Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ The Gambler ❯ The Gambler ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Edmondia Dantes 
Gozaburo Kaiba has always been obsessive. Sugoroku Mutou has always been impressive.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Psychological | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 07.04.2004 | Pages: 5 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 555 | Status: Completed
Gozaburo Kaiba has always been obsessive. Sugoroku Mutou has always been impressive.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Psychological | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 07.04.2004 | Pages: 5 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 555 | Status: Completed
* * *
The Gambler
By Edmondia Dantes
Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh.
AN: The world's first ever Tobaccoshipping fic. Because I'm crazy. If you haven't seen Sugoroku in his younger adventuring days, you probably won't recognize him here. This fic takes place 16 years before the events of the series.
* * *
He was thirty-seven years old, and he had just lost his first chess match to a smirking old man.
He ground the stub of his cigar into the delicate glass ashtray he'd brought with him, leaving an ugly black streak against the pristine surface. His opponent delicately knocked a few ashes off the end of his cigarette, falling like shadows of snow, obscuring his own inelegant manoeuvre.
"Clumsy move," the man had chided, and promptly won the match.
He glared across the table. The old man smirked still, standing now, blowing a fading golden bang away from his lined face.
"Come back when you're ready to try again," the man said, and turned and walked away.
Gozaburo Kaiba gritted his teeth and slammed his fists into the warped wood of the chess table.
His bodyguards tensed behind him, but he leapt to his feet and spun past them, stomping out of the park.
* * *
The man had a wife, and a pregnant daughter - who had no husband. It was an interesting detail.
His past was even more interesting.
Funding archeological expeditions on poker games. He knew it had been done, but he was still damnably impressed, despite himself. He wasn't interested in the myths or ideas that the old man had proposed - but the deaths surrounding his time in Egypt intrigued him.
Sugoroku Mutou, age fifty-seven. An old man already, faded glory.
How had he won?
* * *
Gozaburo Kaiba stared down at the chessboard, disbeliving.
Sugoroku Mutou smiled. "Clumsy," he chided, and blew smoke into his eyes.
He glared after as the old man strolled away.
* * *
He stopped the limo when he saw him on the sidewalk, an arm wrapped around the waist of a plump woman. He slid the window down and leaned out, scowling.
"You," he said, and the old man turned and lifted a brow in his direction.
The woman at his side had silver streaks in her dark crimson hair, and dark brown eyes that crinkled at the sides from years of laughter.
"Go away," the old man said, and continued walking.
The woman blinked, nodded politely in his direction, and jogged slowly back to the old man, resting her head on his shoulder when she caught up.
He hated her immediately.
* * *
Her name was Sakura. It was sickeningly sweet, cloyingly so, and he was sure her personality was the same.
How she had gotten her hands on one as wild as Mutou was beyond him. They'd gotten married at a young age, but he couldn't imagine her trekking through the wilderness with him.
Seventeen bribes later, he had a pile of letters stacked neatly on his desk.
It seemed the old man was quite the romancer in his day. Ancient Egyptian poetry had a certain violent flair that even sounded good when translated to Japanese.
He ignored the tentative knock on the door of the study.
His wife and her thousand complaints could wait.
This life in his hands was so much more interesting.
* * *
"So did you kill those men?" he asked over the small table one sunny afternoon, smug in his surety that his new strategy was perfect.
The old man blinked slowly and looked up from his careful examination of the situation, one dark brow quirking. "Did you?"
Gozaburo glared.
Mutou eyed the board thoughtfully, then moved his queen. "Checkmate."
* * *
He was halfway through the stack of letters now, hoarding them until he could read them uninterrupted and alone. It was a good thing that Mutou's whore (wife was too good a word) had kept them all, treasured them all, for nearly thirty years.
He'd listened with glee to the tearful phone call she had made to the police station.
The old man was very eloquent. And almost musically perverse.
His wife knocked on the door again, so he picked up the nearest paperweight and threw it vaguely in her direction.
She didn't knock again.
* * *
"Stop following me," the old man said, "Come to the park if you want to play a game."
He lounged against the side of his limo and eyed him. "Why don't you come and play a real game?"
The old man turned away from his perusal of an empty storefront and fixed him with a glare.
"I don't think so," he said coolly, and for the first time, he realized what a startling shade of violet the old man's eyes were.
It was... unnerving.
* * *
Three days later, Mrs. Mutou attempted to apply for a loan at her local bank.
She was amusingly startled when they turned her down.
* * *
A week had passed since he'd last seen the man - apparently he still had some connections that even a Kaiba could not trace.
He was glaring into a stack of papers when the door of his office opened and the devil himself strode in, clad in classic black that made him look a few decades younger.
He slammed a rough palm down on his desk and fixed him with a cold, sharp gaze.
"Don't do that again," the rogue said to the millionaire, and snuffed his cigarette out on a twenty-four million dollar arms deal.
And then he turned and walked away.
Gozaburo stared after him in silence.
* * *
The Mutou family purchased the little shop. He did a little digging, then a little more, and still a little deeper until he followed the old man's trail into the bowels of Tokyo.
Illegal gambling halls, while interesting and profitable, weren't really his style.
But they did make good testing sites for the practical teams in his research and development divisions.
* * *
He came to the park in paint-splattered overalls.
Gozaburo stared at him in disgust.
Mutou didn't speak a single word the entire time, but in the end, he won the game.
"I hate you," he said.
"Good," the old man replied, and rose with a creak of bones.
Gozaburo's lip curled.
"It's an honest day's work," the old man said flatly, "Ever heard of it?"
"Have you?" he retorted skeptically.
Those velvet eyes were as cold as ever. "I have now."
* * *
He was awoken by the sound of his wife retching in their bathroom.
When she stumbled out, messy-haired and disgusting, she pointed to the slight curvature of her belly and hissed, "I hate you."
He gazed blankly at her.
She gave an angry screech and stomped away.
Her eyes were very blue.
Such an ordinary color.
Such an ordinary woman.
It was pathetic.
* * *
The woman who answered the door was very young, barely into her twenties, and her belly was beginning to swell noticably with her child.
Her hair was deep crimson, and her eyes were brown.
Such an ordinary woman.
He had no doubt that she got it from her mother.
The old man strolled out of the back in those same paint-splattered overalls, plaster dust coating his hands.
"Ashita, help your mother," he said, and she went nervously, slipping past him like a frightened child. How dismally typical.
Her father crossed his arms and glared up at him.
"Get off my property."
"And if I buy up the land?"
"Get off my property."
"You know I can."
"Get out."
He went, because he had an appointment, because he had better things to do than waste his time arguing with a foolish old man.
He certainly did not leave because the old man had landed a punch in his midsection that left him winded and dizzy.
The tricky bastard fought dirty.
Very, very, very dirty.
He licked a trace of blood from his lips and smiled.
* * *
The old man was setting up a gaming shop.
How... quaint.
He drummed his fingers on the expensive wood of his table and glared at the report in front of him. The man loved his games - every time he blocked him he found another way to dodge.
He was impossibly lucky.
Impossibly.
It was infuriating.
* * *
It wasn't like him to be out so late at night. He had a company to run.
And old men belonged in bed long before midnight.
Yet he stood in a nearly-empty game shop and tapped a stolen pawn on a newly-installed glass counter while the clock on the wall ticked past three.
The old man tapped his ashes in a plastic tray and leisurely lifted the cigarette back to his lips.
"Are you going to move?" he demanded impatiently.
He smirked, and his eyes glittered in the flickering light. "It's my last, Kaiba," he drawled, and took a long drag, "I'm quitting for the baby. Let me savor it."
He gnawed on the end of his own cigar, nearly growling. "Foolishness."
"Wisdom."
"Surrender is always foolishness."
The old man reached across the counter and neatly captured his queen. "Checkmate."
He stared. For the second time since he'd encountered the man, smoke stung his eyes. The man was old, nearly sixty, the death could easily be made into an accident.
He snarled and lunged across the counter -
And cool steel pressed against his throat.
In the sudden silence, the sound of the hammer being pulled back echoed loudly in his ears.
"Go away," the gambler hissed, "And never bother me and mine again."
His eyes were frigid and his hand was steady.
His breath froze in his throat.
Silence.
The old man took another long drag on his cigarette, the flame reflecting wildly in his eyes.
"I can kill you for this."
The old man's lips curled into a smirk. "Before I kill you?"
How strange. He'd never actually been able to hear his own heartbeat before. The cloying scent of smoke burned water into his eyes.
How could an old man hold himself so steadily?
Cold steel in his hands and in his eyes.
Fascinating.
Lethal.
He left slowly, cigar crumbling to searing ash in his fingertips.
When he paused outside the shop, he watched the old man snuff his cigarette, plunging the shop into darkness.
* * *
The next day, Sakura Mutou was hit by a car. The ambulance was held up by a car accident three blocks over. She died on the way to the hospital.
Her life had been worth nothing, but her death was well worth the three million yen it took to arrange.
He gave her obituary a place of honor atop the pile of the old man's letters. He added a photo of the grieving family next to it.
The black didn't make him look so much younger, now. But that was all right, because he was finally free.
She had been so unworthy of him.
* * *
Three months later, he watched the old man brush past him in the hospital, a tiny, squalling bundle in his arms.
Mutou cradled his grandson against his chest, tickling under his chin, softening wails into giggling. He cooed at the little child, and the child cooed back, gurgling happily.
His once-perfect eyes were soft.
It was pathetic.
He turned back to the wall that kept him from his newborn son.
The limp little thing squirmed pathetically in its plastic haven.
He turned away, disgusted, and stalked down the hall, lighting a cigar as he went.
A nurse tried to flag him down.
He let his bodyguards handle her and stepped outside into the fading sunlight.
He watched the old man usher his daughter out of the hospital, watched him carefully hand the tiny creature in his arms over to its mother. He watched from the sidewalk, waiting to be noticed, waiting for a flash of familiar steel to steal his breath, waiting for a spark of flame to set the evening ablaze.
But the gambler walked away.
* * *
Fin
* * *
AN: I am in love with this fic. This is probably an odd form of narcissism. I don't care.
The Gambler
By Edmondia Dantes
Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh.
AN: The world's first ever Tobaccoshipping fic. Because I'm crazy. If you haven't seen Sugoroku in his younger adventuring days, you probably won't recognize him here. This fic takes place 16 years before the events of the series.
* * *
He was thirty-seven years old, and he had just lost his first chess match to a smirking old man.
He ground the stub of his cigar into the delicate glass ashtray he'd brought with him, leaving an ugly black streak against the pristine surface. His opponent delicately knocked a few ashes off the end of his cigarette, falling like shadows of snow, obscuring his own inelegant manoeuvre.
"Clumsy move," the man had chided, and promptly won the match.
He glared across the table. The old man smirked still, standing now, blowing a fading golden bang away from his lined face.
"Come back when you're ready to try again," the man said, and turned and walked away.
Gozaburo Kaiba gritted his teeth and slammed his fists into the warped wood of the chess table.
His bodyguards tensed behind him, but he leapt to his feet and spun past them, stomping out of the park.
* * *
The man had a wife, and a pregnant daughter - who had no husband. It was an interesting detail.
His past was even more interesting.
Funding archeological expeditions on poker games. He knew it had been done, but he was still damnably impressed, despite himself. He wasn't interested in the myths or ideas that the old man had proposed - but the deaths surrounding his time in Egypt intrigued him.
Sugoroku Mutou, age fifty-seven. An old man already, faded glory.
How had he won?
* * *
Gozaburo Kaiba stared down at the chessboard, disbeliving.
Sugoroku Mutou smiled. "Clumsy," he chided, and blew smoke into his eyes.
He glared after as the old man strolled away.
* * *
He stopped the limo when he saw him on the sidewalk, an arm wrapped around the waist of a plump woman. He slid the window down and leaned out, scowling.
"You," he said, and the old man turned and lifted a brow in his direction.
The woman at his side had silver streaks in her dark crimson hair, and dark brown eyes that crinkled at the sides from years of laughter.
"Go away," the old man said, and continued walking.
The woman blinked, nodded politely in his direction, and jogged slowly back to the old man, resting her head on his shoulder when she caught up.
He hated her immediately.
* * *
Her name was Sakura. It was sickeningly sweet, cloyingly so, and he was sure her personality was the same.
How she had gotten her hands on one as wild as Mutou was beyond him. They'd gotten married at a young age, but he couldn't imagine her trekking through the wilderness with him.
Seventeen bribes later, he had a pile of letters stacked neatly on his desk.
It seemed the old man was quite the romancer in his day. Ancient Egyptian poetry had a certain violent flair that even sounded good when translated to Japanese.
He ignored the tentative knock on the door of the study.
His wife and her thousand complaints could wait.
This life in his hands was so much more interesting.
* * *
"So did you kill those men?" he asked over the small table one sunny afternoon, smug in his surety that his new strategy was perfect.
The old man blinked slowly and looked up from his careful examination of the situation, one dark brow quirking. "Did you?"
Gozaburo glared.
Mutou eyed the board thoughtfully, then moved his queen. "Checkmate."
* * *
He was halfway through the stack of letters now, hoarding them until he could read them uninterrupted and alone. It was a good thing that Mutou's whore (wife was too good a word) had kept them all, treasured them all, for nearly thirty years.
He'd listened with glee to the tearful phone call she had made to the police station.
The old man was very eloquent. And almost musically perverse.
His wife knocked on the door again, so he picked up the nearest paperweight and threw it vaguely in her direction.
She didn't knock again.
* * *
"Stop following me," the old man said, "Come to the park if you want to play a game."
He lounged against the side of his limo and eyed him. "Why don't you come and play a real game?"
The old man turned away from his perusal of an empty storefront and fixed him with a glare.
"I don't think so," he said coolly, and for the first time, he realized what a startling shade of violet the old man's eyes were.
It was... unnerving.
* * *
Three days later, Mrs. Mutou attempted to apply for a loan at her local bank.
She was amusingly startled when they turned her down.
* * *
A week had passed since he'd last seen the man - apparently he still had some connections that even a Kaiba could not trace.
He was glaring into a stack of papers when the door of his office opened and the devil himself strode in, clad in classic black that made him look a few decades younger.
He slammed a rough palm down on his desk and fixed him with a cold, sharp gaze.
"Don't do that again," the rogue said to the millionaire, and snuffed his cigarette out on a twenty-four million dollar arms deal.
And then he turned and walked away.
Gozaburo stared after him in silence.
* * *
The Mutou family purchased the little shop. He did a little digging, then a little more, and still a little deeper until he followed the old man's trail into the bowels of Tokyo.
Illegal gambling halls, while interesting and profitable, weren't really his style.
But they did make good testing sites for the practical teams in his research and development divisions.
* * *
He came to the park in paint-splattered overalls.
Gozaburo stared at him in disgust.
Mutou didn't speak a single word the entire time, but in the end, he won the game.
"I hate you," he said.
"Good," the old man replied, and rose with a creak of bones.
Gozaburo's lip curled.
"It's an honest day's work," the old man said flatly, "Ever heard of it?"
"Have you?" he retorted skeptically.
Those velvet eyes were as cold as ever. "I have now."
* * *
He was awoken by the sound of his wife retching in their bathroom.
When she stumbled out, messy-haired and disgusting, she pointed to the slight curvature of her belly and hissed, "I hate you."
He gazed blankly at her.
She gave an angry screech and stomped away.
Her eyes were very blue.
Such an ordinary color.
Such an ordinary woman.
It was pathetic.
* * *
The woman who answered the door was very young, barely into her twenties, and her belly was beginning to swell noticably with her child.
Her hair was deep crimson, and her eyes were brown.
Such an ordinary woman.
He had no doubt that she got it from her mother.
The old man strolled out of the back in those same paint-splattered overalls, plaster dust coating his hands.
"Ashita, help your mother," he said, and she went nervously, slipping past him like a frightened child. How dismally typical.
Her father crossed his arms and glared up at him.
"Get off my property."
"And if I buy up the land?"
"Get off my property."
"You know I can."
"Get out."
He went, because he had an appointment, because he had better things to do than waste his time arguing with a foolish old man.
He certainly did not leave because the old man had landed a punch in his midsection that left him winded and dizzy.
The tricky bastard fought dirty.
Very, very, very dirty.
He licked a trace of blood from his lips and smiled.
* * *
The old man was setting up a gaming shop.
How... quaint.
He drummed his fingers on the expensive wood of his table and glared at the report in front of him. The man loved his games - every time he blocked him he found another way to dodge.
He was impossibly lucky.
Impossibly.
It was infuriating.
* * *
It wasn't like him to be out so late at night. He had a company to run.
And old men belonged in bed long before midnight.
Yet he stood in a nearly-empty game shop and tapped a stolen pawn on a newly-installed glass counter while the clock on the wall ticked past three.
The old man tapped his ashes in a plastic tray and leisurely lifted the cigarette back to his lips.
"Are you going to move?" he demanded impatiently.
He smirked, and his eyes glittered in the flickering light. "It's my last, Kaiba," he drawled, and took a long drag, "I'm quitting for the baby. Let me savor it."
He gnawed on the end of his own cigar, nearly growling. "Foolishness."
"Wisdom."
"Surrender is always foolishness."
The old man reached across the counter and neatly captured his queen. "Checkmate."
He stared. For the second time since he'd encountered the man, smoke stung his eyes. The man was old, nearly sixty, the death could easily be made into an accident.
He snarled and lunged across the counter -
And cool steel pressed against his throat.
In the sudden silence, the sound of the hammer being pulled back echoed loudly in his ears.
"Go away," the gambler hissed, "And never bother me and mine again."
His eyes were frigid and his hand was steady.
His breath froze in his throat.
Silence.
The old man took another long drag on his cigarette, the flame reflecting wildly in his eyes.
"I can kill you for this."
The old man's lips curled into a smirk. "Before I kill you?"
How strange. He'd never actually been able to hear his own heartbeat before. The cloying scent of smoke burned water into his eyes.
How could an old man hold himself so steadily?
Cold steel in his hands and in his eyes.
Fascinating.
Lethal.
He left slowly, cigar crumbling to searing ash in his fingertips.
When he paused outside the shop, he watched the old man snuff his cigarette, plunging the shop into darkness.
* * *
The next day, Sakura Mutou was hit by a car. The ambulance was held up by a car accident three blocks over. She died on the way to the hospital.
Her life had been worth nothing, but her death was well worth the three million yen it took to arrange.
He gave her obituary a place of honor atop the pile of the old man's letters. He added a photo of the grieving family next to it.
The black didn't make him look so much younger, now. But that was all right, because he was finally free.
She had been so unworthy of him.
* * *
Three months later, he watched the old man brush past him in the hospital, a tiny, squalling bundle in his arms.
Mutou cradled his grandson against his chest, tickling under his chin, softening wails into giggling. He cooed at the little child, and the child cooed back, gurgling happily.
His once-perfect eyes were soft.
It was pathetic.
He turned back to the wall that kept him from his newborn son.
The limp little thing squirmed pathetically in its plastic haven.
He turned away, disgusted, and stalked down the hall, lighting a cigar as he went.
A nurse tried to flag him down.
He let his bodyguards handle her and stepped outside into the fading sunlight.
He watched the old man usher his daughter out of the hospital, watched him carefully hand the tiny creature in his arms over to its mother. He watched from the sidewalk, waiting to be noticed, waiting for a flash of familiar steel to steal his breath, waiting for a spark of flame to set the evening ablaze.
But the gambler walked away.
* * *
Fin
* * *
AN: I am in love with this fic. This is probably an odd form of narcissism. I don't care.