Blue Eyes

Mokuba stared into the void with a mixture of awe and horror, small gasping sounds escaping his throat. Of all the things he had been expecting, finding this . . . place hadn’t been one of them.

The darkness stretched on and on and on with no sign of quitting, just darkness and glittering white pinpoints of light like faraway stars. No warmth, no mercy, only the black rush of silence. Mokuba shuddered and fell backwards, more than aware of how close he’d come to tumbling downward through the doorway.

A thunderous grumble echoed up from deep inside the shadows, shaking the air itself with its warning tones. Mokuba trembled, pressing his body deeper into the carpet, trying to force the ground to swallow him up as the shockwaves pounded his painfully inadequate body. His mind just recognized it as the sound that had brought him down here to the Door, while his body recognized it as supreme danger and was begging his mind to get the hell out of there! But Mokuba barely felt his body’s twitching as he found himself leaning closer to the doorframe.

“S-Seto?” he called out in a choked whisper. He wasn’t sure if his brother was there at all, but one never knew for sure, especially when dealing with hidden vortexes in one’s basement.

A soft, barely audible groan floated up from the void, frightening Mokuba more than anything else had thus far but strengthening his resolve all the same. “Niisan?” he shouted, an almost hysterical edge to his voice as he forced himself to sit up.

“DAMARU,” rumbled a sonorous earthquake of a voice directly in front of Mokuba’s face. “You might wake him.”

The boy couldn’t help it. He squeaked.

A pale, ethereal blue light filled the space between voice and human, revealing the astonishing, deadly face of a Blue Eyes White Dragon.

This time Mokuba managed to utter a proper scream, scrambling back as he did so.

“Urusai!” The dragon ordered, and Mokuba obediently shut his mouth. Would you argue with a Blue Eyes?

The dragon nodded curtly and said nothing more, content with watching (with more than a little amusement in its pale eyes) Mokuba try and recover. This was proving unsurprisingly difficult, and it took quite a long time before he could look at the head staring back at him without wanting to run like a silly child.

It’s head, which had to be very nearly ten times the size of its holographic counterpart, was narrow and shapely, with minute pebble scales scintillating across its snout from a light Mokuba couldn’t see. Its eyes were wide and almond shaped, very much like a cat’s, and massive ivory horns jutted out across its forehead varying in length from a few feet to perhaps eighty yards (80 x 3 240 feet 2,280 inches. Just thought I’d give you a proper perspective of how big this sucker is. :P), looking a bit like long white hair. Its mouth was parted slightly, showing two rows of meter-long teeth running around a forked tongue nearly ten feet in length leading back into a throat wide enough to swallow a small house. Mokuba gulped uneasily and quickly returned his gaze up to the creature’s eyes.

“Ano, shitsurei?” he murmured reverently, overawed by the majesty of the dragon’s face.

“Yes?” it replied smugly without moving its mouth.

“H-have—“ Mokuba paused and tried again. “Where is Seto?”

“Of course. He is down here with us waiting for it to finish.”

“Us?” Mokuba’s pulse quickened again.

“Nani? Did you really think I was the only one down here?”

“I was hoping you were,” Mokuba said apprehensively. The dragon chuckled, cat eyes sparkling with laughter.

“Come along, little one. He’s been asking for you.”

And without knowing just how he’d gotten there, Mokuba found himself inside the massive jaws of the Blue Eyes, hanging onto the nearest serrated tooth for dear life. Seconds later he toppled out, slightly wetter than he would have like but he thought he preferred being covered in dragon saliva to dragon stomach acids.

He climbed to his feet, surprised that there was really a bottom to the void, and looked up.

And up.

And up.

And up.

Three Blue Eyes White Dragons loomed over him, each one differing from the other two but all a gloriously stunning white that seemed to hum with power in the darkness. The one that had nearly eaten him who had seemed so large before now looked small and meek compared to the other two.

The largest of the three lowered its great head until it was eye level with Mokuba. Its face was broad and littered with horns and jagged scales, almost forming an old man’s beard. One of its eyes was milky, almost as white as the dragon’s scales, and a dark scar marred the surrounding flesh.

“So you Seto’s younger brother, the one he speaks so often of in his sleep, eh?” It asked bemusedly with a voice that rattled the ground for miles around as it looked at him with its one good eye. “Rather tiny, aren’t you now?” It cackled out a barrage of bass laughter that threw poor Mokuba to the ground . . . again.

“H-hai!” Mokuba replied shrilly, shaking all over.

“Good,” it said, sobering instantly, “He’s over there.” The dragon’s eye roved to focus on something behind Mokuba, who turned around slowly, none to keen to leave that seemingly mile-wide mouth out of his sights, but all thoughts concerning his own safety vanished in the instant his eyes connected with Seto’s’.

“Niisan!” he very nearly screamed, rushing to his brother’s side.

Seto looked (and happened to be) very, very, damaged as he sat huddled and shivering, wrapped in a blood-caked blanket that did little more than make him an even more pitiful shadow of himself. He sat in circle of strange smelling candles and bowls of incense, the smoke curling around his frame like gentle arms wishing to pull him along in their upward ascent into the void. The red, swollen scars of so many years of willing yet unwilling servitude stood starkly against Seto’s bone white skin, and his whole being seemed so worn and used and ready to be discarded, but Seto’s face was so strange! There was such a look of peace upon his smiling features that for a moment Mokuba was sure this person wasn’t his brother, but the eyes were so blue and narrow that all doubt evaporated instantaneously. Those two pinpricks of blue light bore through Mokuba like sapphire daggers, drilling into him with the wisdom of someone unimportant and useless being filled with all the knowledge in the world.

“Mokuba, I’m going to die,” Seto said quietly, speaking the matter as a statement of fact. Mokuba’s eyes filled with tears and he looked away, forgetting everything around him. Seto’s face clouded with worry, and he lifted a steady yet gentle hand to his younger brother’s face, turning it towards himself. “It’s not like that, Moki—“

“Then what is it like, Seto?” Mokuba yelled angrily, smacking his brother’s hand away. “I’ve been wondering what the fuck was wrong with you since I was four, and this is what I find? You’re sacrificing yourself to a bunch of fucking mythical creatures! You always said you didn’t believe in magic and I always tried to believe you, or was that all a dumb act to throw us all off the scent of your blood?” For the air was rife with a strong coppery, metallic scent, filling Mokuba’s lungs, burning his eyes, soaking into his hair, his clothes, his skin. He could feel the anger welling up inside him, and he stood abruptly, facing the three Blue Eyes.

“And what about you, huh? I always thought the Blue Eyes White Dragon was one of the good monsters, the way Niisan was so protective of his cards, they way he designed so much of our theme park around you, how he built a fucking plane to look like you! But you’re not, none of you. You’re horrible, you’re EATING him for god’s sake!”
“Mokuba!” So much of the hard, bitter Seto returned to that voice that Mokuba froze and shivered, turning shamefully to look at his brother through his long bangs.

“There’s no point in yelling, Mokuba,” Seto whispered gloomily, “It’s too late.” His lips parted into a hopeful and wonderful smile. “Will you sit with me?” Mokuba looked at him in surprise, and watched time and reality fall away until he seemed only a child again, and Seto years away from being CEO of Kaiba Corp.

He sat beside him, a warm and innocent smile playing across his young features like the afternoon sunlight dancing and reflecting across the waters of the small pond before them. They were sitting on a small knoll in a large public garden, watching the koi fish play in the pond. They had returned to a memory from just a few short days before their parents’ tragic deaths. It was early spring, and signs of the previous hard winter still showed in the bare trees, in the ice ringing the pond. A mother cat and her three kittens lamented helplessly over the fourth, which had fallen into the water and drowned. Everything was bittersweet, reminding them that all good things must come to an end.

“You’ve already had them for a while now, huh?” Mokuba asked vaguely. Seto nodded, showed his brother a bare wrist wrapped in bloody bandages.

“Will you be all right?” Seto asked, lowering his sleeve, hugging his knees close to his chest.

“I think so. I’ll have to stop seeing my girlfriend, but I’ve never liked her all that much anyway, and I might as well drop school after this year—“

“You don’t have to do all that.”

“But the company!”

“Kaiba Corp. isn’t worth throwing away a chance at a normal life. I threw mine away, and look what happened to me!” He chuckled roguishly, but Mokuba did nothing, and after a few seconds Seto sobered himself politely.

“Do you regret doing it?” Mokuba asked. Seto opened his mouth hastily. “Don’t lie to me.” He closed it, and a forlorn look came into his intense blue eyes that seemed to be gazing into something Mokuba couldn’t see, like the light that made the Blue Eyes’ scales shine.

“Yes and no,’ he said. “Yes, because I purposely ruined our relationship by not telling you what I was doing, and doing it all the wrong way. There was an easier way, but I chose this instead. And I made it seem like I hated everything, including you. I want you to know right now that I don’t hate anything very much at all. I’ve just been too preoccupied to get a proper look at the world.” Mokuba leaned against his brother, imitating him by likewise hugging his knees.

“And no?” he pried gently.

“I want to know what it’s like. I want to be free. But mostly, I want to exist.” He eyes seemed to glow with excitement, and Mokuba did not ask him what he meant.

“Do you know what’s going to happen?”

“Yes.” Seto tilted his head against his ototo’s, smiling fondly. “It’s going to be wonderful.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

“Don’t. I’m not going away forever.”

“I can’t see you very well anymore,” Mokuba commented lightly. “You’re disappearing.”

“But not leaving. Not really. I’ll always be here.”

They were quiet for a time, watching the red sun set over the budding sakura trees, turning the pond to liquid gold, making the cats’ eyes seem to gleam with tears.

Mokuba turned to his brother, who was almost nothing but a blue-eyed white shadow now. They were their proper ages now, but still sitting in a bittersweet memory, saying a bittersweet goodbye.

“I love you, Seto,” he said, taking his brother’s hand into his.

“I have always loved you, Mokuba.” There were tears in Seto’s fantastic eyes, and Mokuba realized that this was the first time he had ever seen his brother cry.

And then they were kissing, their hands clenched into one, their foreheads melding together as the pressure increased, their lips so tightly pressed the skin was bruising and breaking, but the pain didn’t matter. Salty liquid spilled down both their cheeks as Seto floated away, leaving a lasting and beautiful imprint upon Mokuba, whose gray eyes were wide with visions of what his brother had become, what his brother had helped to revive. He needed to follow him forever, and he did so joyously.

He caught a glimpse of Heaven as he soared past it at 186,000 thousand miles per second. He was flying on his niisan’s brilliant white wings, flying out to the stars, into them, into a world of agelessness and light and wild and perfect euphoria. His four companions followed after, roaring with triumph and delicate sorrow. Mokuba wanted to cry, to laugh, to scream with terror and then with rage. He wanted it to stop, but he hoped it never would. He had become one with the soul of the universe; he had been separated into every particle of all living things. He was filled with all; he was an aperture with nothing inside. He knew everything, yet at the same time knew nothing. He saw and he was blind. He heard and he was deaf. He spoke and he was mute. He tasted much and tasted little. He was moving and he was still. He encompassed the universe, outshone it, yet he was only a tiny half-fragment of dust floating about in its swirling oneness, barely shedding a single spark of light. He found one thought in himself among the burning and freezing unity and disarray as he rode through history and future and all things in-between atop his brother’s beating wings.

He existed.

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Wasn't that great?