A short installment this time around. You might call it clean-up work. I have a lot of scenes like this, because usually when I write a scene, I don't have it in my head that it's going to be a full update. Usually a chapter will have a number of scenes in it. There are a lot of short scenes in this story, and my update method has forced me to really consider which ones are vital to the story, and which ones aren't.

I like to think that this one is vital.


"What are we going to do about him, sir?"

Seto never looked more like a Kaiba than when he was brooding. He sat behind his desk, drumming the fingers of his right hand on a report he should have been reading, head leaning against his other fist. He'd done absolutely nothing productive since he'd come in, and some part of him knew he would regret this bout of apathetic laziness later. Right now, he was…preoccupied.

It wasn't Roland Ackerman who spoke to him this time; it was Vincent Zika again. He didn't know Seto as well as Roland did, didn't know the Mutou family or any of Mokuba's friends very well at all, but he knew that this was serious. A heavy, far-reaching breach. He stood straight, hands at his sides, forcing himself to be calm. Seto looked at the man, then sighed. "Nothing."

Vincent blinked, his coal-black eyes going wide. "…I'm sorry? Are you…serious? Sir, we can't let something like this—" He got a good look at his employer's face and tried a different tack: "Should we keep an eye on them? Be prepared if anything else happens?"

Seto smirked. "You do that," said he, and Vincent was not nearly so arrogant as to be offended by the dismissive tone in the man's voice. He knew better than most that, in spite of his own training, Seto Kaiba had him beat. It didn't matter what kind of experience or certification or personal recommendations Vincent brought to the table; Seto trusted no one but himself, Roland, and maybe Detective McKinley when it came to protecting his brother.

And, most recently, he trusted Joseph Scott Wheeler.

At this moment, though, Seto didn't trust any of his "normal" security. They wouldn't understand or be prepared for what he thought was the threat this time. He was old enough now to understand his own ignorance, and knew better than to question the nature of what had happened to his brother; of what Yugi Mutou had done to his brother.

Magic? He wasn't prepared to call it that.

But neither was he going to ignore it this time.

He stood, gestured to the work on his desk. "Deliver that to Aarden. Tell her to send it to the appropriate offices. I have…preparations to make." He didn't usually make use of his position to delegate work to his employees. They had their own business, and he was usually in the mindset to get his own tasks done faster than any of them.

Vincent did not question the decision.

As he stalked down the halls toward the stairwell, Seto heard a soft ringing in his pocket. Fishing out his phone, he answered it without looking. "Kaiba," he said quickly.

"Seto-sama," came the voice of Yoshimi Akiko. "Master Brinkley has arrived at the house. He and Bocchan are playing in the game room. I thought you would like to know that Bocchan's mood has greatly improved. He still seems a bit flustered, but he's happy to have his friend here."

Seto's entire body relaxed. "…Good," he said. "Very good." He did some quick calculations in his head, and anyone looking at his face at that moment would have thought he was a machine. "Anything they ask for, let them have. Take care of them. I'll be back on the grounds in a few hours."

"Yes, sir." Yoshimi never asked questions. If the fact that Mokuba adored her was not enough to convince Seto to keep her, the fact that she never asked questions would have been. She understood his instructions, and on the rare occasion that she didn't, she used her own judgment to proceed and asked a senior staff member once she was finished if she'd done it correctly.

She hung up the phone, and Seto slipped his own back into a pocket.

There was a palpable sense of relief that washed over him, in spite of…previous events that day.

He was almost able to banish that face—her face—from his memory.