Rock Bottom: Season Zero

Birthday

When Mokuba's birthday arrived, Seto tried hard to make it special for him. After all, Seto's own birthdays as a youngster hadn't been much celebrated or noticed, and he didn't want Mokuba to go through that as well.

Seto always woke Mokuba in the morning, but on his birthday, it was the smell of fresh pancakes that woke his little brother. Seto had acquired several cooking skills out of necessity and had become quite proficient in what he knew. Mokuba had gone through a stage of picky eating when he was eight, and thirteen-year-old Seto had needed to work hard to get his brother to eat much of anything.

They were chocolate chip pancakes, which put his now twelve-year-old brother in a good mood for the long walk to the KaibaCorp Headquarters. He'd cleared it with his supervisor beforehand, so it was alright for him to bring Mokuba in to work with him that day. He'd also let Duke know so that he wouldn't be surprised.

"Hi there, I'm Duke," the mechanical genius greeted as he held out a hand to Mokuba, who shook it with a smile. "You must be Mokuba. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Mokuba said with a smile. "You built that?" he asked, looking behind Duke at the Duel Arena prototype.

"Yep, and your brother did all the programming," Duke said, after double checking that the door was closed. They could get away with this so long as it never got to Noah that Mokuba had come in with Seto. Duke had started to suspect that he had moles acting as his eyes and ears in every corner of the company, so they'd taken extra precautions like closing their door while they were working. "Want to test it out?"

"Can I?" Mokuba said excitedly, unable to believe his ears.

"Of course you can!" Duke answered, with a wink. "We need to test it out again to see if your brother finally worked out all the kinks in the card-reader."

"Hey, you try staring at endless pages of computer coding and NOT having difficulty picking out the errors. It's a different language completely, just like Portuguese or Farsi."

"Nah, I'll leave that to nerds like you," Duke teased playfully.

"Hey, speak for yourself," Seto joked back, Mokuba grinning the whole time. He enjoyed seeing his brother so happy. He hoped that things stayed this way for a long time. He never wanted things to go back to when Seto was always working late, always in pain, always tired.

"Are you ready to duel?" Duke asked with a sly grin.

~~~~~~~~~~

That night, the two of them were quite content with their day. Mokuba had crawled over to Seto as he sat on their bed and looked over Duke's preliminary sketches for their portable Duel Arena idea. The child curled up at his brother's side, content to just be near him.

"Seto, do you need glasses?" Mokuba asked finally after nearly fifteen minutes of watching his brother squint at Duke's angular handwriting and faint pencil sketches.

"What? No, that's ridiculous," he answered, quickly dismissing the idea.

"But didn't Mom wear reading glasses?"

Seto was silent for a few moments, then answered, "Yeah, she did."

"So it's not that ridiculous that you might need them too, right?" Mokuba pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Seto answered with a sigh, smiling at his brother.

I told you that there was something wrong with your vision, Seth said, trying not to sound too triumphant.

Shut up, you, Seto thought back at him with a tone of irritation. I'll deal with it when I can afford to go to the eye doctor. Until then, I'll make do.