Wing Gundam Fenice."
The Zaku swatted a giant hand at the Strike Gundam, but the Gunpla zipped back and forth to evade its reach. Kaiba aimed at the exposed elbow joint. For an instant after his rifle beam hit, it turned red hot but ultimately resisted the energy. It was as he feared: the joints that were easily the weakest point in any Gunpla's construction were cast in metal.
Three more video commlinks popped up alongside Jounouchi's, one each for Fellini, a Yasaka Mao, and a Reiji.
"Meijin Kawaguchi!" Yasaka exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
He ignoring the three fighters he had been forcibly linked with. After all, he wasn't here to make friends. "Jounouchi, do you have any information I can use to defeat this thing?"
Jounouchi's fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, zipping through screens and screens of schematics. "You're going to have to give me a second."
"You got us into this mess. You better have a plan to get us out of it!" Kaiba snarled.
"One of us alone isn't going to be able to defeat this. Try combining our attacks, aim for the head," Fellini declared.
The three other Gunplas started concentrating their rifle fire at the Zaku's head where its main camera was stored. Kaiba growled and followed suit as the head began to melt and warp, bubbling as new pockets of hot air formed from within the plastic. He wheeled back to maintain some distance when the head finally exploded and released a plume of dark smoke into the sky, obscuring the Zaku from sight.
"We did it!" Fellini shouted.
Kaiba tensed, tightening his grip on the control orbs. "No," he barked. "It's not over yet. Destroying the head would have blinded the pilot, but this Zaku is being controlled by the battle system. It'll get all the sensory data that it needs from the simulation."
A giant green hand cleaved through the smoke, and the headless machine lurched forward like a Frankenstein monster that refused to die.
"In that case, Reiji, use the discharge!" Reiji's builder ordered from the other end of Reiji's open comm. "Put all the particles into one shot."
The Star Build Strike took to the air— the headless Zaku's focus still following it as sure as a homing beacon. A handle ejected from the end of the Strike's shield binder, which it grasped and slotted into the side of its rifle as the barrel extended. Four red markers suddenly appeared behind its back and the first of the three indicators on the underside of the barrel lit green.
The Zaku wasn't going to wait for their attack to finish charging. It plucked its last cracker and threw it at the Star Build Strike with unfailing aim.
"Oh no, you don't!" Fellini cried as he and Yasaka threw themselves into the path of the cracker.
"Idiots!" Kaiba bit out. There were other ways to help without putting themselves in harm's way.
Fellini's beam mantle softened the cracker's percussive blow, so both machines hit the ground with relatively minimal damage. But then the Zaku fired two oversized missiles from the pods mounted to its legs.
"Kaiba, help them!" Jounouchi half-pleaded and half-ordered.
"Go, bits!"
A stream of particles rushed forward and impacted with one of the missiles, causing it to detonate in mid-flight. He wasn't going to get to the second one in time. A katana pierced the second one, knocking it off-course before detonating it. While Kaiba would have like to determine who had thrown the weapon with startling accuracy, he was more concerned with the Zaku now hefting its bazooka weapon onto its shoulder. It took aim at the Star Build Strike again.
The second indicator on the Star Build Strike's rifle lit up.
"Hurry up," Reiji frantically urged over the comms.
Cursing under his breath, Kaiba discarded his rifle and switched over to the beam buster cannon in the Legilis' chest unit. He dialed the output up to maximum, even though it would deplete his remaining particle supply.
"What about the two diffuse beam cannons in the shoulders?" Jounouchi asked.
"No, concentrate everything into the beam buster."
He fired, but not at the Zaku itself. It was unclear if a beam buster at max output would do enough damage to make a difference, and if it didn't, his Legilis would probably not survive to find out. The ground beneath the Zaku split open like the tectonic plates beneath the earth had shifted. The Zaku stumbled, thrown off-balance, and began an uncontrolled free fall backwards.
"Get out of the way, Kawaguchi!" Reiji roared from above.
Multiple [Caution] alerts screeched in his ears, turning his HUD from blue to dire red. Kaiba pushed his engines to their limit and thrust the Legilis into the lower atmosphere. From there, he watched as the four markers moved forward to create a window in front of the Star Build Strike's rifle. The beam that the rifle fired had also turned from green to red. The readings he was collecting were off the charts. Once the beam's stream hit the window, it divided on the other side, raining a shower of destructive energy down on the flailing Zaku.
"Oh my god, so that's what their shield really does," Jounouchi muttered in amazement.
It didn't nullify beam attacks; it absorbed them. Kaiba couldn't tear his eyes away from the climbing numbers on his scans. A worthy opponent had unexpectedly revealed themselves.
The buzzer sounded as the Zaku exploded to the roaring approval of the stadium's crowd.
-x-x-x-
"Wait a moment, please!" someone called after them in the hallway after the fighter. "Meijin Kawaguchi."
Behind him, Jounouchi stopped. "It's you guys."
The two teenage boys about 16 or 17 in age slowed as they approached.
"We wanted to thank you for your help," Iori Sei, the builder, said and dropped his head into a deep bow.
"I didn't do it for you," he said coldly.
Iori's face screwed with a familiar-looking determination. "I know, but thank you anyway, Kawaguchi-san."
Jounouchi bent forward to examine the scuffed Gunpla cradled in the teenager's hand. "Is your Star Build Strike going to be okay for tomorrow's qualifier?"
"Oh, the damage is minor enough that I can fix in one night. I have an extra shield prepared. Please don't worry about Mao-kun or Fellini-san either, they're fine too. Thank you for your concern, uh—"
"Jounouchi."
"Right, Jounouchi-san! Thank you for asking." Iori dipped into another bow.
"Oi, I've been watching you," the red-headed boy known simply as Reiji stepped closer and gave a sharp-edged grin. "You're really strong. So don't lose until we get the chance to fight."
Yesterday, Kaiba would have laughed at the boy's bravado and presumption, but he had just seen a sample of what they were capable of. He smirked and turned away in a flare of his trench coat. "Do your best in the qualifiers and maybe we'll meet again in the final bracket."
-x-x-x-
Back in Kaiba's hotel room, Jounouchi handed him a chilled bottle of green tea. "You did good today."
With his free hand, Kaiba wrenched off his sunglasses and tossed them onto the table with a clatter. He loosened his cravat and collapsed into one of the chairs by the window.
"It was unnecessary," he finally said after cracking open the bottle and drinking from it. It was refreshing— exactly what he needed after that last battle.
Instead of moving over to the other chair, Jounouchi planted his butt on the edge of the coffee table in-between. He angled himself to face Kaiba, all loose-limbed and easy smiles. "Yeah, but you gotta admit, it was kinda fun. Didn't it feel a bit like Susano bringing down Orochi?"
Kaiba snorted, propped his elbow on the chair's arm, and pressed his cheek against his palm. "More like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills. We were fortunate that the Legilis didn't suffer any real damage. Don't forget that I'm the fighter in charge. Do not force my hand like that ever again."
Jounouchi sprang forward, planted both hands on Kaiba's knee, and leaned in until his face was centimeters away. He narrowed his eyes and in that instant, he appeared a complete stranger made of flint and steel. "I didn't force anything today. No one can force you to do anything you don't want to. But tell me, Kaiba, what would be the value in winning by defeating a damaged Gunpla? Isn't it better to fight them at their absolute best?"
Jounouchi's words jarred something loose in Kaiba's memory, but he couldn't pinpoint why they sounded so familiar. Kaiba has heard those words from someone else's mouth before, but from where?
Jounouchi continued, "They're good kids, Kaiba. What Chairman Mashita did today was selfish, and if he wasn't going to fire my ass on the spot, I'd go and give him a piece of my mind about what happened today. Those kids deserve a chance to compete fair and square like everyone else. Everyone at this tournament does."
"There's no such thing as a fair fight in real life. People will take advantage of your weaknesses and ruthlessly target them. That's the real world, Jounouchi. It made no sense to help them today if our goal is to win the championship."
"Maybe, but this isn't the real world. This is Gunpla Battle, it's not life or death. It's not stupid to want worthy rivals, people who will actually challenge you to improve. And it's not the end of the world if you lose once in awhile. So why not push ourselves out of our comfort zones every now and then?" Jounouchi's gaze softened by the end of his speech, returning the person that, all too often, saw right through Kaiba.
For the longest time, only winning had mattered in Kaiba's book. It was something drilled into him from birth. No son of Kaiba Gozaburo's should settle for anything less than first place— anything short of a hundred percent was failure. Things like fun and teamwork were crutches that lesser people latched onto to make up for their innumerable shortfalls. Kaibas should need for none of that. Yet he felt less and less like a proper Kaiba with each passing day.
Kaiba sighed, "Still, I'd rather not make a habit of it. I wasn't even able to defeat that Zaku myself." It was a fact that stung his pride, but not as much as he imagined it would. It was more uncomfortable proof of, as Yuugi previously put it, "the ways he was changing."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they probably wouldn't have beaten it if you weren't there to help," Jounouchi declared.
As usual, Jounouchi's unwavering confidence was heartwarming, even if ultimately unsettling. Kaiba's gut twisted. He clenched his hand tighter around the bottle, battling the urge to push back a lock of hair falling into Jounouchi's eyes. No matter how hard Jounouchi cursed and combed his hair to tidy his appearance, it never seemed to stay put for long. But Kaiba preferred that way; wild and untamed.
Kaiba dropped one hand away from his face and reached across the gap between them. Jounouchi's eyes widened, as if realizing their proximity for the first time, tensing as his breath stuttered. All Kaiba had to do was lean in and he would finally know if Jounouchi tasted as fiery as he'd imagined. Jounouchi would probably let him too. But the dusk's orange light could play tricks on Kaiba's perceptions and Jounouchi always burned brightest in those moments before the sun set, leaving Kaiba as helpless as a moth.
Instead, he flicked his finger and shattered the moment. "Who has time for annoying challengers? I already have my hands full with you," he said imperviously and sank back into the chair with a shaky exhale.
"Ouch, that hurt, you fucking bastard," Jounouchi pulled back and rubbed his forehead.
His knees still smoldered where Jounouchi had touched him. "If you have time to waste lecturing me on bullshit, you should dedicate some of it to thinking about counters for some of the Gunplas we saw today."
Jounouchi stood and moved away. "Fine, fine, I'm gonna give the Legilis a once-over and make sure it's ready to go for tomorrow. You wanna grab some dinner afterwards?"
"I'll come with you," the words tumbled out of Kaiba's mouth automatically. Watching Jounouchi light up with the prospect of company, Kaiba lost the will to berate himself.
"We can order room service!" Jounouchi bounced excitedly on the heel of his feet. "I heard they're showing the War in the Pocket OVAs on TBS tonight. We can watch it together."
"I've never seen it before."
"Don't worry. It's super serious and depressing, so it's right up your alley."
Kaiba may not need a lot of things— affection, companionship, diversions— but it didn't change the fact that Seto wanted them.