Disclaimer: Incontestably not mine.
A/N: Yet another one from As Deep as the Sky that went beyond the time limit. The idea of that ficlet collection is you put your music play-list on random and have to write a fanfic based on whatever song pops up, but you only have the duration of that song in which to write it. Since I didn't follow the rules and spent far longer than just three minutes on this one, I decided to upload it separately.
ObNit: This one relies quite significantly in a few panels of the manga. Can't remember whether they appeared in the anime or not – certainly not in the dub, which is still the only version of this arc that I've watched.
People are born with,
People are born without;
Some people have,
And others want what some go without.
Some people live free,
Some people just want more.
As for me I got all that I need.
-- From Could You Bite the Hand?by Steve Conte.
Could You Bite the Hand?
© Scribbler, September 2008.
Noah was an intelligent boy. That didn't change when his mind was implanted into a virtual world. If anything, he grew more intelligent when his nerve endings became computer receptors, and the electrical impulses in his brain became literal.
He wasn't a prodigy in real life, but freed from the restraints of his body he learned quickly, absorbing information and retaining it in ways he'd never been able to do before. He showed off to his father how he'd gone from merely clever to gifted, and at first Gozaburo was pleased. He'd always wanted someone special to carry on his family name. Only perfection would do for a Kaiba.
Then, as Noah showed him more and more, his smile faded and he began to frown.
"But you're not really learning, are you?" he demanded one day. "You're just retaining data. Any office machine could do what you've showed me." Then he walked out before Noah could reply.
Noah cried that day. It was odd, crying without tears. His physical sensation programme had no data to feed him, since Gozaburo never even contemplated his son might want to cry in his new life.
He cried again when his father didn't visit him for a week. Noah looked forward to their visits, and it was only when they didn't happen that he realised how lonely he was in his virtual world. It was no longer his sanctuary, but his prison, and he sought to find a way out.
What he found instead was a window in the rest of the world. One day, while idly recalibrating his virtual puppy to shoot spikes out of its collar on command, he found himself suddenly staring out of a security camera on the Kaiba mansion front lawn. He'd played on that lawn growing up, before he realised it was unbecoming for the son of such an illustrious man to roll around in the dirt. Noah's mind twitched, and the camera panned sideways.
Delighted, he spread himself out, seeping into all the security cameras in the Kaiba Mansion Compound. He wanted to find his father, to prove to himself that Gozaburo had a good reason for why he hadn't come to visit.
What he found instead were two boys who shouldn't have been there.
Noah learned a lot through those security cameras. When the technicians operating his life support systems weren't paying attention, he watched the intruders – Seto and Mokuba, they called each other – and his hatred of them bubbled and seethed. He saw his own father spending time with Seto instead of coming to visit him. Gozaburo was clearly teaching Seto all the things he once taught Noah, cultivating in him his hopes for the future. It was like he'd forgotten all about his real son.
Gozaburo never came to see Noah again.
Noah's hatred of Seto and Mokuba grew. He blamed them for being forgotten by everyone who wasn't paid to remember him. He wanted to hurt them. He wanted them to be knocked down by cars too, and left to rot in some hospital, with no virtual world to store their minds in. His surroundings turned red, and his puppy exploded, but he told the technicians it must be a glitch in the system and they believed him because of the strange data spikes
Then one night, not needing sleep, Noah tuned in to the security feed in Seto's room. He didn't like watching the other boy at night, asleep and peaceful in Noah's old room. Seto looked like he belonged there, and that was the most hurtful thing at all.
However, tonight Seto wasn't asleep. He was under the covers, and Mokuba sat on the bedclothes trying to tug them away. Seto fought, but Mokuba eventually won out, and both he and Noah saw why Seto's iron resolve hadn't carried him through in this tiny battle. His face was black and blue, his shoulders bruised, and though he'd been bandaged and taken care of, it was clear he'd been beaten. Mokuba was distraught, but Seto refused to say what'd happened, only that Mokuba should go back to bed and leave him alone.
"Big Brother," Mokuba said brokenly, "this isn't worth it."
"Do you want to go back to the orphanage?" Seto snapped.
Mokuba flinched as though struck. "… No."
"Then it's worth it."
"But -"
"I promised you I'd get us out of there and make a new home for us, and I'm keeping my promise."
"But -"
"Not many people would've adopted both of us, Mokuba. You know that. And you're safe. If this is the price I have to pay to make sure you get the best life you can, then so be it."
"But Seto -"
"It's not so bad. I was just careless. It was my own fault."
"You don't mean that -"
"Go back to bed. I have lessons in the morning."
There was a file that appeared in front of Noah in that instant, as though it could only be accessed by a certain composite of his thoughts. 'Jockey whip', it said. Everything in the virtual world was ritual, so by reaching out and poking the file with his finger, he opened it.
Inside he found a clutch of his own memories, carefully removed when he was uploaded into the virtual world, but stored away by his subconscious when his father's employees tried to delete them. Noah lived in the most powerful computer ever invented. There were very few places he couldn't go if they had a connection, and infinite places he could create where others couldn't go, and where he could hide pieces of himself.
In the coming days, as he searched out his memories' hiding places, Noah's hatred started to pass away like morning fog: first grey, then clear, then gone. Seto walked stiffly, but he still went to his private lessons and he still lied to Mokuba about just how badly he was treated in them. Noah watched twin feeds of both boys – Mokuba playing, making up his own Duel Monsters cards; Seto standing rigid as the leather collar was attached and his tutor – Noah's old tutor – stood over him as he worked, a riding crop slapping against his fat thigh. When Gozaburo arrived, took the crop from him and crossed the room towards Seto, Noah came to a decision and turned off the feed.
The newspapers reported it as a tragic accident caused by mistimed stoplights. Gozaburo Kaiba's car sailed through on green, not realising that a truck coming the other way also had a green light. The car was crushed, its passenger killed and its driver ill in hospital.
"It must have been a computer glitch," said one police officer to the other, scratching his head over how something like this could've happened. "I always said that stupid central grid would be the death of someone someday."
Fin.