Fixation

Chapter 23


Jou was more angry than he should have been after his last time with Seto. The last time he’d been so angry was during his last duel against Kaiba as kids—the way Jou’s efforts had been utterly discounted infuriated him. It was as though Seto was so confident that he was in control of every element of the duel that he didn’t even bother trying to follow Jou’s moves, because he was certain there was no chance anything Jou was capable of could phase him. Seto may have been focused on more entertaining things this time, but he had still brushed aside Jou’s warnings as though they were premonitions of doom coming from a four year old. And Jou was beginning to wish that he had been able to think of any other way to resolve things with Mokuba, just so Seto wouldn’t have to face quite such a damaging wake up call.

Jou had to go back to the mansion after meeting with Seto. He had his wallet and phone, but not his passport, laptop, or clothing, and he couldn’t very well keep Seto’s car. He would have to stay somewhere else tonight, since he was pretty sure he was going to need a bit of a running headstart when Seto realized the full impact of what he’d done.

He was surprised to find the house was largely deserted, but by the time he climbed the stairs to the guest rooms he and Mario had stayed in, he was not surprised to find that his things were gone. On the night stand by the guest bed was a Spanish note saying that Mario had moved their things back to the hotel they had originally planned on staying at, and that Jou’s new room key would be waiting at the front desk. Jou was relieved to know that Mario, at least, took his concerns seriously. He walked away from the mansion, not even glancing at the guards on the gate, and strolled down the affluent street with sprawling, western-style homes and ornate European-style yards and gardens. The luxury homes gradually gave way to normal western-style houses, and then to the smaller, traditional Japanese homes and apartment buildings that he was used to. He had missed walking these streets. In America, the endless suburbs and neighborhoods of LA just blended into the landscape—more walled subdivisions popped up like trees in a forest. Drive around the wall blocking off one small community of stucco-sided homes and you find six more gated entrances and six more endless forests of stucco. Here, each neighborhood felt real and alive, each sidewalk and narrow street felt like home. He wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to feel at home in his own small stucco home again, but he knew he couldn’t stay here.

He wandered back through his old neighborhood, down the streets he had run down as a kid, passed the dumpsters he had hidden behind. By the time he made it to his hotel, his brain had effectively shut down. In his room, he found another note from Mario, this one telling him that Mario had already caught a flight home, and that he would call and check in when he made sure his sister was alright. Jou briefly wondered if it would be better just to get on a plane now, rather than wait to see how Seto coped with the aftermath of Jou’s work this morning. But he was too tired to set up his laptop, much more to set up travel arrangements. He fell asleep on top of the covers with everything except his suit jacket still on.

It turned out he was lucky to get what sleep he could. He woke up to someone pounding on his door in the middle of the night. His watch said that it was two in the morning.

“Who is it?” he called in English, still have asleep.

The voice of a very pissed off Honda yelled over the pounding. Jou couldn’t quite make out what he was yelling.

Jou fumbled with the door lock, threw the door open, and stepped out of the way before the taller man who charge in and tackle him. “Where the hell do you get off fucking with me like that! You get my fucking suspect to talk and then you hook her up with a damn tabloid reporter before you even call me! Hand me the entire fucking investigation and then compromise it beyond all repair! You are such a fuck up, Jounouchi!”

“You’re drunk,” said Jou calmly.

“A little,” Honda admitted, brushing the fact off as though it were irrelevant. “But I think I have the right to a drink or two at the moment! The fucking evening news is going to come out with evidence incriminating that little brat tomorrow and I’m going to have to subpoena it from them! My witness has already given three fucking interviews this afternoon and none of them were to me! How would you feel if you were me?”

Jou shrugged. “I don’t know. Ta be honest, I never really made it beyond traffic and normal patrol stuff. I’ve never been a detective. I imagine that you feel a bit insulted, though.”

“You think?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure you’d follow through… I figured this was the only way I could really force you to do it.”

“Force me?”

Jou nodded. “And force your supervisors to let you. If there’s enough public outcry for a legitimate investigation, they can’t very well stop one, right?”

Honda froze and took several moments to process Jou’s excuse. “Public outcry?”

“Yeah. I figured everybody Mokuba’s likely bought off or threatened is a politician, and they can’t let their public image degrade so much that they look like they’re protecting a serial killer just to advance their own careers. Your superiors are likely going to have the mayor demanding a full investigation before lunch. Plus, I laid out all the pieces for you in advance…”

“You realize you’re going to destroy Seto’s reputation along with Mokuba’s, right? That you might very well destroy Kaiba Corp altogether?”

“Yup I thought about that,” yawned Jou. “Now that you’ve got that off your chest, can I go back to bed?”

“Are you kidding? You’re just going to sleep!”

“I had planned on it, yes. Most people are unconscious at two in the morning.”

Honda leaned backwards, his uneven pupils trying to focus on Jou. “You sounded just like Kaiba, then.”

“Sorry,” Jou mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done!”

Jou thought things through for the hundredth time. Slowly, in case Honda’s vision was a bit blurry, Jou nodded. “One Kaiba’s pretty much like another,” Jou explained. He shoved Honda towards an overstuffed arm chair and collapsed on the bed again. “If you wanna play against a Kaiba, you’ve got to play for keeps. That was one thing all of those duels against Seto taught me—he’ll always throw everything he’s got at an opponent, he’ll never hold back, and he’ll never give in. I never had any hopes of beating him, in a duel or a fight, because I always held back. I was always worried about hurting him or some shit like that. But that was when it was just me in a fist fight or a duel, when there was nothing at stake except my idiot pride or money. I’m not going to do a half-assed job of protecting my friends.”

“You’re willing to destroy an entire company, destroy the only thing your lover as ever cared about, just to win a game?”

“Ah, that’s the problem,” said Jou, curling up with his pillow. “To Mokie it’s a game. Maybe Seto looks at it that way, too. But I ain’t playing any more. Believe me, the news story and getting your witness to talk is just the beginning.”

“You aren’t going to do anything illegal, are you?”

“Nope. Now go to sleep, you’re loud.”

“No,” Honda shook his head. “Get up. There’s a bar down off the lobby, you’re going to come have a drink with me. Tomorrow it might be a conflict of interest, so get your add out of bed.”

Jou reluctantly stood up, found his shoes, and followed Honda out the door. He spent two hours nursing one beer, listening to Honda take his occasional turn on the bar’s karaoke machine, and wondering what the hell was going to happen in the morning.

Morning came sooner than Jou expected. A combination of his cell phone and the blaring sunlight pouring in through the hotel window woke him up, even though he felt like no more than a few seconds had passed since he carried Honda upstairs. Cursing, he pulled the covers up over his head and hoped that whoever was calling would give up. A moment after the phone’s missed call beep, it began to ring again. And then again.

Jou reached a single hand out from under the blankets and pulled his phone under the covers with him. The LCD announced that the Kaiba Mansion was calling. Jou held his breath for a moment, then opened his phone. Time to find out just how much damage he’d done so far, and just how mad he’d made Seto. “What’s up?” he said, his tone as light as he could manage.

“Mr. Wheeler, sir,” a rigid voice came over the phone instead of Seto’s. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Yeah. Who’s ‘dis?”

“Roland, sir. Master Kaiba expressed concerns regarding your whereabouts and asked me to find out if you were safe.”

“Seto’s worried about me?”

“No sir, Kaiba Seto is the reason Master Kaiba expressed concern.”

“Oh… Master, like a little boy who happens to be a European aristocrat… Right, right, it’s early. Got confused for a second. I’m afraid I’m not used to having to think this early in the morning.”

A long silence on the other end of the phone made Jou pull the phone away from his ear for a moment to glance at the clock. It was twenty minutes until noon.

“I mean I had a long day yesterday that, unfortunately, didn’t end until eight this morning.” Jou was glad his face was hidden under the covers. He felt stupid enough that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to face a sleeping Honda, much more the rest of the world.

“Of course, sir. Have you even seen the news this morning, Mr. Wheeler?”

At least there wasn’t much he could say that would make it worse, Jou realized. With an internal sigh of relief, he let the part of his brain that was responsible for common sense go back to sleep and let his mouth run on auto-pilot. “Can’t say I have. I usually get the paper to check the lottery numbers, though, so no worries there. Guy like me doesn’t have much need for the rest of the paper, ya know.”

“Very funny, Sir. Master Kaiba advises that you stay on top of current events throughout the day. Things are changing fast.”

Jou hung on to the phone for a good thirty seconds before he realized that Roland had hung up on him. He was about to close the phone when he saw that he had four new text messages. To his surprise, none of them were from Mario telling him that he was back in the states and on his way to help his sister. All four were from a number that didn’t show up on his caller ID, but the first three were signed. The first was from Seto, asking him to please come to his office. It was sent at eight in the morning. The second one was telling Jou that Seto would really appreciate him coming down to his office. The third said that Seto needed help. The last message wasn’t signed, but it was from the same number. It said “They’ve locked the door, overridden my security access, and cut off my communications. No one is opening the door from the outside. All I have is a pre-paid emergency phone and you apparently do not accept unidentified calls. Come pick this damn lock, now!”

“What the hell?” Jou said aloud. He threw the covers off and climbed out of bed and tried to find where his shoes had ended up earlier that morning. “Honda!”

Honda had passed out on the way back up to the room, and since Jou hadn’t been too eager to lose more sleep, he had dumped Honda in the arm chair. The taller man was still sleeping in the same position that Jou had dropped him in. Jou threw Honda’s jacket at him. “Honda! Honda! It’s noon! Mokuba’s planning something and Seto says he’s trapped in his office. Get up!”

“Trapped in his office? Noon? What are you talking about?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but I’m going to find out. Besides, your pager has been going off every fifteen minutes like clockwork. It’s worse than a damn alarm clock.”

“Has it?”

“Come on already, get up!” Jou ducked into the bathroom while Honda’s eyes darted around the room, as though trying to figure out why he couldn’t remember where the hell he was.

“Jou?” Honda’s voice called from the bathroom door. He sounded a bit more coherent, sudden wakefulness brought about by the urgency of a bladder full of biologically processed alcohol. “Hurry the hell up, will ya?”

Jou slipped out of the bathroom as quickly as he could. Honda looked up from the television and smiled gratefully, sprinting into the bathroom. Jou stared at the television, not wanting to watch, but unable to look away from the story.

“Sex , Lies, and Video Tape,” Jou read the scrolling headline, laughing. “She wasn’t kidding when she said she had evidence.” He sat down in the still-warm arm chair and stared at the woman on the television, enthusiastically telling a story of sex, deception, and the internal politics of Kaiba Corporation. The news was scathing. It describes video tapes of Kaiba Mokuba being involved in everything from drug deals to assassinations. In response to the news, Kaiba Corp’s stock prices had fallen by roughly forty-five percent since the market opened at eight.

The news showed brief segments of interviews with Kaede, including one that an analyst was attacking as disproving all of her claims. The interviewer asked Kaede why she was coming forward now, when her statements were likely to be seen as a pathetic attempt at revenge by a scorned lover. Kaede became enraged and announced that she was tricked into falling in love with Mokuba, who could never have been in love with her because he’s homosexual. She went on to rant about how he was a lying faggot until the interviewer cut the recording off.

“You know Seto’s going to kill you, right?” Honda stuck his head out of the bathroom door with one of the hotel’s complimentary toothbrushes hanging out of his mouth.

“Why do you think I stayed here last night…”

“And now you’re going to give in to the Hurry over, I need your help line?”

“Yeah. Seto is a bastard, there’s no question there… He’s a lot of things… But he is not a liar. He wouldn’t ask me for help if there was anyone on his payroll he could turn to. Whatever Mokuba is going to do, he wants Seto to stay out of it so badly that he’s willing to piss Seto off to force the issue. He needs my help.”

Honda shook his head, popped back into the bathroom, then reappeared a moment later. “Come on, lets go.”

“Hang on a second,” Jou hopped to his feet and turned off the TV. “Kaiba’s got a pneumatic lock on his office door—I heard the hiss as it locked yesterday. I’m going to need a couple things…” He flipped open his suitcase and dug through the rumpled clothing. He pulled out a small electronics tool kit and shoved it into a messenger bag along with his phone and laptop.

“That’s nothing dangerous, is it?”

Jou shrugged. “I’ve seen a coat hanger and an ashtray be used as weapons,” Jou said nonchalantly. “So, yeah, I suppose it is. It’s a screw driver set, a hammer, a multi-meter, and a soldering iron. Just tools.”

“Multi-meter?”

“Did you pay any attention in high school shop?” Jou rolled his eyes.

“All I remember from shop was putting up dry wall and making a wooden napkin holder.”

Jou shoved him towards the door. “It’s not going to explode!”

When they got to Kaiba Corp, Jou was only a bit surprised to find that the streets around the building were cluttered with news vans. Around the main and side entrances, police had set up barricades to control the crowds. The rumor running through the crowd was that no one without a Kaiba Corp ID was getting through the barricades.

“Now, aren’t you glad I decided to bug you last night?” said Honda, pulling out his badge and shoving his way through the crowd. Jou trailed behind in his wake.

The officers on the barricades looked relieved when Honda shoved his way through and started shouting out orders. Jou smirked when he saw that none of them even glanced at Honda’s ID or asked what Jou was doing following him. Honda ordered the barricades to be moved tighter together and for the officers to space themselves out so that more could help direct traffic away from the mess.

“What’s all this,” Honda motioned to a small section of side walk that had been set up with a stage, podium, and sound system.

“Kaiba called a press conference,” one of the officers explained. “Scheduled to start in about fifteen minutes, but the Captain said he didn’t want any of the press near the building.”

“Follow the Captain’s orders,” Honda said with every sign of confidence. Then he shoved his way inside the lobby.

A quick glance at the security counter told Jou that the police were doing their part to annoy the private security guards. Having been on both sides of that counter, Jou understood that both sides thought the other was composed of nothing by incompetent lazy twits who shouldn’t be employed at all, much more employed in a job that let them get in the way of people who took their jobs seriously. They were currently arguing so much that no one noticed Honda and Jou stroll passed towards the elevators. The animosity between law enforcement and private security seemed to stretch across every cultural boundary, and that much animosity made everyone blind.

Jou noticed the way Honda was twitching on the elevator. It reminded him of the way his father’s hands would twitch every time he tried to give up drinking. Jou knew that Honda was probably just nervous, although he replayed the other man’s night of drinking in his mind and tucked away the suspicions that rose in his mind to be dealt with later.

When the elevator door opened, he was surprised to find that the entire top floor seemed to be empty. The lights hadn’t been turned on for the day and the only light at all came from the widely spaced windows around the open office. Every desk and office was empty. But through the dark silence, Jou could hear the muffled sound of someone methodically pounding on a door. He followed the noise to its source, to the closed door of Seto’s office.

“Seto!” Jou yelled.

“Bout time you showed up, Mutt!”

“Yeah, yeah. What the hell happened!”

“It’s too hard to hear you! Get this door open!”

Jou felt like laughing, but then remembered the time he had spent in that office the day before and stopped himself. “Shit, Seto, you should have mentioned that your office wasn’t sound proof!”

“Get the door open, Mutt!”

Jou pulled out a slim screwdriver and ran the blade along the very slim crack in the door. When the screwdriver blade hit the bolt, he stopped and pulled the screwdriver to the side, scratching the paint beside the lock bolt with the blade.

“Do you want out quick, or do you want me to try and be neat about this?”

“Quickly!”

“Right,” Jou tucked the screw driver away and pulled the hammer out of his bag. He tapped the wall beside the lock, moving the hammer up and down until he heard the tapping echo. Without hesitating, he hit the wall hard enough to smash a hole through the sheet rock above, bellow, and to the side of the locking mechanism. He used the hammer to smash away a line of sheet rock around the lock, then cleared away the remaining debris and knelt down to check out the lock itself.

“You know if you destroy the locking mechanism, the door wont open, right?” Seto shouted through the door.

“I know that pneumatic locks typically look like, and how they typically operate,” said Jou happily digging into the pre-wired plug that operated the door lock by remote. “A remote switch gives a little burst of power to a solenoid, it pushes out of an air compression tube, the air is released for a moment before the spring pulls it back in. When the air pressure is released, a second spring, that had been extended by the air pressure, retracts the bolt. When the solenoid stops getting’ power, it slides back in, seals the system, and it’s instantly pressurized again, pushing the bolt back out. All I gotta do is release the air pressure,” said Jou simply. “And the way to do that without causing a lot of damage is to flip the switch that sends power to the solenoid.” He pulled out the tiny multi-meter, attached the leads to the correct spot on the circuit, and switched the device to measure electrical resistance.

“What are you doing?” Honda whispered.

“Multi-meter,” Jou repeated. “Measures voltage, amperage, and resistance. You can’t measure resistance in a circuit without power, so the meter provides a small current. Should be enough to trigger the solenoid.”

When the meter blinked to life, the air chamber immediately emptied and the deadbolt pulled back out of the door. When Seto threw the door open furiously, Jou smirked, turned the meter off and carefully put his things away.

Seto glanced around at the empty office, his eyes glowing with fury. “I was told that door was the most secure money could buy. That even prisons rely on them. But you managed to open it with a couple of standard tools!”

Jou shrugged. “They’re secure… I just know how they work. Your average prisoner does not have access to a hammer, much more something to generate electrical current, and the walls they would have to cut through would be two inch thick steel. But if you’re wondering if you wasted your money…” Jou laughed, “then yeah, big time. If this were a normal day, though, that would have triggered an alarm and Roland would have been here about five minutes ago.”

“You know, Mutt, I think you might be better at his job than he is.”

Jou smiled and bowed his head. “I try. But you’re being nicer than I expected. Did you get to see the news?”

“Sex, Lies, and Video Tape,” Seto nodded. “It was on the cover of every newspaper I could find this morning. By now, without any damage control, I’d guess my stock prices are down nearly sixty percent, an emergency meeting of the Board of Directors has been called, and several warrants are in the process of being issued. I’m surprised Mokuba hasn’t been arrested yet.”

“Only forty-five percent,” said Honda.

“And my brother?” Seto hissed, glancing around at the empty office.

“Apparently he scheduled a press conference, it’s supposed to be right down stairs any minute now,” Jou explained. “They were just setting up when we got here.”

“And he didn’t see you?”

Jou shrugged. “I didn’t see him. I’m pretty good at seeing people, except when they’re hiding behind a security camera.”

“Point taken.” Seto strode away from his office, towards the elevator. “Are you coming?” he asked over his shoulder.

Jou didn’t hurry to catch up. “Are you mad?”

“According to three court ordered mental health evaluations, I am quite sane,” Seto said calmly.

“I meant angry.”

“I know. But I intend to stop this from getting any more out of hand before I address that issue. Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” said Jou, slipping his bag over his shoulder.

Seto led them to the elevator like a general marshalling his troops. Seto didn’t say anything, didn’t even meet his gaze. Through the corner of his blue eyes, Jou could make out the way rage and embarrassment were warring inside of Seto. Jou just wished he could tell who Seto’s rage was directed at.

He could find out easily enough, of course. “So Mokuba locked you in your office?”

The glare Seto sent him was fierce enough that Jou was fairly certain that even wild animals would have shrunk away from him.

“Do you have any idea what he’s going to do?”

Seto smirked. “He’s a Kaiba,” Seto said simply. “He’ll play your game. Which means he will attempt to spin the media attention in his favor. I am not entirely sure how he’ll do it, but he typically approaches everything like a game of chess… Which means that, since sacrificing a pawn backfired, he’ll likely sacrifice a knight or a rook. I can think of four or five likely candidates, although which one he picks would depend on which direction he intends to take all of this attention.”

“A knight or rook? One of your employees, you mean?”

Seto nodded.

Jou thought about the podium set up out on the sidewalk, right there in front of all of the media vans and reporters. Whatever Mokuba was going to do, he would do it right under the world’s eye and no one would ever know the difference. No one except Seto, Jou, and Honda.

The frantic preparations in the Kaiba Corp lobby had ceased. The police and private security guards who, Jou accepted as a matter of faith, could and would argue through a riot, were standing side by side watching the glass windows where hundreds of reporters stood in shocked silence. Mokuba stood just a few feet behind the stage, a smug grin on his face. He was surrounded by security from the Kaiba mansion. And on top of the stage, stepping up to the podium, was Roland.

“Damn it!” Seto cursed, running for the main entrance. Jou followed, sprinting to keep up.

They made it out the door only to run into a crowd as thick as a cement wall. Seto began to shove his way through the crowd, actually growling at anyone who dared protest. And over the heads of a dozen reporters, Roland began to speak in excellent Japanese.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I asked my employer to call this press conference today to answer some of the rumors that have been circulating since this morning, and to address many of the questions those rumors raise. The most pressing rumor, it seems, is that Kaiba Corporation has, for many years now, been harboring a murderer.”

A whisper ran through the crowd of reporters.

“Let me begin by saying that this rumor is absolutely true.”

The whisper turned into a torrent of shouted questions and shoving bodies. The crowd surging around them pushed Seto and Jou back several feet.

“The first of these murders,” Roland went on, his face carefully blank, “Occurred almost fourteen years ago. For ten years I had worked as assistant security director for Kaiba Corporation, which included managing and overseeing security for its then CEO Kaiba Gozoboro. History remembers Gozoboro as an astute businessman who endowed public universities and museums, gave ridiculous amounts of money to orphanages and charities, and built a profitable empire out of the sale and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. The Gozoboro that history remembers is a clever fiction. For ten years, under Kaiba Gozoboro’s employ, I was forced to stand by as my employer committed atrocious crimes. I have spent the last fourteen years attempting to atone for the years when I failed in my duties.

“Fourteen years ago, I encountered Kaiba Gozoboro about to molest his youngest son, Kaiba Mokuba. Rather than see the boy hurt, I threw Kaiba Gozoboro out a window and edited the only incriminating security footage to make his death appear to be a suicide.”

Roland paused long enough to glance around at the stunned crowd. The shouting and whispers that made the crowd frantic just moments before were gone. Instead, a hundred pale, open-mouthed faces stared up at the foreigner at the podium, every one of them speechless.

“Since then I have taken it upon myself to protect Kaiba Seto and Kaiba Mokuba, both from people who could cause them harm and from people who would exploit the position fate cast them into. To that end I spent four years systematically eliminating a group of former employees who, with Kaiba Gozoboro’s full knowledge, recorded, traded, and pleasured themselves to videos of him molesting and beating young boys. After they were dismissed, these employees duplicated and traded these videos, using them as leverage in a conspiracy to manipulate and blackmail then fourteen year old Kaiba Seto.”

Roland took a deep breath and paused when he spotted Seto in the crowd. “I make no excuses for my actions, and I do not apologize,” he said calmly. “It was mere chance that put two young boys in a position where their very lives and the lives of thousands of employees rested upon a reputation they could not understand and could not hope to defend. It was a crime in itself that these boys, because of the public nature of their lives, were elevated so far above normal society that even the pursuit of justice for these transgressions became impossible for them. And so, in accordance with my duties as their guardian and bodyguard, I have spent the last fourteen years attempting to protect and shelter them from every memory of their adoptive father.

“As I said, I am not sorry for the crimes I have committed. But the fact that I rid the world of men who deserved far worse than any punishment I could give them does not excuse my crimes. Immediately after this press conference, I intend to surrender myself to police custody and to take responsibility for my acts.”

At that the puzzled crowd erupted in more questions, but Roland quickly silenced them. “But before I do that, there is something that I must make clear. Some of the rumors circulating among the papers this morning implicate Kaiba Mokuba in a long list of atrocities, including those I committed. These rumors stem from an interview with a disgruntled former lover whom Kaiba Seto recently fired for various criminal and unethical behaviors. These accusations, ladies and gentlemen, were born of the scorn and hatred of an evil and intelligent woman who has sworn that she will stop at nothing to destroy Kaiba Mokuba. Kaiba Mokuba is not guilty of the murders she has accused him of. He was aware of them and he protected me when proper judgment would have convinced him to turn me over the police himself. Poor judgment, however, is the only accusation that Kaiba Mokuba is actually guilty of. Including poor judgment regarding who to share his evenings with…”

They laughed, Jou thought dismally. The reporters took the fatherly tone of disapproval and the mildly inappropriate comment and a cheeky joke, and they had laughed. The little bastard was going to get away with it.

“That’s all,” Roland said simply, turning away from the microphones.

Jou shoved his way through the crowd, pushed passed the barricades surrounding the podium, and ran towards Mokuba. “You think that you can just throw up a smoke screen and get away with this! You would just sacrifice the closest thing you’ve got to a father so you can win this fucking game! You little asshole, I’m going to beat eight kinds of shit out of you!”

“Jou,” Mokuba smiled nervously and held up both hands, “This is not the time for this.” Jou grabbed his wrists and forced him back several feet. Out of the corner of his eye, Jou noticed that Seto wasn’t moving to help either of them and Honda was holding back the police officers who were trying to intervene. “Besides, I think that’s definitely check, if not checkmate,” Mokuba whispered.

“You miserable lying little bastard!”

“Mr. Wheeler,” a calm voice echoed through the street, “Release Master Kaiba, now.”

“Put the gun down, Roland,” Mokuba said quickly.

The officers Jou could see had drawn their side arms and were pointing them at the podium.

“It’s alright, Roland,” Mokuba continued. “Jou is a hot head, but he would never hurt somebody who wasn’t trying to hurt him.”

“Never hurt anyone!” Roland shouted. “If he understood the slightest thing about loyalty and honor today never would have happened! He’s tried to destroy you and your brother, Master Kaiba! And now he’s trying to hurt you!”
“No, he’s not,” said Mokuba, his voice remarkably level. “And it wouldn’t matter if he wanted to hurt me. Seto needs him, Roland. If he needs to strangle me to feel like he can stay, then fucking let him do it!”

“I will not let anyone hurt you!” Roland shouted, raising the pistol slightly.

And to Jou’s surprise, he actually fired. The world seemed to move in slow motion, and Jou found himself a bit surprised that the one thing he noticed was how long it took the officers around him to shoot. It seemed like they were too stunned by the fact that Roland had pulled the trigger to remember that they were armed too.

He had learned, the first three times he was shot, that it was pointless to expect pain immediately. Pain came soon enough, and it lasted like an endless hangover, but in the few seconds that followed a bullet wound there was nothing but a photographic view of the world around you, engraved in the mind in such detail that the shape and color of every piece of gravel in the pavement would be clear memories decades later.

The last few times, though, Jou did not recall the world spinning quite so much.

And then he was on the ground, staring up at a sky that looked like a blue and white tie dye, with most of his upper body covered in blood. He could feel blood pouring over his fingers. The heavy weight on his chest, though, made him pretty sure that the blood wasn’t his.