Disclaimer: Unequivocally not mine.

A/N: This was originally part of the fic collection As Deep as the Sky, but I went far beyond the time limit. First time I've ever tried to write Amelda as more than a cameo. He's a surprisingly interesting character under his stereotypical yaoi bondage manga appearance.

Dark Thoughts Need Satisfaction

© Scribbler, November 2008.

I don't want emotional hassle;
I just want another bite of the apple.
Dark thoughts need satisfaction.
We're gonna crash,
Let's make it happen!

-- From Ga-Ga by Melanie C

Amelda tracked Seto Kaiba for a long time before they actually met. It wasn't such a stretch. After all, he'd been tracking the Kaiba family for years.

Years of pent-up aggression had honed Amelda's mind to a sharp point, with little room at the deadly tip for anything except one thought: I will avenge my family. It kept him going when things were roughest. When he found himself committing acts he wouldn't have thought himself incapable of while his brother was alive, even in the middle of a war, where men did terrible things every day, Amelda kept his head above water by using this promise as a life raft. He and his loved ones would not be so easily forgotten. He would make the head of the Kaiba family pay for what his corporation had done.

Dartz taught him the importance of knowledge. "'Know thy enemy'," he said with a smile. "Clichéd, but effective. You can't fight what you don't understand. And when you do understand it, you'll know where best to strike for maximum effect."

So Amelda set himself the task of learning all about Gozaburo Kaiba and his world. The more he discovered about it, the more his resolve grew. Gozaburo and his kind revolved around money like flies around a slowly rotting corpse. They feasted on the misfortune of others to make figures on a screen get bigger, and exploited everyone and everything in their path with no regard for anyone but themselves.

Gozaburo had a son. Amelda studied footage of him – young, about Miruko's age but with a harder edge than his brother. Amelda didn't fail to see how Noah Kaiba watched his father more than the crowd at public functions when he was allowed to attend. Mostly he was absent, but when Gozaburo deigned to be seen with his son it was obvious Noah craved approval as much as Gozaburo disdained giving it. Noah copied his father's gestures, his bearing, trying to emulate what he obviously though was a great man.

It made Amelda feel sick. He wondered whether he could revenge himself on Gozaburo by taking away his son and turning him against his father. He could save Noah from the merciless life of a Kaiba and get back at Gozaburo at the same time.

But then Noah Kaiba disappeared from the public eye. It came without warning, and he was so infrequently seen anyway that only Amelda noticed when the appearances stopped altogether. He checked, but it seemed that Gozaburo's only son had been erased from all records he was able to access. Amelda asked Dartz to use his connections to find out what had really happened. Amelda was a good and loyal soldier who always listened and never shied away from loathsome tasks he was given, so Dartz granted him this one thing.

It barely any time for Dartz's network to discover the truth. Noah Kaiba was dead – struck down in a freak road accident. Even though he felt sorry for the boy, at first Amelda was glad. Now Gozaburo would find out how much it hurt to lose a loved one.

But Noah Kaiba had no funeral. His death wasn't acknowledged by anyone. Even the media failed to investigate where the Kaiba heir had gone, and Amelda turned up several rumours that Gozaburo had paid off key people to keep it quiet. It appeared he was as heartless towards his own family as he was with everyone else's.

Amelda gritted his teeth and renewed his promise, over and over. He promised for Miruko, for his mother, for himself and all his own suffering – and somehow the dead son of his enemy also made his way into his pledge: I will make him suffer for his heartlessness and cruelty.

Then that bastard Gozaburo died, and for a while Amelda foundered. There were two other Kaiba children who had appeared after Noah's disappearance, but according to Dartz's sources they were adopted. They hadn't even been a part of Gozaburo's sick lineage when he was a master of death and destruction with napalm and bombs in Amelda's country. They were innocent of those crimes. Could Amelda really extend his vendetta to them as well?

But … what about his promise? What was any of his struggle worth unless he had something to show for it at the end? How could he justify some of the things he'd done for Dartz and the Oricalchos without his promise to sustain him?

Without his mission, who was he?

For a while he felt himself cracking, thin lines of doubt and confusion splintering outwards from his chest, where his heart had shrunk into a shrivelled black thing that barely beat except in bitterness. He wasn't the boy he used to be, and he wasn't the man he'd intended to be when his family was still alive. The lines of his own personality blurred, and for the first time since Miruko died he felt a stab of fear.

That was what it came down to in the end. Seto Kaiba may not have been blood related to Gozaburo, but he had enough of the man's traits to give Amelda the justification he needed to keep himself whole.

Except that Seto Kaiba turned Kaiba Corp into a gaming and entertainment company. The first thing he did upon attaining power was to close the military research facilities and sever funding to all arms producers bearing the KC logo. He obliterated everything that could have been twisted into use by armed forces and prosecuted anyone who tried to keep underground projects going. Amelda was brought up short by this unprecedented development. These were not the acts of a bloodthirsty capitalist. They were almost the acts of someone with a conscience.

But he was nothing without his mission, and so he carried on. He watched Seto Kaiba, picking out his faults so as to bolster his own grudge. Seto was pitiless and brutal. He was ruthless and not above manipulation to get what he wanted. He reminded Amelda of Noah, mimicking his father and trying to turn himself into a miniature version of the man. When Seto kidnapped and inadvertently induced a heart attack an old man over a single Duel Monsters card, and then let someone else take him to the hospital, Amelda was watching it all from the shadows. The darkness in his heart swelled at this undeniable proof of Seto Kaiba's immorality. By blood or not, Seto was most definitely Gozaburo's son.

I will have my revenge on the Kaibas. I will.

Still, he felt strange about promising to steal Seto's soul. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was uneasy about taking it away. Perhaps it was the way he'd seen Mokuba Kaiba caring for Seto after Yuugi Mutou crushed his mind. Mokuba wasn't like the other Kaibas. When Amelda saw his face on television screens, he saw something different in the eyes of Gozaburo's youngest son. There was even more of Miruko in Mokuba than there had been in Noah. Was Amelda destined to forever see him brother in the faces of those he was destined to hurt?

Amelda was bewildered. He had to take Seto's soul. It was for the Oricalchos, but somehow that reason wasn't enough in this case. It wasn't until Dartz found him brooding and told him the truth that he stopped questioning things – and himself.

"He murdered Gozaburo, you know. His own adoptive father – the man who rescued him from an orphanage and gave him everything he ever wanted. He pushed him out of a sixteenth floor window so he could take over his company."

Like flies around a corpse …

Amelda stared at Dartz for a long time. He didn't bother to ask whether this was true. Dartz never told them anything but the truth, after all. It was why they'd joined him, why they'd given themselves up to the Oricalchos and let it brand them with its mark like cattle. It was why they believed Dartz when he said he was going to rebuild the world into something better than it was.

"Does that help alleviate your conscience?" Dartz asked with the same small, sly smile he wore when he first said 'know thy enemy'.

Amelda paused, but only for a second. "Yes," he said tonelessly. Then he got up and left.

Valon and Raphael were waiting for him. Gurimo had gone on ahead to Domino City in Japan, to challenge the pharaoh inside Yuugi Mutou for his God Cards. It was starting tonight. All of their preparation was finally coming to fruition – Dartz's plans for the world, the revival of the Oricalchos God, and Amelda's own revenge.

I will avenge my family.

Amelda had a mission to complete, and a promise to keep.

Fin.