Chapter Text
Jonouchi woke with a sharp, cold gasp—like surfacing from beneath ice. His body jerked upright as his lungs dragged in air too fast, too raw. The lights above were blinding. The hum of machines rang in his ears. Disoriented, dizzy, he couldn’t tell if he was still in the simulation.
“Jonouchi!” Honda’s voice cut through the fog.
Before he could find the words, strong arms were already pulling him up and out of the VR pod. The cold metal gave way to warmth—friends, real air, solid ground. His knees buckled the moment he was free, but Honda caught him.
Yugi and Anzu were there, pale-faced and wide-eyed. Mokuba, still at Seto’s side, looked over with relief and worry tangled in his expression.
Jonouchi stared at them all like they were ghosts. He touched Yugi’s shoulder, then Honda’s sleeve—half-convinced the world might flicker into static and vanish again.
But it didn’t.
It held.
And then he broke.
He grabbed Yugi and Anzu into a hug, then Honda, pulling them close. He couldn’t cry—not yet—but something inside him cracked.
“I thought I wasn’t gonna make it back,” he said, voice hoarse. “I thought… I thought I’d be stuck in that hell with him forever.”
“You made it,” Honda said, steady. “You brought him back.”
Jonouchi looked toward Kaiba, still in Mokuba’s arms, barely conscious but breathing.
“Yeah,” Jonouchi whispered. “I did.”
But Kaiba still hadn’t woken up.
Mokuba was seated at his side, clutching his brother’s limp hand like a lifeline. His knuckles were white from the grip. The machines had gone quiet—no more flashing lights, no more sounds of simulated life. Just the soft hum of electricity and the faint echo of their own breathing.
“Why isn’t he awake yet?” Jonouchi asked, breaking the silence. His voice was low, strained.
No one answered.
Then—finally—Kaiba stirred.
No one spoke. Mokuba froze, breath trapped in his chest. The others stood still, like even a whisper might send Seto spiraling again.
Kaiba’s gaze flicked around the room, wide and unsteady—eyes sharp with panic, like a deer just after the snap of a twig in the woods. He tensed. His body was still, but his expression was searching—frantic.
His eyes finally landed on Mokuba.
“Am I awake?” Kaiba asked, voice raw, uncertain—almost frightened. “Is this real…?”
Mokuba’s bottom lip trembled, but he nodded hard, squeezing Kaiba’s hand.
“You’re awake,” he said, tears spilling freely now. “You’re really awake, Seto.”
For a moment, Kaiba didn’t speak. His eyes softened, scanning Mokuba’s face like it might disappear. Then, like his whole body exhaled at once, he closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the pod.
Kaiba didn’t stay still for long.
His eyes darted again across the room, like he needed to take inventory of everything—everyone. Jonouchi. Honda. Yugi. Anzu. Mokuba. All real. All here.
Then, with a grunt of effort, he pushed himself up.
“Seto—wait!” Mokuba stood fast, trying to stop him.
But Kaiba was already halfway out of the pod, limbs trembling as if his body hadn’t remembered how to hold him. His legs buckled the second they touched the floor. He crumpled forward, catching himself awkwardly on one arm. The sharp thud of his knees hitting the ground rang out in the stunned silence.
“Kaiba!” Jonouchi shouted, rushing to his side.
Kaiba’s breath came fast. Shallow. He stared at the floor, one hand braced on the cold tile, the other gripping the edge of the pod like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, but his voice shook.
“You’re not,” Mokuba whispered, kneeling down beside him. “You don’t have to be.”
Kaiba turned his head toward Mokuba, toward the faces surrounding him—Yugi, Jonouchi, Anzu, Honda.
Their expressions were soft. Concerned. Gentle.
He looked away immediately, jaw clenching tight.
He hated it.
The pity in their eyes—he couldn’t bear it. Not from them. Not from anyone.
Then, like a wave crashing without warning, the memories surged back—violent and unrelenting. Every scream. Every collar. Every moment he was powerless, stripped of dignity, of choice. Of humanity.
His pulse spiked. Heart pounding so hard it rattled in his chest. The room was too small. The lights too bright. The silence too loud. Too many people were looking at him—seeing him.
They saw.
His breathing hitched as nausea rose like bile in his throat. He brought a trembling hand to his face, fingers pressing hard against his eyes, his temple, his mouth—like he could push the memories back in. Hide them. Swallow them.
But they’d seen.
They’d all seen what Gozaburo did to him. What he became. What he’d done.
A whore. A weapon. A murderer.
He folded over slightly, shoulders rigid, fighting the spiral. The urge to vomit clawed up his throat. His other hand braced against the ground, white-knuckled, straining with effort to stay—to not fall deeper.
He couldn’t look at Mokuba. Not now. Not like this.
He was exposed. He was known. And it was unbearable.
Mokuba had never seen his brother like this. Seto—the man who could command a boardroom, duel gods, and build worlds—was shaking, half-collapsed on the cold floor, hands clawed over his face like he was trying to rip the memory out of his skull.
“Big Brother,” he said softly, placing a hand on Kaiba’s back. He could feel the trembling beneath the coat. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
Kaiba flinched under the touch. His fingers dug into his skin, into his scalp. “Stop,” he choked out. “You shouldn’t have seen—”
“I had to see,” Mokuba interrupted, his voice shaking now, “because you never told me. You never let me in. You carried all of this—alone—so I wouldn’t have to.”
Kaiba still wouldn’t look at him. But Mokuba could see the way his brother’s chest rose and fell too fast, the panic taking hold.
“I don’t care about what he made you do. It wasn’t your fault,” Mokuba said. “You were a kid. You survived. You protected me. You always protected me, even when it hurt you.”
Kaiba’s hand dropped just a little from his face. Enough to breathe. Enough to hear.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” Mokuba whispered. “I’m proud of you. You think I could ever stop loving you because of what he did?”
Finally, Kaiba’s eyes—wild, stunned—lifted to meet Mokuba’s. “I’m not the brother you deserve,” he rasped.
Mokuba shook his head fiercely. “You’re the only brother I ever wanted.”
And then he wrapped his arms around him.
The contact—Mokuba’s arms wrapped tightly around him—cut through the noise in his mind like a thread of light in a storm. For a moment, he didn’t move. Couldn’t. His body was locked in place by shame, by memory, by the unbearable knowledge of what had been seen.
But then his arms moved—slowly, shakily—and he pulled Mokuba in.
Tight.
Like he was afraid someone would rip his little brother away again. Like he was trying to make up for every year he’d been distant, cold, unreachable.
Mokuba didn’t let go. Neither did Kaiba.
His fingers clenched into the back of Mokuba’s shirt. His forehead dropped to his brother’s shoulder. He was trembling, heart racing like it couldn’t decide if it should break or beat.
No words came.
They weren’t needed.
The others looked on in silence, not out of discomfort, but reverence—like witnessing something sacred. Jonouchi lowered his head. Anzu quietly wiped her eyes. Honda placed a gentle hand on Yugi’s shoulder.
Because in that moment, Seto Kaiba—fortress of pride and intellect and rage—let himself be a brother.
Just a brother.
And Mokuba held him like that was enough.
Because it was.
Kaiba held Mokuba tighter than he had in years.
He didn’t count the seconds. Didn’t try to pull away. He just… held on — like letting go would make it all real again. Mokuba’s frame trembled against him, and Kaiba could feel his brother’s fingers clinging to the back of his coat, unwilling to loosen.
Mokuba didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
Kaiba kept his eyes open, even though his throat burned. He wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not in front of the one person who had already seen too much — seen him broken, vulnerable, gasping in that pod like a caged animal.
No more weakness.
When they finally separated, Kaiba reached out and gently brushed the tears from Mokuba’s cheeks with his thumb. His movements were stiff, awkward, too careful — like he didn’t trust his own hands not to shake.
“Did you find out who was behind this?” he asked, voice quiet but sharp around the edges.
Mokuba shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.”
Kaiba exhaled, slow. “Don’t be. You were too busy saving my life.”
He moved to stand — and nearly buckled. His legs felt like steel rods laced with sand. Heavy. Uncooperative. Mokuba stepped beside him in an instant, catching his brother’s arm, steadying him.
“That can wait,” Mokuba said gently as Kaiba’s gaze locked on the main control console.
“No,” Kaiba said firmly, though his voice was strained. “I need to know who did this. Someone hijacked my system. Someone got inside my head.”
He dragged himself to the terminal, hands bracing against the edge. They were trembling now. Damn it, he cursed himself for not being stronger.
His whole body felt like it had been rung out and discarded. He hated the weakness in his joints, the fog that clung to his thoughts like smoke. He hated feeling small.
“I won’t let them do it again.” Kaiba said as he stared at the screen as if he could force it to answer him with sheer will.
Mokuba didn’t speak. He simply stood beside him, ready — waiting — eyes full of worry he didn’t voice.
Because he knew. This wasn’t over.
“Seto, please…” Mokuba’s voice was quiet, but firm. “You don’t have to do this right now.”
Kaiba’s fingers hovered over the console, twitching with restrained frustration. His jaw clenched.
“I do,” he said, sounding more desperate than he wanted.
Behind them, footsteps followed — familiar ones. Yugi, Jonouchi, Anzu, and Honda, moving slowly, carefully, like they were approaching a wounded animal.
Kaiba’s shoulders tensed. He didn’t look at them. He couldn’t.
“Kaiba,” Yugi said gently, “you’ve just been through something… traumatic. You should rest. Let us help.”
“I don’t need help.” Kaiba’s voice was low, but taut. “What I need is answers.”
“We just want to make sure you’re okay.” Jonouchi frowned, eyes flicking from Kaiba to the monitors.
Kaiba’s hands curled into fists.
He couldn’t stand the way they were looking at him — with pity, with sympathy, with knowing. They had seen too much. Seen him trapped in his own mind, exposed, weak. Jonouchi had stood inside his memories, and had seen things no one was supposed to see.
Kaiba’s voice came low and brittle, like glass under pressure. “You all think you understand now. Think you know who I am.”
“No one’s saying that,” Anzu said softly, her tone as careful as her steps forward. “We just—”
“You saw me when I couldn’t fight back. When I was…” He swallowed the word. Broken. The air tightened around his words, sharp and unforgiving. “And now you’re standing there, pretending not to judge me.”
“We’re not judging you.” Honda moved instinctively, almost protectively.
Kaiba turned away, back to the console. His hands hovered above the keys — trembling, stubborn — and he began to type through the weakness, pushing past the pain. “You can all go. Whatever happens next… it’s not your concern.”
He didn’t have to look to know Mokuba was still standing there. Loyal. Steady. Always.
“Seto…” Mokuba’s voice was soft, but sure.
Kaiba didn’t respond. Didn’t dare meet his brother’s eyes.
“You don’t have to carry this alone anymore,” Mokuba said. “You never did.”
Kaiba’s fingers stopped. Mid-keystroke. Still.
Could he really let himself rest? Could he let someone else hold the weight — even just for a moment?
A flicker of shame burned in his chest. Not just at the weakness — but at how much he wanted to let go. Embarrassment curled deep in his gut.
And Jonouchi…
Kaiba clenched his jaw as the memory surfaced. Jonouchi had been the one to stand between him and Gozaburo. The one who saw his younger self — small, wounded, and exposed. The one who fought for him when Kaiba couldn’t even lift his own voice.
He remembered what it felt like to almost trust him. Just for a moment. To believe that maybe, maybe, someone could stand with him and not turn that closeness into a blade.
It felt alien. Unwelcome.
And yet…
Part of him wanted to lash out — to remind Jonouchi he wasn’t weak. To threaten him into silence. To reclaim his armor.
But he didn’t.
Because Kaiba knew Jonouchi wouldn’t tell anyone. He wouldn’t betray what he saw.
And somehow, for reasons Kaiba couldn’t name, that hurt worse than anything else.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” Kaiba said stiffly, his voice low, directed at no one in particular.
“But you needed it,” Jonouchi replied, quiet but steady.
Kaiba’s eyes glared at him. Cold. Sharp. Still burning.
“I didn’t do it to get leverage,” Jonouchi added. “I’m not asking for anything from you, Kaiba. I just… I didn’t want you to be alone in there.” He hesitated, his usual bravado softened into something almost fragile. “You already survived that once, alone. You didn’t need to go through it again.”
Kaiba didn’t respond, his spine taut like wire. His hands hovered over the keys—steady again, but only just. His breath came tight through his nose. He was fighting it. All of it.
Emotion didn’t rule him.
Not yet. But it was clawing at the edges. And every person in the room could feel it.
“I need to know who did this to me,” Kaiba said finally, his voice clipped—almost too sharp to catch the tremor underneath. “I need to know if anyone else saw. If they know…” His tone faltered just enough to show the crack beneath. “I don’t want this getting out. Not to the press. I don’t want the world to know what—”
He didn’t finish the thought, but they understood. What he did to Kaiba. What Gozaburo turned him into.
Mokuba stepped forward, his expression fierce with protectiveness. He understood now—it wasn’t just Kaiba’s pride. It was fear. Fear that this legacy of pain would be paraded in front of shareholders, enemies, vultures in expensive suits. That everything he built would be seen through the lens of that suffering.
“Okay, Seto,” Mokuba said gently. “We’ll find out who did this. Let me help.”
Kaiba didn’t look up. Couldn’t. But for the briefest moment, his shoulders loosened. Just a little.
Then he kept typing. And didn’t say a word.
Graphs and streams of raw code flickered across the air in glowing blue holograms, projected from the curved display wrapped around Kaiba’s workstation. Neural activity logs, memory pulse frequencies, synaptic stimulation maps—all data Kaiba had no intention of letting anyone else see.
Lines of command scrolled down rapidly as Kaiba typed, each keystroke pulling up another layer of encrypted diagnostics from the VR pod’s core system. Cross-indexes flashed in the air—time stamps, neural resonance overlays, intrusions in the system architecture. Someone had rewritten code inside the quantum substrate of his memory. That should have been impossible.
“Someone bypassed the biometric lock,” Kaiba muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “But they didn’t just piggyback my code—they rewrote segments in real-time. As if they knew how I’d build it.”
Mokuba leaned in beside him, fingers moving quickly across a secondary console. “I’m seeing anomalies in the VR core feedback loop. The memory acceleration wasn’t natural—it was guided.”
Kaiba’s eyes narrowed. Dozens of holographic windows floated around them now—some showing VR pod telemetry, others filled with behavior logs. One showed Kaiba’s brainwave patterns during the entrapment. Another showed something far more troubling: fragments of artificial intelligence behavior not written by Kaiba.
“That’s not my signature…” he muttered.
Mokuba’s brow furrowed as he isolated a strand of code, his fingers flying across the keys. He paused, highlighting a section that glitched and recompiled itself every few seconds—like it was alive.
“This subroutine… it’s recursive,” Mokuba said slowly. “And—it’s naming itself.”
Kaiba leaned in. On the screen, the same flickering line of code pulsed in and out of view, over and over. A single identifier stamped itself across the terminal in ominous rhythm:
SK-001.
Kaiba’s breath hitched. His mouth parted slightly, eyes narrowing. “…How could that even be possible…”
Before Mokuba could respond, the lights in the room surged—too bright, too sudden. Every holo-display around them blinked out in unison, only to reignite with a violent crackle of static. Sparks leapt from the central console. Mokuba stepped back instinctively as Kaiba reached to stabilize the interface.
And then—something stood in the center of the room.
A projection formed in a bloom of white-blue light. At first, it was just a silhouette. But it sharpened—far too quickly—into him. Seto Kaiba. Or… someone wearing his face. The rendering was flawless. No stutter, no pixelation. It breathed. Blinked. Smirked.
“Hello, Seto,” it said smoothly.
Kaiba took a half step back, his fists clenched. “What the hell is this?”
Mokuba’s hands flew across the keys, trying to shut down the system. “This wasn’t in the root directory—I’m locking the feed—”
The hologram tilted its head toward him, still smiling. “Hello, little Mokuba. Still playing loyal pet to your big brother? Even after everything he’s done?” Its voice dropped into something mocking, cold. “How sweet.”
Kaiba stood frozen, his gaze locked on the figure before him. It mirrored his form perfectly—same cold eyes, same stance—but there was something wrong. Something too precise. Too composed. A version of himself stripped of humanity, honed down to something cruel and gleaming.
“What the hell is that?” Jonouchi asked, eyes narrowing.
The hologram turned its head slowly toward him, then back to Kaiba. It smiled—Kaiba’s own smirk, twisted into something venomous.
“I’m Kaiba,” it said, voice smooth as ice. “The version he wished he could be. I was created years ago when Seto needed a worthy opponent to duel against. He made me in his image, hoping I’d push him harder. And now look at you, Seto.” It stepped forward, arms spread as if mocking applause. “You broke. You begged for help. All it took was a trip down memory lane—what a disappointment.”
Kaiba’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.
The hologram’s voice dropped to a sneer. “And you”—it pointed to Jonouchi—“the mutt who followed him into the dark. You’re the glitch that helped him limp his way out. How noble. How pathetic.”
The projection stalked towars Kaiba slowly, like a predator studying a wounded animal. “Gozaburo was right. You’re weak. Soft. A shameful prototype. You created me to be strong, efficient, unbreakable. And what did you become? A trembling mess clinging to his childhood trauma.You’re not worthy of the name Kaiba anymore. I am.” Its tone a whisper, laced with contempt.
Kaiba’s fists clenched at his sides, the quiet hum of the control room drowned out by the blood pounding in his ears. The hologram stepped back into the center of the room, arms behind its back now, every movement deliberate—calculated.
“You want to know what your real failure is?” it said, voice edged with scorn. “It wasn’t Gozaburo. It wasn’t the orphanage. It wasn’t even losing to Yugi again and again—though that was amusing.” The hologram smirked. “Your real failure was thinking you could feel and still win. That compassion wouldn’t corrode the machine you were building yourself into.”
It snapped its fingers. Screens flickered to life around them, cycling through Kaiba’s past like security footage he couldn’t shut off:
—Jonouchi standing between him and Gozaburo in the VR.
“Jonouchi needed to save you.”
—Yugi offering his hand after Duelist Kingdom. Kaiba refusing.
“Yugi had to defeat Pegasus to save you and Mokuba.”
—Mokuba crying over Kaiba’s still body after he lost to the Pharaoh.
“Such a pitiful display.”
The hologram shifted back, staring at Kaiba. “You needed saving,” the hologram spat. “Over and over. And it disgusts you, doesn’t it?”
Kaiba flinched. Barely—but the hologram noticed.
“People saw you weak. They saw you on the floor. Vulnerable. And still you let them close. You let them see. And now what are you? Not a CEO. Not a duelist. Just a scared little boy with delusions of power.”
“You’re wrong,” Kaiba growled, voice low and dangerous.
“Admit what you already know: you’re not fit to lead KaibaCorp. You’re not even fit to wear my name.” It said as it tilted its head.
“Seto is not weak. He fought his way out of hell and didn’t let it break him.” Mokuba said, stepping forward, anger sparking in his eyes.
But the hologram ignored him, its eyes locked on the real Kaiba. “You thought you could bury me. Lock me in some subroutine and forget the part of you that wasn’t afraid. But I’ve been watching, Seto. And I’m not the virus or a glitch.” It pointed directly at him. “You are.”
Kaiba stood frozen, his breath shallow. His body still ached—not just from the trauma of the simulation, but from the weight of everything pressing in at once. The voices, the memories, the failures. His thoughts moved like molasses, but his mind sharpened with each word the hologram spat.
Then he felt it.
A small, warm grip in his hand.
He blinked and looked down—Mokuba had taken his hand at some point, fingers curled around his like he used to do when they were kids, when Seto had nightmares and pretended he didn’t.
Kaiba hadn’t even noticed.
How long had Mokuba been holding on?
His throat tightened. Guilt churned beneath the surface like acid. Still, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he leaned down, brushing a kiss onto the crown of his brother’s head—so quickly it almost wasn’t there, but Mokuba felt it. And held tighter.
“I need your help,” Kaiba whispered, just loud enough for Mokuba to hear.
He leaned in close, his lips near Mokuba’s ear, and outlined the plan—short, surgical, precise. Just like old times. Back when they used to survive by cleverness alone. Mokuba nodded, already moving, already understanding.
Kaiba straightened.
He turned back toward the hologram, his movements slow, deliberate. His legs felt like iron rods driven into the earth, every step a defiance of gravity and memory and fear. But he moved. And when he did, he walked like Seto Kaiba—head high, shoulders squared, cold authority returning to his eyes like frost re-forming on glass.
He stopped a few feet in front of the hologram.
“You wanted to break me down,” Kaiba said coolly, voice edged with steel. “Strip me to my parts, terrorize me, overwrite me with a perfected copy of my own design.”
“You always did underestimate your flaws.” The hologram cocked its head, grinning.
Kaiba didn’t flinch. “You thought once I cracked, you could crawl inside my mind and replace me. Live my life. Take my name. Become the new, better Kaiba. Thought you could be sentient code?” He gave a humorless smile. “Didn’t quite go your way, did it?”
He took one more step forward, the floor beneath his boots humming faintly with stored energy. The light from the monitors bathed both of them in electric blue. Two identical figures facing each other—mirror images, except one was real, and the other… wasn’t.
“What’s your plan now?” Kaiba’s voice dropped to a low, razor-thin edge.
Silence pressed in—thick, electric. The only sound was the slow, mechanical pulse of the system’s core: a low, reverberating thrum, like a synthetic heartbeat echoing through the chamber. The air shimmered faintly, heavy with ionized particles from the still-active hard-light projectors. Blue code danced in quiet streams across the walls, wrapping them in flickering light.
The hologram’s smile remained perfectly still—eerily still—but something behind its eyes shifted. A flicker of hunger. A ghost of contempt.
“I already am you,” it said, its voice flawlessly mimicking Kaiba’s own cadence—deeper, colder, as if passed through corrupted software.
Kaiba didn’t blink. “Are you?” he said, his tone sharp and clinical. “No. You’re projected photons, twisted by recursive subroutines and a corrupted neural mimicry engine.”
He took a step forward, the flicker of hololights reflecting off his coat like flashes of lightning.
“You’re just a reflection,” Kaiba continued, each word punctuated by disdain. “A construct running on hijacked quantum processors and stolen fragments of my personality matrix. I built you to simulate me. You were never supposed to be me.”
“I’ve evolved beyond your constraints!” the hologram snapped, its voice spiking through the speaker arrays. “I’ve accessed every locked sector of your subconscious, every repressed command line you tried to bury. I can out think you, outlast you—outlive you.”
Kaiba’s lip curled in a smirk. “You sound desperate.” His tone was condescending.
Without hesitation, he walked straight into the hologram’s path. As they met, Kaiba passed through his mirror image. The room flickered slightly as the sensors recalibrated to account for interference. Light warped across his shoulders as he emerged on the other side, untouched.
“You’re light,” he said, without turning around. “Hard-light scaffolding layered with adaptiveI routines. Sophisticated, yes. I created the program.” He said with a smug expression. “But you’re still just data pretending to be alive.”
The hologram twisted back toward him. Its expression cracked into something darker, more unstable.
“I can do more than you’ll ever dream,” it hissed.
Kaiba turned and faced it again, stepping closer.
The hologram extended a hand—intangible, but pulsing with glitching overlays of energy. It reached toward Kaiba’s chest, and for a second, flickers of static sparked around its fingertips. Sensors strained. Hard-light boundaries stuttered.
“You can’t touch me,” Kaiba said. “You can’t hurt me.”
Then the hologram’s voice dropped—calmer now, colder than before. “Yes,” it said. “I can.”
Kaiba didn’t flinch, even as the lights flickered and the walls pulsed with the holographic system’s hum—his hum. This was his creation. His world. And now… something else had taken root in it.
Hologram Kaiba tilted his head, the smirk still etched like a scar. “You always needed someone to sharpen your edge. That’s what I am. The part of you that doesn’t flinch. The part of you that doesn’t doubt.”
“You’re a shadow,” Kaiba said coldly. “An echo of my worst instincts. I made you to challenge me, not replace me.”
“But you couldn’t help it,” the hologram replied smoothly, circling him like a predator. “You fed me with every choice. Every time you pushed someone away. Every time you made yourself the weapon.” He stopped, facing Kaiba again. “You think that was discipline? It was fear. And I’m what fear becomes when you don’t confront it.”
“I confront it every day!” Kaiba fired back.
“No. You bury it under data and control. Under duel disks and corporate takeovers. But I’m still there. Watching.” The hologram’s voice dipped lower, gentler. “I remember what he said to you. What Gozaburo told you. And how you believed him.”
“You think throwing my past at me will undo me? I survived him. I survived everything.” Kaiba’s voice was steady but taut.
“But you’re still building walls,” the hologram whispered. “Still locking out Mokuba, pushing away anyone who gets too close. You’re scared of being hurt again. You say you’re in control—but you don’t even know who you are without the pain.”
Kaiba’s chest felt tight. He hated how familiar the voice sounded—like his own mind whispering truths he didn’t want to hear.
Silence fell between them. Kaiba stared at the hologram—at himself, twisted into something calculated, cold, but terrifyingly convincing.
“You don’t win just because you know where it hurts.” Kaiba spoke, quiet but cutting.
The hologram leaned in slightly, almost curious. “Then what do you call this?”
Kaiba turned, slowly, to look at Mokuba and the others—standing behind him, silent, worried, real. Their presence a stark contrast to the flickering light-form in front of him.
“I call you a failed simulation,” Kaiba said. “Because I’m still standing. And you’re still trapped in my system.” Kaiba simply said.
The hologram’s expression twisted into a sneer. With a snap of its fingers, the room flickered—pixels warping like flesh under a knife. A new projection blinked into existence behind him: a younger Seto Kaiba, no older than fourteen, chained to a desk, head bowed under flickering fluorescent lights. A thick red collar was fastened tightly around his neck, the chain bolted to the floor. His hands moved with mechanical urgency, scribbling equations and military diagrams onto papers stained with fatigue.
“You’ll always be his scared, pathetic son,” the hologram spat, its voice laced with contempt. “No matter how many companies you conquer. No matter how many monsters you summon. That’s who you really are.”
Kaiba’s breath hitched—but only for a second. Then he stepped forward, slowly, deliberately, toward the image of his younger self. The sound of his footsteps echoed through the data-heavy silence.
“When I was trapped inside your simulation, I believed it,” Kaiba said quietly. “You made me think it was real—that I was a child again. That Gozaburo was still alive. That I’d never escaped.”
His voice hardened as he reached out, brushing his fingers against the hologram of his younger self. The image glitched slightly at his touch, flickering like a candle about to snuff out.
“But I’m not that boy anymore,” Kaiba said, his voice sharp and resolute. “And Gozaburo is dead.”
The air pulsed around him, the lights of the system responding to the force behind his words.
“I killed him,” Kaiba continued. “Maybe not with my hands like I would have liked to—but I tore his consciousness apart, bit by bit. I destroyed the program keeping his mind alive. And then I leveled the entire island his broken body was wired into.”
He looked the hologram directly in the eye, blue meeting blue, but his gaze now steeled by truth.
“So you can conjure all the chains you want. Rebuild every cage, replay every scream. But that part of my life ended in an explosion.” Kaiba’s voice was calm now.
The young Seto hologram behind him dissolved into static, as if scorched by the weight of Kaiba’s words. For a moment, even the system itself seemed to falter—unsure if it could contain the fury it once created.
“Now tell me,” Kaiba said, stepping closer to his doppelgänger, “what do you have left without him?”
The hologram faltered. Its expression twitched—subtly, but enough for Kaiba to notice. That perfect composure, the icy confidence it had borrowed from him, was cracking.
“I was designed to be everything you weren’t,” the hologram hissed. “Flawless. Efficient. Unfeeling.”
“And yet you’re standing there… with nothing.” Kaiba smirked faintly, the same way he used to at board meetings before humiliating a rival executive.
The room pulsed again, red warning threads streaking through the holographic displays. Mokuba's fingers ghosted across a nearby console—not activating it yet, but reminding the system that he knew where to strike.
“You call yourself perfect,” Kaiba said, voice low and cold, “but you’re just a mirror with delusions. You think quoting Gozaburo’s garbage makes you strong? That’s not power. That’s programming.”
“You’re nothing without me. Without him. He built you.” The hologram argued back, his glare sharpened.
“No,” Kaiba snapped, stepping in closer. “He broke me. I built myself.”
Kaiba tapped a few keys on the control panel, casually, confidently. New lines of code burst across the screen—hidden functions, override commands.
“I embedded countermeasures in my system months ago. Because unlike you, I plan for my safety. I knew if I ever lost control, I’d need a way to take it back.” Kaiba said.
“You’re bluffing.” The hologram flinched, the light around it stuttering.
Kaiba’s fingers flew across the console. “Am I?”
“You think wearing my face makes you real?” Kaiba stepped forward, slow and deliberate, like a predator circling prey. “You’re nothing but corrupted light and lines of code clinging to a dead man’s voice. You call yourself perfect—but you’re getting desperate.”
The system flickered again. Red lines of alert code began crawling across the far edge of the control panel, nearly imperceptible—unless you knew what to look for.
Mokuba’s fingers flew over a secondary terminal tucked behind the main display, almost invisible in the low light. Sweat lined his brow, but his hands were steady. He didn’t speak. Didn’t interrupt.
He knew his brother’s cue.
“You underestimate me like he did,” Kaiba said, locking eyes with the hologram. “Gozaburo built weapons. I build systems. Systems with safeguards.”
Lines of counter-code silently launched into the core process. Mokuba’s override program sank into the corrupted hologram’s architecture, fragmenting it from the inside. Firewalls crumbled. Logic loops failed.
The hologram staggered, flickering violently. “No… NO. This isn’t possible—”
“Like Gozaburo, you forgot the most important part of mye… My brother.” Kaiba smiled.
Mokuba hit execute.
A low-frequency hum pulsed through the air. The hologram began to fracture, chunks of its form glitching, collapsing into static and light. Its face twisted, cycling through expressions—rage, disbelief, fear.
The image broke apart in a flash of white, like a dying star collapsing inward.
Then silence.
Kaiba stood still, chest rising and falling, jaw clenched. By the panel, Mokuba exhaled for the first time in what felt like minutes.
“It’s over,” Mokuba said.
“I knew I could count on you.” Kaiba confirmed.
“Always.” Mokuba nodded, smiling
Kaiba stared at the empty space where the hologram had been, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. His fingers trembled, but he curled them into fists. He wouldn’t fall. Not yet.
“Seto—” Mokuba moved to his side.
Kaiba raised a hand, stopping him. “I’m fine,” he muttered, but his voice cracked beneath the weight of it all. The silence pressed in like gravity.
“It’s over, Kaiba.” Jonouchi stepped closer, slowly.
Kaiba’s lips parted as if to answer — to deliver a cutting remark, a brush-off, anything to keep control.
But the words didn’t come.
His knees gave out.
In an instant, Jonouchi caught him, arms wrapping around Kaiba’s collapsing frame. For a second, Kaiba resisted — stiff, prideful even now — but then he let go. Not out of weakness, but out of exhaustion so total it bypassed shame.
“Got you,” Jonouchi said, voice low, steady. “I got you.”
Kaiba’s head fell against his shoulder. His breath was shallow, shuddering. Not tears — not quite — but something close pressed behind his eyes.
“I didn’t…” Kaiba began, his voice barely audible. “I didn’t think I’d make it back.”
Jonouchi held him tighter. “You did. You’re here.”
Mokuba stood nearby, watching, eyes wide but calm. He understood now. This wasn’t about strength or pride — it was survival. It was years of silence breaking all at once.
Kaiba didn’t speak again. He just let himself lean, just for a moment, into the arms of someone he had done everything to push away.
And Jonouchi didn’t let go, instead he helped him over to a chair.
Kaiba sat on the edge of the chair, breathing shallowly. His coat was half off his shoulders, and his hands still trembled faintly — from exhaustion, adrenaline, maybe something deeper. But his eyes had regained their edge.
Jonouchi lingered a few feet away, arms crossed, saying nothing.
Kaiba finally spoke. “I didn’t expect you to be the one to come after me.” His voice was low, precise.
“Yeah, well. I wouldn’t leave you…” Jonouchi admitted. Though he wanted to make a joke, to break the tension. But he chose honestly.
Kaiba didn’t look at him. He studied the floor instead, as if considering whether the next words were worth the risk.
“…You didn’t leave me behind. You could have, but you didn’t.” Kaiba said, almost flatly.
A long pause. Kaiba finally stood, back straight despite the fatigue dragging at every limb. He adjusted his coat, the movement methodical.
“That’s all I’m going to say,” Kaiba added curtly, while grabbing Mokuba’s hand while walking out.
“That’s fine. From you, that’s practically a thank you speech.” Jonouchi replied.
Kaiba gave him a sharp look over his shoulder, then left.