Chapter 45, Piece 49 * * * * * * * *
"I'm going to find him, and then I'm going to kill him!" Mokuba threw his brother's cell phone at the nearest wall. "And then I'm going to surgically implant a damn GPS chip in his damn ass!"
"You think he left his phone here on purpose?" Honda asked.
"Of course he left it on purpose!" Mokuba snapped. "He's irresponsible, not stupid. The GPS is in the phone. With it, I can pinpoint his location within a couple feet. But he turned it off, and left it here - and then conned that guy into telling that bullshit 'love hotel' story."
"Not with Jou!" Otogi snickered.
"They probably went somewhere they could sort this all out." Eric tried to be the voice of reason. "They're grown men. They can work this out on their own."
"You don't understand!" Mokuba began pacing. "Seto still has panic attacks. And like what happened earlier - memories overwhelm him, and he flips out. Sometimes he can pull out of it, but sometimes he just loses it."
"He was fine tonight, Mokie," Yugi soothed. "And anyone would have been distraught over what happened with Jou."
"Don't let tonight fool you." Mokuba shook his head. "He only looks twenty-nine. Too much of the wrong stress at the wrong time and he's twelve!"
"If he's that precarious, why is he taking over again?" Bakura asked. "Shouldn't he simply retire?"
Mokuba gave him an incredulous look. "He was twelve when he started KaibaGames. He masterminded a successful hostile takeover of the whole company before he turned sixteen. Against Gozaburo! I'm not that good. I can either give him half the company or he can take all of it." He dropped into a chair and sighed heavily. "He's better than I'll ever be and he's not even operating at his best."
"Which is exactly what Seto says about you." Anzu got up and began rubbing Mokuba's shoulders.
The door of the suite opened. Tamora entered and bowed slightly. "Kaiba-san, we have been able to track Jounouchi-san's phone." He hesitated. "It is, unfortunately, at the Kami Game Shop. Mutou-san confirmed that it was charging and that neither Kaiba-sama nor Jounouchi-san have been there this evening."
Mokuba threw up his hands. "I give! I give up! Fine. Recall everyone. Have those assholes in the ballroom left yet, or do I have to play nice still?"
"The only guests remaining are here."
"Cool. You, Roland and Sato take the night off. Guys, I need two hours, then let's go somewhere and get lit." Mokuba stalked out of the room and up to his own guest room.
The others had rooms - that had been prearranged in case they needed them - so he didn't feel guilty leaving them.
What he felt badly about was what he wanted two hours for.
However tech-ed out it was, ultimately the content of the black box in his suitcase was a blowup doll. A very life-like, sophisticated, computer enhanced blowup doll.
The doll self inflated while the tablet with the program booted up. Mokuba undressed, and unpacked the lube. He tried not to think about how pathetic it was that he was still in love with a computer program he was once brainwashed into believing was his brother. A therapist would have a field day with that.
But Seto had been able to break through the brainwashing in part because Mokuba had not wanted to believe that the lovely teal-haired Noa was his relative. Having him as a lover... Even as young as he was, Mokuba fell hard, fast and forever.
Ever since the day his older brother erased the program containing Noa, Mokuba had searched for it. It had been part of the corporate mainframe and bits of the data were part of inert files in millions of lines of code. He'd even designed a virus that wormed into KaibaCorp software and mined Noa's data from anywhere the world wide web could reach.
The base of the program Mokuba used now had come with the doll, allowing users to enter their own name and their fetish phrases of choice. He'd modified that and added Noa's data as he found it. The result was as close to holding his heart's desire as was humanly possible.
=Hello, Mokie.= The inhuman voice said. =I missed you. Hold me; I want to feel you inside me.=
Mokuba nodded, more to himself than his 'partner'. The program was fully loaded. He picked up the tablet, opened his collection of pornos, and did what passed for sex in his sad little head.
He'd tried. He'd tried dating real men. First anyone attractive, then only guys who reminded him of Noa. Then guys who were willing to cosplay as Noa. He had a lot of photos of them. He'd gotten into an argument with the last 3-D guy.
The man had told him, "get over him; or you're just going to be sad and lonely all your life."
Mokuba had replied, "you're right. Now get out."
Now the doll and the images were his lover until he could find enough of Noa's digital brain to rebuild him.
After, after the release of stress and frustration, and after the humiliating process of cleaning one's plastic companion, Mokuba ran the search file as he redressed.
=Hello, Mokie.= Noa said unexpectedly. =I found your virus in one of my quarantined files. Very nice programming. Cute boy, too. I let it run on a couple CPUs it had been blocked from, and it found a terabyte or so of data. You'll have to tell me the story behind this one. Anyway, the file transfer in your virus overloaded, so I fixed it to deliver this message. I'm going to download the data to a drive. Let me know when you want it. Seto.=
"Oh, hell!" Mokuba sank on the bed and tried not to cry. "Jounouchi, please! Just let him forget!"