Chapter Twenty-Seven: How It Ends

'Why isn't this Duel Disk working?' Kaiba wonders as he shakes the arm the Duel Disk is on. He stops shaking the machine and looks at the bottom of it, where there are a lot of different wires and things. There seems to be one wire that isn't connected to anything. "Okay, I think I found the problem..." Kaiba says aloud as he reconnects the loose wire. 'Unless it just now came undone from shaking the disk too much...' he adds in his thoughts. "Let's try this again," he says and puts the Duel Monster card back on the space. Energy can be seen running through the green microchip and different wires, and then a realistic looking holographic image appears before him. The men at the table have a look of amazement when the hologram appears, since they were beginning to believe the machine didn't work. "Once the machine is finished, the covering will prevent wires from coming loose like that," Kaiba mentions. "As you can see, the Duel Disk wirelessly communicates information from the played card to the two devices on the floor. Then those devices create the hologram. When two Duel Disks are used together in a duel, they can communicate with each other. This small screen shows how many life points a player has remaining," Kaiba says and points toward a part of the machine. "So... What do you think of the disk?" Kaiba asks as he shuts it off.

The men talk with one another for a few minutes. Kaiba looks toward his brother, who has a worried look on his face.

"The demonstration was very... interesting," someone tells Kaiba. "The diagrams in the handout look very promising, and the quality of the hologram - when it works - is very good. The disk also seems exceptionally sturdy, since it still worked after receiving quite a beating. However... as for how much time it's taking to perfect... You have the last say in these matters, of course, but I would suggest moving on to new projects if the machine can't be completed within about two days. As the company's lead financial advisor, I feel the need to remind you that we need to get as many products on the market as possible at this time."

"Two days... It can be completed in that amount of time," Kaiba tells him.

"Are you sure, Mr. Kaiba...? Tomorrow's Saturday. - Most of the people in that department have the weekend off," one person speaks up.

"I'll complete it myself," Kaiba tells the men. With that, the meeting is adjourned. On the way home, Kaiba notices a building being built close to Mr. Muto's game shop. The sign at the top of the building reads, "The Black Crown Game Shop". 'Looks like Yugi's grandfather is going to get some competition...' he thinks.

'If this duel, using a duel arena, almost gave the old man a heart attack, then he should see the realistic holo-generators I'm starting... The Duel Disks will be much more realistic, with solid-vision holograms,' Kaiba thinks. He looks at the card in his hands. 'Finally... I have the fourth Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The man should have agreed to sell it to me or trade for it, but he was an idiot... ' He holds up the card he won in the duel so that Yugi and his grandfather can see, then rips it in half. "Now that card will never be used against me," he says. 'Too bad you can only have three of the same card in a deck, but at least I get to see the horrified looks on their faces...'

"Grandpa!" Yugi says, rushing over to Mr. Muto. "Grandpa, are you all right?"

"Y... Yugi... I'm sorry I lost... Kaiba's a terrible young man... He'll do anything to win a game... I built this deck; I put my soul into these cards... Take my cards and teach Kaiba respect for the heart of the cards, Yugi!"

'What a stupid old man... I already defeated his deck once, and now he doesn't even have a Blue-Eyes anymore!' Kaiba thinks.

The duel begins at the top floor of Kaiba Land, at an arena in the center of the room. 'Is this the same Yugi I've seen in the past? He's more confident than before, as though he's a whole different person! This other Yugi... He's interesting,' Kaiba thinks.

"Draw your last pathetic card so I can end this, Yugi," Kaiba says with a smirk at the end of the duel.

"My Grandpa's deck has no pathetic cards, Kaiba," Yami says, also smirking. "But it does contain... The unstoppable Exodia!"

"Exodia! It's not possible!" Kaiba yells. His life points drop to zero. 'How could this nobody defeat me?'

Kaiba comes out of the memory to see Mokuba sitting beside him. "Seto... can you finish the second version of the Duel Disk in two days...?" Mokuba asks, too preoccupied to notice Kaiba's shocked expression about the memory.

"Well... I think there's enough notes about the disks. I might have to take it apart to see how everything's put together, though," Kaiba answers his brother. "There's something I would like to ask you, too... What happened after Yugi defeated me in a duel using Exodia? What's the rest of the story?"

"I'll tell you when we get home," Mokuba tells him, realizing Kaiba must have just remembered the duel. After getting back to the mansion, the brothers go to a room upstairs to talk. "After that duel, you... left to figure things out. It was a hard six months... Kaiba Corp. stocks plummeted, you lost a lot of weight... Pegasus took the opportunity to try buying out the company, teaming up with the company's head executives, called the Big Five. Pegasus kidnapped me, since I had the key to a safe that held some important papers. The Big Five told Pegasus they'd let him have the company if he could defeat Yugi - what you couldn't do. That's the main reason Pegasus held the Duelist Kingdom tournament. Pegasus hired a guy to impersonate you and duel Yugi, but he didn't expect the real you to show up..."

"Stop Defense! Now all your monsters switch to attack mode!"

"I'll play Feral Imp," Yami says, knowing this will be his last turn of the duel. - He had run out of moves.

"Blue-Eyes, attack!"

'Yugi!...' Kaiba calls, even though he's halfway across the world. The Blue-Eyes vanishes from the field. 'What happened...?' he wonders.

"I knew it was you. Yugi taught you about the heart of the cards during that duel with him, and your Blue-Eyes wasn't going to attack Yugi during this duel if you didn't want it to. Kemo thought it was some glitch with the arena, but anything made by you wouldn't break so easily!"

"Kemo... Isn't he your bodyguard?" Kaiba asks, recalling the name.

"He was... A lot of the people who worked for us switched sides with Pegasus. The maid was pretty much the only person I thought I could trust... You came to Duelist Kingdom to try to save me and the company, after that."

Kaiba suddenly remembers heading to the island in a helicopter, arriving at night and dueling Joey after the mutt practically begged for a match, going to Pegasus's castle, and holding Croquet hostage until he could see Pegasus. He also remembers Pegasus showing him footage of Mokuba's cell and telling him the only way to save Mokuba is to duel him - but first he has to defeat Yugi. Kaiba remembers Dueling Yugi in Expert Mode on a wing of the castle. And he remembers Pegasus agreeing to use the Duel Disks, but only if a brainwashed Mokuba duels in Pegasus's place. He had refused to duel his brother - he could barely stand seeing him in that condition, let alone duel him. He remembers losing to Pegasus, and how, to his dismay, Yugi had won for him. He remembers how he fired everyone who had turned against him.

"Yugi said you tried dueling Pegasus in order to save me, but-"

"You don't have to tell me anymore, Mokuba," Kaiba says with a slight smile.

"But I wanted to tell you about..."

"You don't have to," Kaiba repeats. Mokuba notices the smile on Kaiba's face and the glimmer in his eyes, and realizes what his brother means.

"Welcome back, Big Brother..." Mokuba says as he throws his arms around Kaiba. The brothers hug for a few minutes before pulling away from one another.

"I'm glad it's all over, but I still have something I need to do..." Kaiba tells his brother. He leaves the room and goes downstairs while thinking about who the traitor could be.

"I'm not sure if Pegasus found out about you having amnesia by the Millennium Eye or not... I just have a feeling that there was more to it than that..."

Remembering what Yugi had told him at school yesterday, Kaiba's pretty sure there's one more of Pegasus's spies still working for him. Who could it be, though? Thinking back to the past twelve days, he's done so many things unlike himself, it could be almost anyone he's come in contact with. On second thought, most people probably wouldn't assume he had amnesia when acting a little odd - losing his mind, on the other hand, is another story. The thing is, when Pegasus first called Kaiba, he was very specific.

"Good answer, for an amnesiac," Pegasus replied.

Because of that, either Kaiba must have given someone a big clue - which he was trying to be careful not to do - or he's been around someone often enough for them to put all the pieces together. If he assumed Yugi and his friends didn't blab... (How could he have been so nice to them - even if he didn't remember he doesn't trust them?) The person who next comes to mind is that maid who he's seen almost everyday, it seems. Someone working in the mansion, like her, could be around him enough to figure it out. But Mokuba trusted her so much during Duelist Kingdom that it's hard to believe it could be her, even when remembering that a person can't trust anyone - not even themselves. This is a perfect example of that. He couldn't even trust himself to keep his memory loss a secret. Not to mention how he couldn't trust himself to take care of Mokuba before Death-T. He didn't treat his brother - or anyone else, for that matter - very kindly at all during that time.

Kaiba comes to a conclusion about who it must be by the time he gets to the ground floor. He fires the person, along with having them send a message to Pegasus that he remembers everything.

Next, Kaiba goes to the study to see if he can catch up on his work and fix anything Mokuba or himself had messed up. After typing for awhile, the phone rings. He picks it up and answers.

"Mr. Kaiba, Yugi Muto is at the front gate. Should we let him in?"

Kaiba considers it for a minute before saying, "Yes. Show him in and have him wait for me in the front room." Kaiba hangs up the phone and walks back downstairs to see Yugi sitting in a chair waiting for him. Yugi looks up when noticing Kaiba.

"I thought I should come over, since we didn't get a chance to talk after school. See, I think there might be someone in the mansion who could be spying on you for Pegasus..." Yugi says.

"I already fired the traitor. It was just common sense... When I realized how unlike myself I've been during the past several days..."

"So you've got your memories back..." Yugi observes.

"Yeah..." Kaiba says and pauses for a minute. "Yugi... The past two weeks never happened, got it?" Yugi nods with a knowing smile. "Tell Jo-" Kaiba begins but catches himself, "Wheeler and the others that it was temporary insanity on my part, and nothing more."

Epilogue

Kaiba got himself a new limo driver after firing the old one. His chauffeur was around him even more than the maid, driving him back and forth to school, the hospital, and Kaiba Corp. He might not have been able to hear him and Mokuba talking, but he might have saw his expression when seeing the mansion for the first time, as well as other things. The man also knew about every time he went to the hospital.

Kaiba stayed up all night working on finalizing the Duel Disk and got it done on time. Not too long afterward, a woman by the name of Ishizu told him about three rare Duel Monster cards and talked him into throwing a tournament in order to find two of them. It was good timing, since it would push sales for Duel Disks - having people using them in a tournament. The thing is, it's actually cheaper to make the Duel Disks than the Duel Arenas. They're also more portable - people can duel anywhere with the disks.

There were a few problems during his Battle City tournament, though. Ishizu and Yugi kept trying to tell him that he was a priest three thousand years ago, around 1,000 BC. Of course... that would have been impossible. He kept telling them that he knew who he was - that he was Seto Kaiba, CEO of Kaiba Corporation. There was no way he could stand not knowing who he was for the second time. He just figured out who he was and he never wanted to have that lost and confused feeling ever again.

Kaiba also became obsessed with dueling Yugi again, since he found out that he could have won fairly at Duelist Kingdom if he had remembered the Negate card in his hand. He gave up too soon during that duel and wanted to win a duel against Yugi for real. Yugi ended up winning against him during the finals of the tournament, but it was still a very close match.

After having to relive all the memories about his stepfather, Gozaburo Kaiba, the pain was fresh on his mind and he was haunted by the man ever since he remembered him. Because of that, he decided to try burying the past at the end of the tournament, along with an old artificial island for weapon manufacturing that Gozaburo had made while still alive.

Kaiba also decided to fulfill his dream of building Kaiba Lands all over the globe and flew to America with his brother after the tournament ended. He had only built one Kaiba Land so far, so he had a lot of work ahead of him. He also thought it would be a good opportunity to spend time with Mokuba and talk to him about things. Mokuba had always wanted the sweet innocent brother he used to know before Gozaburo had adopted them, but then when Kaiba had lost his memories and acted more like the kid he used to be, Mokuba couldn't stand Kaiba not remembering him or their life. Then, after Kaiba did get his memories back, Mokuba wished Kaiba would act more like he did when he had amnesia. Kaiba thought he'd try being everything Mokuba's been wanting when they're in America, but he still wanted to have a talk with him about how he isn't sure if he could be that innocent kid again and still remember everything that had happened during his life.

Reflection about writing the story:

Hmm... Looks like the story's over, now. It's been a good two years, and I actually finished a story. First one on this site, and first I finish. Well... The ending seems too rushed, though. I was initially projecting 25 chapters while writing the last part of the story, and I wanted to get 27, since that's my lucky number. Then I ended up with too much to write at the end, so there should probably have been 28 or 29 chapters, really... But I think I found a way to fit everything into the last chapter and still make it sound believable.

I think I got better after writing the first several chapters. It was taking me a month to do a chapter at first - except for the prologue, which only took about half an hour - and then this last summer, May 2006, I was trying to come up with the duel between Kaiba and Pegasus, as well as try to get some inspiration for chapter nine and up. I didn't write much for awhile, but then I wrote chapters 9 to 19 during what was left of the summer - sometimes writing a chapter in only a day's time, even. I saved up a lot of those chapters, and I was right in doing so, since I didn't get anything done during the fall semester at school - even with a Creative Writing class... It was the first time that school took up so much of my time. When I got out December 16, 2006, I thought it was a good opportunity to write as much as I could before starting back on January 16, 2007. I did start making plans before the semester was officially over, though. I made some summaries of what I would like to say in the last chapters, and I again got some chapters done in only a day's time.

Figuring out the moves for the duel helped me with plot stuff. When I first started this story, I didn't know much about what was going to happen next. I wanted Kaiba to have dreams and bad memories, and there were one or two scenes that had popped into my head, but I was really writing this story blindly. I figured it was the best thing to do, since I wanted to finish this and I would become bored with past stories I'd started when figuring out how it was going to end. Every chapter is three pages and 10-14 lines in length and most of the chapters are of a whole day or a half of a day. That's because I had to figure out what to say and I would start with "Kaiba wakes up", think of what he would do next, and eventually end with "Kaiba goes to bed" unless I come up with a lot for him to do during the day. Now... When I was doing the duel, I thought I needed to write down their moves on paper before starting the chapters. I've tried writing duels before, and they wouldn't work out because I wouldn't know enough cards or other things. This time is the first time I got a duel that made sense. After coming up with the moves, I then started writing the chapter centered around those moves. That allowed me to write the chapters quickly, since I basically knew where it was going. What I'm trying to say is, I wanted to have that feeling of everything fitting together, as well as being able to write that quickly, again. So I thought I'd try it for the end of the fanfic. It was good that I did that, since I needed to tie up loose ends, and I went through the story to try to find things I needed to answer or elaborate on. I didn't do everything I was thinking about, since I had to fit in so much in chapter 27, but I did a lot. I'll try to plan out stories in this way again.

I think I also improved my writing skills in other ways while doing this story. For one, I used to switch back and forth between present tense and past tense (it was a way to make "he said" and "she said" sound more varied), but when I first started thinking about doing this story, I thought I should pick one and stick with it. I started the story around the beginning of February, 2005, by the way.

I also worded some things in the first few chapters kind'a bad, since I couldn't figure out how to word them any better. Now, I see how I can word things a lot better. I've fixed little things in the first chapters of the story every so often, so you probably won't see any big mistakes. I've also learned how to make things more detailed, partly from Pile of Manga. I found her website quite a while ago, and the pictures on her site looked so much like ones I've done, I thought it was amazing. I've never seen anyone who drew like me and make some of the same mistakes as me, before. I more recently found out that she's on here and has some stories. I was surprised by how detailed her writing was, and I figured that if she could do it, I could do it. So I studied a few lines of one of her fanfics and I figured out a way to do it. I still haven't figured out how to incorporate detail into everything I write, but if I focus on it, I can do it. I'm wanting to add more detail to this story while revising it some. I want to add some extra scenes into the story - some potential things I could have had in the first chapters, which I didn't notice until about a year after I started writing the story.

Even though I think I've improved a lot, it looks like the story's done better at the beginning... Heh. I still wonder where all the reviewers have gone and why...

Hmm... There's a few scenes I started to put into some chapters, but then had cut them out, thinking of something better to put. I tried putting those deleted/changed scenes back into the story, and hopefully they fit in pretty good where I added them. As an example, the part about seeing a book on a bookshelf and having a bad memory about Mr. Muto's Blue-Eyes was originally the first memory Kaiba had. But I took it out, since I thought it was better for his first memory to be when Pegasus called him. That memory about the book was originally in chapter six. I had already replaced the experience with another, similar one, in a later chapter, but I liked that first one. After adding it, I even came up with more memories that involve it, as you see. So... I guess this is goodbye, everyone. Parting truly is such sweet sorrow.

There's a few people who I'd like to thank and give some credit to.

Helped me with the story in some way:

Ninque (on this site) - the inspiration (even though she ended up revising the story before posting the ending, then not posting the revision! Whenever "To Truly See" comes back to this site, I'll be happy to read it)

Mattie B. - nurse I got the hospital info from

LadyPhoenix99 (on this site) - writer and friend who helped a lot

My dad - proofread the story and pointed out grammatical errors

Decree (on this site) - friend who helped a lot

Angel N.

Cody, from yu-jyo - the guy that knows everything about Yu-Gi-Oh!

Caorann fridh Bronach (on this site)

Clarity2199 (on this site) - her "Amnesia" story initially sounds a lot like mine, although it was impossible for me to have copied from her... Just interesting that we had a lot of the same ideas.

Silver Dragon Golden Dragon (on this site)

Kittyuehana - gave review on live journal

Kari Izumi - told me about live journal

Pile of Manga (on this site) - her writing is so detailed and I'm trying to learn from her

Special thanks to these reviewers:

Wise Man Domingo

Tai Greywing

Shadow over Egypt

Caorann fridh Bronach

LadyPhoenix99

Sir Mocha

t-me

Silverfox

KitsuneChan8888888

nanashi09

Ori

chibineko ()

CCS132

STFU () - for speaking their mind

Dispassion

AvidReaderAlso

Joou Himeko Dah

NeptuneIce - for making me feel better on January 15, 2007.

Kate Ryou

silverfoxninja

Also thanks to everyone else who has reviewed, especially those who have reviewed toward the end...

(Finished Saturday, January 13th, 2007)