Disclaimer: I think that at this point we all know that I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, but in case there's still some doubt: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!.

"You punch your way through a world of good intentions
People don't matter, all you want to do is win
And nothing ever comes too fast for a man of means"

~Big Life, Pat Benatar

Chapter 8

Seto's alarm went off promptly at six-thirty, saving him from unsettling and fragmented dreams. As Seto reached over to turn it off and got out of bed, Alistair groaned and pulled the sheet over his head.

Not too long ago the alarm would have been enough to jar him awake, but a lot had changed in the last year and a half, and while he was still a light sleeper, Seto's blaring alarm no longer put him in an irrational panic, though it often conjured up memories from his past. This day however, he was far too tired to care and merely rolled over and went back to sleep.

After getting dressed, Seto made his way down to the dining room where Trudy had already laid out his breakfast as well as a cup of black coffee and the day's newspaper. Given that Trudy usually waited for him to actually sit down before serving his breakfast, he knew that she wanted to avoid bearing witness to his reaction when he read the paper which meant there had to be something in it he wouldn't like. With that in mind, he sat down to see just what it was. He didn't have to flip too many pages to find out.

For the second day in a row, Kaiba Corp had made the front page: Feminists Rally Against Kaiba Corp. Gnashing his teeth, Seto read the story which detailed the overwhelming support the local and online feminist communities were showing for the Out Loud article and their plans to boycott KC.

If anything, this latest episode in the entire infuriating saga pissed him off more than the initial exposé. The girl who'd written that, Britney Whinnery, had at least been doing it to further her career, something he could respect even if he wanted to break her fingers for targeting him in order to do it, but this latest news story was, in his opinion, only giving voice to a bunch of self-righteous harpies who apparently had nothing better to do than complain.

He'd dealt with them once before during the Grand Championship tournament when they'd taken to their blogs to decry the low percentage of female participants. That time he'd declined to comment given that if they'd bothered to look up anything about the tournament at all they would have realized that the competitors were chosen based on their overall international rankings—something he had absolutely no control over. This time though, he knew that he'd have to address them, especially if they decided to actually come out from behind their computers and do something.

As it happened, he didn't have to wait long: on his drive to work, Roland called him to inform him that an angry group of picketers and several media vultures were assembled in front of KC headquarters.

"I'm not talking to them," he said flatly.

"Sir, you're going to have to say something."

"Why? If I had something to say I'd call them."

"Because sir, it'll look pretty bad if they get someone else instead of you." Seto had a sudden vision of one of the phone operators or other mini-skirt-wearing employees getting cornered and bullied into making a statement and what a mess that would be to downplay, particularly if said girl said anything unflattering.

"Hmm…Fine, I'll say something. Is everything ready for the meeting today?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. And find someone with a high definition camera; I want some nice pictures to send to the papers of just how diverse Kaiba Corp can be. That being said, I need you to make sure that there's no one at this meeting who shouldn't be."

"Understood."

For the rest of the drive, Seto contemplated what he wanted to say to the media. He knew better than to say what was really on his mind, which left him with one option: kill them with kindness. Needless to say; there was only one part of that that he was looking forward to and it didn't involve being kind.

He met Roland, Saito, and his lawyer Eske Uedo in the corporation's parking structure. Seto locked eyes with his bodyguard who patted the revolver that was strapped to his belt and nodded before turning to Roland.

"Let's get this over with."

The group walked across the ground floor of the skyscraper with Seto in the lead. As they passed rows upon rows of cubicles, everyone ducked for cover, not wanting to be caught staring at the irate CEO. Finally, they reached the building's main entrance. Through the plate glass of the front doors, Seto could see that a small crowd of roughly fifty people holding signs were congregated around the front steps. The entire sorry event was being captured by two camera crews and several reporters. Sighing deeply, he pushed the doors open and stepped outside, Saito, Roland, and Uedo hot on his heels.

The cameras immediately turned to him and two microphones and a recorder were shoved in his face.

"I understand why you're here and why you're upset," he started. "And in fact, I agree that you have every reason to be; the person responsible for implementing such policies in the first place was detestable, but as you can see he's no longer running this company; I am, and since here at Kaiba Corp we specialize in state of the art technology, I believe our policies should reflect that. In fact, today I'm holding a meeting to make sure that my employees have the opportunity to voice their opinions on the subject and help continue to keep Kaiba Corp on the cutting edge. The notes from this meeting will be released to the public so there is no need to worry about our transparency." His statement complete, he turned on his heel to walk back into the building, Roland and Saito blocking the reporters from following him.

As he'd promised, Alistair filled Mokuba in on what Seto had told him the night before, and the two of them watched the news coverage of the protest in front of Kaiba Corp headquarters, including Seto's speech, on Mokuba's laptop, though according to the comments left under the story, the viewers at least had been far from impressed by what Seto had to say.

Privately, Alistair agreed with them. Seto had made no promises, and Alistair knew with absolute certainty that while notes from the meeting might well be released, they would have been carefully doctored first to make sure they only showed what Seto wanted them to show. Such was the world of business. Transparency indeed.

After breakfast, Alistair excused himself to get ready for work; he was pulling a double shift that day. He pulled a black polo over his head only to realize it was Seto's; Trudy had been sloppy when it came to whose clothes were whose recently. He wouldn't have minded except that the shirt was emblazoned with the KC logo and Seto would kill him for in any way publicly connecting himself to the company. Besides, in light of recent events he didn't much cared to promote Kaiba Corp anyway. He stripped out of the shirt and traded it for a plain white v-neck and faded jeans.

Upon arriving at the library he was greeted by Zoe who for some strange reason that he couldn't fathom had taken to acting as though the two were best friends. She was constantly asking him how she looked and whether he thought that random male patrons were attractive or not.

He managed to shake her off after leaving the staff lounge given that she was in charge of sorting returned material onto their respective carts, and he was slotted to shelve in the young adult section.

Shelving was Alistair's favorite job for two reasons: one, it was relatively mindless which allowed for him to zone out if he wanted to, and two, it was an excellent opportunity to discover new things to read. The Kaiba library was vast, no doubt, but since neither Gozaburo nor Seto was particularly interested in literature the collection hadn't been added to in the last forty odd years, and it was therefore limited.

He decided on this particular day to zone out; he certainly had plenty to think about. Had he been paying more attention, he would have realized that he was being watched.

Ryou Bakura had first visited the Domino Public Library a month prior simply to get out of the rain. He'd sat in the young adult section while he dried off, not particularly motivated to go back to his small, cramped apartment. That was when he'd first seen the red-headed young man who worked at the library. He knew that most people could probably just walk over and start a conversation, but he wasn't most people.

Ryou was painfully shy at the best of times, but after being controlled by the spirit of the Millennium Ring for so long, he felt like a freak to boot. A freak who, in order to be allowed to go to college, had to see a psychiatrist who was convinced that he'd had a psychotic break.

How could he be expected to explain that to someone else? It's not like he could say that he'd been possessed by a vengeful spirit from ancient Egypt, so he'd be forced to tell them the same thing that Dr. Tendo had force-fed him: the pressures of being a student and the absence of his parents had gotten to him and he'd lost his mind and the only thing stopping it from happening again was the bottle of little white pills he had to carry around with him.

So he hadn't gone up to the young man that day, or any other day, but he did continue to visit the library, hoping that one day, maybe, he'd work up the courage to go and talk to him.

He'd not told anyone about the crush that he had on the DPL employee, not even what could arguably be considered his best friends. But that was just it; they could be considered his best friends only because they had a shared history and were friendly to him, but he'd never really been a part of their group. Not for a lack of trying.

When he'd first moved to Domino, back in high school, they'd welcomed him and invited him to hang out with them several times, but his sickliness at the time (which, it turned out, had been caused by the Millennium Ring) had often forced him to have to bow out of any given activity and so he'd lost his chance.

It had been while following after Yugi, Téa , Tristan, and Joey during the Duelist Kingdom tournament that he'd developed feelings for Joey. He'd been attracted to the sandy-haired duelist's confidence and his loyalty to his friends, but in the end he'd realized that even without the spirit's help, Joey never would have reciprocated his feelings if his on-again off-again flame Mai Valentine was anything to go on.

The thought had certainly crossed his mind that even if he were to actually talk to him there was every chance that he could be straight too, and that would be as disappointing as it would be embarrassing, so he merely watched on from afar with his eyes unfocused and his expression wistful while the young man went about his work and daydreamed about scenarios in which he had been brave enough to talk to him.

Finally, as the summer wore on, he had a legitimate excuse to finally talk to him. Terrified, he walked from the library's main lobby to the young adult section where he was unloading a heavily-laden cart.

"Excuse me?" a soft British voice inquired from behind him, causing Alistair to turn around, his arms laden with books.

"Yes?" he addressed the young man who had spoken, taking in the fluffy white hair framing an equally pale face whose only splash of color came from a pair of amber eyes. Bakura?

"I'm looking for a few books for a seminar I'm taking." Alistair noticed a small piece of paper clutched in the young man's hand.

"Sure."

"I know this sounds silly to ask since I could probably find them myself, but the woman at the desk said that because they're standard literature course books I should ask to have them reserved, but I don't know how to do that and I'd already walked away by the time I realized so…"

"No problem. Can I see your list?" He set the books he'd been holding back on the cart, still stealing glances at the Brit. It couldn't be Bakura; that's be too weird of a coincidence. And this man wasn't wearing anything that looked like a Millennium Item.

"Oh, yes, of course. Here." He handed Alistair the piece of paper on which he'd written out the names of several novels in lovely script, so unlike the scribbles that Seto produced when he attempted to write anything longhand.

"We definitely have all of these," he answered slowly, "but these are also all books that I'm pretty sure are on this list we have in the back of books that are likely to be put on reserve because they are so standard. But I can check. Can you follow me?" The pale young man nodded.

At one of the library's many computers Alistair pulled each of the books up. As he'd suspected, several of them were already reserved, including all eight of the library's copies of Dracula.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde we have, and Dorian Gray is due back in three days so I can reserve that for you, but the others are all either reserved or out and not due back for several weeks, although I can put you down on the waiting lists, but I don't know what place you'd be. I'm sorry." The man's face fell.

"Oh…"

"It might not be what you want to hear, but you could find them online as free PDFs or buy them cheaply if you check local thrift stores or even online stores." The young man nodded, still looking slightly crestfallen, reaching to take his list back from Alistair. Before he quite knew what he was saying, Alistair had already started talking:

"I have a couple of these myself. You can borrow them if you want." The man's brown eyes widened.

"No, I couldn't possibly…"

"It's fine, really. Can I see that paper again?" He took the paper back and scanned the list a second time before taking one of the stubby pencils out of a container next to the computer as well as a piece of scrap paper that patrons could use to write down call numbers and wrote out his cell phone number. "If you call me tomorrow I can let you know for sure about everything else on this list, but I know for sure that I have Black Beauty, Treasure Island, and Dracula."

"Thank you so much uh…"

"Oh, sorry. Alistair. Alistair Ravensdale."

"I'm Ryou Bakura." It was him! Alistair, try as he might not to, must have looked surprised because Ryou added: "do we know each other?" He sounded nervous. There were large chunks of time during which the evil spirit had been in charge where his memory was splintered and hazy. He hoped he hadn't wronged Alistair in some way.

"No, but…" Alistair decided to just come right out and ask. "You don't by any chance happen to own the Millennium Ring, do you?" Ryou bit his lip. The spirit had done something to this man.

"Not anymore," he said softly, staring at the ground. "It's gone. For good. I'm so sorry for whatever the dark spirit did to you."

"Oh, no, no, nothing. Don't apologize, I was just surprised when I realized why I recognized you."

"How do you know about the Millennium Items?" Over Bakura's shoulder, Alistair saw his boss, Mr. Himeno, shoot him a disapproving look and shake his head.

"I have to get back to work," he said apologetically. "I'll explain later."

"Sorry, I hope I didn't get you into any trouble," Ryou apologized quickly. "Thank you for your help and for offering to loan me the books; that's really nice of you. Um…I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow." With an awkward wave and Alistair's phone number clutched in his hand, he hurried from the main room and back into the lobby.

For the rest of his first shift, Alistair pondered the encounter. Clearly there was more to the 'what happened in Egypt' story than Seto had told him if Bakura didn't have the Millennium Ring anymore. And what on earth had possessed him to offer to loan him those books? Seto would not be happy if he found out that Alistair was doing a favor for someone who had once kidnapped Mokuba, but then again that hadn't been Bakura's fault, not if the spirit of the ring had been possessing him at the time.

Why was it that he never seemed to be able to get involved with normal people? First Dartz, then Seto, now Bakura, who was next, Yugi Mouto?

Despite the fact that the meeting had been tiresome and for the most part staged given that he knew perfectly well that no one would actually have the nerve to agree with the Whinnery girl's article if they wanted to keep their jobs, Seto came out of it feeling much better about the whole situation.

He had essentially promised to get the uniform policy changed so that there was a choice between the revealing outfits and something more conservative and had agreed to begin writing up something that would protect employees from being fired based on race or sexual orientation. Someone from the PR department had captured the entire event on camera and sent the pictures and write-up to the local papers as well as to Out Loud, and posted them on KC's website. To top it off, Britney Whinnery had agreed to the meeting he'd requested provided he allow her to bring someone with her, which he'd agreed to, figuring she probably had a friend who was studying law who thought he was hotshot enough to 'represent' her or something else immature and nonsensical like that.

As he drove back to the mansion he was in higher spirits than he had been in weeks. Winning always had that effect on him.

The day had gone so smoothly that he got home before Alistair and went up to Mokuba's room to fill him in.

Mokuba was relieved to hear that his brother considered the matter all but resolved.

"You seem surprised," Seto said suspiciously.

"Only because Alistair made it sound like it was a huge problem."

"What do you mean? What did he tell you?" Mokuba relayed the version of events he'd gotten from Alistair that morning. Seto was deeply annoyed that Alistair had presented such a doom and gloom account of the scandal, particularly to Mokuba who was susceptible to worrying about such things.

"You and I have nothing to worry about," Seto said confidently once the teen had finished talking. "I'm going to show this girl why trying to ruin my company's reputation was a bad idea! Once I do that it'll show Siegfried once and for all that I'm the superior businessman!"

"I guess. But Seto." Mokuba hesitated before continuing. "Don't you think that the girl who wrote that article kind of has a point? I mean, I never really thought about the fact that the uniforms are a little skimpy, but now that she's pointing it out, don't you think that's kind of bad? Or the fact that we don't have a very diverse group of employees?" Seto crossed his arms.

"Objectively, I agree that that's a bit old-fashioned. But so what? It wasn't affecting productivity. And no one ever complained about the uniforms or any of it until this Whinnery woman brought it up which makes me want to kick her teeth in. I'll fix it, but it would have been more convenient if I didn't have to." Mokuba felt that his brother's answer left a lot to be desired, but knew that Seto was unlikely to change his stance no matter what. He therefore decided to tackle a different issue.

"Um…Seto, can I ask you about something else?"

"What is it?" Seto's voice was wary.

"It's about the other day…"

"Oh, that. Mokuba." The teen hesitantly met his brother's gaze. "I promise that that will never happen again. Now drop it."

"Do you and he usually get drunk like that?"

"No. I would never do that to you." He was referring to the fact that it was because of a drunk driver plowing into their father's car that they were orphans. "It was a onetime thing and it was stupid."

"Was it your idea, or his?"

"Does it matter?" Seto shot back dismissively. "Anyway, we have more important things to deal with right now and I need you to focus." Mokuba nodded.

"What do you need me to do?"

"It'll be easier for you to win the public over than me at this point, so if it comes down to a game of good cop, bad cop, I need you to play the good cop."

"You want me to talk to the papers?"

"I might need you to depending on how well things go at the press conference next week. If everything goes according to plan that should be the end of it, but if not I need you to be prepared to become the face of Kaiba Corp." The teen's eyes widened.

"The face of Kaiba Corp? I can't do that; I'm just a kid; no one would take me seriously as a spokesperson!"

"You forget who you're talking to. I'd already been in charge of the company for two years by the time I was your age and you best believe people took me seriously."

"Yeah, but I'm not you."

"You were the MC at the Grand Championship tournament and the main referee for Battle City; you have more authority than you think you do." Mokuba continued to look skeptical. He was fairly certain that any authority he appeared to have came as a direct result of the fact that people knew who his older brother was. "However," Seto continued, "if you aren't interested in making the commitment that's another story. If you aren't willing to dedicate yourself to Kaiba Corp then now would be the time to tell me so that I can try and find someone else." Mokuba stared at his brother incredulously.

"How can you even say that?" It was Seto's turn to be surprised. "We're a team! There's nothing I'd rather do than work alongside you! I still think you're crazy for considering having me take over from you as spokesperson for the entire company, but if that ends up being what you want then I'll do it! But wait." His confident expression slipped slightly. "If I would have said no, would you have asked Alistair?"

"Of course not. He has no interest in being a part of Kaiba Corp. You're not telling me you're still jealous of him, are you?"

"No. But I know that he's one of the only people you trust."

"So?"

"Nothing. That's just why I asked. Who would you have asked then?" Seto considered the matter.

"Roland would be the most obvious option, but a woman would probably ultimately be a better move, or at least the most politically correct, and given that we have extremely close ties with the dueling community I would have started by soliciting the top-ranked female duelists."

"Wouldn't it make the most sense to do that anyway?"

"Please. I don't want to have to associate with the likes of Rebecca Hawkins, Vivian Wong, or Mai Valentine unless I absolutely have to. Can you even imagine having to interact with one of them on a daily basis?" Privately, Mokuba wouldn't have minded, particularly if his brother had teamed up with Mai, but he didn't dare say so lest he be forced to explain why.

Author's Note: Seto Kaiba is in charge of a major corporation, and more importantly, he's a pretty ruthless businessman as evidenced by pretty much every scene dealing with KC. His morals are also a little screwy, so of course he's not going to give a damn about his employees happiness as such, as long as they work hard. And he would be nothing but annoyed by all of the social justice warriors supporting the magazine articles claim-even if they have every reason to be upset.

I feel like every story is allowed one or two big coincidences. Ryou having a crush on Alistair is one of the ones I've allowed myself. But it fits into the plot, I promise.