Of Goats and Brothers
"Mokuba, what are you still doing up?"
Seto had just flipped on the light of his brother's bedroom, where Mokuba had been using his large pile of blankets and his head to create a not-really-secret fort on his bed. He pulled the covers down, meeting his brother's concerned and questioning gaze. Seto's dark green pajamas were rumpled, his hair stuck out at messy angles, and his eyes weren't fully open.
"Oh…uh…I couldn't sleep."
The elder brother frowned and pawed at his eyes for a moment before lazily moving over to sit on the edge of his brother's bed. He spent a second suppressing a yawn, and Mokuba used that moment to rearrange the blankets around him.
"Do you want me to get something to help you sleep? We have that meeting in the morning, Mokuba, and it's already after midnight. You need to rest."
Mokuba shifted nervously, then nodded. "Yeah…if you could get something, that'd be great." He watched as his brother nodded and half-stumbled sleepily out of the room before yanking out his laptop to exit the game he was playing.
It wasn't like his big brother would have been upset with him for playing games late at night-after all, Seto couldn't really talk when it came to not sleeping when he should be-but there was a huge R&D meeting the next morning, in which the brothers would be debuting their newest virtual reality project. It was a big deal, seeing as the last virtual reality game had been kind of a flop, but Seto refused to give it up and continued to work endless hours to perfect the game. And he finally did.
As usual, Mokuba had been very patient throughout the entire project, acting more like a combination assistant and parent to his brother. There had been a few times that Seto had passed out right on his desk, and Mokuba would bring blankets to throw over him. If he'd awakened the elder brother and tried sending him to bed-it wouldn't have worked. Seto would have woken up and gone right back to work. All Mokuba could do was throw the blanket over him, take a nap on the couch while Seto slept at his desk, then go get him some coffee early in the morning so he could work again.
But even Mokuba had gotten a little frustrated with the pattern, and a few days ago had discovered a new game. It was a pointless, no-skill-needed game, but he found the premise quite amusing: destroy everything in sight while guised as a goat.
Unfortunately, this particular game was rather buggy at times, and one of these little issues included lagging…which was currently making Mokuba quite nervous, since the game wouldn't close properly, and he could hear his brother's footsteps heading back to his room, if only he could get the game to just close already-
"What are you doing?" Seto said, continuing over without waiting for a response. He set down a glass of water and a small plate containing two small pills. Mokuba froze as his brother pulled the laptop out of his hands and stared at the screen. "You were playing Goat Simulator?"
Mokuba said nothing.
"Since when do you play Goat Simulator?"
The little Kaiba picked up the pills, popped them in his mouth, and swallowed them with a huge gulp of water. "It gave me something to do while you were working so much the past few weeks."
Seto was now staring at the starting screen with a completely baffled expression, but seemed to be figuring out all the controls with aplomb. He maneuvered the virtual goat up a tower in a tree, then suddenly the screen was displaying a large temple-like room filled with groveling goats, a long red carpet, and what could only be described as a Satanic sacrificial altar.
"Mokuba, there's something very wrong with this game…you should have been asleep hours ago."
"I know…"
"Which is something you've always been nagging me about, and even I was asleep already."
"I know. I could hear you snoring all the way across the hall. Good job, Seto."
Seto shot him a half-hearted dirty look out of the corner of his eye. "I don't get the point of this. You just walk around this room, or…what?"
Mokuba pointed to the altar. "You jump in there. Use the space bar to jump."
"I'm supposed to sacrifice myself?"
"Sort of, I guess. When you do, it'll toggle you back outside…only this time, when you press 'R,' dead goats will fall down around you."
He did so, and as promised, lifeless digital goats flopped down around the playable goat. Seto shook his head and resumed exploring the rest of the area, head butting and exploding several cars in the vicinity.
"This is absurd…"
Mokuba yawned and curled up, feeling the effects of the medication making his body heavy and his brain fuzzy. He rested his head on his brother's leg so he could clearly see the computer screen.
"Yeah…but it's kind of funny," he managed to mumble, and the last thing he saw before falling asleep was a goat blowing up an entire gas station.
When Mokuba woke up, sunlight was exploding through the half-drawn curtains. He was surprised to find that he was still lying on his brother's leg, and that Seto was still playing the decidedly 'absurd' goat game. Mokuba stretched and breathed in, then exhaled slowly as he sat up.
"Have you been playing this all night?"
Seto nodded. "There are a lot of arbitrary objectives in this game…"
Mokuba squinted at the clock, then gasped as he leapt out of bed. "Seto, it's almost eight in the morning! We have the meeting in just over a half hour!"
"Hold on, let me figure out this helipad first…"
Mokuba gaped at the brunet sitting on the bed. Clearly, this was not really his brother, and was actually some pod person. Or maybe Pegasus had stolen his soul again, but this time replaced it with someone else's…he shook his head, closed the laptop lid, and waited until red-rimmed blue eyes locked on gray eyes before he spoke again.
"Seto, we're going to the R&D meeting. And then you're going to take a nap, and after that…well, I'm probably taking you to a different kind of meeting. Let's go."