Kaiba stepped into the lobby at headquarters and was immediately bowed inside by the girl who worked Mokuba's front desk.
Trying to keep the irritation from showing on his face, Kaiba let her walk him to the elevators, where the doors quickly slid open to reveal his younger brother, dressed smartly in a lilac vest with his long black hair tied back into a firm ponytail.
"Seto!" Mokuba grinned happily and reached out to grab his brother by the arm, nodding at his receptionist. "Thank you, Amai-san."
She blushed and hurried away. Kaiba watched her go with an air of disdain and gave his brother an exhausted glare.
"Your child is a menace," Kaiba said, and Mokuba laughed heartily, clapping him on the back.
"Did you know he can say my name?" Mokuba asked excitedly, his eyes gleaming with joy. "He said 'da-da' at dinner last night. You missed it."
"…Is that so?" Kaiba replied plainly, leaning against the elevator railing, realizing Mokuba had changed it the shape of it from a rounded edge to a solid slab wrapping all the way around the entire car.
What else had changed since he'd been away?
Mokuba tapped the button for the bottommost floor and he gave his older brother a warm hug around the shoulders.
"I called you here because we dug up some interesting stuff from that dive," Mokuba said, giving Seto a knowing look. "Maybe you'll know what to do with it."
"It's all garbage. What the hell do I want with it?" Kaiba asked gruffly, and Mokuba smiled gently at him again as the elevator jolted to a stop. The doors slid open and Kaiba followed Mokuba down a familiar hallway, passing by several lab technicians he didn't recognize.
"Welcome, Mr. Kaiba…." man bowed them into a separate room and shut the door behind them.
"Hello Mr. Kaiba…" another woman approached them, carrying an electronic pad, and she handed it to Mokuba before stepping away respectfully.
Everyone greeted them politely, but Kaiba had a feeling Mokuba was the one they were talking to.
He felt invisible. Maybe he was invisible.
He received another heavy shock when a lab technician rushed up to them and bowed, addressing Mokuba as "Mr. Nakamura".
Right.
Because Mokuba had said he wanted nothing more to do with the Kaiba name and had taken his wife's surname instead.
"This way," a man with a watermelon sticker on his nametag gestured for them to follow.
Kaiba's eyes widened when they walked into an adjacent lab that had sprawling metal tables set up along the walls, and a large wooden slab was propped up in the middle of the room.
It was a fucking…tombstone!
Mer-writing was stamped neatly across the board, and upon closer look, it seemed the wood had been processed and preserved to hold underwater because it was untouched by algae and wear.
On the surrounding metal tables, Kaiba recognized a pile of rusty spears, several mesh sacks that had been dried, and an odd assortment of mer-made jewelry spilling out of a clay pot that clearly looked like it came from several decades ago.
"What is this…" Kaiba breathed, feeling a slight headache coming on as he thought he recognized his own name imprinted at the very top of the wooden slab.
That was impossible because he couldn't read Mer-writing.
But he had been able to read Seth's note.
It had to be impossible, right?
Did ingesting scales give him the ability to read?
"I dunno. I thought you'd know, considering how you've been doing this longer than I have," Mokuba said with a shrug. "Wanna see what happens when we turn off the lights?"
Kaiba shook his head, half-dreading what they would discover.
"Turn off the lights and draw the blinds," Mokuba commanded, and the lab technician hurried to obey. The sharp rattle of plastic blinds fell over the windows, cutting out light from other parts of the lab, and the switch was flipped, throwing the room into absolute darkness.
Kaiba blinked rapidly, biting back a startled gasp as the wooden tombstone was illuminated with an intricate drawing.
The names had disappeared into the dark, and a family of merpeople were illustrated on the surface with glowing lines, side-by-side with their clawed hands nearly touching, looking as if they were swimming upwards towards rays of sunlight.
Their glistening tails nearly reached the very bottom of the slab, and every scale on their fins had been drawn with wonderful precision.
A beautiful merman and mermaid had their arms outstretched towards the rays sun streaming down from sky, and their two mer-children were trailing between them, their faces turned upwards, smiling at their parents.
They were both boys.
One had long, flowing hair and the other…had a short hairstyle, almost too similar to his own. Above the mer-family's heads, a short phrase was written in neat calligraphic symbols: "King Heliodor and Queen Maxixe, with Prince Seth and Seto."
Unable to breathe, Kaiba just stared.
He could read it.
His eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
He could read the entire thing.
This was a fucking tombstone and his first name was on it.
Was this someone's idea of a joke?
Was this a prank that Seth was playing on him?
He had insisted on proof, so was this supposed to be the proof?!
Granted, Seth's blood tests hadn't come back yet, because Mokuba was running the lab….
"…Cool, right?" Mokuba smiled, oblivious to Seto's distress. "We had our scientists test it out, and you know those bioluminescent fish? They used those to draw this on there…"
Kaiba tuned Mokuba out acutely, the glowing lines burned steadily into his mind as he stared at the drawing of the two mer-children, their smiling faces eerily blank. They were profiles of a face, and they didn't resemble anyone in particular, but the hairstyle was really throwing him off.
It had to be fake.
How the hell could he accept this as proof?
Just because his first name was carved on a piece of garbage they'd hauled up from the ocean didn't mean anything.
"….So….maybe we can work on translating it?" Mokuba tilted his head and gave Seto a nudge. "Earth to Seto. Museum. Translation. Can Joey and Tristan read? This is like, mermaid language, right?"
Mokuba wanted to display this symbol of death in a museum? H-Hell no!
"Put it back…" Kaiba said numbly, growing cold all over and trembling slightly as he tried to compose himself. "Put it right back where it was. This is a tombstone."
"What?!" Mokuba cried, throwing a frantic glance at the lab technician behind him, who hastily flipped on the lights.
The striking image of the merfamily disappeared and Kaiba found himself staring at hundreds and thousands of names again.
It made him sick.
A tight bubble of nausea sat low in his chest and he swallowed thinly, trying to keep himself from vomiting.
"Whose tombstone is it? That family's?" Mokuba asked, now looking deeply curious. "Did they teach you how to read?"
Feeling bile burning his throat, Kaiba pressed a hand over his mouth and moved to the door, his eyes darting around the floor for a waste basket as he nodded frantically. The pressure was rising horribly, and his eyes were watering….
"You're gonna hurl?" Mokuba cried, his eyes wide with panic. "Trash—trash can! Here!"
He dashed over to a sink and yanked out a large silver can, kicking it over to his older brother. Kaiba grabbed it and bent over, heaving, feeling his cheeks and ears grow hot with violent humiliation as his tongue stung with the horrible metallic taste of blood.
Oh…fucking shit.
Had he forgotten to take the last dose of dried anemones? It seemed like it.
This vomit tasted nastier than all the rest
"Seto…oh god…do I need to call a doctor?" Mokuba asked nervously, running his hand reassuringly up and down Kaiba's back, and Kaiba took deep, steady breaths, finding that Mokuba's warm touch helped.
Touching…helped.
"I'm fine…get…water…" Kaiba gasped, feeling another violent heave climbing its way up his chest, and Mokuba rushed away to grab a glass.
Leaning his head stiffly against the side of the metal can, Kaiba faintly recalled Seth's note suggesting he drink more water, and he realized hadn't been doing that.
Water always made him feel sicker…unless….
He had to drink saltwater.
Did it have to be a certain kind? If Seth's colony was at the surface, then any saltwater would be fine.
Mokuba returned with a glass of water and Kaiba accepted it from his brother gratefully, taking a tentative sip before rising unsteadily to his feet, spitting into the sink and feeling his head swim terribly.
"Weird question, but…do you have salt?" Kaiba asked, stealing a look at Mokuba and was relieved to see that his brother wasn't disturbed by this question.
"Oh, yeah, Ayame always did a salt-rinse afterwards to keep her teeth clean," Mokuba said cheerfully, and he addressed the lab tech who was standing stiffly by the door. "Mr. Watermelon, can you grab the salt from the top drawer in my desk upstairs?"
The man bowed out of the room and Kaiba set the empty glass down onto the counter, listening to the rapid pounding of his own heart. Elevated heartrate. Shit.
"You okay?" Mokuba asked softly, his brow furrowed with concern. "Hey, I heard one of your dates went well! Can I meet her too? Isono told me you found someone nice—"
"What else did you find?" Kaiba interrupted, his eyes nailed to the rusty spears left in a neat bundle on the metal table across the room. "We're putting all this shit back. We can restore the weapons too."
"What?" Mokuba looked disappointed, and he fidgeted nervously. "Well…do we have to put it all back?"
Kaiba leaned over the sink, feeling another horrible wave of nausea accompanied by a painful clench in his stomach.
That drawing on the wooden slab was making him sick.
And what did Mokuba mean by 'all'?
"What do you want to keep?" Kaiba asked heavily, thinking Seth wouldn't be too happy about it either way. "We need to give the weapons and the tombstone back at the very least."
"Diamonds!" Mokuba cried, his cheeks pink with excitement. "And a fuck ton of precious gems! Like, bags full of them! Wanna see? Are you feeling better?"
"Just…show me," Kaiba breathed, easing himself down on to the floor beside the trash again, not caring how undignified he looked.
He was feeling like absolute shit after seeing that drawing.
Also, the nausea and the cramps were getting worse with every passing second.
Mokuba walked over to one of the lab stations and pulled out a steel cart, wheeling it over to Seto and proudly pointing at the glass jars all neatly stacked one on top of another, labeled clearly with carat weight, color, and clarity.
Kaiba's head spun wildly as he stared at the numerous jars of diamonds.
There were…so fucking many of them! Some were tinted yellow, pink, or blue, but the white ones were all shaped like tears…containing memories.
They are tears, Kaiba realized with another horrible surge of nausea.
Were they…Seth's tears?
Were they tears shed for all the people written on the tombstone?
This was an abnormal number of tears, looking like it had come from multiple people.
It made his own stash pale in comparison.
"I wanna make rings and necklaces for Ayame!" Mokuba said excitedly. "There's a list being passed around the office right now. People are staking their bids on the different sizes and shapes. Then we'll sell the rest to the public."
Kaiba shook his head furiously, completely at a loss for words.
These contained memories and pain.
They shouldn't be worn as jewelry by unsuspecting people in love.
A horrible wave of pain swirled low inside his stomach and Kaiba winced, riding it out steadily as he gazed into Mokuba's angular grey eyes and spoke.
"Mokuba, listen to me," Kaiba said, trying to keep his breathing steady as the nausea subsided. "These…can't be worn as jewelry. They're tears. They're full of pain. If you really want to keep some, let me sift through it and give the ones that don't have…death in them."
"Wh-Wha…t?" Mokuba choked, looking mildly frightened. "W-Wait, is that why they're all pear cuts? I just thought it looked trendy…"
"When you touch them with your bare hands, you can see memories of the people who cried them," Kaiba said, eager to educate his younger brother. "Like these bracelets."
He held up his wrist and showed Mokuba the bracelets Atem had made for him.
"Touch it and you'll see."
"Uh…" Mokuba looked nervous and shook his head. "No thanks. I believe you, Seto. I'm kinda scared I won't be able to forget what I see, especially if it's horrible. Maybe they could be happy tears? But since we dug these up with a tombstone, I'm gonna say no."
Kaiba sighed and nodded, leaning his head carefully onto the cabinets behind him, hating how his body was weak with pain.
Fuck that stupid wooden slab and that stupid drawing.
"So then, what do I do with all of this?" Mokuba asked shrilly, pointing at the jars with a shaking finger. "People were so excited."
"I said I'll sift through them for you," Kaiba replied, wincing as he shifted his position on the floor and tucked his legs underneath his chin, staving off a rush of pain curling low in his clenching stomach. "I'll give you the 'blank' ones."
"You'd do that for me? …Thanks," Mokuba smiled, visibly relieved. "Hey…are you okay? Do I need to call a doctor for you?"
Kaiba shut his eyes and pressed his forehead to his knees, nodding weakly before he shook his head.
"Call a car to take me back to the beach property," he said through gritted teeth, his legs slowly going numb from pain. "I just need a hot bath and I'll be fine."
"On it!" Mokuba dug out his phone and pressed it to his ear.
Kaiba cursed silently in his mind and slowly rocked back and forth, counting his rapid heartbeats between each clenching wave of nausea.
He really needed to be in ocean water…because something in his blood was screaming for saltwater to envelope his entire body. Cold and hot shivers were running down his spine and Kaiba dimly wondered if this was it.
This was death.
He had gone too far with the scales and he couldn't survive too long in or out of water. He had effectively turned himself into a freaky amphibian, and no one could help him now because he was in so much…damn…pain!
"Can you walk?" Mokuba asked nervously, standing and offering his older brother a hand up. "I still have a wheelchair from Ayame's pregnancy. Its stored in one of our janitor closets somewhere."
Kaiba shook his head, his vision fading in and out dangerously just as the lab technician burst back into the room, carrying a box of salt and a glass of water.
"Oh, about time, but too fucking late!" Mokuba snapped. "Get the wheelchair we used to have and bring it here…faster this time, or I'll fire you for being a slow, incompetent ass!"
He sounds like me, I'm so fucking proud, Kaiba thought weakly, reaching for the box of salt. Hastily dumping a chunk of it into a full glass of water with a shaking hand, he tossed the concoction down his throat without hesitation, feeling a wonderful moisturizing wetness trickle down his body.
The pain instantly subsided and turned into a low thud at the base of his spine.
Holy…. Thank fuck!
He should've been drinking saltwater this entire damn time!
Seth should've specified…or maybe he was the idiot for not figuring it out faster.
It never crossed his mind, because he'd always accidently swallow ocean water when training with Joey and Tristan.
Now that they'd left, he didn't think to actively drink saltwater.
"Did you just…drink that?!" Mokuba cried, his ponytail coming loose as he shoved a hand through his hair in distress. "Seto! You can't—you're not supposed to drink that! That was Maldon sea salt!"
"…Great, it tastes delicious," Kaiba said weakly, giving Mokuba a grin, and his brother clapped his hands to his mouth, pointing at is face with a shaking finger.
"Wh-What's on your teeth? Are those costume fangs?" Mokuba whispered, backing away nervously and glancing at the door where the lab technician came rushing through the door with a black wheelchair.
Rising steadily to his feet, Kaiba turned to the sink shook the box of salt into the glass and filled it with water to the brim, feeling all eyes on his back as drank it in deep gulps without spitting it out.
"A-Are you…serious right now?" Mokuba asked weakly, his knees trembling with disbelief. "That's disgusting, Seto."
Feeling much better after several more long drafts of the smooth, silky water, Kaiba straightened up and toasted his empty glass to the lab technician was gaping at him shamelessly.
"The key to longevity is frequent vomiting and only drinking saltwater," he said seriously, making direct eye contact with the technician and hearing Mokuba groan in frustration beside him.
"Why are you so uncool?" Mokuba growled through gritted teeth, his ears red with embarrassment. "Go home. You're sick!"
"Going," Kaiba said airily, setting the glass down with a clink on the counter and picking up the box of salt. "I'm keeping this."
Mokuba shook his head with exasperation and pressed his hands into his face, feeling a headache coming on. He heard Seto's shoes click smartly over the floors and a door slammed.
When he finally raised his head, the lab tech was staring at him with wide eyes, shrugging in confusion.
"Remember, you signed a non-disclosure," Mokuba muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets and quickly exiting the room, also slamming the door behind himself.
Seto…needed help. Professional help.
Clearly, therapy didn't do anything for him, and all he did was scare his therapist repeatedly by reading her mind while staying stubbornly silent.
Sighing to himself, Mokuba decided he would talk about it with Isono later tonight.
Kaiba slammed on the brakes and parked haphazardly on his driveway, ignoring Isono calling out to him as he raced down the sandy cliffside towards the water, his chest burning and aching for air.
He wasn't suffocating, but each breath was getting harder to take, and the sooner he was in the water, the better.
"Master Kaiba! Let me have a word with you!" Isono shouted, running after him across the beach, and Kaiba viciously ignored him, kicking off his shoes as he went. He quickly stripped off his shirt, belt, and pants, leaving them behind in the sand.
He climbed nimbly atop the rock and dove with practiced precision down into the frothy waters below, secretly thanking Tristan and Joey for teaching him this trick.
Taking a deep inhale, Kaiba relaxed gratefully into the warm water, still hearing Isono furiously calling for him on shore.
Master Kaiba! We need to talk about that lady you brought into the house. Why are all of her belongings in a spare bedroom?! Who is she, really?!
She's my wife! Kaiba shouted back angrily, powering through the waves with long strokes, intent on getting to meditation spot in deeper water. Go make her some tea or something! Leave me alone!
Come back here, Master Kaiba! I'm not finished…
Isono's voice was growing fainter and fainter.
Pleased, Kaiba spotted his comfortable little cove covered with thick strands of kelp and he pressed his back against the rocky wall, panting heavily as he took deep, gasping breaths.
God…when would this day end?
Also, where the hell was Seth? He had some questions for the merman.
Maybe he would show up after a light nap….
Kaiba was jolted out of his thoughts by another searing wave of pain in his stomach, and he dug his claws into the rocks behind him, curling forward and shuddering.
H-Holy fucking shit. What was happening?!
Between the sharp clenching jolts of pain, he saw a tiny purple octopus zooming his way through the water, sounding ecstatic.
"I am the Royal Messenger! I come bearing a message from King Atem!" The octopus squeaked, and Kaiba cursed. Yeah, great timing! He was dying.
"Spit it out," Kaiba gasped, curling his claws tighter into the rock as the pain subsided briefly. "I'm fucking dying over here."
"Ahem!" The octopus did a playful twirl in the water before it began reciting, "Kaiba, why are you not present to receive my messages? Why bother sending them in the first place if you're just going to ignore me? I thought you'd like to know that I've been sent from kingdom to kingdom in search of a Mate at the insistence of Mana and my court. I've met your brother, Seth. Can you confirm that he is your blood? Don't you dare lie to me. That's all. Reply soon, you idiot."
Another clenching wave overtook him, and it sent Kaiba reeling.
The octopus's voice was lost somewhere in the background as his ears began ringing terribly with a high, tinny sound.
Thudding his head back against the rock, Kaiba blinked and gazed up at the sky through the water, now thinking he might need to surface. What if he died like this, and Mokuba found his body floating in shallow tide pool somewhere?!
"Merman?! Merman! Are you ill? Shall I go fetch a Medic?" The octopus squeaked, darting to and from his face and Kaiba hissed at it
"Yes!" Kaiba replied with effort, and he grit his teeth, letting out a silent cry, reaching down to curl his knees to his chest as something stabbed through his abdomen with force.
It was as if someone had reached an arm deep into his stomach and was twisting violently, this way and that, and the pain had become an explosive white-hot fire, spreading from the tips of his toes to the ends of his fingertips, localizing at the base of his spine, almost ripping him in two.
Barely able to keep his eyes open through the haze of pain, Kaiba saw the water clouding dark green around him, and the horrible metallic stench of blood filled his nostrils.
Shit. Shit…he was in trouble.
"EEK! YOU'RE BLEEDING!" The octopus squealed, darting away through the water, leaving a trail of white bubbles behind it as it cried, "Stay there! I'm getting help…!"
Stay here?
Hell no!
If he stayed here, he was going to bleed out in the water and die for real.
Disgusted by the smell of his own blood in the water, Kaiba pushed weakly away from the wall of the cove and swam for shore, his body trembling so much, he could barely fight a low wave that pushed him farther back from the beach.
He heard Isono still shouting at him from the tall rock onshore, and he winced as another spasm of pain rippled through his lower body. Maybe he was imagining things, but his asshole was throbbing horribly.
…And she orders me around as if she lives here! What's her surname? She refuses to tell me, saying it's 'Kaiba', which is ridiculous because—
Fucking shut up and help me! Kaiba hissed, interrupting Isono's angry tirade. I'm…bleeding!
Bobbing against another wave, Kaiba blinked rapidly, trying to keep his eyes open, but his vision was fading into green as he continued to lose blood in the water, but it was no longer green. It had become inky black.
I'm bleeding…internally! Kaiba realized, managing to keep his eyes open right until he saw Isono leap into the water from the rock, and his world faded to black.
"Master Kaiba! ...Seto!" Isono powered through the water and after a few firm kicks through the water, he reached Kaiba and managed to grip onto him tightly, dragging him through the waves with effort, fighting each heavy current that pushed them father and father away from land, but he persisted, his arms and legs aching as he carried Kaiba's weight beside him.
It was too much.
Kaiba was growing heavier, and the waves were rough, washing him further away from shore as they began to sink.
Saltwater gushed up his nose and stung terribly in his eyes.
Coughing, Isono struggled to keep his head above water, feeling Kaiba slip dangerously in his grasp as the water continued to darken with blood around them.
Th-This was really bad!
Reaching his arm above his head, he tried to keep them afloat, still feeling Kaiba sinking deeper and deeper below him as his grip weakened. He was…no longer strong enough to hold Kaiba and stay above water at the same time.
Their saving grace came swiftly in the form of Kisara, dashing down the boardwalk with her white hair flowing behind her in the wind as she ran.
Climbing steadily onto the tall rock, she took aim and leapt into the water without hesitation, managing to reach Isono quickly after a few powerful strokes, and together, they dragged Kaiba's limp body to shore, their clothes soaked and stained with ocean water and blood.
Isono gasped for air, rolling onto the sand as he watched the woman lift Kaiba by the shoulders to drag him away from an oncoming wave with surprising strength, causing his long legs to leave two heavy lines behind them.
"Oh gosh! He's hurt!" Kisara cried, fanning the air above Seto's nose, trying not to stare at the blood that was spreading slowly across the sand underneath his lower body.
"Seto…wake up! Seto?!" Kisara bent down and pressed her mouth tightly over Kaiba's cold lips, feeling a light breath graze her cheek, and she jerked back frantically, "He's breathing!"
Isono finally caught his breath and pulled his wet phone out from his pocket, cursing under his breath when it refused to turn on.
"Stay here and I'll get help!" She cried, dashing back to the house with her white hair streaming behind her.
Pulling himself up onto his knees, Isono kept two fingers down on Kaiba's pulse, noting that it was unnaturally weak, and his mind churned with turmoil.
The woman was…caring and protective.
Where did Kaiba find her?
She was practically a stranger, but behaved with too much familiarity.
But they were both alive because of her strength.
He could hear sirens in the distance, and he shut his eyes, praying that Master Kaiba would come to his senses quickly. The master was ill, in more ways than one, and it wasn't surprising that all of his strange behavior resulted in a massive physical illness.
Shivering from the cold, Isono kept his fingers down on Kaiba's pulse, praying and praying.
Blood was streaking down across the sand underneath Kaiba's bare legs and Isono turned his head away fearfully, trying not to look at it.
Kaiba wasn't a young man anymore.
He was behaving recklessly for someone his age. This really needed to stop.
A long talk with Mokuba was in order after this when Kaiba woke up—if he woke up.
Author's note:
Mokuba shows his big bro some cool stuff they found underwater while they were clearing out Seth's colony. Kaiba is cynical as usual, full of denial and PAIN, so much pain he bled and passed out in the water.
Kisara comes and saves the day…!
edited by: CHOCOLATE YETI