The Storms

by rainstormcolors

Summary:

A version of the world where Seto Kaiba has inherited the Millennium Rod and finds himself in a strange place.

Chapter 1

The sky between the buildings was like ink and the sleet pelted down and was lit like embers as it passed through the orange of the streetlights. It was an alley somewhere in Domino City. The teenager named Seto Kaiba had an older man pinned to the pavement with all his weight on his foot to the man’s chest, the toe near the man’s windpipe. And Seto was panting and his hair was wet and the Millennium Rod was tucked into a loop of his belt. The Millennium Rod left to him by his late father Gozaburo Kaiba.

“Damn—dammit! No!” the man coughed. His hair had bits of silver in its dark color. Seto couldn’t even remember who this man was, why he had attacked him.

“Enough – that’s enough!”

Seto felt a hand firmly grip his arm. Seto twisted to see the Other Yugi was here.

Seto ripped himself from the Other Yugi’s grasp.

“Get away from me. Stay out of this!” Seto hissed.

There had to be a reason he attacked this man. There had to be--

The man began to lift himself into a sitting position, began scuttling away.

“What have you been doing?” the Other Yugi asked.

The Other Yugi’s eyes.

“Don’t look at me!” Seto hissed, and he wobbled as he twisted.

“Kaiba-!” the Other Yugi reached out to him, and Seto slapped the Other Yugi’s hand away as hard as he could.

He felt like the cold air, brain swirl, and he couldn’t stand up anymore. The corners of his world were going black.

“Kaiba,” he heard the Other Yugi say.

Seto smirked, looking at nothing. “You could’ve killed me before. Were you too weak? Were you going easy on me?”

The Other Yugi’s voice came softly. It was disgusting. “It’s too cold out here. You can’t stay here. Is there someone I can call for you?”

Yes, it was cold.

 

“Kaiba-kun, there’s a cab for us.” Now it was the normal Yugi.

Bring the other one out again. Seto didn’t say it.

Seto felt a gentle tug, and he ripped himself away from it as best he could. “I can do it myself,” he grunted. But it was hard somehow. Cloudy colors returned to him as he breathed out the grey and filth. His clothing was near soaked. Yugi’s face was disgustingly concerned, hair weighed down some in the slushfall.

Seto was able to stand again and he followed Yugi down the alley as if through the bottom of a lake. He stumbled a little and Yugi caught him. It was nice in a way but Seto hated it.

Men were supposed to like women and women were supposed to like men. That’s the way it was supposed to be. That wretched touch of the Other Yugi gripping his arm, of this Yugi catching him for a brief moment. Useless emotions. A coat of tar over the roots of his soul. Don’t touch me.

The cab was glowing like a yellow flower in the rot. The doors opened automatically for them and shut automatically for them.

“Go to his place first. I’ll pay for both,” Seto said to the driver.

“Are you feeling okay enough to go home alone?” Yugi asked him.

Seto stared at the water droplets racing down the car window, catching the bits of city light trapped inside them. And his head rested on the chill of the window, little clouds of breath on the glass. He felt the Millennium Rod pressing lengthwise into his thigh.

Before his father’s death, Seto had no idea the Millennium Rod existed at all.

Seto’s scars were as much a part of him as the flesh was.

“We were worried about you, Kaiba-kun,” Yugi said as if he wanted to give Seto a part of his heart.

“It’s none of your business,” Seto said quietly.

Gozaburo Kaiba’s will had been a voice that binded Seto to his future. The will proclaimed Seto as the heir of Kaiba Corporation, which Seto had already spilled his sweat and blood and soul to win, and of the Millennium Rod that had been buried away in Gozaburo’s bank vault. Since meeting Yugi, the Other Yugi, Seto had been aware of the Millennium Puzzle like an itch at the back of his neck. When he held the Rod, it was as if a thin current of electricity melded the two Millennium Items. Why couldn’t Seto let it go?

The city went by in orange-yellow blurs, splashes of blue light. The car’s wipers pulsed.

“Is the other one listening?” Seto asked quietly.

Yugi made a soft hm and then he said, “Yeah, he’s here.”

“I can’t understand why you’d let me wake up.”

“What?”

“What use was it to you to allow me to live, either time? Or now?” Seto said, the patch of glass now warm with his skin.

“Kaiba-kun…”

Of course Yugi wouldn’t have anything to say for himself. Of course.

“Don’t waste your useless kindness on me, Yugi,” Seto said.

A traffic light turned red and the cab waited there and then the traffic light turned green. The rocking of the car was gentle.

“… I feel weak sometimes. I want to be stronger,” Yugi said. “The Other Me has a lot of things he doesn’t know. You probably…”

“… Probably what?”

Yugi seemed hesitant to say. He said, “Probably have things you don’t know yet either.”

How stupid. Stupid! Seto clenched his jaw in silence.

“--Oh, here!” Yugi said more sharply.

The Kame Game Shop’s logo became visible on a neat little building, the cartoon turtle on the street-level sign spot-lit even this late into night. The cab came to a stop and the door on Yugi’s side automatically opened for him.

Seto finally eyed Yugi, waiting for him to leave. He could see the crystal pigment of Yugi’s eyes inside the cab’s lunar glow.

Yugi gave a small and pathetic smile behind his melancholy eyes. “Take care of yourself, Kaiba-kun. Mokuba-kun will worry about you.” And then he slipped out of the vehicle into the cold night.

The cab driver wearing his white gloves set for the door to automatically shut and then the cab began to move again.

“Rough night?” the cab driver said and Seto refused to respond to that.

Seto sat up straight in the seat, his body feeling more solid now. They rode in silence around the city’s edge and off until they reached the gate of the Kaiba Manor. The sleet had stopped falling now.

“Leave me here,” Seto told the driver.

There was a light at the gate. Seto spoke through the intercom to the manor’s head of security and then he entered into the yard. It was too dark to make out colors. There were some spare pools of warmth in the lantern-like windows.

Seto walked into the elegant viscera of the Kaiba Manor, a light left on in the foyer for him that sparkled in the chandelier.

It was late. But Seto walked into a spare room tucked away in a corner of this house. He knew the pathway even in the dark. The room had a television set and it had a VHS player, and there were shelves and shelves stuffed with neatly set and neatly labeled tapes. Each tape was labeled a date: past dates but not too past, future dates, the present date. Seto picked out the tape for today --- for it was past midnight now, and he placed it into the VHS player and he sat upon the stool before the television set. A faint silver shimmer fell over his face as the television turned on.

Gozaburo Kaiba’s face appeared on the screen.

“You’re late,” the television Gozaburo said to him. “Making “friends” I see.” His voice gave the words a rot.

Seto felt his mouth tense a hint.

Gozaburo had made each one of these tapes it seemed, and Seto was still waiting (desperately, not desperately, no) for Gozaburo to be wrong about what would happen. How many tapes? Millennium magic was strange and Seto couldn’t understand it. And sometimes the tapes would have orders for him and they would be the logical choices when the events unfolded and Seto hated how of course they’d be a choice he’d make.

And sometimes, not too often yet, Seto couldn’t remember very well.

This too was an electric current connected to the Millennium Rod and Seto found he couldn’t destroy these tapes and he couldn’t understand why. He couldn’t speak of them.

It was a voice only for him. This was the future for him.

Chapter 2

There was a hole in Seto’s heart puzzle. A missing piece. In the starless swell of the dark, the memory of himself as a younger child, he pressed his eye to the hole to look inside. Darkness, darkness all the way down.

Someone’s hand had suddenly reached out to him, as if from the surface, and he grabbed onto that hand. The light was like fire. The light was like heaven.

He flew alone across the ocean to face the Other Yugi again; to face Pegasus J. Crawford again. He remembered what Pegasus told to him before, around the time they'd first met. “If you used that very special tool your father left to you, you could transplant yourself into the perfect life. Did you know that, Kaiba-boy? Live for the rest of your life in someone else’s.”

Seto had already known that. His adoptive father Gozaburo had already told him that in one of the video tapes.

Mokuba’s small arms snagged around Seto’s neck, strangling him. Please don’t go.

 

This was some time ago now. Seto woke up in damp clothing, warm under the thick covers of his bed. A fractal of light like a piece of sky slipped in through a gap in the drawn curtains.

Chapter 3

Candlelight shimmered pale orange over the stone walls and shadows clung within the corners as they always did and Malik Ishtar was around eleven years old inside this memory of the past as his heart was ravenously waiting. His older sister Isis could never understand the depth of this excitement as she tried to quiet him down.

Rishid came into the room and the plan was ready to begin.

“Isis-sama, I’ll take care of everything from here. Please grant Malik-sama his wish,” Rishid said, his eyes holding warm.

Isis led her little brother up a dark passage of stairs and then she opened the door. Isis would give him two hours and the sunshine was miraculous. The blue day shimmered in Malik’s eyes.

Isis led Malik into town where people in flowing white and cream fabrics moved through the streets and stalls, carrying food and chatter. Vibrant vegetables, rolls of cloth, a small tan dog at one stand they passed by. Colors sparkled. Even the dirt was dazzling. Palm trees shot leaves like green sparks into the air. Malik felt Isis pull up the back of his tunic. Wasn’t he allowed to forget those markings, just for now? Just for once?

There was a book on the ground! How wasteful! Malik took it into his hands. The slim book was full of all kinds of wonderful things.

“This is so cool!” Malik beamed. He showed Isis a page of a man riding some kind of wheeled contraption shining with silver. “What’s this machine this person is sitting on?” Malik asked her.

“That’s a motorcycle. It’s a transportation tool that runs on fossil fuels,” Isis explained to him.

It looked so fun and wonderful. “It looks like it can go fast.”

Malik felt a tight curl pinch within him.

“Nee-san… Even if I continue living in this world, I’ll never ever be able to ride a motorcycle and speed across this great piece of land,” he said softly, almost a murmur for himself. But Isis’ sky-colored eyes revealed she’d heard him.

Suddenly Isis said, “It’s time to go.”

“What… that fast?!”

“We made a deal, two hours only, right?”

Malik, head white with adrenaline, carefully tore out the page with the gleaming motorcycle. “Okay. But at least let me take this page back home. I promise I won’t let Father find it.”

They began to walk back through the streets.

The man had been like a ghost. How had he appeared before them so suddenly? He wore a large golden key from around his neck and his eyes were piercing.

With a voice like vapor the man said, “The spirit of the Great Pharaoh will awaken soon…”

“Who are you?” Isis asked.

“Tomb Guardians, from now on, your fate may be a tragedy of blood that will split your bloodline apart. This is the will of the Pharaoh.”

The Pharaoh. The markings on Malik’s back. That was what the Tomb Guardians had left to protect. Once they had two precious items of the Pharaoh’s to protect as well but those precious items had been stolen before Malik was born. Their father was always watching Malik, always trapping him within the dark. Their clan had always felt on the brink of falling apart.

It was only two hours. How selfish could it be to want just two hours of life?

“Fate will cradle you,” the man said to Malik. And then he was gone as if he’d been a mirage.

“Are you— Wait—Please wait—!” Isis called out.

Could people move like mirages in this bright world? But the man had been strange even to Malik.

“Nee-san, where did he go?” Malik asked. “How does he know about the Tomb Guardians?”

“We cannot talk about those things in this world.” Isis had an expression like stone and yet Malik could still tell how nervous and shaken she was. “All the things you’ve seen in this world, that man, you must forget about them.”

“I understand…” Malik clutched the page he was carrying and he lifted it to see its splendor. Just one page. “But… please let me keep this picture of the motorcycle!”

Isis didn’t answer him, instead turning as she said, “Let’s go home now, Malik.”

They walked and the sun was warm. They left the town behind. Isis opened the hatch that led back to complete darkness.

“Nee-san, hold on a moment.”

Malik pulled himself onto a slender boulder, a leg on each side, and he looked across the soaring landmass, the sea-colored atmosphere. For a moment, like a motorcycle maybe.

And then he returned to the dark.

Isis was terrified. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong and something like fear was seeping into Malik to see that expression on Isis’ face. Isis then bolted down the stairs.

Malik’s room was in disarray: books thrown from their shelves, the desk toppled over, the bedding ripped into. Malik left his room first and left it fast. Rishid--!

It didn’t take long to find Rishid and his father.

Rishid was hunched over on the floor and immediately Malik saw the flesh of his back in smoldering tatters.

“Rishid!?”

Malik’s father stood over Rishid with a machete in his hand. Rishid was clenching his teeth and his own hands were bound. He looked so frightened.

Isis rushed into the room next.

Their father turned to them slowly. “Malik… Isis… you broke the family laws…”

And then Malik noticed the other machete resting within a metal bowl of glowing-hot coals as their father exchanged his blade for a fresh blade from the bowl.

“I’ll make you all understand the price.”

Their father stepped back towards Rishid, saying, “You were left abandoned and then forgot the education I gave to you. You couldn’t even be a good servant.”

“sorry… very sorry…” Rishid’s voice was blurred and too soft.

“You’ll pay with your life.”

Malik rushed to his father, grasping him from behind. “Stop it, Father!” he pleaded, feeling like his head was splitting apart. His father shoved Malik away hard and Malik was flung down onto the stone floor.

Isis almost squeaked his name, “Malik!” as she darted to him.

“Look at how much pain he’s in because of you,” their father said with a smile as he held the machete over Rishid again.

And then Rishid screamed. Such a horrible agonizing sound. The scream hit Malik before the sight of the blade slicing and burning a streak across Rishid’s exposed back.

Rishid. Rishid…

For him, Rishid was…

Rishid stopped screaming and stopped moving.

Malik couldn’t breathe. He clutched his head. He felt like he was burning. He could barely see anymore. He could hear his father saying, “Your punishment is next, Malik…”

Rishid was… because of him, Rishid…

He felt like he was being ripped apart. His fingers tore into his own scalp.

All there ever was and would be was the dark.

Something changed. Like an assault of energy. The room felt distant and dreamlike. Malik calmly removed his hands from his head. His expression was sharp and new.

“Malik…? What do you think you can do, Malik?” their father said with candlelight moving over his haggard face, a charred machete still within his grasp.

The air was still for a moment.

Like a mirage, the man from the market appeared in the room. Their father violently turned towards him, brandishing the machete. “Who are you!! How did you get in here!!?”

Isis wouldn’t voice her words. But Malik asked the man coldly, “Is this ‘fate’?”

“Would you like me to judge this man?” the man from the market asked stoically as he held up a golden scale, one that also appeared suddenly as if it was a mirage.

“Get out or I’ll kill you!” their father shouted, bits of spit flinging out of his mouth.

“I want you to kill him,” Malik said. “I want him to die!”

Malik and Isis’ father began to lunge at the man with his blade but suddenly it was as if he’d been rendered still. There was an energy sizzling all through the room.

“Yes!” screeched Malik.

“Who are you?” Isis asked.

“I have worked for three-thousand years as a gravekeeper just as you are gravekeepers. I’m a disciple of Anubis and I follow the will of the Pharaoh.”

“I have no care for any pharaoh!” Malik spat.

“You wish for your own fate. But I will now judge this man."

As the scale in the man’s hand tipped, some shadowy thing peeled in from the corners of the room, peeling like flesh. It moved and breathed and became beastlike but somehow it was hard to see.

Isis tried to move in front of Malik as if to protect him but Malik roughly elbowed himself in front of her.

And suddenly there was blood. And suddenly their father collapsed as a corpse to the floor and the beast was gone.

“What have you done!?” Isis gasped. But Malik was laughing. His laughter overflowed the room.

Malik walked to the corpse and plucked the discarded machete from the floor where it fell. “I must thank Father for killing Rishid.” And then Malik cut open part of their father’s robe and he began to slice into their father’s back.

It was so heavy. Her lungs felt so heavy. “Why!?” Isis begged the man.

The man’s face seemed sad somehow. “I know it hurts…” His pause was very human. “This is the will of the Pharaoh,” he told her, his eyes vivid in the faded light. “To carry out fate, I give you these gifts.”

With two hands, he pulled the grand golden key from around his neck, the cord coming free. “Young man, this gift is for you.”

“You interrupt…?” Malik growled but he stood up, curious, as he continued to hold onto the blade.

“You will now bear the Millennium Key.” And the man placed the strange necklace around Malik’s neck.

Malik took the key into his hand for a moment and he felt it. He gripped it tight. He smirked. “I must thank you too I suppose. But poor Rishid deserves his own parting gift.” His words curled. Malik returned to carrying out his gruesome work on his father’s back. Isis couldn’t watch.

And then the man held out the golden scales to Isis. Where did they go? How were they back now?

“This gift is for you. You will now bear the Millennium Scales.”

“No— No!! You killed Father!” Isis shouted, stepping back.

Malik was walking over to Rishid’s body now and drips of blood trailed with him. Malik looked back to the strange man as he held a slice of flesh in his child hands. “So you allowed Father to kill Rishid then?”

The man said nothing.

Malik now stood over Rishid. “Rishid… you always wished to have the scars of the Ishtar family. It was the only damn thing Father had left. You can have them now. Your parting gift…” And Malik dropped the slice of flesh onto Rishid with a plop. It was his father’s own markings, carved into his own back when he’d been ten.

But then Rishid flinched and there was another soft movement.

“He’s still alive…” Malik clenched his teeth as their eyes met. Rishid’s warm eyes.

“Malik-sama…” Rishid’s words were gentle even now.

Malik began clutching his head again, blood smearing into his hair. He trembled.

Isis, having been watching Malik, looked back to where the man had been standing but he was gone.

Suddenly Malik was sobbing. He was sobbing and sobbing as Rishid held him.

Their father was dead. The Millennium Scales were resting on the floor beside him, spots of hot crimson illumination floating over its luster.

And then Malik broke away from Rishid’s embrace and rushed to clutch his father’s body. He didn’t even notice the weight of the Millennium Key around his neck.

The man from the market was gone but they could hear his voice. All three of them heard his voice saying: “The one who pushed your father towards his death was the spirit of the Pharaoh.”

This was five years ago.

Chapter 4

I lived as long as I did for your sake.
I gave you all the lessons I had. I showed you the ugliness of the world so that you would understand and be resilient against that ugliness and the horrors of living. I gave you the keys to success in this world. I gave you all I had. Teaching you gave something to my empty heart. The supposed beauty of a human life is fleeting and fragile. True beauty has existed before any human was here and will continue to exist long after we’re gone. I asked for your resolve. I asked you to carry my lessons and to carry my name. Carry on my legacy and what needs to be done.
If I had to die, in front of you was the way it should’ve been so that you could carry me inside your soul forever.
Father and his son.

Chapter 5

The metallic glow of a smoldering sun reflected over the glassy lean clawing architecture of the city and grey purple clouds smoldered and the warm heavy weight of Gozaburo’s palm was set on a fourteen-year-old Seto’s shoulder as he was directed towards this view from Gozaburo’s kingdom.

“We will be kings,” Gozaburo told him and he moved like lunar dust.

There was a high drop to the streets below where people pushed by and bobbed.

And their bodies were bloated and bobbing in something like blood and juice and a rotten savor spread over everything.

Awaked from this dreamscape, still puddled with the morning, a somewhat older Seto was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. It was as if he had only one eye, the right eye staring back blue and clear. But the left eye was like an abyss. It was a hole that tugged towards nothing. Seto touched his left eye and felt it still there. The mirror was lying to him.

Another Millennium Item had entered into Domino City. Seto could feel it. He would’ve preferred to ignore this.

The sunshine bloomed crystal white over the city’s cosmos and clouds floated foaming and pearlescent above the tall buildings as Seto’s chauffeur drove through the asphalt and concrete rivers.

He’d left the Kaiba manor before Mokuba. It was too hard to talk to Mokuba.

There was a smear of meetings with investors and there were presentations to draft and organize at Kaiba Corporation. Seto sipped black coffee from a white mug.

A woman named Isis Ishtar representing the Egyptian government was trying to contact him. His employees had left him various digital notes and voice messages about it. She was carrying the Millennium Item Seto could feel. His heart understood this.

His father Gozaburo had told him within last night’s video tape to meet with this woman named Isis Ishtar or he’d regret it, and so Seto arranged for the meeting.

Did the Other Yugi feel like a puppet on strings? Seto dashed out, blacked out the thought. He was too proud. Yugi himself was too gentle.

Isis Ishtar was apparently very eager to meet Seto Kaiba. She agreed to meeting him nearly immediately if he’d like. Mokuba had left a message for Seto as well, asking when he planned to leave headquarters. Seto waited until dusk and then waited until night and starry flecks pooled over the city before meeting with Isis Ishtar within a conference room at Kaiba Corporation headquarters many stories off the ground.

There she sat alone with long black hair tied in places with rings of lush gold and her long flowing gown was ivory with dark trim. Seto didn’t see a Millennium Item on her offhand.

“Hello, Mr. Kaiba,” she said professionally, the cosmopolis glittering in the night beyond her and the glass wall containing them.

Seto Kaiba sat down across from her. “I expect you to not waste my time,” he said.

“Of course. You carry the Millennium Rod as I understand it, am I correct?” Isis asked him, her eyes hued lavender and sky blue.

Of course she’d be able to sense the Millennium Items like him. Seto pinched his lips a little, somewhere between annoyed and something else. “What business do you have with me?”

“The Millennium Rod and the Millennium Necklace are both precious items of the lost Pharaoh that my bloodline had protected for generations in Egypt and those items were stolen almost two decades ago from my family.” Her voice was steady and flat.

“I had nothing to do with that.” Seto hadn’t even been born yet.

“I understand you didn’t steal the Millennium Rod yourself. My younger brother will seek you out in time to try regaining the Millennium Rod.”

Seto couldn’t read Isis’ face. “Hmph. Wouldn’t you like that, if the Millennium Rod is allegedly stolen?” he said in a prickly glassy tone.

“The Millennium Items exist for the sake of the lost Pharaoh. My brother has put himself on a destructive path.”

“What ‘pharaoh’ do you keep blabbering about?”

“A special exhibit will be arriving to the Domino Museum soon that will reveal the truth to you. The Pharaoh is an important piece of your story as well. I believe the exhibit will be able to explain things to you with more clarity and precision than I.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m trying to protect my brother, Malik. I’m giving you a warning for your sake and for his.”

Seto gave a low cruel snicker. “What would you do if it’s out of my control?”

“You must feel that I carry a Millennium Item, or do you not?” Isis asked.

Seto seemed to slightly frown.

“I ask questions of one’s soul. I limit those questions as I can but I can read people’s souls.”

Like Pegasus…?

“I thought you said your family’s Millennium Items were stolen? It hasn’t seemed to slow you down.”

A corner of the room grew darker, pure black, behind Isis and the fluorescent lights seemed to dim as if the world had shrunken, submerged. Some shape slithered over the floor and towards Isis’ hand which she extended as if to gently stroke this breathing lightless form that sizzled the air darkly. Seto didn’t react to this sight. He’d seen such things before.

At some point, an old-fashioned weighing scale forged from glistened gold had appeared on the table separating Isis from Seto and it reflected over the table’s surface as if it was alive. It shimmered silvery the way a mirage shimmered.

“This Item was a gift. I wonder if that strange terrible man meant for me to judge my own brother. I won’t do such a thing.” Isis wasn’t looking at Seto as she said this. She was looking at the creature Seto’s eyes couldn’t quite see as she gently stroked its shape. And then Isis asked, “Where is the Millennium Rod now? I strongly suggest you keep it on your person from now on.”

It had always, always, always been difficult to leave the Millennium Rod alone. Even now, as it rested within his office’s safe underneath his desk, he felt claws whispering over his face.

“A young man named Yugi Mutou carries the Millennium Puzzle, doesn’t he?” Isis said next and the deep abysmal shape she’d been touching was gone now. “I believe you’re familiar with him. I believe the Pharaoh is a very important piece of his story as well.”

Chapter 6

A string held between the present and the past.

A too young Malik who felt like clouds pulling apart ran away from his home. The sun and sky were glaring down on him and it was too hot. He needed to be away from that hole in the ground and those people. He ran into the town his sister had led him to before. All these strangers who didn’t care about anything and had nothing to run away from. Malik found an alleyway to hide in for a while and then he moved between corners. He became aware of Rishid following him at some point. Stay away! Just leave me alone! Malik had brought a murderer home! He didn’t want his sister or Rishid looking at him now. He didn’t want to hear anything from any of those sparse stupid sheep followers that were still left of the crumbling Tomb Guardians. It was just a hole in the ground!

Rishid, still recovering from that day, quietly approached Malik at some point but before he could speak Malik shrieked at him, “Get away from me! Go home, Rishid!” and Malik dashed off to somewhere else.

It went on like this for a little while. Nights were restless and too full of noise. This world was too full of noise. Rishid would leave food for Malik at whatever hiding spot he’d found. Malik felt pathetic and stupid when he ate this food. No --- he needed to rely on himself now.

Malik would snatch food from the marketplace --- apples, figs, fresh bread, raw lentils. He noticed how sometimes people noticed and didn’t stop him. He felt filthy. He hated the way eyes looked at him.

But all the while, there was an amount of gold hung from around his neck by brown cord. Malik understood who gave this to him even if he couldn’t find the memory. It was a key. Maybe it was the key that would lead him to that murderer and the Pharaoh. Gold shined so much brighter above ground.

As a soft pink twilight melted into the sky, Malik tried to find a place to rest for the night and he suddenly, like a cold shiver, felt another person following him. It wasn’t Rishid at all. In the corner of his eye, it was an adult man he’d never seen before and Malik tried to dart away. His heart was buzzing too vivid. And then suddenly another adult man was in front of him at the other end of this alleyway. He’d been cornered front and behind.

“Hey, hey, shh. We just want to see that fancy necklace you have. We won’t hurt you,” one of the men said, his shoulders large, his hands thick and outstretched.

Malik’s heart was like a clenched fist and Malik gripped the golden key tight. He backed himself towards one wall and tried to get the men to move closer together as they moved towards him. He tried to break away through a more widened gap on one side, but one of the men grabbed at his arm and grabbed him tight and it was so tight it hurt.

“Knock it off, kid!”

Malik tried to yank himself away when another hand grabbed him by his shoulder. Before the other man could grasp the golden key, Malik lifted it as if to stab and he stabbed it into the hand of the man who had taken hold of his arm, and then he whipped around to stab it into the thigh of the other man and he focused on the power he knew was there somewhere, reaching, and felt like clouds pulling apart. He felt dizzy as there was some kind of glow a little bit like fire.

The man he’d stabbed in the thigh was screaming as he clutched at his head.

This was no longer Malik’s memory. It was Malik’s memory but it wasn’t. This piece of Malik inside this screaming man’s soul was harder and vaporous. He couldn’t stand some adult thinking he had any right to touch his body and he couldn’t stand there being any kind of light inside the soul of someone who thought so little of roughly grabbing him. And within this speck of time that was so dilated and stretched out the way a fallen raindrop stretches and flattens, this other Malik began shredding and ruining whatever it was here – it didn’t even matter to him. He was so sick of being stuck inside people’s heads.

“You should be more careful.”

The other Malik halted to hear such a clear voice right now in this almost unreachable place. As he cast his gaze over (was it a “gaze”? what were these forms inside of a soul?), he saw the strange man he’d met before, the one who’d given him the golden key. The one who had killed Father. And the man’s eyes were piercing, like pinholes of light in the black.

“What do you want? How are you here?”

The man’s face was calm. “You and the one outside are both still too new and unused to the Millennium Key’s powers. You’re young and impulsive. The one outside may become too overwhelmed if you don’t allow him to hone his skills with the Millennium Key.”

“I don’t care! What power do you have anymore?! You gave away your “Millennium” trinkets. I’ll ruin you here too!”

“Are you so sure I’ve given away all my Millennium powers?” the man said.

“I said I don’t care!”

Suddenly, the strange man’s hand was delicately placed on top of Malik’s head inside this soul space. Malik hadn’t even sensed his movement. The hand was just suddenly there, so delicate Malik couldn’t even feel it.

“The other one will leave you behind and trapped inside this stranger’s mind. Be patient. Allow him to hone his skills,” the man said with his stoic voice.

His hands weren’t his own. This body wasn’t his own. And the other Malik was gone. The real Malik, the true Malik (or so it was) was now running and running away from the two men who had tried to steal the Millennium Key. There were screams that grew paler behind him.

In the blue morning shade, as Rishid found Malik, Malik found Rishid. Rishid held Malik like he wanted to protect him.

Almost five years ago.

Chapter 7

 

Is this the color of the hole in your heart?

 

Is this the color of the hole where your eye should be?

 

Is this the color of what those people call shadow magic?

 

Is this the color of the television screen after you’re done watching one of Gozaburo’s tapes?

 

 

Are these the flowers your mother once set in the center of the table?

 

Are these the flowers your ****** once brought to the hospital for your mother?

 

Are these the flowers you had to set onto a grave? Whose grave?

 

 

 

Mokuba is on one of the mansion’s decks, watching pigeons with their bobble heads and hints of iridescence within their ash-colored plumage. They’re walking the edge of the small fountain that offers a gentle drizzle of water into the round stone basin. The deep greens of spring are beginning to breathe. And then Mokuba catches you watching him watching the pigeons and he smiles to you as you stand behind the glass. It’s a kinder smile than you have in you.

 

Isis Ishtar wants you to visit the Domino Museum. It’s ludicrous.

 

You’d rather be considering strategies for reclaiming your title and finally defeating Yugi.

Chapter 8

Seto stepped out of the glossy car he’d been driven here in. He exhaled with an edge of annoyance and something else. The sky was pastel blue and it was as if the Domino Museum was a creation of moonlit colossal bone as Seto passed over the stairs and under the archway and into this building. The Millennium Rod was resting on his belt within a dark leather carrying case which concealed it, further hidden under Seto’s long dark coat. Signs on thin poles pointed in the direction of the exhibit on Ancient Egyptian society and relics and Seto walked over the eggshell marble floor towards this exhibit.

Seto hadn’t wanted to pay any attention to the other scattered patrons but he had to stop in his place when he suddenly recognized a blaze of hair like the feathers of a tropical bird. The Other Yugi… and he was here with someone else… that Mazaki girl. They were standing near to each other and they hadn’t yet noticed him as they looked over some display from this lost dead society. Seto was beginning to turn back.

“Hello, Mr. Kaiba. Welcome. I’m glad you’ve arrived,” Isis Ishtar said from behind him.

There she was in a long pale gown with gold in her hair.

Did she plan this? Was he invited here with Yugi without knowing?

“I work in the Ministry of Egyptian Archeology so I know this exhibition well.”

“I don’t care. I have no interest in a dead civilization.”

Isis began to step forward, deeper into the exhibit. And she said, “Did you know Duel Monsters was inspired by Ancient Egypt and this exhibition holds the proof?”

Seto flinched a bit and he hated that he flinched.

“You may know the name of Pegasus Crawford who designed the game you love so but he created the game with inspiration he took from Egypt. He seems to have tried to keep that inspiration secret. But the proof is here.” Isis cast her polar blue eyes on Seto. “Please follow me.”

Seto’s eyes shifted towards the Other Yugi and Mazaki, still out of earshot it seemed. “Did you invite Yugi here today? I don’t appreciate being ambushed.”

Isis’ gaze followed the direction of Seto’s view. “Is that Yugi Mutou then? It seems destiny brought us all here today.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Isis shut her eyes for a moment. “I have yet to meet Yugi Mutou.” And then she opened her eyes and she walked forward.

Seto felt stiff and he did not like this at all. He walked forward after her but kept a gap between him and Isis. He stopped to keep this distance as Isis paused where the Other Yugi and Mazaki stood.

“Excuse me. Are you Mr. Yugi Mutou?” Isis calmly asked.

Both of them looked at her.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Yugi,” Isis said.

The Other Yugi seemed suspicious and firm, even with this gap between them. And the Other Yugi asked, “Who are you?”

“I am Isis Ishtar. I work for the Ministry of Egyptian Archeology. More crucially, I have protected a piece of the lost Pharaoh’s memories and I wield a Millennium Item as do you.”

The Other Yugi and Mazaki also seemed to flinch.

“Did you know Duel Monsters was inspired by Ancient Egypt? Please follow me. I have more to tell you.” And Isis turned and walked on further.

Mazaki noticed Seto first, her blue eyes starry with all the light and her voice was crisp. “You’re here too, Kaiba-kun? I haven’t seen you since the helicopter ride back from Pegasus’ island.”

Seto walked on to follow Isis as did the others. Both Mazaki and the Other Yugi were looking at him as they walked.

Mazaki continued, “How’s Mokuba-kun doing?”

“He’s fine,” Seto said shortly.

“Kaiba, why are you here?” the Other Yugi asked. He was wearing entirely too many bracelets, dark leather and small chains. As always, he wore the Millennium Puzzle.

“Ask her,” Seto said gesturing to Isis.

Isis was now stopped beside the entryway into a separate room.

“The relics inside this showroom come from the tomb of an eighteenth dynasty pharaoh. They informed Pegasus as he went on to create Duel Monsters. I think you’ll find something very important inside of this room,” Isis said as she gestured for the three to enter.

Inside the room, hung on the pale walls behind glass and illuminated with clear bands of light, there were intricately carved stone tablets. Upon them, soul-like, the shapes of the creatures of Duel Monsters were undeniable. Seto could feel it weighing upon his heart somehow. Why did the Other Yugi look so much calmer than Seto felt?

Isis told them, “In Ancient Egypt, people believed the monsters that lived inside human hearts caused disaster. These portraits of monsters were sculpted to seal them away and to wish for peace. It is thought these stone images hold power. There was a power struggle between the court and high priests and the Pharaoh, and the power of these monsters was misused.”

“Do you know what happened to the Pharaoh?” the Other Yugi asked.

“Information has been lost and the details may be distorted with time,” Isis said. “You came here on your own. You’re curious but it seems you’ve chosen your fate.”

“This is ridiculous,” Seto said.

“There is one particular mural I would like you both to see. It depicts a battle from the past.” Isis walked over to the carved stone slab towards the edge of the room, and Seto and the Other Yugi and Mazaki followed.

Seto felt almost sick somehow.

Somehow… it was the Other Yugi engraved on the carving. He knew it.

“That’s you, Kaiba, isn’t it…?” the Other Yugi asked.

On the stone, across from the shape of an ancient Yugi was another figure. Seto hadn’t really noticed it in contrast to Yugi’s cacophonous shape.

Isis’ voice met them. “Yes. The young Pharaoh who controls the Black Magician and the high priest who stands opposite of him with a white dragon overhead. This mural is very special and is a song of battle and friendship. The Pharaoh’s name has been scraped away however.” A smaller patch of the stone was roughly chiseled down into a mess of gouges.

“How can Yugi and Kaiba-kun be on this tablet if it’s ancient?” Mazaki asked softly but she went unanswered.

“It’s not only this tablet. The pharaoh’s entire tomb and the palace’s records were stripped of his name, as if to be erased,” Isis continued.

Seto’s heart felt too heavy and tight for some reason he couldn’t understand. This was all so ridiculous and stupid.

“To regain your memory, Yugi, you must gather the seven Millennium Items,” Isis said calmly.

The Other Yugi’s words came out sharp. “You said you have a Millennium Item. Are you my enemy?”

“The Millennium Items have a great capacity for evil, but I am not your enemy,” Isis said.

Seto’s arms were crossed and he stood stiffly.

“Pegasus was led by fate to create Duel Monsters. You both were led by fate to here, now.”

“YOU were the one who led us here!” Seto spat.

“It is a lot to take in…” Mazaki said, softly rubbing at her chin. “So Yugi’s a lost pharaoh…?”

“Why do I need to be here at all? This is a waste of my time,” Seto snapped.

“Kaiba,” the Other Yugi said.

“If you want to listen to old fairytales, go ahead,” Seto huffed. “I have other things to do.”

“But do you know of the three legendary god cards in Duel Monsters?” Isis said all too calmly. “You can see them on this stone tablet as well.”

Above the stone Pharaoh and high priest was a carving of the Millennium Puzzle like a whole heart and above that were three spectacular stone beasts.

Seeing these stone beasts now, radiating hotly through his veins, Seto stayed where he was.

“Pegasus Crawford recreated these three gods as cards in his game: the God Obelisk of light and darkness, the Dragon God Osiris of good and evil, and the Sun God Ra of sky and earth. They are three deeply powerful cards now, meant for a game king.”

“Where are those cards now?” Seto asked sharply. The Other Yugi and Mazaki were also listening intently.

“The god cards contain immense power and if wielded as such, they can become true weapons. They can even take lives. Pegasus deeply regretted creating them. He couldn’t destroy them and so he buried them away in the Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately, it seems my younger brother has stolen all three cards.”

“That brother you mentioned before? He has those cards?!” Seto hissed.

“Who is… your brother?” the Other Yugi asked carefully.

“He leads a criminal ring that also focuses on Duel Monsters called the Ghouls.”

“The Ghouls stole those cards?! Those frauds?!” Seto hissed in disgust. “I can’t allow that. Such unworthy lowlifes don’t deserve such powerful cards…”

The Other Yugi stood quietly. Mazaki stood quietly.

Isis’ bare expression couldn’t be read. And then she said, “I have something else to show you both. And only to you both. It is a very private piece held in the back. Please follow me.”

Isis began to walk again and after a moment of hesitation the other three followed her. As they reached a locked metal door, Isis said to Mazaki, “I apologize, but you may go no further. This is only for the others.”

Mazaki had a somewhat puzzled expression. “Oh… um, okay.” She moved a few steps back and the Other Yugi watched her. “Don’t worry about me. I can wait.” She put her hands up a little in surrender, trying to seem playful. But really she was nervous.

And then Isis unlocked the door which led into darkness and Seto and the Other Yugi were swallowed inside. Isis followed and locked the door behind her before turning on the overhead lights. Motes of dust like planetary glitter floated with their steps. There were sheets over unseen objects and large cardboard boxes and other treasured clutter.

“It’s kept in this safe box,” Isis said as she went towards a large black metal case pushed all the way to the back of the room.

Seto and the Other Yugi caught each other’s eyes for a moment before approaching.

Isis worked to unlock the large safe and following a series of clicks the door came open. Isis removed some kind of cover from inside.

“Please look inside here,” Isis said as she pulled out a tiny silver flashlight and shined its saber within the cupped space over what looked like an old stretched-out piece of marked-up leather.

Seto and the Other Yugi bent down some and squinted their eyes a little to make out the markings on the strange leather.

“Can you read it?” Isis asked coolly.

Seto was tired of talking about any of this. But yes he could.

And then the Other Yugi said, “Yes, I can.”

Chapter 9

The god cards Isis Ishtar had told them of no more than twelve minutes ago, and now nestled in a patch of glow on poorly-cured hide there was a message asking for the “Pharaoh” to present all three gods to the stone of his memories, a stone carved by a friend, a passageway to the answers, an afterlife. It was like a shard of glass lodged in Seto’s throat.

The Other Yugi’s face often wore a flat expression when he wasn’t in the thrill of a battle as far as Seto knew. This Yugi couldn’t be a pharaoh. But when Seto looked between the Other Yugi and Isis and the strange hide and then back to the Other Yugi, for a brief moment, as if painted in wax, there seemed to be a strange foreign man whispering something into this Yugi’s ear.

“-- Yugi- !” Seto thrust out his hand towards the spectral man but he was already gone and the Other Yugi was now staring at him.

“Kaiba?”

Seto felt stuck in this feeling and he stumbled inside for a moment before asking, “Did you hear anyone just now?”

The Other Yugi had a quietly quizzical expression and said, “I don’t believe so. Did you hear someone?”

Seto pinched his lips but it was like a ringing deep inside, like there were puppet strings everywhere. The Other Yugi wasn’t supposed to be a puppet on strings. Seto trembled slightly as an acidic memory that wasn’t his own flickered over top the Other Yugi. It was as if the Other Yugi was dead.

“Are you alright, Kaiba?” he heard the Other Yugi asking.

Seto hardened to compose himself, standing himself straight and avoiding the Other Yugi’s miserably concerned eyes. “I’m fine.”

Isis spoke. “You both possess Millennium Items which will be bait for my brother but they should also provide you with some means of protection should he try using the god cards against you.” She looked to Seto. “I recommended you carry your Millennium Item on your person also for the sake of avoiding the careless targeting of others.”

Seto did not like Millennium magic and he wasn’t interested in using it. He preferred finding his own power, inventing his own magic in the expanse of holographics and data and technology. The magic of a human brain, the power of human will. If his father was watching him from the Millennium Rod somehow, couldn’t he see the great bloom of wealth and influence Seto had claimed for the Kaiba name now?

But right now, Seto could feel the heavy heavy weight of “fate” pushing on them like the pressure of a tremendous river.

“According to this message, I’m supposed to collect the god cards?” the Other Yugi said as a question to Isis. “How can I do so if your brother has them?”

“I don’t have an answer for you, but the Millennium Items will seek each other and the Pharaoh, and I believe the god cards will seek out the Pharaoh as well,” Isis said in her elegant voice.

A heavy invisible river drowning them and they couldn’t even see it. Seto wanted to break fate.

“Don’t be mistaken. Those god cards will belong to me in the end,” Seto said. “I won’t bow down to any of those pathetic Ghouls or to you, Yugi.”

The Other Yugi almost seemed to smirk at that. A drowning fool. You weren’t supposed to be a puppet too.

Seto left the museum in a rush, a blurry world.

Kaiba Corporation’s Domino Headquarters was a glass spire to the sky.

Busy work in his office to escape his head, a fall below beyond the windows. Mokuba had left headquarters earlier in the day. Seto worked on.

As he was chauffeured back towards the Kaiba manor, the tendrils of night were consuming the sky. The manor was lit like vanilla fudge and the trees held the dark between their dark leaves.

“What did you go to the museum for? I know it has something to do with an Egyptian official,” Mokuba said in the kitchen, a space of grey stone and clean wood and stainless steel brimmed with smudged reflections. He was sitting at the small table crafted of seashell-hued wood where the brothers often ate. Originally it had been a tucked-away table meant for the staff of an older Kaiba manor, but the dining room was too haunted now.

Seto sipped a can of vegetable juice. He tried to conjure an answer. “I was informed of a set of powerful Duel Monsters cards called god cards that Pegasus tried to hide, and how a crime ring may target me as an opponent,” Seto said.

Mokuba pondered the answer for a moment. “Who’s targeting you? What are you going to do?”

“They’re known as the Ghouls, and they allegedly possess the god cards. They’re frauds and thieves. The Egyptian official seems to be personally related to one of their primary members. I’m unsure of what they’re planning currently, but the official felt it was necessary to warn me. I’ve already put our security team to the task.”

“Do they want to hurt you? Why would they target you?” Mokuba’s voice was stained with love.

“It seems I have something they want, but I plan to relieve them of their god cards if they dare to mess with either me or Kaiba Corporation,” Seto said. “I’ll teach those sleazebags a lesson they won’t forget if I have to.”

“Just be careful,” Mokuba said and his words were gentle.

Mokuba had been in the crosshairs too many times. Seto knew Mokuba never deserved it.

As the brothers parted ways for the night, Seto walked to the room tucked away in a corner of the mansion. The darkness was soft. Seto inserted one of Gozaburo’s VHS tapes into the player. His father’s living portrait fizzed into focus.

“You understand the threat you’re up against. The powers of the Millennium Items will protect you,” the phantom on the television screen said in its throaty voice. Seto couldn’t avoid that throaty voice. “Be smart, and let me make the tough choices. Don’t be an embarrassment to me. You will not throw away our empire. You’ve embarrassed me too many times already.”

Seto wasn’t sure what Gozaburo meant.

And Seto walked to his bedroom and puddled into sleep, leaving the Millennium Rod sitting on a bedside table. Seto slept as wisps of cloud tumbled over the crescent moon. It crept into him like ooze, like maggots, like jewels. The dark sea collapsed over him, rinsing him.

The morning was bright and sudden.

He was on the floor of his bedroom. The Millennium Rod was in his hand with its sharp end unsheathed. Seto could only see out of one of his eyes. His awareness seemed to flicker. There was blood. There was fresh hot blood streaming over his face. One of his eyeballs was on the carpet and not in his head, a wet nerve curled off from its orb. Seto had dropped the Millennium Eye which he had not remembered ever holding. The panic was quick silver in his guts. He now dropped the Millennium Rod and he pathetically kicked away the Millennium Eye, and he kicked it again until it was hidden under his bed. His limbs trembled and his lungs hurt. He touched at the hole in his face where his eye was supposed to be but no longer was.

Call an ambulance..--

No. He cut out the thought. They’d think he’d done this to himself (but he had done this to himself).

He couldn’t afford a scandal now. He wasn’t going to be seen as a pathetic lunatic. He sat with himself. The panic was white. It could melt glaciers. What did he do to himself?!

Puppet strings were strung everywhere.

He breathed deeply. He wanted to break fate.

Chapter 10

A nightmare carousel was spinning inside. The ultramarine curtains had already been pulled open a gap by someone. Seto peeked out of the tall windows of his bedroom and the clouds on the distant horizon were shaded like neon flesh. Early morning. He hoped so badly Mokuba was still asleep.

He felt as if he moved like fluid but he went into his bathroom and ran cold water from the chrome tap. He only glanced at himself in the mirror and then he avoided it. He rinsed off his cheek carefully with his hand and then he took a white hand towel and partially soaked it in the water’s stream. He squeezed out the towel to be moist rather than soaked and he pressed it to the closed lids over an empty eye socket.

He walked carefully through the hallways, watching out for signs of Mokuba, but he trailed to the tucked away room crowded with all those haunted videotapes. A television set and all those tapes meant for him.

Seto was angry. But what else did he have to do. He wanted the answers now. And if there had to be a talk about this, he wanted someone who wasn’t going to be upset about it or pity him or be repulsed or tell him to go to the hospital right now and someone who he wasn’t expected to return a conversation with. And Seto felt a rattling angry feeling but he needed to know why this. Yes he knew absolutely that Gozaburo had a role in what happened but why this.

Seto found the tape labeled for today and he placed it into the player, hearing the faint chilly whirl of the machine, and then he sat before the sheen on the television screen. The towel was still over his empty eye socket. The room and the violet shadows felt melty around Seto.

Out of the pixels, Gozaburo Kaiba’s face appeared before him. His expression was firm and strong. It was the part of Gozaburo a child Seto had wanted to be connected with. It was the part of Gozaburo that Seto had wanted to understand and embroider into his own soul. As much as he’d be hurt, there was something in Seto’s soul and in Gozaburo’s soul that was only shared between them, or so Seto had shamefully felt.

“I’m sure you’re surprised,” the television Gozaburo said. “As I already told you, the powers of the Millennium Items will protect you. The time to be strong and brave is now. I’ve already done the hardest part for you. Do not be a coward, don’t turn off this television. I expect you to be brave as I raised you to be, and to not be a weak foolish coward. You should be above the rest. I admired how you’ve always been willing to crawl through whatever muck it took to get what you want. Listen to me and put that Millennium Eye in its proper place.”

Seto did want to turn off the television screen but Gozaburo nearly always called him out on the feeling.

“We must do what must be done. I didn’t raise you to be a coward. Don’t turn off the television! If you put in the Millennium Eye, the removal of your eye isn’t the move of a nut job who lost control of his body but instead the work of a strategist and a wise investment. You know its power, but it will be yours to wield now. Make me proud. Who else could protect you? And I expect you to make the correct choice by the next time you see my face here.”

Gozaburo’s face vanished again. Seto sat in the silence for a while. Part of the towel in his hand was tinted with his blood.

Eventually Seto stood and he began to walk back through the hallways to his bedroom. At times like this, the size of this house was far too vast. Lost at sea. Seto hadn’t yet decided what to do. He was considering staging the loss of his eye as some kind of accident.

He returned to his private bathroom and turned on the light above the mirror. He removed the towel and he peered into his own face. There was a tired sagging beneath his intact eye. The other side was beginning to flush with dark bruising like berries beneath the skin. His eyelids hung pathetically over the empty socket and Seto realized they’d been intentionally nicked and blood was seeping from them. Keeping his fingers as precise and careful as he could, he tugged apart his tattered eyelids. What was inside of himself? He leaned towards the mirror and he peered into the hole of himself. He saw his own flesh. He thought he saw a tiny cemetery there.

Chapter 11

There was a memory cupped in Mokuba’s hands from many years ago, from when he and his older brother had been kept at a boys’ home (an orphanage). Needles of sun were splashed across the earth and under the green light filtered through the maple leaves, Mokuba’s nii-sama had invited a younger Mokuba to the base of a tree trunk pushed to the edge of the yard. He pointed for his little brother to see. A battered and brittle color of lunar mint, the Japanese Moon Moth could no longer fly and was resting here in the shade of the boys’ home’s yard as her place to die.

“Don’t tell anyone else,” his nii-sama had said. The other boys might’ve crushed her if they noticed her.

Mokuba had thought the moth was a very pretty bug, whether her wings were torn or not.

Mokuba, here and now, awoke and now he was inside this too-mammoth cavernous home’s more peaceful kitchen under sugared light. He had a small cup of chocolate pudding and peanut butter spread on sourdough toast for his breakfast and he drank a fruity energy drink. If Nii-sama was here, he would’ve drunk black coffee like his nii-sama.

There wasn’t a sign of Seto here. Mokuba guessed he’d left for work already. Seto couldn’t reach Mokuba where he was but Mokuba could reach Seto, maybe. Seto couldn’t meet Mokuba where he was, but maybe Mokuba could meet Seto. Mokuba’s nii-sama had to see and feel things for them to be real. Sometimes Mokuba would see Seto drifting through the house at night like the colors of an underwater plant.

There was a message for Mokuba from his nii-sama when Mokuba checked his phone. “I will be absent for today. Something urgent has come up. I’ve pushed back the afternoon meeting for tomorrow. Get in touch with security.”

Mokuba fought away the urge to play hooky. He messaged for his chauffeur and bodyguard to get ready to pick him up soon for the day ahead.

Mokuba knew about the tucked away room filled with shelves of videotapes even though Seto had never spoken of it to him. Nii-sama wasn’t here. Mokuba walked to this secret not-secret room now. There were security cameras in the Kaiba manor’s hallways but Mokuba had never been able to find one in the room itself.

Mokuba had done this before a few times. Each time he hoped to discover something. He found the tape labeled with today’s exact date and he slipped it into the VHS player. The television played nothing. Blank and soundless. This time Mokuba decided to leave the tape in the player. Maybe he hoped Seto would notice someone had been in here messing with his tapes or maybe Seto wouldn’t notice. The hallway’s security camera would have tattled on Mokuba every time already anyway.

Mokuba left the room like it was an exit wound and then he left the mansion altogether, a handsome car and trim chauffeur waiting for him on the drive.

In the distance, Mokuba could see it was raining. Probably over the ocean. Silver-blue plumes of cloud spilling out gentle dark like watercolor but only in the distance.

Chapter 12

It's natural for sons to hate their fathers. I hated my own father as well. I think it helps us to strive. We have something to fight.
It was exhilarating to make you grow.
I can live on as the part of yourself you loath. You won't have to hate yourself with me here.
Have you thought about how much bloodshed and murder and horror the nations of Japan and the United States of America threw at each other during World War II? So much ruin and so many families torn apart. And then the Americans stayed in our homes and reigned in our government like a dog on a leash. And then suddenly America and Japan were the best of friends! Great allies in this world! And America pardoned and took in those "mad scientists" from Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany who'd done so many terrible inhuman things but discovered things worth discovering and worth taking. Do you know why? Because there was a new powerful enemy to America: the Soviet Union. That's the truth about "friendship." That's the truth about war. It's all just about winning the game.

Chapter 13

Seto waited under the morning trees behind the thickest trunk near the corner of the street. He was smoking a cigarette, something to make the static of his mind more swimmy. There were a few old scars like coins on his shoulder hidden beneath his clothing where, when he was younger, Gozaburo had snuffed out the hot ash of his cigar – this younger Seto had spoken out of line or this younger Seto had given Gozaburo a bad look.

Seto was waiting to be picked up. The employee’s name was Isono. The hiring process had been extensive in its research. The candidates’ backgrounds were scoured over and for the top applicants, two private eyes had been hired to spy on them until things felt clear. And Isono was hired.

Seto heard a vehicle pull up and come to a stop and he peaked out to check. Isono with his crisp black hair and his dark sunglasses stepped out from the driver’s seat of the black car with its tinted windows smudged with the world. He saw Isono carrying the small plastic shopping bag from a convenience store. Seto put out a hand to indicate where he was but he wasn’t intending to show Isono his punctured face.

“The bag,” Seto said, and he felt the soft weight of the bag’s loops fall into his open palm. Seto put out his cigarette and then fished into the bag and pulled out what he needed. He flushed his socket with stinging medical spirit. He pulled the white eyepatch over the cherry-flesh pit in his face, secured the strings and its placement, and only then did he step out to reveal what he was to Isono.

Seto held the bag back out to Isono, saying, “No questions.”

“Yes, Seto-sama,” Isono said as he retrieved the bag back.

Seto began to walk to the car parked at the edge of the road, saying, “Drive me across the Kurushima Kaikyō Bridge, as we discussed.”

“Yes, of course, Seto-sama,” Isono said.

Seto let himself into the backseat of the car before Isono had a chance to open any door for him. When Isono set himself back into the driver’s seat, Seto said, “Close the partition.”

And Isono did. And Seto sat in the backseat where he couldn’t be seen as Isono drove onward. It would be a long drive. Seto wouldn’t be home for at least another day and he’d have to push the schedules back further. Seto lay down across the backseats as best he could and felt the chamber of his body like lead, like charcoal. Even now, he kept the Millennium Rod near.

Several hours into the drive, Seto felt that weakness of the human body that was hunger and he tapped on the partition as a request for Isono to lower it and Isono did so. “Stop at the next shop which has food and drinks,” Seto said to him.

And Isono obeyed, pulling into the lot of a small local grocery store with a smooth teal roof. Seto wanted to stretch his body. What kind of coward would he be to hide away this whole trip? And so Seto stepped out and walked into the store with Isono trailing him.

A gentle pop song bubbled from the ceiling’s speakers and the linoleum floors reminded Seto of a deeper more innocent past. Under the bleach-white light, Seto found canned iced coffee and protein bars to buy. He saw Isono behind him with his own selection of bottled iced tea and crackers and beef jerky. Seto liked how Isono kept a stoic face. He liked how Isono didn’t ask questions even with his body language.

After making their separate purchases, Seto walked back outside and to the car and the crystal sky was cut into pieces by electric wires. Isono returned to his seat and he drove Seto onwards again, on and on, the partition between them shut again.

Perhaps Seto should have visited a back-alley doctor first to stave off infection and get himself looking more intact. The task that visited his mind first had him request visiting the vast bridge over a space of ocean first, and he wanted to get rid of it first. Get rid of it as soon as he could but as thoroughly and unseen as he could.

Driving and driving. Seto went to pee when Isono stopped to refuel the car at a gas station. And driving again.

Through the tinted windows, the ocean looked like blue meat, ridges of foamy fat sliding over. The elegant arches of the bridge fell into view and the car was moving over the water. They passed under one grand arch and then another and another. And then Seto lowered the window of his left side and he reached into the depth of his pocket --- his fingers found the Millennium Eye. He wanted to be discreet but he hated having to touch it, smooth and warm with his own heat.

And in the moment he began to launch the Millennium Eye from his hand and into the deep saltwater, like phantoms, images surged over this vision.

Mokuba saying, “I love you.”

The real Yugi saying, “I love you.”

The Other Yugi saying, “I love you.”

Gozaburo alive and saying, “I love you.”

Stop. Stop. No. Don’t tell me that.

It was only an instant. Maybe he hadn’t seen it at all. But the Millennium Eye was gone from his hand. Seto’s lone eye searched over the car’s cavity but it wasn’t there. He had to have thrown it, hallucination be damned. He could smell the sea.

After the car crossed the bridge, Seto tapped on the partition again for Isono to lower it. “We can stop off the main road before turning back."

Isono found a small park with wooden benches and a vacant playground, a vivid red slide and spring trees beyond and tiny clover flowers in the grass. Seto sat on one of the benches and gestured for Isono to sit at the other end.

“You’ll take me to that doctor after this. You can drop me off and go home after that. But I intend to be proactive about the Ghouls. I would hope the security department’s been looking into them.” Seto’s voice was harsh and not kind.

“Of course, Seto-sama,” Isono said to him.

“The Ghouls won’t be ambushing us – we’ll be ambushing the Ghouls. I want your team and the security department as a whole to work on locating the higher ranking members of the Ghouls and approaching them with the muscle to back yourselves up. I’ll face them head-on, but they’re not going to be the ones calling the shots. Perhaps we can make a deal.”

“Understood. I hope you can stay safe and ahead of this. I’ll do my best to keep you informed, Seto-sama,” Isono said.

Seto felt himself grimace a hint. He hated that parental tone, even if it was barely there.

“I’m going to take a walk, and then we’ll go back,” Seto said as he stood.

“Of course,” Isono said, standing as well.

The playground had a woodchip floor. Seto heard some squirrels chattering in the trees for a moment. A bird darted through the air. The sun was low and a sunset would advance in not all too long. Seto found the cigarette from that morning, not quite used up, and he smoked the last of it. He knew he should probably call Mokuba. He’d had several messages left from various people on his phone. A mother and her two young children had walked into the park now, the mother tenderly holding on to one of the children’s hands. It was time to go.

Seto gestured at Isono again. Seto put out his cigarette butt and tossed it on the cement, and Isono and Seto enclosed themselves in the car again and went on their way, the many hours it would take to return to Domino City.

The road went on and on.

Chapter 14

This man with tan skin and golden earrings and a thick turban on his head existed the way a sparkle existed. If not a sparkle, then ultraviolet light, shining unseen by most human beings. This man, if he could still be called a true man, was named “Shadi.” His name used to be Shadi Shin but he’d lost even that part of himself now. He couldn’t remember if he’d been truly born to Horakhty the Mother and Zorc the Father but he had been their son for as long as he could remember. He wasn’t allowed to feel anger or loneliness.

The power of the Millennium Items could be like wildfire. Shadi had lost the Millennium Ring at the same time he’d lost his name Shin. At the same time he lost many things. When Shadi followed the will of his mother and his father and the Millennium Items and the steady heartbeat path of destiny’s river, he gave away the Millennium Key and Millennium Scales and this time he could keep an eye on those fires so that only those souls might risk being consumed.

The new young bearer of the Millennium Key had a fractured soul room himself. One time, when Shadi had intervened another time to control the wildfire of that fiery shard of soul that had inserted itself into another person’s soul room with the Key, that young shard of soul who wanted to be a full person asked Shadi, “What are you?”

The piece of soul asking Shadi this question was only a bit more than a year old and so profoundly filled with hatred and the imagery of him was still that of an eleven-year-old child, that image no different than the completed bearer of the Millennium Key.

It felt like a pocket outside of destiny.

And Shadi said to the boy, “I’m like a vanishing rapid sparkle just as you feel like a shadow.”

“Shut up! You don’t know a thing about me!”

The boy almost began to tear into this soul space again. (Whose soul? It didn’t really matter to either of them.) Shadi appeared next to him in the void to make the gentle tap on top of his head to send him back to the fractured soul room of the Millennium Key’s bearer.

“You have no right to train me like an animal!” the boy screamed, the steel edge of his voice enough to slow down Shadi to hear his whole line. Despite this pause, Shadi then sent the boy away. Once he was gone, Shadi left the stranger’s soul room himself.

Shadi and Ishtar family had once been Tomb Guardians of the Pharaoh together but that was a long long time ago now. Shadi thought there had been his own family at some time, but his mother was Horakhty and his father was Zorc.

The Ishtars, back then, time like opaline haze, had taken the Millennium Rod and the Millennium Necklace and various precious scrolls and created their own secret den in the ground. Those two precious Millennium Items were eventually stolen from them.

But fate had a role for them, even then.

Shadi touched the smooth edge of the Millennium Necklace.

He’d obtained it when he played a shadow game with a man named Gozaburo Kaiba. What connects and contains everything in the end has always been death. It had never contained Shadi.

Shadi perhaps like a soul shard of Shadi Shin. He didn’t know.