InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Luck of the Draw ❯ Fourth Gear ( Chapter 4 )

They were halfway to the door that would lead them on deck when Kagome stopped short. After a beat, Kaiba paused to give her a look. “What is it now, Higurashi?”

“It’s just,” Kagome pursed her lips and lowered her voice, “someone was bold enough to try and grab me, and Souta and Mokuba already nearly got kidnapped.” 

“And how far do you think they would get? We’re seven thousand feet in the air, Higurashi,” Kaiba said with a scoff, brow furrowed just slightly, “and Roland’s security-” 

“Sucks. And even if they didn’t, they don’t know how to deal with demons or magic,” she interrupted, setting a hand on her hip and giving him a pointed look. “But I do.”

His eyes narrowed slightly and Kagome saw the way his lips thinned as he looked her over, judging and analytical. After a moment, he turned with a sigh. “Do what you like, Higurashi. But I’m not postponing this duel any longer.”

Well, Kagome thought, that was probably the closest she would get to any admission that she might have a point. She rolled her eyes at his back as he sauntered away but a little smile tugged at her lips as she called after him. “I’m just going to go check on them. I’ll come join you after I make sure they’re safe.”

Kaiba replied with a grunt. Kagome suspected that was more acknowledgement than he usually offered people.

Luckily, Souta and Mokuba were perfectly safe and content when she found them. Holed up in Mokuba’s room, gushing over figurines and cards, they were blissfully unaware that anything had even happened. They barely took a breath from their chatter to greet her when she poked her head in, which made her oddly giddy in a way.

“Looks like you guys are still having fun,” she said with a grin, trying not to be obvious in the way she scanned the room as she entered.

“Oh, yeah we are,” Mokuba agreed before turning to grin at her. “Is it time for my brother’s duel?”

Reminded of that still lingering issue, Kagome strained to smile in turn. “No, not yet.”

The pair remained quiet and Kagome could see the way their expressions, bright and carefree like the children they were supposed to be only moments ago, slowly sobered. They knew who else still had yet to duel.

With a clap of her hands to distract from the uneasy silence, she forced a smile just a bit wider. “It’s late though. Why don’t you guys order some snacks from the kitchen and watch the duels on screen for now?”

“Well, okay,” Mokuba agreed, reaching over the table for something they’d been playing with at her entrance. “But I’m coming up for Seto’s duel!”

Kagome giggled, tickled by the declaration. Kaiba was very lucky to have someone so devoted to him. “Okay, but make sure you get that Roland guy to walk you up.”

She turned to leave them to their devices at that, glad to see them steadily refocusing on whatever they’d been working on before her interruption. At the door, she paused, staring down at the lock for a long moment, her hand drifting to her coat pocket. She never thought she’d be so happy for their grandfather’s paranoid superstitions. The man had practically forced the small handful of ofuda on her before they’d left. She’d rolled her eyes and insisted they wouldn’t need it but taken it to please him nonetheless.

The paper crinkled beneath her fingertips as she slid one out. She might not have had a bow, but with the Shikon gone and her power no longer locked away, channeling it was only difficult for a lack of proper training at least. Grandpa’s ofuda might have been useless in his own hands, but not hers. Little wisps of energy danced from her fingertips as she smoothed it over the wall beside the door.

“Ofuda, sis?” Souta’s voice questioned just behind her.

Kagome flinched, almost having hoped they wouldn’t notice. She should have known Souta would. She pressed the little token to the wall a bit harder than she meant to before glancing over her shoulder at them. “Grandpa insisted I take them before we left. Can’t be too careful, right?”

Mokuba only offered a shrug and a distracted sound of agreement, but Souta stared hard at her. A beat later, he nodded slowly, a quiet confirmation of understanding that both relieved her and made her heart ache.

When she shut the door behind her she lingered until she heard the click of the lock before turning to stalk towards the upper deck. The halls were quiet, devoid of life beyond a few staff who made themselves scarce. Everyone was likely already spectating the duel. Kagome wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by the quiet or unnerved by it.

She opened the door to a face full of dark magic cloaking the arena.

The door slammed shut loudly and several people turned to look at the noise. She’d flung it closed perhaps a bit too harshly, but there were only so many barriers between whatever was happening and the children still inside. Kagome pursed her lips and looked around. The blonde woman -Kaiba had called her Kujaku- looked a bit shaken, but otherwise unharmed.

There was a weird orb floating in the sky though.

‘Huh.’ Kagome blinked at the sight of it. Something about it was unsettling. It felt familiar. Its appearance was unassuming despite its grand size, but it thrummed with what she could only describe as power. Even Kaiba didn’t take his eyes off the sight it made as she strode up to stand beside him.

He did notice her presence though, because after a moment he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear. “The power of a God Card and they haven’t even fully woken it.”

Kagome bit her lip. She’d never questioned their power. It was quite the opposite, really. She was leery because she very much believed they had power.

Then Marik -or whatever demon had possessed the real one- began chanting. Kagome didn’t understand a lick of it, but she didn’t have to. Every nerve in her body suddenly flared to life. She took a step back, not noticing the way her hand grasped at the edge of Kaiba’s coat.

The duel quite promptly went to hell.

She could see Kujaku’s form, strung up against a stone slab that shouldn’t have been real enough to do that as the sphere that hovered over them slowly opened. The other group, clearly friends, tried to demand Kaiba stop the duel, to insist that the woman was in danger. Despite his callous response that he wanted to see the true power of the god card, Kagome knew that it was because it didn’t matter. This battle wouldn’t stop whether he declared the duel over or not. He’d tried that once back at the docks and there had only been a touch of magic involved then compared to this.

Anzu Mazaki, the only one of the group Kagome had even spoken to, suddenly shrieked. “Jou! What are you doing?!”

The blond, Jou, had leapt onto the platform and run to Kujaku. Kagome felt her throat tighten at the way he tugged at the magic that imprisoned her, the desperation and the fear in both their expressions. Marik gave a bark of laughter at their effort and then the god spirit opened its maw.

She was running before she’d really thought about it.

Kaiba didn’t catch her this time and the duelist who’d defeated her brother, Yugi, apparently had the same idea. He leapt in front of the pair, arms spread wide to shield his friends from what would have surely been their demise. Kagome slid into place at his back, ofuda in hand, just in time.

The flames burst around them in a crackling mess of fire, dark magic, and purification.

Just like that the duel was over. The rest of them rushed the platform, hurrying to check them all over and fussing over a still slightly rattled Mai Kujaku. For a moment she saw herself, rushing onto the battlefield with her laughably ill-prepared first aid kid to fuss over her own friends.

"That bastard," Jou hissed. "You alright, Mai?"

"Oh, Ryou," Anzu fussed, "did you get hit too? Your hand is burnt."

Kagome jolted back to the present when Yugi set a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

He spoke low, his voice deep, a stark contrast to the bright excitable boy she’d seen chatting with his friends over the dinner table not too long ago. He was different. This close, Kagome realized that he too had some form of spirit possessing him. At least this one didn’t seem malevolent.

Unfortunately, it seemed she need not speak that devil’s name to call his attention. Marik interrupted her musings when he stalked over to them, insisting something about a ‘penalty game’ and Kagome snapped. “Take your win and sit down before I actually convince Kaiba-kun to get me a damn bow!”

Kaiba shot her a scowl and she could already imagine the complaints about her ‘presuming to tell him what to do’. But it seemed to do the trick. Marik hesitated a beat before trying to take a step towards her. For as thrown as the others seemed to be by the exchange, Yugi and Jou immediately flanked her.

But it was Kaiba who stepped in front of her.

Arms crossed and looking bored by the entire affair, he held the other man’s gaze for a long moment. It was an almost eerie repeat of their earlier stare down. After a moment he inclined his head and Kagome imagined the way his eyes likely narrowed. “If you keep causing trouble in my tournament, I might just indulge her.” 

Kagome let out a breath when she heard the slam of the door that announced his departure. Then the next duelist arrived. 

---

Kagome did not like Isis Ishtar. Which, given the sorts of people she’d befriended over the years, was impressive. The woman had barely said five words in Kagome’s presence and they weren’t even to her. To many others, the serene countenance and assurance of fate and destiny that Isis presented might have been comforting. Somehow, despite Kaiba’s attitude, self-assured and egotistical through and through, it was the certainty of the future that Isis insisted on that rankled her. The woman hadn’t seemed to know what to make of her either, but that wasn’t unusual in and of itself. Kagome had long since accepted and grown used to being an oddity.

Perhaps it was because of the company she’d kept for so long, many not terribly different from the CEO, that she was more comfortable with his personality despite knowing the man little over a day. Perhaps it was because Kagome had learned better than to find comfort in being prey to manipulation in the name of fate. To be forced to question whether every choice made was really one of free will or if it had never mattered was not a comfort.

For as much arrogance as Seto Kaiba seemed to possess, at least his was for skills he’d worked at. Not that she would ever tell him that. His ego hardly needed any stroking. Seto Kaiba wasn’t stupid; he was pigheaded and stubborn.

Kagome, however, was just as stubborn, if not more. “You’re really going to let her manipulate you like this?”

“Watch it, Higurashi,” Kaiba warned. “No one determines my future but me, and they certainly don’t manipulate me.”

“I’m sorry, wait- hold up a sec.” Kagome held up a hand, exasperated.

Kaiba looked down at her expectantly, and she took a breath to steady herself. After a moment, she dragged a hand over her face and spoke again, slowly at first.

“Remind me exactly how many people have been kidnapped, possessed by-” she paused to wave a hand “-whatever this weird demon magic is supposed to be, and nearly killed now?”

Kaiba only seemed bored by the recap, right down to the drone of his voice. “And the situations were handled, Higurashi.”

“Handled,” Kagome echoed, dumbfounded. “You call everything that’s happened so far handling it? You still have people who aren’t who they said they were with these...these things with magic.”

He stared down at her and Kagome found herself having to turn from him and take a moment to stave off the building annoyance. She paced a few seconds before realization struck her and she her hands in the air with a sound of frustration.

“And you're about to duel one of them next!” she spun on him, poking him in the chest roughly. “You might have a chip on your shoulder the size of Tokyo Tower, but I don’t want to see you get fried too!”

Kaiba blinked and for a moment his expression seemed torn between offense and bewilderment. It lasted only seconds before the casual arrogance that he seemed to favor took its place.

“That's not going to happen, Higurashi. I only need one card to win,” he scoffed, “and Ishtar will regret ever handing it over to me when I defeat her with her own god card.”

“Oh, come on,” Kagome snapped, patience thinning. “I thought you were supposed to be good at strategy. She's baiting you!”

“As if that will matter,” Kaiba replied, undeterred. “I can’t lose with an Egyptian God in my deck.”

Kagome’s heart ached at the conviction, of the surety possessed only by a man about to march blindly to demise by his own hubris. She studied his expression for a long moment, her throat too tight to utter words she did not have anyway. Of all the things this man held any determination for, not listening seemed to be at the top of the list.

And yet, for all the arrogance he wore, she had seen enough to recognize that familiar glint of desperation buried beneath it. She’d seen too many fight to survive, too much posturing in the face of an unwinnable battle back in feudal era not to recognize it now.

She wasn’t sure whether it made her want to smack him or hug him. It might have been both.

“Don’t put so much trust in the gods, Kaiba-kun,” she finally murmured. “To them, our fates, us- we’re the playing cards.”

Kaiba narrowed his eyes then only scoffed once more. “I make my own fate, Higurashi.”

Then he turned and stalked in the other direction, his quick pace threatening to leave her behind. Despite the clear dismissal, Kagome couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips. 

---

If one were to consult the list of things that annoyed Kaiba -which was admittedly not a particularly short list- reminders of the past would very likely be near the top of it. He had never been particularly fond of dwelling on the past. In fact, he despised it. Thinking about what couldn’t be changed was a foolish waste of time.

The past was just that. It was over. It was done with.

There was no sense in wasting time with what had already happened when it could be invested in a future that could be changed. At least Higurashi had shown that much sense, despite her foolish assumptions of his motivations. He could begrudgingly admit that much to her credit, even if he resented the way she’d stirred memories she couldn’t have known about.

“We’re the playing cards.” Unbidden thoughts of Duelist Kingdom sprang forth, mocking him with the memory of the last time he’d dueled a holder of one of those accursed Millenium Items. She couldn’t have known. It was impossible. But he still couldn’t help but to resent her for stirring memories of the vile events he’d managed to push back, to bury, to forget until that moment.

He might not have believed in Yugi’s foolish heart of the cards, he might have been skeptical of the extent of involvement that magic they prattled about really had, but try as he might he would never forget what Maximillion Pegasus had done.

He would never forget Mokuba's soulless eyes, led on a chain like a dog to greet him, his brother’s terrified image staring at him from the card Pegasus had claimed he’d been trapped in, begging to be rescued.

He would never forget the oppressive atmosphere of that dueling arena, the way his skin prickled, his throat tightened and his mind itched as Pegasus gleefully watched his desperation from the other side.

He would never forget the despair of that loss or the agony that had followed when his soul was ripped from his body. Forgetting might have been possible -even easy after the years spent under Gozaburo- but it was thoughts of his brother being subjected to such pain that haunted his dreams. Mokuba hadn’t seemed any worse for the wear when they’d been reunited. He’d been emotional and clingy and even cried a bit, but he hadn’t seemed like someone who held any memories of the torment he’d endured. And so, not willing to risk stirring memories that his brother might have been fortunate enough to have buried, Kaiba never brought it up. 

It was the past now, after all. It didn’t matter. It would never happen again. He would prove to Higurashi that her fears were unfounded, that if she had to worry about anything it certainly wasn’t him.  

 Seto Kaiba was no one’s playing card. He would prove it to Pegasus, he would prove it to Ishtar, and he would prove it to Yugi. Most importantly, he would prove it to himself.

---

Kaiba would give Higurashi credit for one thing – her read on Isis Ishtar was spot on.

That wasn’t to say he’d needed her warning. It wasn’t as if he didn’t realize the woman had been using him. Ishtar had been quite open about her motivations in giving him Obelisk and encouraging the organization of Battle City, after all. But thinking she could manipulate him had been her mistake from the start. Like many others, she either neglected to remember that Seto Kaiba was far more than just a champion duelist – and sometimes they even seemed to forget that.

Their duel didn’t go quite as planned for either of them but Kaiba certainly wasn’t about to admit to the vision that had him stray from his original plan of destroying Ishtar with her own god card. He would call it a duelist’s instinct if they pressed, or simply say it had been his plan all along, but he certainly wasn’t about to give the nerd herd that kind of fodder for their lectures on destiny and the heart of the cards.

“I told you, Higurashi,” he said as he approached her, “no one decides my fate but me.”

She quirked a little smile at him and he wasn’t sure what to think of the relief in her expression. He was used to fear. He was used to anger. Only Mokuba was ever happy to see him, which was as it should be – even Yugi Mutou and his little cheerleader, ever the pinnacles of the power of friendship, had the sense to be leery of him. Kagome Higurashi, on the other hand, had the nerve to look relieved, as if she’d thought he might fail.

“Now,” he caught her by the elbow to tow her inside. “I believe you still owe me an explanation.” 

And several hours more than he’d anticipated later, he finally had that explanation.

Logic dictated that the girl was mad. Unfortunately, Kaiba was forced to admit, that only left her in good company given the rest of the occupants of his aircraft. Her story was fantastical – ridiculous even. It did, however, explain quite a bit.

It explained why she’d been so oddly unsurprised -if perhaps annoyed- by the supernatural element that had infested his tournament – or, if he were truthful, that his tournament had been designed to draw out. It explained that display at the end of Kujaku’s duel. It explained that look in her eye that had unnerved him so.

Now he knew what it was that made Higurashi differ so much from Yugi’s idealistic little group. She had survived cruelties that innocent little Yugi could only imagine, but he knew all too well. She had seen everything he had changed Kaiba Corp. to put an end to.

She had seen blood. 

She had seen torment. 

She had seen death. 

She had seen war.  

“I kind of envy you a bit, actually,” she said suddenly, “it took me a long time and getting cursed before I found that kind of confidence in who I was.” 

Then she dimmed and Kaiba frowned at the shift in her demeanor. She tugged her legs a bit closer to lean atop her knees, no longer looking at him. Everything about her suddenly seemed small and uncertain. 

“But even now, I still see Kikyo in the mirror sometimes,” she admitted quietly. 

For a moment she looked ready to cry. While Kaiba was no stranger to witnessing tears, their appearance was usually intentional. She showed her weakness too easily, a voice within him hissed. The reflex to mock the display welled within him, the taunt just on the edge of his lips. 

Instead, he scoffed. “And Ishtar had an engraving of my supposed past life. That didn’t mean anything either.” 

Higurashi looked at him with a jerk, her wide-eyed look of confusion suddenly reminding him just how little she actually knew of the situation. 

“The past is just that, Higurashi,” he continued, “and my only concern is the here and now.” 

She giggled at that. Somehow, it was preferable to the threat of tears. The last thing he needed was a girl to be seen fleeing his room crying in the middle of the night. 

“Yeah,” she said, “you’re right.” 

Perhaps he’d spent too much time with Yugi’s group, hearing their lectures, but Kaiba couldn’t help but be a touch surprised by her easy agreement. Perhaps he hadn’t been wrong to think Higurashi at least sensible.

“What you did with Ra earlier,” Kaiba began slowly, looking her over when she turned towards him. “That was the power you fought demons with?” 

“Well, I think so,” she replied simply and lifted a finger to tap her cheek. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work to tell you the truth.”

Well, scratch Higurashi being sensible.

---

The tournament ended much more uneventfully than any of them had expected. Yugi, annoyingly but unsurprisingly, claimed the title of champion. But it was Jonouchi of all people who defeated Marik. Though he wasn’t sure why or how, even months later, Kaiba was inclined to blame Higurashi for that one. 

And Higurashi herself had become an almost obnoxious facet in his life since then. One he could do nothing about.

He certainly couldn’t demand Mokuba to give up the singular friend he’d made when the boy at least wasn’t part of the dweeb patrol. He even had potential to be a part of Kaiba Corp. one day. He’d learned after the fact, once he wasn’t so focused on the tournament, that the boy had a knack for technology and electronics. Higurashi had laughed and said something about Inuyasha’s ‘hostile relationship with appliances’ being the contributing factor to that skill. 

“Mr. Kaiba, there’s a Kagome Higurashi on line 5 for you. She’s really quite insistent, sir.” 

‘Speak of the devil,’ he thought. 

“Kaiba-kun,” she sang, the cheery tone sending an odd sense of dread down his spine. “Why is there a Petite Dragon chewing on my torii gate!?”