Note: I've thought about writing about both of the relevant topics of this before, but always chickened out for fear of being too cliché, but… I think I can manage it now that I had a brainchild and she's perfect. Oh, Jennifer, Jennifer…
This story will act as a sequel to You're So Spoiled! but also function as a standalone story. It'll just make more sense if you've read YSS!.
Edit: I feel like this is boring. I'm trying not to be boring, but there's just so goddamn much I have to introduce without being boring. Also, I keep wanting to put (You're So Spoiled!) as the separator. I spent too much fucking time on that goddamn story.
Double-Edit: I still feel like this is boring. Goddamn it. I promise it won't stay boring.
Synopsis: Seto Kaiba has spent his adult life developing immersive games to escape unanswered questions, but virtual reality really does make the world much smaller; in the end, how much space for unknown answers is left? KaibaxOC
Disclaimer: Still didn't kill him. Maybe now you'll find out who did. (Spoiler: Kazuki Takahashi may own Yu-Gi-Oh, but it wasn't him.)
No Evidence Available
Chapter One
Mokuba was dating another green-eyed brunette. This one seemed relatively complacent, at least, which was a pleasant change from the last.
He watched the dark-haired boy eye him resentfully as he guided his latest beau out of the office.
Seto Kaiba sighed.
Four years had made Yggdrasill, his virtual reality console, a massive success. The machine itself came in three forms: Affordable Public Console, complete with headgear, sensory leg braces and gloves; Arcade Immersion Console, built for extended abuse and easily adjustable use for a wide variety of users; Private Immersion Console, the gaming platform for the rich and the obsessed, built for extended periods of use, individually constructed for the purchaser's specific body type and as much a decoration piece as a virtual reality system.
All three had the same token design: an artist representation of the Norse world tree itself. It had been his design team's idea, and feeling magnanimous at the time, he had allowed them to run wild with the idea. The result was astounding. Even the public pieces looked more like art than heavy, tough virtual reality technology. The private pieces were beyond exquisite- enough for even him to enjoy the offset of the rich greens and browns against the dark and icy colours of his office.
It looked good for him to have his own masterpiece in his own office. His brother had told him that it worked on the same level as the skinny chef theory and lent him credibility.
He found it amusing that even his own little brother doubted that he used his own equipment and played his own games.
The truth of the matter was that Yggdrasill: PIC had been largely an exercise in self-indulgence. Seto Kaiba didn't use the immersion console in his work office- he used the one in his home office.
Had he felt the need to explain himself to others, it would've been easily dismissible under the pretense of the obsessive, neurotic hands-on work ethic everyone knew that he possessed anyway. In truth, it was only partially that.
Yggdrasill had a variety of channels- individual planes, each with their own individual hubs in various countries- encapsulated in the original nine Norse worlds. Midgard was the starting point of all new players, and the most densely populated and the oldest; Asgard the realm of returning champions and the paying elite. Above, there was Vanaheim, realm of the Vanir, gods of wisdom, Nidavellir, realm of dwarves, and Alfheim, realm of elves: each served as alternate start points for less accomplished warriors and as sources of more basic quests.
Below, Svartalfheim, realm of the dark elves, Jotunheim, realm of giants, Niflheim, land of ice and mist, and Helheim, the underworld, home of the goddess Hel: each served as more difficult levels for more accomplished warriors, providing more challenging quests. It was a system that worked.
The base fantastical nature and sheer age of the mythology itself provided huge variation in admissible quests, places, even monsters.
It had been a hit on release. Four years later, and the population of players on Yggdrasill had exploded to the point that his developers were scrambling to expand existing planes and add new quests and enemies to compensate.
The appeal of the game for the public seemed to be possibility that anything could happen.
For him, the appeal was the impossibility of recognition.
Since her disappearance, he had resisted the overwhelming urge to track her obsessively. He had first reacted with panic, certain that she'd either been kidnapped or had gone back on her word, still preoccupied with her fading drug grudge, but he knew her better than that.
She'd emptied out her apartment- the place looked like it had never been lived in. He'd found her old futon in a thrift store less than three blocks away; her coffee table had found its way into her neighbor's tiny living room. Her landlord had told him that she'd paid the next two months up front and an hour later, the apartment had been empty.
She'd boarded a plane to her home state at fifteen minutes to one that afternoon and had arrived safely just after midnight. Three weeks later, she'd registered at a technical college three states away, but dropped out less a week before classes started. Her housing application had been denied on the inability to contact her previous landlord.
A month later, her name was removed from the phone book and she closed her chequing account, withdrawing the last thirty-five dollars and sixty-two cents she had to her name.
She had disappeared again.
Mokuba had made it very clear that he expected his older brother to pursue her, and when he had not, Seto Kaiba had discovered something else.
His brother had inherited both his possessive streak and his propensity to obsess. In a bitter passive-aggressive display of disapproval, he had begun to take every opportunity to remind his brother of exactly how he felt about his inaction.
As Mokuba had recently turned eighteen and gained all the belligerent cockiness he himself had possessed at eighteen, coupled with Mokuba's own undeniable charisma, the trend had come down to the lowest common denominator: Women.
Thin, dark-haired, green-eyed women. Intense women. Very slightly insane women.
To compound the issue, following the success of Yggdrasill, the media had gotten wind of the assignment that had spurred the whole situation to begin with and the resultant abandonment, and his pervasive image as the cold, rich bachelor had transcended inescapably into that of the tormented, lonely, extremely rich bachelor.
His personal life was hellish.
He considered it appropriate that his spawn point in Yggdrasill was Helheim.
He was eying his work office immersion console. He'd never used it, but as far as paperwork went, his workload was running light, he'd run out of appointments, and it had been a particularly hellish day.
It would also look good to be caught having what appeared to be fun.
He decided for it.
He immersed.
(No Evidence Available)
When the design team had created a character for him, the newest member had proposed an infinitely recognizable and unique custom-made characterform to alert others when a high-level moderator was around.
One of the older design team members had already set up an account with an NPC characterform that appeared to be the same generic, empty-looking suit of iron plate-mail that appeared decoratively in most human cities, under the ambiguous name Wandering Knight.
The character had every appearance of an NPC. The generic 'suit of armour' characterform was known to be non-speaking. To most players, he appeared to be a non-interactive NPC. He was largely left alone.
He'd doubled the man's pay and promoted him to head of the team.
It was a decision he did not regret.
He loaded into Yggdrasill easily. Sometimes the load was disorienting, if the room left was bright and the loading area dark, or vice-versa. The city of Hel was always comfortably half-lit.
He began his semi-obsessive check of the city itself, reassuring himself that his programming was holding strong against the steady increase of users Helheim was seeing. From there, he had both work and personal interests: The recent addition to Helheim: the new cave system to the South.
He enjoyed travelling in the worlds of Yggdrasill. Despite the vast distances he was sometimes required to cross on foot, the scenery was explicitly detailed.
All of Helheim had been stylized after and inspired by the works of Howard Lovecraft to produce the correct feeling of grotesque wrongness that his design crew had felt was necessary. He enjoyed the result.
From afar, the city of Hel revealed itself to have been set on wildly uneven terrain; from within the city, the buildings appeared to have been stretched where the ground dipped low, and squashed down where it rose. The entire top of Hel was level despite the massive incline of the ground. Combined with the sometimes sickly yellowish cast of the stone walls and heavily suggestive masonwork, from a distance, the city looked like an indistinct and alarming yellow-grey monstrousity leaning against a mountain.
He enjoyed that the most.
Helheim itself was black, rocky, suggestively volcanic, and pervasively damp. He was following a river he knew led to the caves, and as he walked, he marvelled at the workmanship that had gone into making it so disturbing.
The river looked thick, slightly opaque, like someone had poured soupy dark grey gelatine down the countryside. Under the slow rolling water, he could see something large and flat darting sinuously along the bottom. Something glittered gold along its snout as it darted away.
He wondered which of his design team had created that.
The caves were in sight. His first impression was a feeling of burgeoning approval and interest.
The cave mouth was too low and wide to enter comfortably, forcing the player to stoop. There were cave openings all up the cliff face- in some of them, he could see a faint suggestion of yellowish slime. The ground in front of the cliff was free of the scruffy yellow-green and wilted vegetation that peppered the rest of Helheim. The disturbing river flowed into the mouth of the main cave, disappearing down into the blackness.
He stooped, and stepped inside.
The designers had done a good job- despite the caves still being empty of monsters, the sensation of having to squat and shuffle, half-bent, crab-like, and with his neck stretched forward, did provoke a strong sense of budding unease and claustrophobia. The light was minimal, and the river began a rapid decline into the bowels of the world. His feet slid forward and down on the loose rocks and mud, grabbing the walls for balance.
The passage opened into a massive underground lake.
He took a moment to send a notification of approval to the member of the team that was active before stepping in.
Something suddenly moved along the far wall. He frowned. 'There shouldn't be monsters yet. Nakamura is arguing his contract terms again.'
As it came into the somewhat alarming yellow light emanating from the lake, he realized it was another player. The player perked up on seeing him, and stood straight.
"Oh, hello," it said in English. The voice was rich, low, a little effeminate. As it rounded the lake, it a heavy iron lantern, and the dark room burst into a comparison of black shadows and scalding red light. He realized why he hadn't seen the player before it had moved.
It was an extremely thin, massively androgynous characterform wearing the indistinct black skinform available in Hel to those who had completed the city's quest set. He eyed the player silently.
It moved closer. "I know you're a moderator. Even a wandering NPC wouldn't have had the caves input into its available routes yet. We're not that efficient."
He sighed. The sound came through breathy and metallic. "Which hub do you work for?"
It chuckled and summoned an account statistics screen for him. "Detroit." The stat screen identified the player as a male under the username AppSpo. He wondered about it without really caring.
He waved away the screen. "Why are you here? The caves won't have monsters for at least two weeks."
AppSpo gestured carelessly and fluidly. Kaiba realized that he was using an immersion pod, and then wondered why he was surprised by that. "U.S. hubs haven't updated yet, and won't until Monday, so western channels don't have the caves yet- I went on the Domino channel to see what the ruckus was. I'm moving, and transferring to an eastern hub tomorrow, so this'll be my problem before it's anyone else's."
Kaiba accepted that and gestured to the American moderator to follow him. "The caves will be closing for maintenance now that they've been approved," he explained. The dark, skinny low-level mod trotted after him eagerly. The climb out was somewhat arduous given the mud, but the low ceiling proved to be less of a challenge whilst leaving rather than entering.
AppSpo whistled when the caves suddenly vanished, leaving only the river puddling into a hole too small to enter. He minced after Kaiba when he tried to escape discreetly.
"You must be from Head Office, if you have approval capabilities," he asserted.
Kaiba nodded reticently.
AppSpo's face was too dark to differentiate features, but he sounded awed. "So you actually work for Kaiba Corporation?"
He nodded again.
The skinny mod sped up to keep pace with him. "How is that? I was hired from home as a heavy user. Truthfully, I've never actually been to the Detroit hub itself."
He went to nod, but something occurred to him. He stopped abruptly and turned to the scrawny American. "How are you using an immersion console if you're a volunteer moderator?"
AppSpo skidded to a stop, obviously startled, and lost his balance, thudding down on the dusky ground. "My husband bought it to keep me occupied," he said simply.
For a moment, Kaiba was too startled to speak, but suddenly felt a little foolish.
'Yggdrasill, where anything is possible: Even spoiled gay part-time-moderating househusbands.'
He wasn't sure why that made him feel somewhat fonder of the American.
(No Evidence Available)
He didn't like Toshio Nakamura.
The man had a broad, handsome face and for all appearances did excellent work, but he was jumpy, nervous and he blinked too much. He also had a great deal of difficulty communicating the motivations behind his ideas without rambling incoherently.
Nothing about him was concise, from his spindly fingers to his propensity to go into tangents about his wife; he was a man who wasted time, and the fine quality of his work was all that kept Kaiba civil towards him.
Nakamura had finally agreed on a rewrite of the contract that didn't stipulate a timeframe- the deal was to be a strict exchange of goods for money. Kaiba liked that. He hoped that it meant Nakamura would leave Domino- or at least stop his ceaseless muttering about missing his wife and his concerns over returning to Japan after emigrating.
At the very least, he thought, watching Nakamura grip the pen between his skinny fingers and sign it, it would mean that he would have his monsters.
Nakamura was a successful graphic artist, and had worked in a storyboard team on several low-budget horror films. Almost a year before, he had sent in a tentative and unassuming folder of grotesque monster sketches when word had gotten out that Kaiba Corp. was expanding Helheim.
Kaiba had liked them.
Kaiba still liked them.
Kaiba didn't like Nakamura, however hard he tried.
Nakamura slid the new contract, now signed, over to him. It looked all his willpower not to snatch it from him as Nakamura started tapping his fingers nervously on the header.
He signed it and the copy, handed one to his secretary, and all but threw the other at Nakamura.
Nakamura stammered something about looking forward to the Yggdrasill world expansion press release and Kaiba flinched inwardly.
He had been trying to forget about it.
It would be his first public appearance in over six months. His public relations unit had insisted it was integral for the company that he go with the design team to announce it officially.
He wasn't looking forward to it.
His public life was almost as hellish as his personal life.
(No Evidence Available)
On the way home, he crossed paths with someone who looked like her from behind.
The girl had smiled at him when she saw him looking. He'd looked away quickly.
When he arrived home, his brother was fighting- loudly- with his new girlfriend about something.
There was a note in the mail requesting he pick up his suit for the press release.
Kaiba locked himself in his home office and immersed.
He found himself strangely relieved to find AppSpo online.
(No Evidence Available)