Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Despite What You Might Think... ❯ What ( Chapter 2 )

Despite what you might think…

WHAT

Dedicated to Meena, the Meaner, whom, though not a Yu-Gi-Oh fan, is a wonderful scenario consultant and an absolutely frustrating beta.

AN: The second chapter. I wonder if I'm living up to standards. Anyways, Enjoy.

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What the hell had she been thinking? Damn it! The question more likely was: had she been thinking? If this was the general effect Seto Kaiba was going to have on her, the farther away from him she stayed, the better. No, rephrase that, the farther away she was from him and anything that had to do with him, the better. She turned and stormed into the Dance room. So what if she didn't have her song? There had to be some music in there she could use. For God's sake, it was a Dance room. What was dance all about anyways?

'And what is first period?' a logical voice in the back of her mind asked. Home Room. 'Oh.' It shut up. Anzu shook her head wondering why it was exactly that she had voices in her head. Who was she? Yugi?

Anzu had permission to be in the Dance room throughout the period. Besides, Bakura had been in class. He would definitely answer for her during role-call. She smiled when she saw a box of CDs near the sound system. Ms. Singh had been in school this morning. Sitting down, she began shifting through titles. Finally, she found something she liked: Dave Koz's "The Dance".

How fitting. The songs were smooth and light, and tempo would work perfectly for her. She needed to vent a little frustration whose source she was unsure of confronting but she wasn't going to think about it now. Now, she was going to dance.

She shed her jacket and shoes and un-tucked her shirt before leaving the sound booth for the Dance floor.

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Seto Kaiba staked away from the classroom and the shamelessly curious faces of his classmates, not caring whether or not he would be late for his first period. He needed to contemplate what he had just witnessed.

What had all of that been about? Apparently, someone had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Or, perhaps, she hadn't gotten up at all, like him. Still, Anzu Mazaki was an enigma. An enigma in a bad mood, at that. As he made his back to whence he came, more and more questions popped up in his head.

Why had she stood up for him? How on Earth had she gotten all that information about him? How could she possibly know his parents were dead? What else did she know?

The last question made the most impact. What did she know about him?

She knew about him running Kaiba Corp. And she thought that he…cared. Of course, she did. He had given her license to say that he did. How could he have been so stupid? What on Earth had possessed him?

In an effort to clear his head, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the front wall of the school. When he opened his eyes, it was to see Yugi and the Mutt heading his way. Not in the mood to deal with the blonde's attitude this morning, he made a detour. He walked down the halls, ignoring the noise of the students around him. He had to find out what she knew.

He rounded a corner and stopped. There were only two doors on this corridor. It took him a while to realise exactly where he was. He was accustomed to entering this corridor from the other end so that the windows he was now facing were behind him but there was no mistaking it, this was the hallway that separated the Dance room and the Gym. He was about to turn away but a stray note wafted out of the slightly ajar doorway on his right: the Dance room.

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This was what Anzu lived for: motion and sound. Every thing on Earth, she thought, could be expressed in dance; every emotion, every message - no matter how harsh - was made beautiful in dance. Like all other forms of art - literature, music, painting, poetry - dance was an addictive, omnipotent form of intoxication. If ever Anzu were asked if she had ever gotten high, she'd have to say yes.

Light on her feet and acutely aware of the placing of everything (which was really nothing) that was in the room, she closed her eyes and allowed the music to catch her in it's tide. Already having surrendered to seductive rhythms of "Surrender" she started working her way through"Together Again", she found it to be one of the easiest things she'd ever done.

Somewhere in the middle of the song she could have thought she heard a door open but paid it no mind. She continued with her movements in time with the saxophone. A few bars later, she closed her eyes when she was practically bending over backwards for a rather sinewy move before executing a perfect back flip. Gymnastics was fun every now and then, she thought as she kept moving.

Half of a minute later, before she launched herself into a spin, she heard something tip over and crash. Her eyes snapped open and she groaned as she hit the floor ungracefully. Jesus, she must look a fool.

What was it, Fate's Play with Anzu day? Of all the people that had to come barging in, it just had to be Seto Kaiba. Well, at least she wasn't alone in her misery. He wasn't in any better condition considering that he was tangled up in a folding metal chair on the floor. His attempts to rid himself of it looked very ungainly.

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Seto had recognised the music as he drew nearer to the dance room. Dave Koz, of course. Wondering who would be dancing to some of his favourite melodies, he entered quietly, so as to not disturb whomever it was. Only a few lights were in use and shadows lined the walls. He found himself incalculably thankful for them and his ability to dissolve into their depths when he set eyes on her.

He was getting sick of this. Fate was playing games and he was the unwilling pawn. He had heard that she danced but had never really considered it much. It was one of the simple facts of life, just like he was a boy, Anzu was a girl, and Wheeler was a Chihuahua. Now, here he was, watching her, when the last thing he thought he needed was to be near her.

Something about her made his reflexes flee, he reasoned. Else, he wouldn't be standing here, his eyes fixated on her form as she moved. Every cell in his brain was screaming "GET OUT NOW!" but every other cell in his treacherous body was completely unresponsive. Normally, if he ever found himself confronted by someone he had no compulsion to converse or co-exist with, he left.

Currently, though lacking the afore mentioned compulsion, he was still there, silently cursing himself for drinking in every little detail about her. Everything, from the way she was able to close her eyes and know where to move with total ease across the floor to the pure liquidity of her motion. His eyes traversed the lines of her profile - moving though it was - and he noted that without the ridiculous pink jacket and blue bow, she looked reasonable; more mature.

More than reasonable, the purely physical, male side of his brain argued. Anzu in a plain white shirt with the sleeves folded up to her elbows and an extra button or two undone, the regulation knee-length blue pleated school skirt and socks was an appealing kind of cute. Twirling around and showing off her already obvious femininity with moves like the current spins she was executing made her attractive - in every sense of the word.

Suddenly, she bent over backwards and Seto felt sure she would see him. When he saw that her eyes were closed, he breathed. He stared at her as she moved and considered for a moment that maybe; he hadn't found himself here by accident. He trusted his sub-conscious as far as he could throw Japan. After all, hadn't it been responsible for him calling her?

She did a back flip and the male in him piped up again. He felt like he had been hit physically. Damn, she was gorgeous. Those black tights really did something for her legs. And she moved like water.

Why was she wearing tights? He mentally groaned. She looked about ready to spin again and he smirked inwardly. The pleats on that skirt wouldn't stay down when she did. Then, just as suddenly, he snapped out of it.

What the hell was wrong with him? What was he thinking? No, question was: was he thinking at all? Anzu Mazaki? He realised that he needed to get out of there…and soon. Still a part of him protested. He needed to talk to her didn't he? This was the perfect time. No one would care if he wasn't in Home Room.

He took one step to the right, heading in the direction of the door. His fatal mistake. Somehow, a chair he hadn't noticed when he walked in appeared beside him and before he had time to steady himself, he crashed to the ground in a twisted heap. Well, so much for not getting her attention.

He heard a thump and craned his neck around to see that she, too, had fallen. All grace had flown out the window and she was in heap that, no doubt, resembled his own, albeit she didn't have a chair hanging off her legs. He almost smiled. Misery loves company.

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The two struggled to regain their footing. Anzu managed this before Kaiba and stood, watching him disengage from the chair. She made no move to help. She doubted people like him ever took help, freely given. Probably looked at it as charity.

And, besides, it wasn't everyday that one got to the rare chance to watch Seto Kaiba make a fool out of himself. As she watched, Anzu thought of it as a bit of payment and a bit of revenge for this morning. After all, he had probably listened to everything she had said from behind the door and never made a single move to help. What was her motivation to help him?

He rose to his feet, having finally divested himself from the offending chair. He stood up and straightened his apparel. When he concluded the he had recaptured enough of his fleeing dignity to look at the girl standing before him, he tore his glare away from the offending chair. Why was it that the lights always seemed so much brighter when one was the centre of attention?

Trying to look impassive, he looked at her. Her hair was bit untidy from her fall, her cheeks flushed from exertion and her breathing heavy - indicating exercise. This was not the best time for him to be noticing such things, however.

Maybe it was just her, but she seemed to find Seto Kaiba in worse condition every time she saw him. His hair was just plain messy and, if her eyes weren't deceiving her, there was the slightest twinge of pink on his high cheeks. Of course, he would never display any emotion to match his colouring. Not to her. Anzu waited for the entirety of thirty seconds before she spoke.

"What?" she asked. "What are you doing here?" she rectified, seeing that the one word didn't make much sense.

What was he doing here? Good question. He asked himself and realised that any answer he could come up with sounded totally ridiculous. He was: a) In the Dance room - a place he had no business being in - and b) Watching her. True, he had thought of clearing up a few things but he had no clue what he wanted to say to her.

Was he just going to stand there? Did he suddenly go dumb? In case he hadn't noticed, it wasn't helping to alleviate an already awkward situation. In fact, it made it all the more terrible because it forced them to stay in each other's company for a protracted period of time - something she personally didn't favour at that moment. She shifted her feet and was about to put an end to their torture when he spoke.

He realised she was getting impatient. Before she could begin shouting, her raised his index finger and said, "I can come back later."

Without waiting for an answer he strode purposefully out of the door. She simply stared after him.

"Damn."

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Three more days and school would be out completely - over for a month and a half. The spring holidays were about to start. Anzu was the happiest she had been all day. The final bell rang and signalled the last of the days she really needed to be in school. Tomorrow and Friday were going to be spent milling around classrooms and waiting for Finals results to come out once more.

She cheerfully gathered her things and smiled at the prospect of getting home. Despite the rain that poured outside, she walked right out the school building and into the welcoming downpour. She made her way down the road, weaving in and out of fellow pedestrians and stealing what shelter she could from their overlapping umbrellas.

Anzu managed not to think about the holiday assignments she had to get working on, the fact that she would not see Yugi, Joey or Tristan for a month and a half, the fact that she felt left-out from their pre-travel excitement, even what had happened yesterday and that morning. In fact, as she turned off the main road onto the residential streets of East Domino, Seto Kaiba and the mixed emotions he invoked were the farthest things from her mind.

That was, until the limo pulled up next to her and the figure in the white trench coat appeared next to her, an umbrella in hand, shielding her from the rain.

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Seto Kaiba had spent most of the remainder of the school day avoiding Anzu Mazaki. While this was easy physically, mentally it was one of the hardest things he'd tried to do in a very long while. Try as he might, he was unable to keep as firm a grip on his mind's leash as usual. It seemed to have penchant for the seat one back, one to the right.

He had spent most of his day thinking about what he had heard that morning. Where did she get her information? What was she doing with all of that knowledge about him? What did he care? As the bell rang, he got up from his seat and his head - perfidious as it was - turned towards her. She was smiling as she packed. Seto scowled. Misery loved company but he was all alone.

Before he started packing, Seto pressed nine on his cell phone. His limo would be waiting for him by the time he got out of the building. He passed Anzu as she made her way out into the rain, without a coat or an umbrella. She stepped into the rain, oblivious. He turned away from her, not wanting to relive yesterday's happenings. He was not going to loose more sleep tonight.

As soon as he was seated, he shed his school jacket. The shirt and pants were ok but the tight-necked, high-collared jacket was unbearable. Besides, Mokuba said it made his head look big. He pulled on one of his white trench coats over his white shirt and blue pants. Lately, since he had taken to going straight to the office after school, he was found in this garb more and more often. The trench coat was not his multi-angular, sleeveless new one but a more comfortable, long-sleeved, plain white version of the old blue one.

Having no homework, he gazed out of the window, bored. The passing scenery was the same always. When his driver took a turn off of the main road and onto a quieter - more residential street, he blinked. He didn't know this road. Then again, he hadn't always been very attentive about the route he took to Kaiba Corp once it got him there. He cleared his throat and the driver, having been in his service since before Seto could remember, answered his unspoken question.

"It avoids the traffic jam at the 915 intersection, sir." Seto simply nodded and turned to stare out of the window once again. That was when he saw her. She was walking slowly down the pavement. The rain was beating against her frame yet she took no notice. He frowned slightly when he saw her shiver although she seemed not to notice herself. Before he processed what he was doing, he had ordered the driver to pull over.

That was how he found himself staring down at an equally shocked Anzu Mazaki in the middle of the pavement, on a rainy day, in the middle of April.

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She stared up at him and for once, was able to see something resembling emotion in his blue eyes. He was as surprised as she was and he was uncertain. 'Uncertain about what?' she wondered.

He stared down at her; attempting to look impassive and knowing he was failing miserably. He had so many questions for her but had no idea how the hell to put them over. He couldn't simply just ask her - they weren't friends, they weren't even acquaintances. He knew what she had said that morning but that wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

She was the first to speak. His staring at her was becoming unnerving and she was simply getting wetter and wetter by the moment. She hadn't minded getting wet in the first place but now that she was no longer on the move, the cold was starting to seep into her skin. She was going to shiver; she knew it.

"What?" she challenged verbally. It was probably the second time she had spoken to him since the day on top of the tower at Duellist Kingdom. Yesterday, she had simply glared away his offer. Prior to that, everything she had said had either been general comments directed at a group he was standing with or simply something into the air. Everything except this morning but she tried to block that from her mind. He continued to stare down at her for some time before opening his lips, only somewhat and murmuring:

"Where do you live?" that took her by surprise. Where did she live? What business of his was it anyway?

"Why?" she asked. Her chin lifted ever so slightly. It wasn't, on her part, an act of superiority but an act of defiance and, well, self-defence. She was going to fight this to the end. Seto Kaiba and - God - his good looks were not going to beat her.

"How else am I supposed to know where to get my driver to drop you off?" he countered.

"Who said I'd accept?"

"Look, you are soaked and you're shivering," he replied. This little game of hers was getting on his nerves. She was going to accept the ride. He was damned if he spent another night worried about her. It's not that he cared or anything, his sub-conscious simply insisted. "You can either stand here, freeze some more during this pointless conversation and develop severe hypothermia or you can get in the limo. Your choice."

She knew she was defeated. She didn't stand a chance anyhow. Had he stayed a moment longer yesterday, she might have relented. Today, she was giving in. He put up an argument and that was all it took. She was sick of rain.

Sighing heavily, she walked past him and into the limo. The raised eyebrows of the driver were not unnoticed. Great. Now she felt even more self-conscious. What? Didn't he pick up random girls from the street and offer to drop them home everyday? She averted her eyes and shifted down the seat a bit to the next window, as far away from his seat as possible.

Anzu saw the driver turn his head and heard faint mumblings through the beating of rain on the limo's roof. The driver nodded and slim hips appeared in her peripheral vision before being replaced be the profile of Seto Kaiba. The door shut and she was trapped. Suddenly, she asked herself why she had even agreed to this? What was she thinking accepting this ride? She groaned inwardly as the limo drove off.

Seto was looking and not looking at her. He was trying to get the wording to his questions right. He hadn't ever - if his memory served him correctly - had a normal conversation with the girl in his car. She had told him off once and then there was that strange single comment thing this morning that he was sure didn't qualify as a conversation however, apart from that, he was sure he hadn't talked to her. Seto was thinking of a way to get his first question into the air when Anzu beat him to the punch.

"What are you doing this for?" she asked. "I mean, it's not like you owe me anything and I doubt you simply pick up random girls from the street and offer to drive them home."

"I don't but I have some questions for you. About this morning," he said, business-like. "Firstly, how do you presume to know so much about me? Most of what I heard could have been gained from the local gossip-mill. Besides, do you even know if any of it is true?"

At least his tone wasn't as angry as Anzu had expected it to be. Still, it wasn't the tone but what he said that got her riled. She wasn't known to be short tempered but Kaiba affected her strangely.

"I don't presume to know anything. I simply stated the facts. I am not and never have been one for gossip, Kaiba, so you can just shove it. Most of what I said is true anyway, and you know it." she sat back and stared out of the window. Because of the tint, she could see both her reflection and Kaiba's. He looked thoughtful. Not angry.

"So," he said, after a time, "you're saying that you know for a fact my parents are dead?"

"Yes. I heard it a long time ago from a very reliable source."

"And you know for a fact that I own and manage Kaiba Corp along with doing school work? You also know that I personally develop the new gaming systems - as a fact?" he questioned.

"Considering that you've spent the majority of the past year and half testing out your new gadgets on my best friends; making speeches about this or that new design you came up with, yes." She was almost mocking him. Something about her being sardonic made this all the more interesting.

"It's also a fact that Mokuba is one of the few people I have ever loved?" There was no need for an explanation as she said, "Yes."

When he spoke again, his voice was so much quieter than usual; she had to strain to hear it over the pounding rain.

"And you know that it is a fact that one of the people I care about, other than Mokuba, is you?"

She looked at him then, turning completely to face him on the seat. The white made him look younger and older at the same time. She knew that if he had been there long enough, this would have come up. She had known it from the time he started quoting 'facts'. She steeled herself, opened her mouth, and lied.

"No, it just got them to shut up." She added, so as to not burn the bridge before her if ever she needed it again, "The truth in that is all yours to decide."

Seto listened intently as she finished. It was his to decide. But he wasn't going to. She was, after all, the Chihuahua's best friend. He decided he was going to ignore the pang in his chest when she said no. He was simply going to drop her home and, like she seemed to be doing, ignore the fact that this morning ever happened. It would be best for both of them.

Anzu returned to staring out of the window as he took to staring straight ahead. That was, until he noticed the amused look on his driver's face. Scowling, he too, gazed out of his window. He noticed, as he watched, that she smelt of rain.

When the limo pulled to a stop in front of a tall and none too inexpensive apartment complex, Seto looked away from the lines on the asphalt and up at Anzu.

She opened the door. Before fully stepping out although her back remained turned away from him for her own comfort, she said, "Thank you."

Because she was not looking at him he found it easier to reply with, "Likewise."

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When the door closed, he threw his head back against the seat and groaned out loud. His driver simply smirked.

As the limo drove away, Anzu stared after it for a few moments before turning towards her home.

Once again, they both found themselves thinking, "Despite what you might think, you don't care."

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AN: According to sources, the main holiday for the Japanese is not summer but Spring. It's the longest holiday they have (I think about two moths) as opposed to our two-month summer vacation. It makes sense considering the weather there at that time of year is at it's best. It also facilitates my constant downpour.

Thank you to everyone who took time to review this story. I'll try to get the third (and fourth?) chapter up before my birthday (August 28th). Hope you enjoyed.

Reviews, Flames, Comments and Criticism are all welcome.

Disclaimer: "Surrender" and "Together Again" are from the album, "The Dance" which belongs to Dave Koz et al. Titles are used without permission. While I'm at it, I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its characters. Fan fiction relates to something about "Fair Use Laws" or the other.