Chapter 2: Cheating Death

Author's Note: Dialogue between Noa and Gozaburo in this chapter and the next are taken from the Yu-Gi-Oh! English dub. I included it for canon consistency, but the focus here is supposed to be on what I've written around it from Gozaburo's perspective. I'm trying to show the scenes from his POV, to better express how I see him as a parent and how the events in canon affected him.

4 hours and 51 minutes later, Gozaburo stood, waiting and watching the holo-viewscreen.

"Please remember, Mr. Kaiba, our experiments weren't complete yet," the nervous scientist operating the controls told him. "We have no way to know this will work."

"Shut up!" Gozaburo snapped. "I know that! Do you think I'm a fool? Just do as you're told. If you had a child, you would understand."

Apparently too intimidated to answer, the scientist obeyed. The viewscreen stayed dark, but Noa's voice floated out of the speakers, in pieces at first and then more consistently as the connection was made. "...sleeping for days! ... in the hospital... a dream! Father!"

"I'm right here, Noa! Noa, it's your father speaking to you," Gozaburo called back loudly, facing the dark screen.

There was a pause, then Noa's voice came again, breaking his father's heart. "Hey... what's going on? I'm locked in... Father? Hello? Are you there?" Obviously, Gozaburo's son could not hear him, and believed he was all alone.

"What are you doing?" Gozaburo snapped at the scientist, every fatherly instinct driving him to deep anger and helplessness at his child's pain. "Get that screen on!"

"Right away, sir!" the scientist replied, desperately pressing buttons. Finally, the viewscreen lit up, showing a view of Noa in a virtual copy of his bedroom.

"Huh? What's that?" he asked, turning from the door. Seeing his father standing there, he ran excitedly to him. "Father! I had the weirdest dream! I was in a hospital and everyone was really worried and-"

Gozaburo just shook his head, cutting his son off. As much as he hated to destroy Noa's false hopes, at the same time he had always believed the truth was best from the start - no matter how brutal for them both.

At Noa's innocently quizzical noise, Gozaburo squeezed his eyes shut in pain and forced himself to explain. "I'm afraid it WASN'T a dream, Noa. There was... an accident. And you were in bad shape. Your body's gone." How did you tell your own child something like that? Gozaburo wished it HAD been just a dream; but wishes were pointless folly. He needed to deal with the reality of the situation, and so did Noa.

Noa's eyes widened in shock, and he gasped. "But how?!"

Gozaburo put his hands on the screen, wishing he could hold his son comfortingly in his arms. Although he had not done so very often while he had the chance, he ached to do so now. "My team of scientists and researchers tried to save you," he said, his hands sliding down the face of the screen an inch or two in despair as he continued, "but nothing they did would help, so I turned to my tech experts and computer engineers, and they found a solution."

Noa dropped to kneel on the floor of his virtual room. "W-what do you mean?" he asked, his voice shaking in fear and confusion.

"You'll understand in time," Gozaburo told him gently, trying to ignore and mask his own pain, as the virtual dog he had ordered to be programmed came up from behind Noa and gave two short yaps. As Noa turned to the small dog in surprise, Gozaburo explained, "I've created this dog for you, son. You and he exist in a different way than the rest of us."

Noa hugged the dog as his father finished speaking, clinging to that bit of comfort like a drowning man to a liferaft.

What have I done? Gozaburo wondered, the reality of his son's separation from the rest of humanity, and from himself, hitting home. What I had to do, he resolved. I saved my child's life.

Gansley smiled smugly to himself as he leaned back in his overlage office chair, reflecting on poor young Noa Kaiba's recent funeral. With the CEO so distraught and distracted over the death of his son, he's making it all too easy for the five of us to begin to subtly grasp power. Under my direction, of course, we shall soon own Kaibacorp. And I've paid off that driver more than enough to live out a happy, early retirement for the rest of his days - very, very far away from here. I am sure that investment will prove to be a good one.