Chapter 3: It's Not That Simple

The island housed a KaibaCorp helicopter for emergency purposes. It had four seats. Roland would have to fly it, and Krisalyn was the only one who could lead the way. Joey wouldn't allow the girl out of his sight. That left one seat.

"I'm going," Yori said, cutting Serenity off as the girl was clearly about to speak. Yori didn't apologize, and when Tristan and a few others tried to protest, she reminded them bluntly that she was in possession of a dragon and not afraid to summon it.

"My friend's in trouble," she said, "and I'm going to help him. End of story."

She hadn't thought about the words when saying them, but she saw the reaction on Yami's face, the mysterious closing off, and then she couldn't stop thinking about them. He'd defended Seto before. Why should it be any problem for her to do the same?

"It's settled, then," said Roland. "I'll ready the helicopter."

He gave a long string of orders to the rest of the staff in his absence, and the blimp moved into a new frenzy. Rather than waiting on the island, they were going back to Domino, although Roland had arranged a docking location outside of the city to be safe.

"Safe," Duke scoffed. "I'm pretty sure we left 'safe' behind in the qualifiers."

A few others agreed, but with little other option, they headed back to the lounge. Serenity lingered, speaking quietly with Joey before giving him a hug.

Yami lingered. Yori caught his arm and pulled them both out of the way of a hurrying employee, into a corner of the room.

"You're mad at me," she said.

"I'm not mad." But he slipped gently free of her grasp.

"That's literally the most classic way of saying you're mad."

"I'm not in the habit of dishonesty, Yori, you know that."

She did know that. And she didn't know why she had hackles up already, why she felt so defensive when she'd done nothing wrong and neither had he. He hadn't even accused her of anything.

There was just something in his eyes, something she couldn't understand.

"You don't want me to go?" She'd meant to make it an honest question, but her tone sharpened it, made it an attack instead. Her specialty.

"It's not as simple as that."

"It's a yes or no question!"

An employee glanced in their direction, and Yori shot the man a glare to mind his own. He scuttled off.

Yami watched her steadily, his ever-present calm in direct opposition to the strangle of odd things she felt inside. Normally she found his composure comforting. Attractive, even. At the moment, it grated on her.

"It's not as simple as that," he repeated, "because I don't want you to misunderstand me. 'Yes,' I want you to go, because I would never hold you back from anything. 'Yes,' because I have no doubt in your ability to help Kaiba, or in his need for such help at the moment. 'No,' because I . . . worry. That you won't return to me."

"Oh." The tension in Yori's shoulders drained at once, and she shook her head. "That's all? Yami, you don't have to worry. I just fought my way back from the shadows, I mean—Seto's petty corporate rival isn't going to get the better of me. It's embarrassing to even think about."

Yami smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.

"That's not my worry," he said softly.

"Then what—"

"Yori!" Joey shouted, too loud for close-quarters in echoing metal hallways. "Wheels up, come on!"

Yami closed the small distance between them and kissed her forehead, sending a little shiver down her spine.

"I love you," he whispered. It sounded strange. Kind of like a plea, and kind of like a goodbye.

Even though Yori had already known how he felt—how she felt—hearing the actual words, she froze up on the spot, and she couldn't say why, except that she felt a little echo of a cold tide washing in around her ankles. She remembered a deep darkness and the realization that Yami was a breathtaking daydream wrapped in red flags, and she'd never quite figured out how to feel about that.

"Wheels up." Yami nodded meaningfully toward the door.

Yori nodded. She intended to say something. She intended to kiss him in earnest.

Instead, she darted down the hallway after Joey.

Seto unzipped his flight suit and tossed it back in the jet with Mokuba's. They stood alone on the landing strip; no one had come out to greet them with threats. Apparently this would be one of those games for his enemies where he was expected to jump through hoops like a circus animal in order to discover whatever he'd done to piss them off—which would be no worse than anything he'd done to anyone else.

"I should add an attraction to KaibaLand," he said. "Just put my face on a punching bag and let anyone the world over buy ten minutes in the ring."

Mokuba laughed, and even though Seto had made the joke, it wounded him a little to hear.

"It would make money," Mokuba said, somewhat apologetically.

"Shut up," Seto grumbled.

He closed the jet's cockpit and took inventory of their surroundings.

As soon as he did, he knew where he was. What he was standing on, at least.

"Of course," he muttered. "It's GK-12."

Now that he was at the right angle, he recognized the tower, though he'd only seen it in pictures after Gozaburo's death.

"GK-12?" Mokuba frowned.

Gozaburo was organized. Any assets belonging to KaibaCorp had always been coded with a KC, but his private belongings of note—private island, yacht, mountain lodge in the Swiss Alps—had been coded with his initials. GK-12 had been one of those ships, the only one that Seto didn't now own.

"In his will, Gozaburo left all his personal assets to the major shareholder of KaibaCorp, everything except one. He left one ship to 'KaibaCorp's largest corporate rival.' I tried to fight it, of course, but it had never been owned by the company, and he hadn't taken any shortcuts or used any loopholes. He even left a paper trail to prove that the ship contained no proprietary information about the company. It was, by all accounts, just a meaningless toy . . . but I always knew it was a chess move. I knew someday it would come back to bite me. Today's the day."

He glared up at the tower, at the eyes he knew watched him from inside, holding a hoop and waiting for him to jump.

"How come you never told me about it?"

Seto glanced down to see Mokuba pouting. Despite himself, he smirked.

"Mokuba, you were ten. You didn't care about Gozaburo's will or his assets."

"Well, I'm older now!"

"And I told you now."

The boy considered that and seemed to find it acceptable. Seto almost reached out to muss his hair but restrained the impulse, instead jerking his head toward the tower.

Together, they found the door to the tower, and they entered the ship's dim interior. Even without being an official aircraft carrier, the space had a military feel to it—of course, that had been Gozaburo's design aesthetic of choice. He'd never hung pictures or endorsed "pointless decorations." After inheriting Kaiba Mansion, Seto had taken Mokuba to an art gallery and told him to pick out whatever he liked, not just because it made the boy happy to bring color into their home but also because it made Seto happy to spite his adoptive father's legacy whenever given a chance.

Besides, the painting Mokuba had chosen for Seto's office was actually rather nice. Tokyo at night, with all the neon lights streaked in rain. There was something calming about it. The interior of GK-12 could have used a few paintings. With only harsh metal lines and cold white lights to break up the interior, it felt like walking through the intestines of a robot.

Mokuba moved for a staircase, then paused when Seto didn't follow. "Shouldn't we climb to the top?"

Seto had his eyes on the opposite corner, where a sign marked a door with stairs down.

"Hair-gum's using this ship for a reason," he said. "Whatever I'm meant to discover, it will be in the main ship interior."

"It's eerie how you can always tell what the bad guys are thinking."

Seto clenched his jaw, and he didn't let himself say what he wanted to. I am one.

Not Seto Kaiba. The great irony was that with all his enemies in the modern world clamoring to whine about how he'd ruined their lives in various ways—disrupted their jobs or said something mean—they had no idea what he was truly capable of. He'd had no idea what he was truly capable of, not until he remembered a time long past, when he'd been a different person.

These whining children of the modern world could not have looked Priest Seth in the eyes. He would have killed them just for the audacity of it.

"Seto?" Mokuba held the door open.

Seto strode forward, descending the staircase.

Rather than a collection of divided rooms, as he expected, the belly of the ship had been gutted to become one large hanger. As Seto and Mokuba entered, the ceiling lights came on row by row to reveal a floor crossed with bundles of electrical wiring in thick casings, with screens and control panels along one wall. The center of the room held three human-sized pods like tanning beds arranged around a pillar.

"Nope, don't like it!" Mokuba declared. "This is how all the alien movies start!"

"It's a virtual reality setup," Seto said.

He'd been testing a very similar thing in one of KaibaCorp's basement labs but hadn't yet perfected the system. He hadn't started that project until after Gozaburo's death; how could the technology be here?

"Admiring my work, yes?" said a new voice.

Seto turned, placing himself between Mokuba and the man coming down the stairs behind them. Hair-gum stood a few inches shorter than Seto and looked to be in his mid-twenties, though it was hard to place an age on anyone with waist-length bubblegum-pink hair. The jokester walked silently, due to the fact that he wore soft-soled white moccasins rather than any proper shoe, and if the outlandish shoes weren't enough, his deep maroon suit had been trimmed in white lace at every cuff, collar, and buttonhole.

Seto snorted. "Am I speaking to a man or a Barbie doll?"

"Ah, your insults. Zey do not faze me, Kaiba. In zis moment, I sink it better to be a stylish Barbie doll zan to be Seto Kaiba, brought to justice at last."

"Justice for winning a grant you wanted? Maybe if you'd spent more time on your technology and less on your makeup, you would have given me some true competition."

"Indeed!" The man smiled, an expression with true delight. "You lie to us bose so easily. Let us examine my technology, zen. I sink you shall find it improved even above what you stole."

"Stole?" Mokuba bristled. "Seto's never stolen from anyone."

The man paused on his way into the room, leaning sideways to see around Seto to Mokuba, his hair swooping with the motion like he was some fragrant shampoo spokesperson.

"Tschuldige!" he said. "Hallo, small child. We have not met. I am Zigfried von Schroeder, ze one Seto Kaiba has stolen from."

He gave a little bow with a flourish, and then he continued striding across the hanger, stepping lightly over each snake of wiring as if he knew the path by heart. Seto had tensed when he'd been close, anticipating an attack, but he relaxed once Hair-gum was out of reach.

Having seen the enemy in question, ninety-percent of Seto wanted to turn on a heel and leave without a word. If he needed to stand on the landing strip for an hour and fiddle with his jet until he got the autopilot working again, so be it. What was this clown going to do to stop him—prattle relentlessly in an annoying voice? Having just endured an entire tournament with Joey Wheeler, it would be a familiar torture, at least.

Only one thing made him linger.

"Why did Gozaburo give you this ship?"

Seto couldn't imagine the answer to that, and he hated few things more than lacking an answer to his adoptive father's motives. Three years, the man had been dead, yet he still managed to haunt Seto's life.

"He did not," said Zigfried offhandedly, powering up the workstation as he reached it. Blue light glowed around the edge of each pod, and the control screens flickered to life.

"Then how do you have it?" Mokuba demanded. "Did you steal it?"

Seto smirked.

"Sree years ago, zis ship was given to ze weapons manufacturer Steel Control Industries in America. From how I understand, zey were srilled to receive a personal inheritance from Mr. Gozaburo Kaiba, man, myss, legend—until zey realized it gave zem no advantage over KaibaCorp."

At least that much had been true, then. Seto glanced around the room once more but saw no further clues as to the ship's purpose.

"Soon after," Zigfried went on, turning away from the controls with the screens still blank, "KaibaCorp became not weapons, but games. You entered my territory. When I discovered zis lost ship left to Seto Kaiba's enemy, I knew—I am now Seto Kaiba's enemy. I purchased zis ship, und I discovered its secrets."

"But you said it didn't have any secrets," said Mokuba.

"It offers no advantage over KaibaCorp, I said. Yet it offers advantage over Seto Kaiba."

He reached out, and with a delicate flick of his wrist, he engaged a switch on the control panel. The largest screen along the wall lit up with a command input box, and with a hiss, the three pods slowly opened, displaying glowing blue interiors.

"You wanted to see my technology, den Kotzbrocken. Take a close look."

Seto rolled his eyes. Before he could respond, Mokuba spoke first.

"We're not climbing in your murder boxes." The boy gave a visible shudder, as if shaking loose a few bugs.

Perhaps Seto should leave the talking to Mokuba more often.

"You heard him," he drawled.

Zigfried shrugged. "I will not force it. But we are bose businessmen, yes? Bose gamers. Perhaps a little wager, zen. I propose one game of chess. At ze end, you may choose, eizer I will give you zis ship"—he swirled his finger to indicate the ceiling, and then he pointed toward the pods—"or you will willingly test my virtual reality system."

The man was an idiot. "No one has ever won against me in chess. Gozaburo Kaiba himself never won a game off me."

"Oh-ho, I did not say it was winner dependent. Win or lose, at ze end, you choose."

Seto narrowed his eyes.

"Why play at all, then?" Mokuba asked. "He could just choose now."

"No, ze game is ze whole fun of it. I daresay you will learn somesing about your opponent."

Zigfried smirked as if he held the only map to a buried treasure. He thought he was worth something, that his vendetta was worth something, that he had cornered Seto into some kind of maze where he would prove himself against a champion.

And both sides of Seto—CEO and High Priest alike—yearned to put him in his place.

"You're on, Hair-gum."

Even Mokuba didn't protest. The boy had been right from the start; after facing Marik, any new threat seemed like a joke by comparison. Especially if that "threat" presented itself like a velvet throw pillow.

Seto crossed the room. He expected Zigfried to pull out a chess board, but the man typed a command into his control panel instead, bringing up a digital board. It was a crude design, not even rendering as a hologram, just a flat 2D board pixelated green and white with hollow cutouts for pieces.

"Impressive technology," Seto deadpanned. "Challenger makes the first move."

It was his preferred way of playing, since he was usually challenger, but he waved for he-of-the-pink-hair to dazzle him.

Zigfried only folded his arms.

On the screen, the white king's pawn moved forward two spaces.

Seto raised an eyebrow. "Your plan is to pit me against your AI chess system?"

When he received no response, he typed a command for his own pawn. It blurred on the screen, then showed a red X.

"Perhaps a different piece," said Zigfried.

Seto shot the man a glare. "So you want me to guess some predetermined game? This is a waste of my time."

"Zen I guess I will keep ze ship."

Just to wipe the smug look off his face, Seto typed in a command to test all twenty possibilities for his play at once. Nineteen red Xs flashed, and one pawn slid forward a space.

"Guess I solved the puzzle," he said, and he reveled in the tiny frown of irritation that cracked through Hair-gum's mask.

The computer moved a second pawn, and Seto found himself bored already at the lack of challenge. He typed another command to test all possible plays. His bishop moved.

And then Seto frowned.

Because four plays in—

He recognized a familiar sequence.

The room sharpened in his senses; he heard the faint buzzing of the lights overhead, felt the nearly imperceptible sway of the ship meeting resistance in the ocean. He leaned in toward the screen, bracing his hands on the edge of the control panel.

The computer moved a knight. Just as Seto had expected.

Seto's turn. He did not type a test command; he moved his own knight. No red X barred the way.

This was not some predetermined game. It was the very game he'd played against Gozaburo Kaiba in an orphanage eight years earlier, the one where he'd won adoption for himself and his brother from a millionaire.

The plays continued, each one in perfect sequence. Between moves, Seto ran the permutation in his mind, calculating the odds that such a thing could be happenstance.

Mathematically impossible.

Zigfried could not have stumbled into a perfect combination, could not have guessed every move correctly even if he knew the circumstances of the game. Beyond that, there was no way for him to have gained the information; the game had not been recorded in any way, and the only witnesses to it had been Seto and Gozaburo. One of those witnesses was dead.

But this was his ship.

Seto finished out the game, move for move, until it was his final turn, until all he had left to do was declare checkmate to complete it. For a moment, he was back in the orphanage, ten years old and staring his future in the eyes.

The cursor blinked in the control box.

"Seto?" Mokuba's voice reached him from the other side of the room, distant and tinny.

Checkmate, Seto typed.

The chess board disappeared. Green, pixelated words flashed across the screen without sound, but Seto could hear them in Gozaburo's voice as clearly as if the man sat across from him—because they were the exact words he'd spoken that day.

Congratulations, kid. You're adopted. There's no turning back now.

Seto fixed eyes of ice on Zigfried von Schroeder.

"When you bought this ship," he growled, "what did it contain?"

Zigfried returned his glare steadily. "Only an unfinished program. You have one chance to test what I have finished. If you would prefer, you may take ze ship, und I will keep my technology, und you will never know what zere is inside."

Straightening to his full height, Seto loomed over Zigfried. The man did not cower.

At last, Seto said, "I'm going in the pod."

Note: Guys, I am WIPED. I spent all of November writing a novel from start to finish (82,000 words) so I can meet the upcoming deadline from my publisher. Now that I finally get a break, what do I do?

Write fanfiction? HECK YES ABSOLUTELY I DO. I am DYING to tell this story, and I'm sick of it getting interrupted! Haha. I'm going to squeeze in as many new chapters as I can before my other responsibilities catch up. Cross your fingers for me and the CH cast both. (They need it more than me.)