Seto is the genius. But Noa is also a genius. They're foils to each other, and they operate on the same level. But the thing is, that leaves it easy to believe that Mokuba can't catch up. That he doesn't know as much as they do, that he's dependent on them for guidance.
He isn't.
Mokuba's just as sharp and quick-witted as either of his brothers.
He just has a different specialty.
.
Be a man.
It was something Gozaburo had pushed on him almost from the first day they met. He'd hinged his approval on it. The only things Seto was ever praised for, the only things that were reinforced, that ever mattered, were the things that fed into "being a man."
To this day, Seto had no idea what Gozaburo Kaiba thought a man even was.
He'd asked Noa, but he didn't know either.
The old Kaiba patriarch had always been a confounding mix of signals that never made sense under scrutiny, and Seto wondered sometimes if Gozaburo had done that on purpose. If confounding people was one of his chief pursuits, and Seto just never caught on.
He thought of himself as a good judge of character, and as being quite gifted at reading other people. Seto had spent so much of his life watching other people, usually as a safety measure, and it eventually became habitual; he couldn't turn it off. But even after spending years with Gozaburo, and several more years with Gozaburo haunting his every step, Seto still couldn't puzzle him out.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Noa said once. "I saw him at his best, you saw him at his worst. We've compared notes. I feel like, if we can't work out his bullshit, even together, then I don't think there's anything to work out." Then he said something that struck the both of them like a bolt of lightning: "Ask Mokuba. He probably got the best read out of all of us on what made the old bastard tick. Considering he acted like Mokuba didn't even exist in the first place."
They both, in that moment, decided to consult the youngest Kaiba.
As predicted, Mokuba was supremely confident on how that man worked.
"Whenever he tried to get you to be a man," the boy posited, "it was whatever happened to be useful to him at that moment. Would it be useful to him for you to be distant and cruel? Be a man and button it up. Would it be useful to him if you were open and accommodating? Be a man and act with grace. Chivalry. Whatever. It doesn't matter. There's a reason you both can't figure him out, and it's because you're expecting him to make sense. To be consistent. But he never was; manipulators never are. They're chameleons. They say what they need to say, so that they can get what they want out of their victims. Keeping you confused and unable to predict him kept him in control. The both of you were left on the back foot. It made him mysterious and powerful. You were always praised for being geniuses, after all, and if you couldn't figure him out, it must be because he was operating on a wavelength above yours."
The way he said it, the way he looked both his brothers square in the eyes while he did, shook Seto and Noa both to their cores.
Because they both knew, all at once, that Mokuba was absolutely right.
"Sheesh," Noa said, later that evening. "And they call us the smart ones."
"Mokuba understands people the way I understand technology," Seto said. "There's a reason he's my vice president, and regardless of what tabloids want you to believe, it isn't nepotism."
