Ye-e-e-e-p. Ch.11 is HUR. So all the minor characters who've only had about a chapter and a half dedicated to them will probably get some more time here and now. P:

After Jou and kaiba, of course.

I OWN NOTHING HUR.

"zwanzig Fragen" mans "Twenty Questions"

[Zwanzig Fragen]

"I want to know about you."

"You want to know about me?"

"I didn't ask about a monkey, did I? You're more of a mutt, aren't you?"

"Hey, if intimate feelings are being reciprocated here, I don't want to hear the nickname "Mutt," hard-ass."

Behind steepled fingers, Kaiba looked amused.

"From the one saying "Hard Ass."

"You started it."

"True."

They sat in an amused silence for a few moments. Kaiba looking cold, superior, and aloof, and Jonouchi looking unamused and more than slightly uncomfortable.

"So, questions," Kaiba was all business again. "I want to know about you. Where you came from, how old you are, and what you are doing here, specifically."

Well, Jonouchi would be damned if he let Kaiba ask the only questions.

"You first. You're mister supremely aged vampire, right? I want to know about you."

A pale hand started to twitch nervously. The papers were in Kaiba's hand again, shaking. They were torn in places where hard nails were scraping rents and pulping the resume.

He put the papers down, standing up quickly and walking over to a small wooden cabinet up above a bookshelf.

One might store cognac there, Jonouchi thought as he watched.

"I didn't know you could drink," He spoke up as Kaiba opened the cabinet.

"I-I'm far beyond legal age."

Kaiba never stuttered. Not from what he'd seen. Something was wrong with him.

He pulled out a vial of blue liquid. It looked like highly viscous antifreeze. It shook violently in it's bottle as he brought it ip to eye level, fidgeting and scrambling to get it uncorked. Jonouchi stood up and walked over, taking the bottle from Kaiba and uncorking it, cautiously handing it back to him.

"Are you okay?"

The liquid was gulped down. There was about sixteen ounces of it, all in a slim vial. In an instant, it was gone.

The shaking stopped. A long breath was exhumed, and Jonouchi could swear that he saw a small flash of pure white, pointed bone and enamel slowly retreat into pink gums.

The vial was replaced. Suddenly, Kaiba was all business again.

"What was that," Jonouchi watched him replace the bottle.

"Nothing to concern yourself with."

The cabinet closed.

"Now, questions. You still need to answer them."

Jonouchi smiled at that.

"You first."

They moved back to the chairs.

"Alright, then. I'm originally from Egypt,"

"Then you'd be tan, right? Not overly pale."

Kaiba shot a glare at him.

"Don't interrupt. Skin pales over time; it takes a while for melanin in the skin to die, but it still does."

"Alright. So, you're Egyptian. How long have you been alive?"

"I thought I told you not to interrupt. I've been around a little over two thousand years. I've had a significantly small impact on history."

"How'd you get over to Japan then?"

"Around World War two, I was in Germany. Hitler got elected and then given the political post of supreme chancellor. I saw what was coming after a few months, so, naturally, I fled. I stayed in Russia for a time. There were still exceedingly strong shockwaves after the 1917 revolution, but parts of the country were overly xenophobic. Too much so for my tastes. After a small while there, I decided to leave. Stalin and his regime were getting to be as cruel as Hitler's- the Gulag was more or lest on par with Aushwitz and Dauchau and all the other death camps. I may be a vampire, but I still can't stomach the idea of mass deaths and fascism. So I opted out, fled down to China, and sailed over to America. I spent all of World War two there and then moved over to Japan."

"Okay... What are you doing here?"

"It's a... complicated matter. Mainly due to the culture, no other reason. The places in America where I lived were a bit to... much for my tastes. So, I moved. I got recruited by the former owner of KaibaCorp after a while, and here I am."

A slow nod.

"Now what about you?"

The blonde snapped his head back.

"What...? Me?"

"I'm not asking the vampire pope, am I? Answer my questions now. There's a fair trade, right?"

"Okay, okay- I- I know I'm sixteen. Or something like that. I don't know how long I've been like," He motioned to himself, "This. I think I'm from... Brooklyn... And I don't know... how... I got over... here. Or how long I've been here."

Jonouchi's eyes had gotten glazed over and unfocused. They were flitting back and forth nervously, sometimes landing on him, other times at random parts of the room.

"So you have no concept of time."

"Hm! No- not for as long as I've... as I've been here..."

"You don't know what you're doing here?"

"No... nobody told me. I'm just... Here."

"Do you remember anything?"

"Anything from what?"

"When you were human. How you were created. Anything like that."

The blond shook his head again.

"No. Nothing. But sometimes, I get...I don't know, flashes, I'd guess you call them."

Kaiba felt like a psychologist now. He wished he had a recorder or something hidden in a desk. He glanced at the security camera hidden in the corner. That worked, too. Normally he wouldn't have a camera in one of his private rooms, but he did have a safe here, and he did complete a lot of business transactions here.

He was brought out of his thoughts by jonouchi speaking up to him again.

"They're weird... it's all domestic, y'know... just... flashes of an ordinary life. Someone's life. And there's alway a word... just one word to go with them... But I don't know what it is... It's just... there."

Kaiba brought a hand up to his mouth, his brow furrowing in thought.

"Relapses," He finally said, getting up. "Normally, you wouldn't have them. You would remember everything. Something, I don't know what, has obviously interfered and messed with your brain."

He walked around the desk, motioning for Jonouchi to follow him.

"Where're we going," He asked, following cautiously. They went out of the study, down the hall and the staircase, and up to the front door. Kaiba turned too Roland, whom Jonouchi had just noticed was there, sticking to the shadows.

"I'm going to the office. Have dinner ready for Mokuba when he gets home from his friend's and if anyone calls, tell them I'm unavailable and reschedule. I'll be back in a few hours."

The little man simply bowed and handed him a set of keys.

Kaiba swept out the front door, Jonouchi following at his heels, walking towards the drive way. There was a sleek, black, economical-looking car sitting in it. Walking around to the drivers side, he promptly unlocked the car and motioned for Jonouchi to get in with him. He did.

"Where are we going? KaibaCorp?"

"Where else? There's someone there I want you to meet."

Pulling out of the driveway, they sped down the road. Jonouchi hastily scrambled to put his seatbelt on.

"Kaiba?"

"Hm."

The car took a sharp turn.

"Can I ask something?"

"Depends."

A stoplight. Long, pale fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel.

"If... uh... well, I like you and you... like me, then, um..."

The light turned green.

"You're really awkward with relationships, huh," Kaiba smirked.

"You were either going to say go out or calling each other by our first names."

"Can you read minds!"

Kaiba laughed a bit. The sky outside was starting to get dark.

"You're just easy to read. If you want to call me by my first name, that's fine. I don't much care about cultural customs in the way of names. As far as going out, why don't we stay in, if anything."

"Um... okay. Alright, that sounds- Oh my GOD are you trying to kill us!"

The car had just zipped in front of an eighteen-wheeler, almost getting ran over by it. The horn was blaring loudly and he could hear the driver's cusses. His ears were ringing loudly as they progressed down the street. He could see the building in the veritable background- it was as imposing from five blocks away as it was from five feet. They made a few turns, cutting off some more people before sliding into a reserved space in the adjacent parking garage.

"Come on."

They headed inside, blowing past the glass doors and through the post-modernist lobby to the elevator by it, heading down when Kaiba pressed the bottom button twice. Lights flickered a bit and the elevator got a little jerky for a few seconds. Jonouchi grabbed Kaiba's arm, silently praying to whatever god that was out there the elevator wasn't going to break down. He wasn't a big fan of elevators.

The rest of the ride went very smoothly; the doors dinged open at the end, dropping them off in an epoxy-glossed hallway.

Kaiba put a hand on his shoulder, making the blonde loot at him.

"I want you to understand, perfectly, flawlessly, here and now, that I am trusting you with something incredible here. You can not tell anyone about this. I don't care if it's your mother-"

Mother... That was the word!

"You have to keep this to yourself. Understand?"

"O-okay. Keep it a secret. An 'If I tell you, I hve to kill you' thing. Yessir."

Kaiba's eyes were colder than ice and clearer than glass when he replied.

"You had better keep it a secret. or I will kill you."

Ice eyes.

Kaiba could give a man a mile away frostbite, was Jonouchi's thought as they went through the hallway.

It twisted and turned until they cane to a door. It looked like steel, shiny and impervious and new, standing at perfect attention. Waiting silently. Next to it was a keypad and card slider. Below that, there was a small tub of a fluctuating metallic substance, as well as a small scanner-bar above it.

The doors reflected their images perfectly. Every perfection and imperfection was bounced back at them, their movements matched.

"I thought vampires did't have reflections," Jonouchi muttered off-handedly as he reached out to touch the metal. He honestly hadn't seen anything like it- it was so shiny, so bright, and it looked so smooth...

A pale hand slid out and caught his hand when it was just millimeters away from it.

He whimpered at the thought of being denied the action of touching the lustrous metal.

"I wouldn't."

Kaiba pulled out his hand from the metal, looking into the scanner and repeating a sentence before the crackling, buzzing, fizzing sound stopped. Jonouchi wasn't even aware that there was such a sound. It was coming from the door, apparently. A hissing sound filled the air as something slid back and 'thump'ed into place. The images rippled and disappeared as the doors slid back and revealed what was obviously a lab.

"What is this...?"

Kaiba walked into the room, heading towards a table where a hunched over, quivering mass was piled. Upon closer inspection, the mass was a human. Flyaway, disheveled white hair stuck up every which way, and a shiny, metallic black hand held a pen and scribbled equations and words all over a brown-ish paper.

"Rotwang."

The man continued to write.

"Rotwang."

There was muttering now. Jonouchi heard the words 'Frederson' Hel' 'Creation' and 'Will kill him'.

He hadn't seen the man's face, didn't know anything about him, and he was terrified just by the feel of the air around the man. It was menacing; utterly cold and terrifying- anger fathoming a depth of temperature at the very least a few hundred degrees below zero.

"Rotwang!"

Kaiba, obviously, was not. He reached out and grabbed the mans shoulder, spinning him around to face them.

At first, Jonouchi thought the man was a vampire himself. He was sure of it. His face was a pale, paper-white, stretched over sharp, strong features that leaned slightly to the right of his face. Dark circles were under his eyes, obviously put there by a countless number of sleepless nights heaped together. His eyes were a cold blue. They looked long-dead. His mouth was stretched in a frown and his shoulders were tense. He felt cold and dead. But not a vampire.

"Was wünschen Sie? What is it now!"

His voice was as cold as the air, sounding bitter and three times as bitter and poison as a cesspool.

In was spattered along the paper, dripping from. an old-fashioned ink pen.

"What the hell do you want?"

Jonouchi was taken aback by the hostility. ot even three sentences and he felt his insides twisting nervously.

"Where's-"

"Franz? That is what you interrupt me for! Franz! It's your damn complex, Kaiba! Your own damn complex!"

The man jumped up.

"Stop throwing a fit. Just tell me where he is."

The man- Rotwang- Stalked over to another table, flipping on a buzzing mercury light. A schematic was pulled out from a drawer underneath it. Soft, buttery-looking, shaped copper-plates were laid out in the shape of a person on the table, chips and wires piled under them with wires and tubes connecting parts of them.

"He's somewhere around here."

The mechanical hand waved them absentmindedly away.

"Go find him, if you need to speak to him so quickly."

Kaiba nodded, turning and walking off.

"Come on, Katsuya."

Jonouchi bolted at the name. Katsuya. That was the first time that Kaiba had called him that. Katsuya.

"Sure thing, Seto."

And he followed him.

The place was a damn maze. One turn here, two turns there, two rights made a left.

"Hey, Seto...?"

"Yes?"

"Is Rotwang a vampire?"

Kaiba stopped for a second, before laughing. It wasn't a long, loud or hearty laugh as it was short.

"No. Not by any means."

"What is he, then?"

"Something of a living mummy-"

"He's a zombie!"

"Wrong term, then. He's a walking embalmed corpse. I developed the method- it's costly, it's troublesome, and it's not only annoying but exceedingly painful. If you're willing to deal with all of that, it keeps you alive. You don't need to eat or drink or anything like that. And your brain and body are preserved for countless lifetimes."

The eventually came to a door. Voices were coming from behind it. These were different- They were honeyed- warm and sweet. They were lover's voices. He heard moans and begging, cloth scraping together and bodies rubbing up against each other in such a tender way- He was utterly hypnotized by the sound of it.

Until Kaiba knocked on the door, his face utterly cold and unamused.

The noises ceased before hushed whispers sounded off.

"Erich- Erich, stop... H-anh!"

"Why- you were begging for it just a few seconds ago."

" P-people! Other people - out there! Let me up, I- unh!"

"Hhhh... very well; go on and answer it."

"Wh- who is it!"

"Who else would it be, Franz?"

"Kaiba! God damn- H-hold on! I'll be out in a minute!"

There was a loud scrambling noise. Something fell with a heavy 'thud' and there was a discontented sound.

"Get some damn clothes on!"

"Why? Because of Kaiba?"

"Yes! Yes, you idiot, because of Kaiba! Hurry up!"

Nothing moved for a moment.

"Fine, stay there! Just keep the sheets on or something!"

The door slid open not a moment later. There stood another man, about as tall as him, who was jus as pale and just as cold-feeling at Rotwang.

His light blonde hair was disheveled, and he looked as if he would be sweating and blushing. Clothes were thrown loosely onto him, and he was still buttoning his shirt. He had light, crystal blue eyes. They were magnified a bit by a tilted pair of red, rectangular glasses. There was a wild, unsatisfied lust in them.

"J-ja, Herr Kaiba, what is it?"

His voice was hurried. He sounded breathless. Judging by the man sitting naked- very naked- in the bed behind him, he had a good reason to be.

Jonouchi wanted to blush.

"I need you to do some blood tests and an examination, Franz."

A brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, and corners of a mouth were pulled down.

" On who?"

Kaiba motioned to Jonouchi, who just waved shyly and said 'hi there' while looking and feeling awkward and out of place in general.

"Now!"

"Yes, now. Here, now."

"Hhhh- alright. Alright, bring him through here."

The man laying on the bed lit up a cigarette and waved, the lighter in his hand.

"In here."

Franz led them into a walled off room with a curtain to one side.

"Does everyone who needs a physical have to go through here?"

"You mean the bedroom? No. This is just room that happened to be connected. It's a back up way in, per se."

"Come on, you," Franz's hand was tight on his upper arm. "Over here."

Jonouchi stood nervously by the curtain.

"Strip down."

"What!"

"You heard me, strip down. Your shirt, pants, underwear, socks, everything. Strip. Now. You can use the curtain for some privacy or not. When you're done, go stand over by that scale- clothes weigh more than people give them credit for, and we need an absolute weight," Franz motioned towards the corner of the room, "And we'll get started."

He headed off to get a clip board and form, leaving Kaiba and Jonouchi to themselves.

Kaiba was watching him.

"What?"

"You were going to-"

"If you want a show, go somewhere else! You pervert."

"Whatever happened to 'reciprocate feelings'?"

"So I can't do that and see you strip?"

"Hfff- Fine. Fine. Watch if you want."

Jonouchi promptly proceeded to take off his shirt, sliding it over his head. His hand went to the button of his pants and-

"How long does it take you to get undressed? Good lord, you're damn slow. Hurry up."

Franz hit him with a pen.

Jonouchi quickly pulled off the rest of his clothes and stood there, as naked as the day he was born and even more awkward.

"I didn't think that you had to undress to do an examination," The blonde mused out loud.

"You don't. I was a doctor at Aushwitz. This is just the way we did things there."

"You were at Aushwitz! You're a Nazi! He's a- Did you know about this! Why do you have a Nazi as your doctor! You're damn psychotic!"

Jonouchi looked back and forth between Kaiba and Franz.

"Yes, I did. He was a nazi. That doesn't mean he's a bad doctor. Just let him to the exam."

This was suddenly a great deal more uncomfortable than Jonouchi would have cared to admit.

"Step on the scale- we need exact weight and height."

Jonouchi obeyed.

"Stand up straight. Your posture is atrocious. Throw your shoulders back, keep your spine straight. Try your best to keep your shoulders square and your weight evenly distributed."

He still stood slightly hunched over, holding his arms over his chest at his elbows.

Franz looked over his glasses at him.

"What? You're embarrassed? Look, just stand up straight and put your back against the wall when I tell you and we'll get to move on to the next part of the physical. Hurry up- there's no need to feel inadequate."

"Wha- That is not why!"

"Then there should be no problem. C'mon, I don't have all day. Stop being a child and hurry up."

Grudgingly, Jonouchi did as he was told.

Franz quickly measured him, writing measurements on the paper.

"Weight is 170, height is five foot nine inches. Hair is blonde, eyes are brown, race is Caucasian. Alright, you're perfectly normal so far. Step down, walk over here."

Franz led Jonouchi over to an examination table. Kaiba promptly followed.

Tapping the seat for Jonouchi to sit, he opened a cabinet built into the lower part of the table.

"I'm going to check your hearing, your eyesight, and your reflexes. Kaiba's going to help with that-" Franz shot a look out of the corner of his eyes at Kaiba and smirked a bit. "Shouldn't take a moment. Now, I want you to put these on," A pair of red headphones," And tell me if you hear a sound and which ear you hear a sound in. Just raise the hand corresponding with the ear. I'm going to start the machine now. Ready?"

Jonouchi nodded.

"Okay."

A switch was flipped on a small box the headphones were connected with. A clear ringing sound went through his left ear. He raised his left hand. A note on the paper.

Another switch, another beep, another hand raised.

The ringing got progressively louder or softer, and Jonouchi's head was starting to ache in it's lower back. Finally, the noise stopped.

"Alright. Hearing's normal. Take the scoop," The headphones were put away and a spoon-like thing was handed to him.

"Hold it over your left eye, tell me what you see, and then try your other eye."

The tests progressed relatively quickly after that. Jonouchi didn't have much of a problem with it, not until Franz pulled Kaiba aside.

He heard the words 'blood test, cancers,' and, he was somewhat sure the phrase 'std' was in there somewhere.

"The entire battery," was Kaiba's reply.

Franz walked back up.

"I'm assuming that, since Kaiba brought you here, you aren't exactly human. You don't exhibit the characteristics of a lycanthrope or a zombie so I'm assuming vampire."

"Y-yeah..."

"When it comes to vampires, the immune system and such don't function like those of a living being. As well as the process of ridding the body of waste. You don't produce urine or material waste if your body doesn't use part of what you consume. So, the waste is either thrown up, excised, or neutralized by being absorbed into cells. The brilliant thing about cell absorption is that the cells that absorb the waste are in the dermis and epidermis- your skin- and die and shed just as soon as they've absorbed all the waste they can. And when you're talking about millions of cells all over your body, there's a large capacity to absorb waste. Or it all congeals together into nastily colored snot."

Jonouchi looked on nervously as Franz pulled out a pair of latex gloves, a swab and length of elastic ribbon, some vials with a cloudy, congealed substance in them, and a bag along with a large needle.

"I'm sure you're not allergic to latex," he said, pulling the gloves on.

"All that we're doing here is s simple blood test- I stick you with a needle, draw a sample, test it, and report what I find. We're looking for blood and DNA composition, as well as any indications of diseases or cancers."

"Why do you need to know all this? What sicknesses could vampires even get? Why would it matter?"

He was feeling more and more nervous by the second. He rubbed his legs together a bit, pressing them together at the knees.

"Because even though most human functions aren't needed any more, there is still the subconscious urge for the body to produce white blood cells and for things like cancers to occur. Vampirism is just a complicated super virus. It evolves and combines. or reacts with other viruses, sicknesses, or bacteria to create something new, even down to the infected subject's DNA. It changes the four DNA bases, so there's more components than adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, and your DNA isn't simply deoxyribose nucleic acid anymore. Your body has the probability of evolving or completely breaking down at the sign of any abnormalities. We need to test and keep a record so we know what's going on with you and use you as a guinea pig if need be. Obviously, most doctor's don't get a chance to conduct examinations on a species that supposedly doesn't exist."

"How do you know that a vampire's immune system doesn't just destroy a virus automatically?"

"We don't."

"I really don't like this."

"You really don't have to. And I really don't care. So, you get blood samples drawn."

Franz grabbed the needle. Tying an elastic strip around Jonouchi's arm, he wiped it with alcohol and poked it methodically to find a vein. Wasting no time, he inserted the needle in the pale flesh, stopping when it hit the vein to connect it with the small empty vial that had a sort of opaque gel in it.

Black blood gelled out-sluggishly at first, opaque and sticky, before roiling out and filling the vial. Gently removing it one it was full, Franz replaced it with another. The process repeated after that until four or five vials were full. The needle was pulled out and a band-aid placed on the pinhole.

"I'll test these and fax you the results when it's done. Until then, get out. I'm tired and my patience is wearing to damn this to deal with the rest of this. Bring him back if any other tests need to be done."

The gloves were torn off in a menacing ' snap' and thrown away. The swab was set by a table of equipment and Franz walked out and flopped down on his bed. Jonouchi quickly got dressed and walked out, pulling Kaiba behind him.

They ducked out of the room quickly, walking down the hallway and through the main lab. Rotwang was gone. The coppery metal was still there on the table, but pulled together at the midsection now. It was clearly human, a slim imitation of a girl. Slim, with a tapered waist. Jonouchi noticed that there was a mound of circuitry and computer chips where a head would be. Beside it lay a metal skeleton, shining silvery light off of it. Wires connected parts of each respective structure. In between the two, rudimentary hands were stretched out, almost toughing. They wanted to be together- A body and it's skeleton. It chilled him to the bone.

They were out of the lab before he could get a good look at anything else.

[-_-_-_-_-]

Franz lay next to Erich, suddenly tired beyond comparison. He frowned as He felt his shirt buttons being undone.

"Stop it, Erich."

He was pulled over to lay on top of the other, his head lolling off to the side, his face buried in the other's neck. His glasses slipped off his face. Lazily, Franz took them and placed them on the bed side.

Hands ran lovingly up and down his back, sliding his shirt down below his shoulders.

"You're okay?"

Oh, Erich. Erich was always there, always comforting at the end of any hardship. Something felt odd this time, though, off, ever since he had mysteriously shown up again. It was weird. It was unsettling. But it was comforting at the same time. He felt safe and warm as he lay there, his eyelids drooping. His hands rested above Erich's arms, folded, one gripping his shoulder and one the sheet. It felt stiff and sticky. If he could blush, he would have. What they did earlier- ah, god. He exhaled slowly, curling into Erich's body.

"Are you okay? You seem... distressed."

"Mhh... I'm exhausted. I want to sleep. So you had better let me., or suffer my wrath."

"'Suffer my wrath'?" Erich laughed. "I think Rotwang's need for vengeance is starting to rub off on you."

"Hah! That'll be the day."

They stayed in silence for a few moments before Erich finally broke it.

"Franz?"

"Mph- yes? What is it?"

"It's the in-"

"Don't say information," Franz groaned.

"If you don't want to talk about it-"

"I don't think I can get it. I would need access to files that require higher clearance than what I have. Kaiba doesn't give information away to just anyone. In any way."

Erich's hand went up to sift trough his hair, stroking his skull. The hand around his waist tightened, not uncomfortably, holding them together.

"Take your time. If you can't get it, it's okay, just take your time."

Franz nodded, leaning into the side of Erich's neck. The warmth from the blanket, the comfort of another body... He couldn't believe it all was back. Beside him, Erich moved to bury his nose in his hair, smiling.

[Ende ch. 11]

Mmkay, I went back and edited this, because, on second thought- I probably shouldn't have written the screwy mess that was here before.

So, some explanations of the medical thing- And please, keep in mind that I learned all this LAST YEAR in Biology 1, so I'm a little rusty-

DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid- this is what defines us as, well, human. It's made up of four bases- Adenine, Cytosine, Thyme, and Guanine, that go in different sequences to determine what traits can come out of a strand of DNA. For example-

ACGTCTGACTGTS

Would be a random, screwy, but valid sequence in a strand of DNA.

Basically, I think that if vampirism or hemovorism or whatever you wanted to call it actually existed, it would be passable as a highly contagious strand of super-virus that altered DNA sequences. By highly contagious, I mean if you get bit, about 99% of the time, it gets you. Like small pox to Indians way back in the day.

This is a partial attempt to explain something that is supernatural and is more or less supposed to be beyond the realm of scientific thought or explanation, and also to reflect growing anxieties about evolving super-viruses- check the news, kiddies, it's there.

So, yea, never say you didn't learn anything from me!