As this story goes on, I feel like you can tell that I watched Naruto and internalized a lot of its messages. Something something power of friendship. Okay, sure, you can say that YGO also talks about the power of friendship; after all, it's the whole point of that smiley face hand-tattoo scene. But sometimes, it takes seeing the same message in more than one piece of media to really make something stick for me.

I dunno. Maybe that's a common thing.

Anyway. I guess my point is, Takahashi-sensei was right when he said that friendship was important. Not just relying on your friends, but extending a friendly hand to other people, even if you didn't expect to when you first meet them.

I don't know if I could have picked a weirder vehicle for this message than Seto Fucking Kaiba.

But nobody ever accused me of making sense.

Verse One.

"I mean, that's fair," Yugi said, "but it's still pretty wild. I mean, here you are, gearing up to gather them all in . . . what, a weekend? Did you even have to take time off work?"

"To you, it's been a weekend," Seto said. "For me, it's been . . . years. At least. There's no comparing the two. These games are taking much longer from the inside than they are on the outside. Magic bends reality like a forge bends white-hot metal."

"I wonder what the Kaiba of a few years ago would say," Yugi said, with a coy little smile, "if he heard you talking about magic like that now. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were starting to understand how it works. You probably do, on an intuitive level. More than I do. I think maybe Atem still has you outstripped right now, but I don't think that will be true for much longer."

"Osiris said magic is like poetry," Mokuba said. He blinked. "Where did Osiris go, anyway?"

Yugi shrugged. "I have no idea. I looked away, and then when I looked back he was gone."

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "Well, whatever. I guess it doesn't matter. My point is: I don't know if there's any real way to understand poems. Yeah, there's analysis and stuff. You can break everything down. Maybe you'll even be right most of the time if you've studied it. But . . . there's never one answer. I think magic must be the same way. It's not about finding the answer, but . . . an answer. I think, honestly, that's kind of worse."

"It's like English," Noa muttered. "The more you understand about it, the less sense it makes." He crossed his arms over his chest and laughed quietly to himself. "I think Yugi still has a point. The Aniki of eld never would've given the time of day to these kinds of . . . experiments. I'm pretty sure, if we were dealing with the Seto Kaiba of yesteryear, he'd have put something in Shadi's skull by now. Bullet, ice pick, fist. Aniki's always been versatile; it's one of the things I respect most about him."

Noa reached down and patted Seto's head. He looked more than a little pleased with himself.

"You're lucky I'm busy right now," Seto muttered, "or I would show you just how versatile I am."

Ryo was only half-listening to the conversation; his attention was focused on the ghost—the man, the boy—he'd been spending so many years trying to grapple with; it was impossible to know what he was feeling. Was it anger? Was it fear? Grief? Longing? Something else entirely? Was it all those things at once? He certainly couldn't tell, and no one present was honestly prepared to wrest any kind of objective meaning out of Ryo Bakura's emotions. He'd always been an enigmatic presence in his friends' lives.

"How is it that you can still speak to us, locked in the game as you are, even though Bakari is locked in the other place?" Ryo asked, more himself than Seto.

Indeed, when Seto spoke in response to his inquiry, Ryo flinched.

He hadn't expected an answer at all, and he seemed almost upset to receive one.

"The dead allow it."

Verse Two.

Seto steps into the chamber, his footsteps silent, and he looks up at the dead of Kul Elna, seated before him like a jury before its court. He stands in the center of the chamber; there is no podium, chair, or plinth for him to claim, and so he simply stands there, arms hanging easily at his sides.

He doesn't speak.

He looks across the tribunal at the restless dead; he recognizes many of them, and he feels the anger still smoldering in his heart as it flares up.

Bakari steps into the chamber after him, and it strikes Seto that he does not join his fellows. Bakari looks up at them longingly, looking like he'd want nothing more than to do just that, but he doesn't. Whether he's holding back for some reason, or he's being barred from joining them, Seto can only guess. He does notice that the court doesn't pay any specific attention to Bakari, and Seto thinks that probably goes a long way toward answering the question.

Bakari stands before the tribunal, then turns his back to them to look at Seto with an unreadable expression on his face; he looks gaunt, somehow. His life force, his vibrancy, his strength, is being sapped from him in this place. The Millennium Ring seems to weigh heavy on him, much more than usual; his shoulders are slumped forward, and it seems to be taking everything Bakari can bring to bear just to stand upright.

He holds out his hands, closes his eyes, and Seto watches as a shock of light slams into his back and settles somewhere inside the Ring. When Bakari opens his eyes again, they are empty; deep, deep red voids, like pools of blood. When he speaks, it is with the voice of ninety-nine.

"You," says he, say they, "come before us, demanding our submission. Do you not?"

"I do not," Seto says with conviction. "I come before you for no reason at all related to submission."

"What, then," they ask, "would you have from us? For what reason are you here?"

"One reason," Seto says, "is to request your help in protecting the people of my city. Another reason, one which has only come to me recently, is to look upon you. So that someone, anyone, will remember your faces."

"For what reason should we protect the living?"

Seto's face twitches. "For what reason should anyone protect the living? Do you need a reason? Do you not wish you had held the power, the strength, to protect yourself when a failed king came upon you and ripped your lifeblood from you? Would your hearts not have been made glad, lighter, if someone had protected you?"

Bakari's face twists into an expression that Seto can't read, because it keeps changing. Some seem touched at the notion—probably the younger dead, the children—while others are clearly insulted; these, no doubt, are the adults, who take offense at the very idea that they should need protection.

"You have that power now," Seto says. "You are that power now. You have been used, in these centuries bridging your deaths to the current day, to wreak violence and sorrow. I suggest something new."

Verse Three.

"What do you suggest?" the dead ask, icily.

Seto holds out his hands. "Choose me," he says. "Permit me to guide your power. I will show you the value, the worth, in using your power as a shield as well as a sword. I will permit you, as your instrument, to be the force that once abandoned you; to impress upon this world that you were not discarded, you are not unworthy, and it was blasphemy to treat you as fodder for the whims of a royal court."

"Are you not royal yourself? Are you not, in your own way, just another king?"

"I am called a king," Seto admits. "I have resources and influence that I do not deserve. Whether I have used any of it well, whether I deserve any accolades for it, is not for me to decide. I cannot be trusted to make that judgment. Watch me. See whether I've the right to act as your herald. I ask not to claim your power. I ask only to act as your conduit."

"Semantics. How will you prove yourself as being built of something better than the very kings who wrought our end? You who carries their blood in your veins, yet still has the temerity to stand before us."

"How would you suggest that I prove this to you?" Seto replies, unwilling to bend. "My actions speak for me. Ask your last son. He has seen what kind of man I am. He knows the answers to your questions as well as I do." Seto gestures to Bakari. "Was he not, in his way, the first to guide your power? Ask him whether I am fit to succeed him."

Seto can hear a thunderclap somewhere in this chamber, even though it doesn't make real sound.

"You would have us trust this pretender? This boy who died not with us, but who was the very first to trample upon us?"

Something snaps behind Seto's eyes.

His anger rears back and strikes.

"Pretender?" Seto whispers through his teeth. "That is how you would refer to one of your own? A boy who grieved for you? A boy who took a weapon to the throat of a king for you?" He steps forward, fists clenched. "No. No, no, no. I don't think we're doing this anymore. I'm not going to bend for anyone who cannot see the worth of their own. There is no longer a question of whether I am worthy of you. Are you worthy of me? I have no time or tolerance for you, vengeful dead, if you cannot see the difference between the kings who saw fit to murder you, and the boy who gathered up your bones and cried over you. If all you wish to do is lash out at the living, at the universe, for what was done to you, then do it. Know, however, that you will be forgotten, and you will deserve it."

Silence reigns.

Seto sees something in Bakari change. He isn't sure if it's Bakari himself, or the people using him to speak, but he knows it means something. Seto waits, quietly. His anger radiates from him, permeates this space, and all of the dead from Kul Elna can feel it.

Eventually, finally, Bakari smiles.

It's a grim sight, combined with his eyes, weeping blood as they are.

Seto doesn't react with words.

"You speak with passion and conviction," they say, "and you do not bend your principles. You speak with your heart facing forward. We will continue this test, and we will see what comes of it."

Verse Four.

When Seto came back to himself, and opened his eyes again, he seemed more distant and distracted than he'd been before, even compared to when he'd faced Shadi. His entire essence, his consciousness, was not present in Turtle Game, but somewhere else. His face was grim, and he rose to his feet like he'd just been informed that it was his turn to kneel at the guillotine.

He stepped over to Bakari. The ghost of the Millennium Ring—although, nobody missed the fact that he was no longer wearing said Ring, nor was he a ghost—regained consciousness soon after Seto, but he quickly succumbed to a hacking fit of coughs and gasping breaths that shook his entire body. He looked small, somehow so much smaller than he'd been even a moment before.

Seto reached out a hand.

Bakari looked up, wiped his mouth free of blood, and took the offered hand.

Seto pulled him up. "I'm sorry," he said, quietly, sincerely.

"Don't be ridiculous," Bakari muttered. He shook his head. "I don't need your pity. Whatever use I may be to them, it matters not to me."

"That may be," Seto said, "but that doesn't mean you deserved it."

Bakari looked stunned; perhaps he'd never considered this. He was still clutching Seto's hand, and he didn't seem fully aware of the notion that he ought to let go. He frowned, brow furrowing, as he lowered his gaze and stared at the floor. "I did fail them, though," he said. "I promised them vengeance, and then . . . and then I . . ."

"You were a child," Seto said. "Your burden was heavy enough. They were grieving their own deaths, and they placed that weight on you. You didn't earn that. You didn't deserve that. Survivor's guilt is a well-documented phenomenon, but that's never made it right. You bear no responsibility for what happened to them. You were just one, and you still threw yourself at the full might of the royal court. There is no shame in what you did. There is no shame in how you lived, or how you died."

"They . . . don't believe that."

"I don't believe in the restorative power of semen," Seto said, flatly.

Bakari barked a sudden laugh. "Watch your tone, outlander."

Seto patted Bakari's shoulder. "That's more like it," he said.

It was at this point that they seemed to remember that there were other people in the room. Seto turned to regard his brothers, while Bakari faced Ryo. Nobody bothered to ask if Seto had won; it was quite obvious to them all that he'd won. It was equally clear that he had no intention of explaining what he'd done to win. What Seto had said, or promised, or anything of the sort.

The fact that Bakari seemed to regard Seto with something like fondness now was more than enough.

Mokuba was the first to speak into the silence.

". . . Good job, Niisama."

Seto smiled ruefully. "I don't know if I agree that it was," he said, "but I suppose I have no recourse but to consider this a victory."

END.