It's been quite a while since I've touched most of my main projects. A recent surge of inspiration and general insanity tied to original fiction has turned things around for me, and the stories on this archive suffered for that.

I'm working to put together an actual writing schedule this year. It's one of the major things I want to do. I know it's been two months already, but those two months have been … well. They've been interesting, to use the popular euphemism.

So one of the biggest things I realized I had to do was come back to the stories that have been suffering.

This series is one of the biggest.

Let's get started, shall we?

Welcome to the new year.


1.


Seto leaned back against the Mutous' couch, more than idly amused by the bit of social theater his synthetic sibling had managed to build. The shock of seeing a fully grown Mokuba—wrapped in black, with thin wireless glasses perched on his nose, and holding the hand of a downright tiny version of Seto himself—had worn off quickly.

Slowly, he put on a Kaiba's face.

Mokuba was still clearly enthralled. His eyes were sparkling, and every handful of seconds he would look at his brother and grin like he'd just won a years' supply of every ice cream flavor in creation.

Kaiba smirked.

The elder Mokuba currently had the field: "Did you think I was joking when I told you I wouldn't stand for this farce?! Do you seriously think you've found a loophole?! All you've managed to do is piss me off!"

"Moku-nii . . ." said Seto, reaching out and touching his thin fingers to his brother's arm. "It's . . . we . . . don't really . . ."

"Have a choice?" Kaiba cut in, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes!" Yami snarled. "Listen to them, Mokuba! For God's sake, you seriously think I want this! How many people are going to die for this? How many monsters are going to run roughshod over this city before you realize I'm not making the rules!"

The elder Mokuba's glare could have melted a bullet in flight. "My brother . . . is not . . . a weapon. He is not your soldier. He is not a pawn in your crusade. You seem under some magnificent delusion that no is a negotiation."

"Mokuba!"

Black-shrouded as he was, this Mokuba looked like a post-modern specter of Death itself as he lifted a hand toward his hip, and settled his palm on the butt of a pistol. "Yugi . . . you need to stop. Now. Before I make you. I'm done playing games. I'm done talking. I've made my stance abundantly clear. You say a word about this again, I am going to take your continued existence as a threat to my brother's safety."

Yami's entire face changed. He visibly deflated, and the fire dimmed in his eyes. He looked like . . . nothing. "Then you have doomed us all. Every last one of us. Welcome to Armageddon."

Mokuba raised an eyebrow. "Niisama?"

Kaiba smirked, leaned forward, and dangled his hands between his knees. Yami turned to look at him. "I see." He looked back at Yami. "You've brought me here because I have autonomy over my own decisions. Because I am not beholden to my brother's orders. One called Seto Kaiba is destined to wake a Great Dragon and overthrow this green-hewn devil dressed in white—and you figure I am just as good as he."

Yami flinched, but held fast and managed to maintain eye contact. "Something like that."

Kaiba stood up. Straightened his coat. Made eye contact with his brother's doppelganger for the first time. Those smoky amethyst eyes were haunting. Dangerous. Flinty. "As much as I would appreciate watching you two actually duel . . . pistols at twenty paces, just like the good old days . . . I must be fair. This solution is somewhat clever."

He winked at the man he'd once considered his greatest obstacle.

"And after all. I'm used to being your backup plan."


2.


Once Seto set his sights on his elder counterpart, those bright blue eyes never left him. For his own part, Kaiba had to admit that Noa had been nothing if not thorough in his research for this project; the boy looked remarkably true to form.

Kaiba wondered for a quiet moment how Noa had managed to settle on his design for Mokuba.

Yami cleared his throat. "If I recall correctly . . . it was some time ago that you mentioned to Yugi that you wished sometimes that you were the elder brother." This he directed at the boy; he was pointedly ignoring the elder Mokuba, who was still fuming but had evidently decided to do so in silence.

Seto frowned. "Y-Yeah. I think I . . . said that. Once."

He looked spasmodically at his brother, flinching with sudden embarrassment, but there was no visible reaction to be read in the (other) elder Kaiba.

"That's what gave me this idea," Yami said. "I wasn't sure if it would work, but I had to think that . . . well. If Duel Monsters have their own . . . dimension, their own world, surely there would be more? Where there are two, surely there are three? Four? Ten?"

"The Everett Interpretation," Kaiba murmured. "Relative-state metatheory." His eyes flitted here and there as he contemplated this. Seto seemed to understand; a sort of dawning light lit in his eyes. Then Kaiba waved dismissively, as the elder Mokuba gave him a questioning look. "It doesn't matter. We've arrived. The how doesn't matter nearly so much as the what."

"Who has arrived?" the elder Mokuba asked sharply. "Who are you?"

Kaiba chuckled. "I'm hurt, Mokuba. You don't recognize me?"

The younger Mokuba offered a pout that transitioned into a smirk. "Niisama. Be nice."

Kaiba straightened, then bowed with a flourish. "I am Seto Sasaki-Yagami Kaiba. Founder and CEO of the Kaiba Electronic Gaming Corporation." Rising back to his full height, which was actually an inch or so shorter than the version of his brother he was addressing, Kaiba settled into an easy stance. "I am also, apparently, a central piece on your game board."

The elder Mokuba stared. "You . . . you're . . . what?!"

Kaiba quirked an eyebrow. "His Impetuousness seems to think that if you won't allow his Seto Kaiba to fulfill some convoluted destiny, then he'll just borrow another. One who's already dealt with this circus act."

Yami's eyes widened. "So . . . so I was right! Your timeline is further along than ours! Then . . . then the Musketeers of Doma have been defeated?!"

Kaiba smirked. "Naturally."

The elder Mokuba's face had gone slack. "You're . . . my brother. I'm supposed to believe that."

Kaiba shrugged. "I'm not in the business of convincing people that magic is real," he put on an expression of mock wonder, "and among us wherever we go. You'll have to decide for yourself if you believe this crap."

He started toward the staircase that would talk him to the ground floor of the building. "If it's any consolation," he added as he passed the elder Mokuba, "I'm having an even harder time wrapping my head around the idea that you're supposed to be my brother."

Kaiba stopped at the stairs, sighed, and turned around to face the muzzle of the elder Mokuba's pistol. He smirked. "Twitchy, aren't you?"

"I hope you don't seriously expect me to just let you leave. Stealing my brother's name is insult enough, but actually passing off magic as the excuse for it? I'm not in the mood."

Kaiba sighed. "I'm starting to think that this is supposed to be teaching me something about my propensity for anger." His eyes flared. "I'm not here for kicks. A mutual acquaintance of ours ripped me out of my home and stuffed me into a role I didn't ask for. Is that grounds for execution in your Kaiba Corporation? Or are we going to take this whole cluster-fuck at least marginally seriously?"

The hand holding the pistol faltered. Lowered. ". . . I'm listening."

Kaiba nodded. "Good boy." Smirked. "Now let's go hunt with dragons."