Notes: Since it's been a while since my last update, I thought I would give a quick reminder of where everyone stands at the moment:

Yuugi is still kind of rattled about Atem's departure and feels a little out of place now that he is no longer in charge of saving the world. He is put off to discover that not all problems can be solved by dueling.

Isis is a little annoyed at being forced to leave her family in Egypt and return to Japan, but secretly isn't she a little pleased too? She feels restless if she's not on a mission.

Mokuba is upset at his brother for failing to disclose his connections to the Egyptian past, and doesn't understand why Seto is getting upset so easily and destroying the relics of their childhood. But he's a bit too timid to ask him about it.

And neither Jounouchi nor Seto know what to do with themselves. Jounouchi thought that he'd be relieved now that all that world-saving business is over—he thought he would be spending the summer chilling and with his friends, savoring their victory over the forces of darkness, and just maybe getting the no-longer-so-secret object of his misguided and muddled affections to see him as something more than a two-bit loser. But now his father is in the hospital and he has to turn to Kaiba to help save his family from what feels like imminent destruction. And he can't seem to pull off having a conversation with him without getting him pissed. Very frustrating.

Seto is still reeling from his time in Egypt and his head hasn't quite come back to the present yet. It doesn't help that it seems he can't go a day without being reminded of one of his myriad personal or professional failures. He's trying to overcome and grow as a person, but it sometimes feels like he's fighting a losing battle with himself. Quite disheartening.

An additional quick note while I have your attention—I figure if you've read this far already you've probably picked up on this but I feel I've got to say it anyway: this story is paced very deliberately, and most of the 'action' happens in between the quotation marks. Kaiba and Jounouchi are both in pretty delicate psychological states right now, and they've got to talk to and learn a lot about each other before they learn to see each other as anything more than unpleasant annoyances. I promise it's all going somewhere—none of these exchanges are without a purpose. However, if anyone has any comments or concerns about that or any other aspects of the story please don't hesitate to share. I'm always actively looking for ways to improve and I love talking with you guys : )

Thanks for reading!

Jounouchi pounded his fist against the glass door, making it quiver in its frame. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered. "Open up already."

"Calm down, onii-chan," Shizuka whispered, placing a hand on his arm. "You'll break it."

Jounouchi sighed and cast an anxious glance at the empty streets around them. Despite the fact that they had been invited here, he couldn't shake the shadow of culpability that hung around his shoulders and wrapped itself around his neck. He shivered under the irate glare of the street lamps, barred his teeth at the sleek, impenetrable surfaces of the imposing office buildings that enclosed them, unable to rid himself of the feeling that he was intruding in a world that was both incapable of and completely unwilling to support him. He shot an irritated glance at the uppermost floor of the building, where a single golden light raged against the night sky.

"I just wish that he'd hurry up already," he grumbled. "Instead of just leaving us out here for ages." He shook his fist at the top of the building. "There are people waiting down here, y'know?!"

"I'm well aware," Seto replied as he unlocked the door and ushered them in. "As is the entire neighborhood. You have a bad habit of making yourself far too conspicuous."

"It's about time!" Jounouchi seethed as he and Shizuka followed Kaiba into the lobby.

"You're hardly in a position to be making complaints. Follow me."

If the Kaiba mansion had exuded a suffocating air of lavish self-indulgence, Kaiba Corp headquarters countered with a steely wave of cold, merciless efficiency. Even with the desks left abandoned and the hallways eerily dark and silent, the building seemed to hiss with an exacting, carefully calculated prowess that was a fortress against wastage and weakness.

"We were just afraid that you might have forgotten," Shizuka explained as the two caught up to Kaiba at the bank of elevators that lined the back wall of the lobby.

"Or that I was lying?"

Neither replied.

"I wasn't lying," Kaiba continued as he stepped into the elevator. "I wonder why you would even bother coming if you suspected it was a possibility. If I can't be trusted to keep my word I certainly can't be trusted to keep your secrets."

"Well, you seem to be doing okay so far," Jounouchi grumbled as he followed him into the elevator, taking care both to maximize the distance between them and create a physical barrier between Kaiba and his sister. "Just don't blow it."

Jounouchi fought a wave of vertigo as the elevator doors slid shut behind them and they began to glide into the sky.

-xxx-

"Three?" Kaiba's eyes narrowed in distaste as Jounouchi set three worn manila folders on his desk. "I thought I was just dealing with the two of you."

Shizuka and Jounouchi exchanged nervous glances. "We were hoping you could make some documents for our father as well," Shizuka explained.

"Why."

"He's a member of our family. It would be shameful not to protect him when we have the chance."

Kaiba shot her a stare almost as severe as that of the Blue Eyes White Dragon figurine perched on the edge of his desk. He shook his head. "You're wasting your time and my effort."

"This is more important."

Kaiba rolled his eyes and Jounouchi smiled. Shizuka's eyes were firm but her bottom lip was trembling.

"Your sentimentality is a massive liability," he sighed. "But fine, whatever. It doesn't make a difference to me."

Jounouchi flinched as Kaiba reached across the table. "What's the problem, make-inu," he asked as he began to leaf through the tattered documents. "You thought I'd be able to forge copies of your medical records without looking at them? Not even I'm that good."

Jounouchi shifted in his seat and crossed his arms. "No, I just don't see why—"

"Do you really want any more people to be involved in this process than is strictly necessary? Do I have to remind you that there's a reason we're doing this at night—with no one else around?"

"It's okay, Katsuya," Shizuka curled a placating hand around his fist. "You don't have anything to be ashamed of."

Kaiba's lip curled. "Hm. That's debatable." He turned to his computer monitor—washing his face in a jarring, ghostly glare—and pointedly ignored Jounouchi's fuming expression. "Now—we may be nearing the end of the twentieth century, but the Japanese bureaucracy is still heroically clinging to Stone Age technology. Only a small fraction of the national archive has been digitized—for the most part it's nothing but a hopeless mess of documents akin to what you have here. This means that hacking into the few digital databases that are available is embarrassingly simple—the government doesn't see the point in protecting something that barely exists. Unfortunately, it also means that this task can't be completed remotely: someone has to infiltrate the relevant offices and physically replace the necessary documents."

"I thought you said this would be easy."

"Creating the forgery is easy—fabricating the reality to support it is considerably more challenging. But not impossible." He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and smirked. "Consider yourself lucky to know me.

"Assuming that you want to pass yourselves off as official Japanese citizens, you'll need to have an entry in the koseki and an official address in the juminhyo. And no, that vacant Kaiba Corp facility cannot count as your official address. For the juminhyo we only have to work with the city of Domino; amending the koseki requires dealing with the Ministry of Health and Welfare—which is located in Tokyo. Once those documents are in place everything else should be relatively straightforward—though I imagine you want to have official medical and school registration records. I can make copies of those with the information you have provided me here," he gestured towards the stack of papers on his desk, "though for obvious reasons I will not be handling the assimilation of these documents personally."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Shizuka struggled to keep her voice from quavering.

"That's not really my concern."

"Oh come on, don't give me that." Jounouchi tried to laugh but the sound became charred in the back of his throat. "Look pretty boy, no one is forcing you to help us, so either you commit to the whole thing or don't bother at all." He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward in his chair, scrutinizing Kaiba carefully. "You can't just make a half-assed commitment to start something then sit back all smug and pompous when we can't finish it on our own when you're perfectly capable of helping."

Kaiba was sitting up straighter now, eyes glowing.

"Oh really." Voice halfway between a cold rebuff and velvety purr.

"Yeah," Jounouchi growled. "I won't let you."

"Hn. We'll see about that. I don't particularly appreciate being told what to do."

Jounouchi smirked. "I've noticed. I guess that means it's time for a change, doesn't it?" He let the question linger in the air between them—a balmy, crimson whisper.

"Kaiba-san, your phone is ringing."

Kaiba turned to her sharply. "I'm aware. It's not important." He stole a furtive glance at the phone to his side, the flashing red light that glared up at him with dazzling fury—like a fiery, solitary eye. Its lurid ring seemed to make the room ripple with infantile mockery.

He shook his head sharply, as if the sound was piercing him. A small tremor stole down his shoulders.

He stood abruptly. "Well, what are we waiting for." He smoothed the creases in his pants, blinked several times, then sat down again and began flicking through the files in Jounouchi's folder. The phone was still ringing, firing bullets into the silence.

"Kaiba-san, are you—"

"Fine," he snapped, not looking up. "Hm. You've certainly led quite a reprehensible life, make-inu. Though to be honest I can't claim to be surprised…"

Jounouchi bristled. "Laugh all you want, if that's what it takes to make you feel special. Shizuka is right, I have no reason to be ashamed of my past. I mean sure, not all of us can grow up in fancy mansions like you, but I wouldn't trade those struggles for anything—they've made me who I am today."

Kaiba scoffed. "Did you read that in a greeting card."

The night ticked on at what Jounouchi felt to be an infuriatingly slow pace. Shizuka bobbed in and out of wakefulness, her small fists always steadfastly clenched at her sides. Kaiba was absorbed in his work at the computer, his concentration only faltering occasionally to fill in gaps in the paperwork or shoot angry glares at his phone, which was erupting in caustic fury nearly every twenty minutes.

"Gee, Kaiba, looks like someone really wants to talk to you," Jounouchi spoke over his shoulder. He had abandoned his post at Kaiba's desk several hours previously and had taken to prowling the office, squinting at the many certificates and trophies that lined its walls. Even in the semi-darkness they emitted a kind of haughty luster that set his teeth on edge. "Think you're going to pick up ever?"

"I wasn't planning on it." He didn't look away from his computer monitor.

"Well can you turn it off or something then? Shizuka is trying to sleep. We don't need to keep hearing this."

Kaiba grumbled, but pulled the cord out of the phone and slid it into the garbage.

"You aren't even a little bit curious to find out who wants to talk to you so bad? I can't imagine you get that many people crawling after your company."

"Very funny." He paused. "I know who it is. I have no desire to speak to him."

"Well I'm sure you're really hurting his feelings."

"Hardly." Kaiba watched him for a moment over steepled fingers. Jounouchi was like a wild gust of wind—disruptive, unabashed, and unsettling. Not nearly as tarnished as his criminal record and harrowing medical history would suggest. Somehow those things hadn't clung to him.

Jounouchi bobbed on his feet. "Y'know, I have to admit that I'm impressed, Kaiba. You've got so many gaming trophies—chess, Go, Diplomacy…"

"Jealous that the only thing you could win is a competitive eating contest?"

"Ha. Yeah I could wipe the floor with you there. I mean what I said though—this is really something. I don't know many guys who would build a shrine to their eternal virginity here in their office like this. That takes major guts."

"How long did it take you to come up with that joke."

"Not that long." He yawned. "I'm getting tired though, so it's probably not my best work."

"Hn. Well I'm certainly grateful to have been spared the full force of your scathing wit." He paused, and with slight trepidation, retrieved a thick, glossy envelope from its hiding place underneath a pile of paperwork. "Did you get one of these?"

"Huh?" Jounouchi stepped closer then plucked the envelope from Kaiba's grasp, puzzling over the elaborate calligraphy of the address. "Maybe? I don't really check the mail at Yuugi's and I doubt anything addressed to home is getting there. What is it?"

Kaiba's jaw tightened. "An invitation. To an Industrial Illusions gala a week from today."

"Hm, I think I read about that in the papers actually." Jounouchi turned the envelope over in his hands. "Pretty crazy I guess, I figured Pegasus was gone for good."

"Apparently not."

"So are you going to go?"

Kaiba seemed to be staring aggressively into the middle distance. "I can't afford not to." He ground his teeth. "I can't keep throwing out telephones."

"Huh?"

"He's been calling me for three days. I have to throw the phone away when I run out of space on the answering machine."

"Why do you not want to talk to him so badly?"

Kaiba stared at him incredulously. "He's a washed-up fraud whose every creation is nothing but a manifestation of his own twisted depravity. And he's still trying to pass himself off as a legitimate businessman." He snatched the invitation out from between Jounouchi's fingers. "It's pathetic."

Jounouchi shrugged. "Well, I mean I'm not going to go out of my way to defend the guy, but have you thought that maybe he's—you know—changed? You've gotta remember that he had the Millennium Eye when he went off the rails—you know that must have messed with his mind."

"Shoving a lump of gold into his eye socket isn't a valid excuse for becoming a psychopath."

"And losing a duel is?"

Kaiba smirked, somewhat bitterly. "No. I was a psychopath before that happened."

"Psh." Jounouchi sat down again, leaning back in his chair. "You know I'm only teasing you. I think you should give him a chance, though."

"Hm. The day I start taking advice from you is the day I'm institutionalized." Kaiba turned back to his computer. "I'm almost done."

"Oh great! Hey, listen—" He paused, trying and failing to swallow the blustering nervousness in his throat. "Thanks. I hope you know that, well, if you ever need anything—"

"Don't get carried away; it's only paperwork. And besides," he smirked—cold and toothy, "There's nothing I would ever want from you. Except maybe to shut up every once in a while."

"Ha ha. Well sorry to disappoint but I don't think I'll be able to deliver on that." He stole a tender glance at Shizuka, who was curled up in her chair, stirring slightly. "To be honest, I wasn't completely sure that I wanted to do this. But I'm doing it for her. She deserves so much more out of life than what were born into." He took off his jacket and gently draped it across her shoulders. "Living in that dingy dorm room and dodging the cops—no wonder our mom took off with her. But, even though I knew it was better for her, I think it made me angry…because I wanted to save her myself. No matter what it took, what it will take, I always wanted to know that I could help…that I was worth something to her. Everything I've ever done to try to make myself better…it was for her, so I could be more for her."

Kaiba coughed. "No wonder you're such a lousy duelist—your brain's too full of sentimental drivel for you to think clearly." Delivered tepidly.

"I wouldn't even be a duelist if it wasn't for her. Not a real one, anyway. C'mon, don't be stupid—I've seen you stick your neck out for Mokuba enough times to know that you understand what I'm talking about."

"Whatever."

Jounouchi sighed. "I don't know what you think you're gaining trying to convince the world that you don't have feelings. No one worth caring about would judge you for it." He paused. "Well, anyway, I may never be able to pay you back, so I just wanted you to know how much it means to me. It's—a new beginning for us. It means we won't have to pretend anymore." Every gesture was soft, supple, warm—glowing with new and tender hope.

"Okay."

"That reminds me," he turned back to Kaiba, eyes large and gleaming, as if he were seeing him for the first time. "Why did you have to do this before?"

"Do what."

"Make fake documents. You said you had done it before."

Kaiba narrowed his eyes. "Why do you carry a first aid kit in your pocket."

"Answer mine first."

He sighed. "According the to the Kaiba Corporation charter, only a blood descendent of its founder is able to serve as president—which I, clearly, am not. That, in conjunction with the fact that Gozaburo was not particularly eager to advertise the fact that he was incapable of producing viable offspring, made our adoption a somewhat covert affair." When Jounouchi looked confused, he continued. "There were no papers, no—evidence of our existence. While Gozaburo was alive it wasn't much of an issue, but after his death—people started to ask questions."

"And people didn't ask questions when he rolled in one day with two kids who didn't look anything like him?"

"It didn't really work that way." The grit and darkness in his voice gave Jounouchi the impression that he wouldn't progress much further along that line of questioning.

"Oh, okay." He shrugged. "Well, you should have figured out the first aid thing by now. I got in fights. I got injured—a lot. Eventually I had to learn how to start taking care of myself. It was either that or, I don't know, never go outside. I had to learn prepare to get hurt and not be a baby about it."

-xxx-

Jounouchi and Shizuka departed with a bundle of paperwork and instructions from Kaiba about how to get into contact with the Domino municipal government.

Once his office was empty, Seto draped himself across his desk, rubbing his eyes. Dawn was just beginning to stain the sky, and even after adjusting the air conditioning he could feel the heat building in the air outside.

He spent a moment examining his invitation, grimacing when he brought it close to his face and realized that it was lightly perfumed with something floral and offensive. On his computer, his recreation of the Jounouchi family tree was still open. He smiled to himself as he admired his handiwork—a few swipes along his keyboard and history had been rewritten. Somewhere the world's balance of justice had shifted, however imperceptibly.

The light was just beginning to catch on his wall of accolades, on the scales of Blue Eyes figurine. He turned it to face him, and let a fingertip gently caress the surface of its forehead.

"So," he asked, voice cautious, "how am I doing?"

No response. Frowning, Kaiba pushed the statue away.

Additional notes

Koseki = the Japanese family registry. A record of all births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, etc. Entry into the koseki is seen as proof of citizenship.

Juminhyo = the local registry of addresses. Citizens can only qualify for some social services (such as health care and school registration) if they are recorded in the juminhyo. We can just pretend that the Domino school district is not very organized so Jounouchi still managed to get in without the proper paperwork.

The title for this chapter comes from the song Everything You Want by Vertical Horizon