Muahahahaha!! I love the evil cliffies! I hope you all lost lots of sleep wondering over the weekend what happened to our favorite villan-turned-good guy. *devious grin* anyway, to finally relieve you all of your torment, I shall post: THE NEXT CHAPTER!!
Seto: I OBJECT!!
Robin: NOW what?!
Seto: I should sue you for this story. It's complete libel.
Robin: Further proof of you intelligence. You're the only person ever to remember that it's not slander.
Seto: Yeah, I know…HEY! That's not the point.
Robin: I tried.
Seto: This story is totally uncharacteristic of me! I would NEVER do ANY of that stuff!!
Robin: Oh, really? How about if you give them the disclaimer, I MIGHT let you see Delaney again?
Seto: *whimpers* She doesn't own anything, I swear! Don't sue her! Unfortunately, she DOES own Delaney and Raia, so PLEASE don't piss her off!
Robin: And now I'm a step closer to owning you. *grins* The pen is far far mightier than the sword…
Part Seventeen
Seto sat there, awake, but he kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut. No, no, no, no, no! Why did it have to end there?! Send me back!! he wanted to yell at the top of his lungs. He kept silent. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed, he wouldn't wake up...
Or maybe I'm just being an idiot. He opened his eyes and found himself back in the virtu-pod in the lab. The blonde-haired secretary looked at him from behind a glass window.
"Are you ok, Mr. Kaiba?" she asked, a hint of puzzlement in her voice.
Of course I'm not ok!! I just got ripped away from the only happy moment of my life!!
"Yes, I'm fine," he answered. He tried to mimic his old, low, gruff tone of voice, but he couldn't quite seem to manage, at least not to his own ears. He got himself out of the pod. Glancing at the clock, he noticed that it was poised exactly two hours later than when he looked at it last.
Two hours...? I've lived three days of my life in two hours? No way. I can't believe that none of that actually happened... The thought caused the corner of his eye to glimmer with the birth of a tiny tear.
"Mr. Kaiba?" the secretary asked again.
He looked up at her, his face hard as normal. "We ran background files on all the participants, right?" he asked.
"Of course..." she said, obviously confused.
"I want them all on my desk in an hour, got it?" he snapped. The woman hadn't even nodded her reply by the time he had turned and left the room.
As he walked, he couldn't shake the feeling of disorientation. Three days. Three days that had vanished, just like the game had around him. Three days of his life that simply did not exist. He couldn't stand that idea. How could that much of something simply not happen? It really did, he knew it did. Then again, how does one define reality? Had he somehow found more of a realistic life in a virtual reality game? Some people go through their whole lives without any semblance of reality.
He had originally planned to head back up to his loft, but some unknown force guided him instead to his office. He sat down in the comfortable- and very expensive- desk chair and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city below him was enveloped in a dense gray fog. How depressing. If he strained his eyes, Seto could almost see the silhouettes of the few fairly recognizable Domino buildings: the school clock tower, a few other not-so-high rise buildings, and...the Kame game shop?
His self-hypnosis was broken by a short knock at the door. The same blonde-haired secretary strode in and placed a stack of file-folders on his desk.
"The files you requested," she said almost curtly.
Kaiba nodded in reply, not even moving to look at her. Perhaps it was true that environment plays a harsh hand in human behavior. He hadn't been back in the "real" world for more than twenty minutes, but just being in his office made him feel like he was his same old self. It repulsed him to some extent. On one hand, this was who he had been all his life; on the other hand, he was starting to like the person that he had grown to become in the last few days. Hours. Whatever.
Just as the woman reached the door, Seto turned to face his desk and muttered a low "Thank you," before she left. She was obviously surprised by the gesture, because he noticed that she stopped a moment before shutting the door.
He sighed and slid the folders towards himself. He flipped open the first one and scanned through it. He already knew what he was looking for. Inside was a complete profile, including a picture. The whole thing kind of resembled a police file. He always made sure that he had all the information there was on anyone who came even remotely in contact with his company.
Unfortunately, this particular file had a picture of a young boy with really short blonde hair. Not quite what I'm looking for... Seto thought.
He impatiently leafed through the next four files. Still the photos weren't showing what he wanted. One was a girl with long red hair (So not her real color,); another with dark hair, but dark brown eyes; the third a white-haired young boy (What is this, Albino City?); and another girl with blonde braided pigtails. That last one made his stomach churn.
He looked at the final one on his desk. That's got to be it. He opened it, and to his supreme chagrin, it was still not what he was looking for. He closed the file and furrowed his brow in thought. If these were the files of all six recruits, and Delaney was not one of them, how did she get into the game?
He picked up all six files and scanned them again. Not one of them was even the remotest description of the girl he was looking for. He turned to his computer and ordered it to search the company system for anyone who had accessed the virtual game in the last two days. Nothing. No record of any attempts to hack into KaibaCorp's mainframe, and no one had been in that virtual game except for him and the six people whose life stories sat in clean manila folders on his desk.
What is going on? he thought. Maybe she was that good of a hacker that she didn't leave a trace. Is that even possible? He shook his head. Not on my system. I'm not even that good... So why was there no record of her anywhere?
It was time to put his own hacking skills to the test. Bypassing the city's Records Department security was the easy part; the difficult task was to be looking through everything. He had nothing to go one except a first name (which now occurred to him could be an alias) and one incredibly accurate physical description.
His concentration was broken by a knock at his door. He looked up suddenly as the blonde secretary poked her head into his office.
"Mr. Kaiba?" she said, almost meekly.
"Yes?" he said, sounding strangely polite.
"You have a call on line one," she informed him.
"Thanks," he said, back to his more brusque self. The woman left, and Kaiba picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hey big brother," a childish voice greeted.
"Mokuba? What do you need?"
"Nothing. I was just wondering when you were coming home. You left kinda early this morning."
As Seto listened to his brother's voice, he could already tell the real reason Mokuba was calling. It usually happened around this time every afternoon.
"Still having trouble with your math?" he asked.
Seto could practically hear the sheepish expression on his brother's face. "Yeah. Could you help me?" Mokuba asked.
Seto grinned. "I've just got one more thing to do here, and then I'll be home as soon as I can, ok?"
"Ok!" Mokuba said "Bye, Seto," he said.
He paused a moment before he replied. "Bye," he said softly, hanging up the phone.
He looked back at his computer, ready to enter some kind of search that would lead him to what he was looking for. Before he entered anything, he stopped a moment, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
What am I doing? It's not like she just ceased to exist. I'll probably see her tomorrow... he reasoned. It would also give him a nice opportunity to ask her how exactly she got into the game in the first place.
He closed out his computer, stood up and left. This matter could wait until tomorrow. Right now, he had to help someone with their pre-algebra homework.