This is the most self-indulgent plot point of this entire story, and I refuse to apologize for it.

Arc-V is an important series for me, even though I haven't finished it, and I knew I wanted to make a nod to my favorite characters from that series in my canon, somehow. This was the first opening I was able to find, and so I took it.

You can't stop me. You're not my dad.

.

"You have . . . four siblings, isn't that right?"

Kisara nodded. "Three brothers and one sister," she said. "Rhett, Ray, Reiji, and Riley."

". . . Reiji?" Seto asked. "I'm not sure which name stands out more in that group. That one, or yours."

"Ray and Kay," Kisara said, by way of explanation. "My parents were quite proud of that one, actually." She waited a beat. "Ray is my sister." Another beat. "Reiji was named for a good friend of my father's. My godfather, in fact. Reiji Hachimura."

"Henry . . . and Zelda . . . St. Vincent. Named their children Rhett, Kay, Ray, Reiji, and Riley."

"Correct."

"The Midwest is confounding."

Kisara laughed. "What can I say? After a certain tax bracket, conservative families are required by law to name their children like a set of expensive dolls. I think the HOA would have fined them if they'd tried to be normal."

"The thing is," Seto said, "I don't think you're joking."

Kisara regarded Seto with a flat look that said she clearly wasn't.

"From the sound of it," Seto said after a moment, "at least Riley expected you to cross paths with me. Eventually. Given that he asked you to get my awful-graph." He chuckled to himself. "Do you think your family ever expected you to start working for me?"

"Absolutely not," Kisara said. "I'm not sure I expected to work for you. All I knew was that, once I resolved to leave home, I should come here. To this city. I knew there was something connecting us. Which, now that I think about it, sounds precisely like the sort of thing a stalker would say."

"If you're my stalker," Seto said idly, "you're certainly playing the long game."

"You will never see my betrayal coming," Kisara said, "for I am patient and duplicitous."

"Do you know if any of your siblings, or your parents, carry her power?" Seto gestured. "Is it a bloodline situation?"

Kisara frowned. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said, shrugging. "I suppose it wouldn't surprise me." The frown turned to a smile. "I always had a certain . . . intuition, I think, that Ray and Reiji and Riley would be important, special, someday. But I think perhaps that's simply how older siblings always think. Would you not say so?"

Seto's expression softened. "I'm not sure I would, but I do understand what you mean." His gaze turned inward. "I remember the day my mother called me into her hospital room. She asked if I would like to hold my brother . . . and I knew, somehow, that this moment would change me forever. I was not the same person I was before this moment. Even at that age, I knew."

"You ought to know," Kisara said, "that Riley calls Reiji Niisama. He picked it up from Mokuba."

Seto's face went slack with surprise. "Oh," he said. "Oh, that . . . that is . . ."

"You are going to spoil my brothers beyond imagining, aren't you?"

"You can't prove anything," Seto said, too quickly.

"I want partial credit for anything you buy them."

Seto smiled. "You should let Mokuba know. He's always been insistent that people take note when he calls me that in public. It's important. That it's marked your own family in such a way would mean a lot to him."