Pegasus had fled to the top of his tower, his own private bedroom. In his grief, he'd closed the curtains and left the room dim to make it match his mood. He tried not to look at the huge portrait of his wife, but it was the centerpiece of the room. How could he not look at her?

"Oh, Cecelia, my love." He was sobbing as he fell to his knees before the portrait, his head hanging low as the tears streamed down his face. "I was so close to seeing you again, holding you again... So close..."

The lonely man dissolved into grief and weeping as he was overwhelmed with despair. It had never occurred to him to consider if Cecelia would have approved of his methods for resurrecting her. He had never stopped to consider how she would have reacted to seeing children kidnapped, even sacrificed, for her sake.

Thanks to his selfish actions, he would never see her again, not even in the Hereafter.

"Seto! Thank goodness, I thought I was going to be left here to rot." Duke sighed with relief as his professional partner entered the room. "Do you know how to pick locks?"

"Yes, but I have something better than that." Seto held up the key with a smirk. "I'll have to showcase my lock-picking skills for you another time."

"The quicker you can get me out of here, the better." Duke held still as Seto slid the key into each lock,

"They'll probably be outside somewhere," Seto commented as he and Duke found their way outside of the castle. "Yugi beat Pegasus, so the tournament's over."

"Oh yeah, how'd you do with that?"

"I didn't quite... participate in the tournament. Not properly at the end of it, at least."

"What do you mean?" Duke still found it hard to believe that Seto hadn't won the whole thing.

Seto explained to Duke about the children getting kidnapped, him infiltrating the castle, confronting Pegasus in the dungeon, dueling Yugi—at Duke's insistence, he explained specifically how he'd won, which clarified for Duke why he was so ashamed of it—and then dueling Pegasus.

"So when I lost my duel with Pegasus, I also lost my own soul, my chance of winning back Mokuba's soul, and, least importantly, my title as champion. Yugi beat Pegasus, though, so I suppose that makes him the King of Games now. Do you know how to get out of here?"

"Yeah, I think it's just around this corner." Duke took the lead, but he still looked thoughtful, as if there was something on his mind. "So, all of this magic stuff. It's real, isn't it?" he asked as he pushed a door open for Seto to pass through.

"It's as real as you and I are," the brunette answered gravely as he walked through the doorway. Duke dropped the door and caught up to him, falling into step beside him, their strides evenly matched.

"And you believe in all that?" Duke asked quietly, eyebrows drawn together as he struggled to accept it himself. "You truly believe it?"

"I have to." Narrowed sapphire eyes met puzzled emerald ones. "Otherwise, I'd be in massive denial, and it would get very difficult for me to make sense of everything."

"That's good enough for me," Duke replied, seeming satisfied for now. He believed in Seto, and if Seto believed in the magic, then he could too. "I'm sorry about your brother. I hope he's alright."

"I hope so too."

Duke glanced at Seto again, and couldn't suppress his smirk any longer. "Nice eyeliner, by the way."

"What?!" Shocked, Seto stopped short, then turned to check his reflection in the shiny glass of a framed portrait hanging inconspicuously on the wall. "Damn it, Seth," he grumbled as he lifted a hand to try and wipe it away. What on earth had he been thinking?

"Hey, don't do that," Duke said gently, pulling Seto's hand away from his face and turning the brunette to face him. "You'll only make it worse. Let me do it." He started pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and said, "Close your eyes."

Reluctantly, Seto did so, and with much fussing and flinching, Duke managed to remove nearly all traces of the make-up.

"Who's Seth?" Duke asked as he folded his handkerchief again and tucked it back into his pocket.

"It's a long story," Seto sighed, ten cast a sidelong glance at his friend, realizing that he still didn't know why Duke was here in the first place. "What were you doing on Pegasus' private island?"

"Same."

They fell into silence as the two of them pushed through doors and strode around corners. Once the final exit was in sight, Seto couldn't help from quickening his pace. He wanted to see his brother more than anything else right then. The only reason Mokuba had been taken was because Seto had left him behind. He shoved the doors open, lengthening his stride, going so fast that Duke had to jog to catch up to him. Outside again, but nobody in sight. This looked like a small, isolated garden, fenced in on all sides, but Seto didn't look around. He ran straight for the gates, shoving them open, and was greeted by a cry.

"Seto!" Mokuba ran to his brother from across the courtyard, and Seto ran out to meet him in the middle, dropping to his knees and holding his arms out so that Mokuba could run right into him. As Seto wrapped his arms around his little brother, Mokuba began to cry. "You're here, you're here!" Seto's eyes started to water, and he closed them to keep himself from crying too.

"Yeah, I'm here," Seto whispered warmly, smiling a little in relief.

"Would you look at that," Mai murmured as she gazed at them both, a bit touched by the reunion. Neither brother heard her, though.

"I was afraid I'd never see you again..." Mokuba murmured, tightening his arms around Seto's neck as he pressed closer to him, reassured by his presence.

"I'll always protect you." Seto was too focused on Mokuba to hear the approaching footsteps of their friends. "I never break a promise, remember?" He moved one hand to the back of Mokuba's head, gave him a final squeeze, then pulled back at last and brushed his thumb under one of Mokuba's eyes. "Come on, no more crying, okay?"

"Okay." Mokuba nodded and sniffled, wiping both his eyes with the ends of his sleeves. "I knew you'd never give up on me." He smiled weakly and wrapped his hand around the locket his brother had given him. Seto smiled back, pat his brother's head affectionately, and stood up again, his eyes falling on his friends for the first time. Ashamed, he didn't know what to say as they smiled back at him in relief and affection, so he was grateful when Joey stepped up and broke the silence.

"It's good to have you back, man." Joey extended an arm to Seto, who clasped it and drew his friend into a hug, prompting Mokuba to step out of the way before he got squashed between them. "I'm so sorry for the things I said," the blond whispered into his ear, which made Seto begin to feel the same relief that the others felt.

"Don't worry about it," Seto murmured back, the two of them speaking low enough that nobody else could hear them. "I deserved it." He released Joey, who stepped back, and Seto's eyes now fell on someone else he'd wronged in his cold rage, when all he could think about was rescuing his brother at any cost. "Yugi."

The shorter teen lifted his warm orchid eyes to Seto's with an expression of peace. "You don't have to apologize, Seto," he said calmly before the brunette could stop him. "Next time you're in trouble, though, come to us, okay? That's what friends are for."

Seto nodded, his sense of shame undiminished by the other's speech, but still feeling more at ease. There was something else that he needed to say, though. "Due to the circumstances of our last, the results were inconclusive."

Yugi nodded, his lips twitching into a smile as he and Seto shared a knowing look. "I look forward to a rematch." Yugi held out his hand and Seto shook it, feeling a bit of closure as he released Yugi's hand. Ryou, who'd been holding in his excitement up until this point, ceased restraining himself.

"I'm so glad you're back, Seto!" he enthused as he threw his arms around him, Marik just a moment behind him. Seto's look of surprise at being tackled was amusing enough to make Anzu and Yugi laugh. Duke chuckled too, which drew Mai's eyes to him.

"And who might you be?" she asked, one eyebrow arched perfectly as she looked him up and down. Duke smirked and walked closer to her, then bowed at the waist with a flourish.

"The name's Duke Devlin," he answered with the smooth charm of a seasoned courtier as he kissed the back of her hand. "You can call me Duke." As he straightened up and grinned, Joey began to bristle, narrowing his eyes at the other teen.

"Mai Kujaku," she replied warmly, then turned to look at everyone. "This is all well and good, but how do we plan on getting off this island? All the boats are gone, and I don't see any way to get back."

Ryou and Marik released Seto as everyone started looking thoughtful, trying to come up with a solution.

"I arrived here in a helicopter." Duke turned to look at Seto questioningly. "Do you think we could...?"

"We'd need a little time, but it's completely possible."

"What are you two talking about?" Ryou looked from one to the other, both of them smiling with a look of satisfaction.

"Give us an hour or two, and we'll be ready to take off," Seto said, looking quite confident in his statement. "Do you remember where it is?"

"Yeah, this way." Duke led Seto towards the hangar, and the others, intrigued, followed suit. They went down a set of stairs that wound around the castle and took them to the side of the cliff. Duke found the button for the garage door and held it until the huge wall of metal had rolled back onto the ceiling of the cavernous helicopter hangar.

"Wow! This place is huge!" Mokuba's eyes grew wide as they all entered.

Duke and Seto ran over to the only helicopter in sight, both of them climbing inside without hesitation.

"Wait a minute." Joey was just starting to understand what they had in mind. "You mean to tell me that you two are going to try to fly that yourselves?!"

"Do or not do," Duke called as he popped out of the side of the helicopter, looking smug. "There is no try!"

"Surely they have a pilot around somewhere." Anzu looked to Yugi. "Maybe we can find Croquette and ask him if he can send a pilot down to fly us home."

"You can do that while we figure out how to fly it, just in case you can't find him," Seto called, popping out from the other side. "And if you could take the kids back to the courtyard, that'd be great. We don't want anyone to get hurt." There were plenty of tools and dangerous things that anyone could have used to accidentally hurt themselves, but he was, of course, more worried about the kids. "We'll get you when we're ready."

"Hold on a minute: Who even said that we trust you guys as our pilots?" Joey looked like he honestly couldn't believe they thought they could fly without any training.

"If you really think that, then good luck swimming back to Domino."

The others laughed while Joey tried to maintain a look of irritation.

"How much fuel are we going to need?" Duke asked as Seto squinted at the operations manual.

"The amount of fuel we'll need is determined by how far we need to go, how fast we'll fly, how long it'll take, how much weight we're carrying, and the rate of fuel consumption," Seto muttered, mostly to himself, then pulled out a pen and started doing calculations in the margins of the manual. "How much weight do you think the helo can carry? I mean, we have more people than seats, so it might be too much to get everyone back in one go." Seto looked up at Duke contemplatively. "We can't just... ask people how much they weigh, can we?"

Duke chuckled at him and replied, "No, I'm afraid that's not socially acceptable, but lucky for you, I'm excellent at guessing how much people weigh."

"I thought that was a carnival trick," Seto retorted with a frown.

"You only win if they can't guess," Duke pointed out.

"But I thought that they had a meter behind the stand or something," the brunette persisted.

"Nope. Just watch me. I'll be back in a tick!" Duke jogged off in the direction of the stairs. He was gone for a few minutes, then came striding confidently back. "Imperial or metric?"

"Metric."

"In approximates, rounding to the nearest multiple of five..." Duke paused as he took a breath. "Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty—"

"Oh, you're just counting," Seto scoffed, and Duke cast him a playful glare.

"I'm going in chronological order for your benefit. I can specify the weight by person, if that's what it takes to make you believe me."

"Do whatever works," Seto grumbled with a roll of his eyes.

"Adina's twenty, Mokuba's thirty, Yugi's forty—"

"No surprise there."

"Anzu's forty-five, Ryou's fifty—"

"He always did look light to me."

"Mai's fifty, thirty-six double-d—"

"Duke." There was a warning tone in Seto's voice as he erased Mai's bra size from his calculations. "Don't mess me up like that."

"Marik's fifty-five, you're sixty, and I'm sixty-four, precisely," Duke concluded, standing behind Seto and leaning against the aircraft. When his partner glanced up at him curiously, Duke smirked and added, "It's all muscle."

"Let's hope those guesses are good enough. Did you round up or down?"

"Down, I think. For the most part."

"Then I'm going to add five to each number, just to be safe." When Seto finished his calculations, he was able to tell Duke how much fuel they'd need added to the tank.

"We'll be cutting things a bit close but we should make it back to Domino without incident so long as the weather holds."

"I'll go find some, then."

A little while later, as Duke was filling the tank with the appropriate amount of fuel, he was watching with appraising eyes as the brunette flipped through the manuals with an expression of deep concentration.

"You know, you're lighter than I expected."

"What?" Seto looked at Duke in confusion.

"Weight-wise, I mean," Duke clarified, tilting his head to the side a little as he tried to determine a more precise weight for his friend. "I would have expected you to weigh more, considering how tall you are."

"That's not really your business," Seto muttered, looking back at the manuals as he attempted to close the matter.

"I suppose not," the mechanic conceded. He wanted to be respectful of Seto's privacy, even if he was concerned about him.

"Here." Seto handed him the operations manual as he continued his calculations. "You'll need this to know how to fly."

Duke took the manual from him and frowned at the table of contents. "Can't you give me the digest version?"

"I thought you'd appreciate a more technical description of how it works," the brunette replied without looking up.

Duke shrugged casually, then turned back to the fuel pump. "I'll get to it later." He paused, then added, not looking at Seto, "I... actually have dyslexia. Reading gives me a headache."

"Huh. I never would have guessed." Seto didn't seem to care either way, and Duke felt the tiniest bit relieved.

"It's the only reason I'm still in high school. I could have gotten my GED by now otherwise."

"After getting your GED early, what would you have done?" Seto couldn't help that he was curious about his friend's plans.

"Actually, that's kind of why I was here," Duke began to explain, leaning against the helicopter again. "I've been working on a pet project for quite a while. I was creating a game of my own: Dungeon Dice Monsters. I was in touch with Pegasus for a few weeks before he called me out here. For one thing, it uses all the same monsters as Duel Monsters, so I'd need the rights from him to do that, but I also needed an investor. We started negotiating the deal when I got here and decided to market it as a spin-off game. His company would handle production, shipping, marketing, all the rest, and I'd have a plump royalties check if everything went well." Duke sighed and twisted his fingers through his ponytail out of habit. "I would have liked to keep my game as my own and contribute to later upgrades and releases, but it was partly his too, because of the monsters." He sighed as he watched Seto thumbing through the pages detailing the inner mechanics of the helicopter's engine. "I always wanted my own game shop," he said wistfully, sounding almost nostalgic. "I always liked games, but some of them were... harder for me. Numbers give me the most trouble."

He paused in his monologue when Seto held up the a manual open to pages of an illustration that explained the connection between the foot-pedals, the rotors, and the levers.

"Thanks." Duke accepted it with active eyes, turning towards the helicopter and laying the booklet on its exterior as he absorbed the information.

"You know, I've been working on a side project of my own, too. Almost a year now, actually," Seto said. He'd never told anyone about it before, not even Mokuba. "It's a virtual reality computer program. It's far from finished, and I don't even have the technology to make it work, but..." He shrugged.

"But you're still hoping it'll go somewhere someday." Duke smiled a little. He understood Seto's thinking. He'd finished his own project, but when he was in the middle, still trying to figure it out, it felt like he was accomplishing nothing and that it would go nowhere. "I'm sure it will, but whatever you do, don't bring it to KaibaCorp. They'll steal it faster than you can say copyright infringement." Duke grinned as Seto chuckled in response. "It's good to be working with you again, Seto."

"It's good to be working with you again too, Duke."

Author Notes: I actually checked their canonical weights and rounded the numbers to something Duke could actually guess. All measurements are given in kilograms. Fun fact: Mokuba, Ryou, and Mai are canonically underweight. True story. I did the math myself, taking into account height, age, and gender too. Kinda sad. Anyways, this chapter was nearing five thousand words, so I just decided to chop it in half. My poor characters, they were supposed to get home this chapter. :( Please review and let me know how you liked this chapter!

Oh, and Pegasus is totally going to hell. -_- Nobody kidnaps children and gets away with it! Not in my fanfics!