A/N: This one can be seen as a precursor to another fic I wrote some time ago, Unchained Elegy (www. fanfiction. net/s/4075071/1/Unchained (underscore) Elegy), so anybody who has read that will be able to tell where this is going from the get-go. Battle City has such scope for tragedy.

28. Guilty – The Rasmus

Seto Kaiba was not in the habit of feeling guilty about anything. He'd done several things that would probably wrack other people with guilt, but he viewed them clinically. Each step he took was towards an ultimate goal, and he calculated his movements with such meticulousness that there was no room left for petty sentiment. Few things mattered to him, certainly nothing more than his brother, and those few were the only things that could tug more than vaguely disgusted apathy from him. He didn't doubt himself, he didn't second-guess himself, and he certainly never felt guilty about doing what was necessary. Sometimes he got a vague twinge of something when Mokuba asked him to spend more time with him outside work and Duel Monsters and he couldn't. The look on his little brother's face, however fleeting, plucked at the strings of something inside Seto, but just like Mokuba's expression it was fleeting.

The first thing unrelated to Mokuba that made Seto Kaiba feel guilty wasn't something he'd done, but something he'd failed to do.

Using playing cards as projectile weapons was a ridiculous idea. Seto knew that. It was why he used them. Nobody expected Duel Monsters cards to cause as much damage as they did if thrown at the right angle, just as nobody expected a teenager to be able to run a company, or a CEO to be capable of more than sitting at a desk signing cheques. Seto was good at challenging the world's expectations.

His aim was perfect. Everything he did was perfect – meticulously calculated, painstakingly exact and mind-numbingly thorough. He wasn't quite a machine, but some days he stared at the banks of computers in Kaiba Corp's labs and wondered whether he really needed them all. There was as much room for error in him as there was for petty sentiment.

Tiny pebbles can bring down giants. Seto should have known he wasn't the only thing that could challenge expectations. A half-centimetre rocked the foundations of all his arrogant self-confidence.

It also ended Anzu Mazaki's life.

Seto Kaiba was not in the habit of feeling guilty about anything. However, he was also not in the habit of watching his most hated rival scream like he'd been stabbed, or watching a possessed person be forcibly ripped from his possession like Mutou's sidekick, Jounouchi, at the sound of a metal crate falling from a great height. Seto Kaiba had ultimate goals and took whatever steps were necessary to achive them. And if people got in his way … well that was their own fault, and they bore the consequences of that.

But when Mokuba told him through tears that Anzu Mazaki had saved his life by allowing him to escape Malik, and done it at the cost of her own freedom, Seto Kaiba risked his own life to save Yuugi Mutou and Katsuya Jounouchi from Malik's sick game. Then he stood over his sobbing rival, dripping wet, and instead of triumph he felt guilt pierce him, and genuine remorse trickle from the wound. He'd wanted Mutou broken and on his knees before him, but not like this.

Seto set his jaw. His teeth made an unpleasant grinding noise. "This won't go unpunished, Mutou."

"You don't understand … you don't … that's not … oh, Anzu!"

Seto looked away, his eyes landing on Mokuba's streaked face and becoming hard as ice chips. He was already meticulously planning his next move, and like so many before it, this one wouldn't be pleasant. "I won't let this go unpunished."

A/N: Hello. My name is Scribbler, and I have a problem with killing off a character I purport to actually love to bits. This is the third time I've killed Anzu in this collection (fourth if you count Ficlet 22, although that was more a near-death-experience), and I'll say now that I'm not sure why or how it keeps happening. Dang short time-span for writing leaves no room for moral dilemmas of the lives of fictional characters!