kittensinboxes | Stars, In Your Multitudes [It's always Rival, lbr. Space Station Hours!]

Stars, In Your Multitudes [It's always Rival, lbr. Space Station Hours!]

It's been a good half a year since his trip to the afterlife, and all that it entailed. Kaiba's recovered from the loss by now, and business is back how it was.

Which meant, of course, that he dealt with irritations from time to time. Today was truly a shitshow, with a stubborn negotiator who tried to walk all over him on a business deal. Pity's to them that they're from out of town, because they learned very quickly that the young scion of Kaiba Corporation was not to be tread upon.

They both left without a deal, which would certainly put development on some of Kaiba's interests back by several stages, at least...unless he did the work himself. Which was not so easy these days, when he was mired in the politics of actually being the president of the company.

It's annoying.

It's boring!

Worse still, today's encounter had left him suffering under the influence of alcohol! And for what?! For a deal that had been rescinded?! What's the point of drinking if he doesn't even get a benefit out of it?

Aggravated, he taps his bracer perhaps a little too hard, and begins dictating a text.

Have you ever been to space

It is well past 9:30 on a weekday. That is a weird question to be asking of one Yuugi Mutou, isn't it?

Seto Kaiba doesn't give a good goddamn if it is. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO SPACE YUUGI?

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Yuugi scratched his cheek.

Yeeeaaaah, he expected Kaiba to be skeptical. Well, that was fine. If he couldn't impress Seto Kaiba, then how was he going to end up getting this game greenlit by Ka--

You know.

Just any company.

Just any multibillion dollar company.

"...Yeah...I believe in my concept. It's still getting tweaked, but I know I can do it. Spherium might not be the next Duel Monsters, but it will be a great game that will bring players young and old together.

"It'll also be a great addition to the growing library of games using Solid Vision and the KCVR engine."

"You..."

It doesn't sound accusatory. Kaiba's legitimately surprised that Yuugi is building a game with his proprietary tools.

He should have known before this. He's Seto Kaiba, the world's biggest ego and control freak, and he didn't know Yuugi was using his things. It made sense of course, that Yuugi's setup couldn't run his engine. Hadn't he mentioned before...?

Ugh. Maybe he really had overdone it today, with the work and the drinking.

The elevator dings, signaling their arrival to the roof shortly before the doors open. A light breeze ruffles Kaiba's coat, before he shakes his head free of whatever thoughts were rattling around in his buzzed mind and walks out into the open.

...Towards his jet.

He is going to fly them.

Yuugi can't stop him.

That.

That was.

That was the KC Dragon Jet.

That Kaiba could fly.

...

He was going to fly them to the station. On the jet.

While...

While drunk

"The...jet?" Yuugi squeaked. "We're taking the jet?"

Yuugi Mutou was allowed too set foot in the ostentatious symbol of a teenager with too much wealth and intellect and too little maturity?!

"You keep askin' foolish questions when faced with the reality of the situation," Kaiba responds sharply, reaching into his jacket for the key fob he had specifically made for this jet, as if it was a car. A quick click and the engines pre-start, before they even get into the cockpit.

"It's a short flight," he adds, as if that'll make anything better, but he's not worried, why should Yuugi be?

Foolish questions.

Ah, yes, the foolish question of 'WHY IN THE EVERLOVING FUCK WAS SETO KAIBA DRUNK DRIVING A JET THIS LATE AT NIGHT'. Surely a question that didn't need answering, for it was an obvious thing.

Yes.

Definitely.

"I'm not worried about it being short," Yuugi said, "But...have you...flown your jet drunk before?"

Please tell him this wasn't a normal thing.

"I'm not drunk," Kaiba immediately shoots back, as if it's the most natural thing to say when you are, in fact, under some kind of influence. "And besides which, all I have to do is take off and land. It has autopilot, idiot."

Rude???

...Wait, this is Seto Kaiba, and let's be real, he is nothing but rude. Would Yuugi even be surprised by this revelation?

Ah yes, the 'I am not drunk' routine. Clearly Yuugi has never heard this before from drunk patrons at his game shop or from various Domino passers-by.

Gods, how hard it was to respond with an "if you say so", but even when dealing with a drunk and strangely friendly Kaiba, he knew not to push his luck.

This was a bad idea.

This was a really bad idea. Seto Kaiba, doing liftoff and landing? In his jet??? While intoxicated???

This was the mother of bad ideas, and yet Yuugi was about to jump in this shit with both feet because what he said next wasn't the 'hell no' that should have come out of his mouth, but a cheeky "Autopilot, huh...I'll make sure not to fall asleep on the way, then."

Yuugi should probably check himself before deciding to judge Seto Kaiba, who was an apex human being fully in control of his faculties and who definitely did not even remotely slow down to jump into the cockpit of his jet.

He also did not at all slam his knee into the controls before settling in. He is FINE. He is PERFECTLY ON HIS GAME, AS ALWAYS.

"Get in already, smartass."

Has Yuugi ever heard Kaiba curse so openly? Well he has now!

Yup. Completely on his game.

Graceful as a gazelle.

Yuugi saluted with a quick wink, because you couldn't call a man a smartass and not expect him to clap back. It was almost like riposting in a card game, just with words.

"Yes sir, Mr. Kaiba Sir."

And he climbed in with...

...

About as much grace, because Yuugi Mutou is a clumsy nerd.

Edited 2025-06-01 04:34 (UTC)

Kaiba is regretting inviting Yuugi to space more and more

(he's really not

keep being smarmy yuugi it's interesting)

but he's already said he would. So it's too late to renege.

He reaches for his headset, slipping it on, then turning to look at Yuugi and encourage him to do the same. Once they're in the air, it'll only get louder, so this'll be the only way to communicate.

And once Yuugi's got his headset on, he'll hear an unusually muted tone coming through, as if Kaiba's actively trying not to peak out the audio. It has the dual effect of sounding...relaxing?! Even though he's tipsy and his words have a bit of a slur, the overall energy is calmer.

"Can you hear me?"

Um.

Excuse.

Sir.

When did he end up tuned in to a phone sex line? If the person on the other end was a little tipsy.

Look, don't judge him: the low burr of the man's voice with that gentle timbre was enough to jump down his pants and say hello so loudly that he needed to be reminded that this was Seto fucking Kaiba on the line.

...

Seto Kaiba.

Sexy.

Shit.

Right, right, he needed to say something...

Would breathily whispering back work:

"Yeah, I can hear you. Loud and clear."

"You don't have to whisper. Your voice is soft enough not to disrupt the audio," Kaiba responds plainly, but still with his tone kept quiet. The only reason he's doing it is because using his usual voice apparently made the audio crackle, and Mokuba had given him more than enough shit about it that now he moderated his tone!

He has no idea how it might be affecting his passenger, and it didn't matter, right?

"Secure yourself. I'll be takin' off in a few moments."

Yuugi should consider himself lucky that the cockpit dome is only now sliding shut with a pneumatic hiss, otherwise Kaiba might have looked at him in the reflection of the glass and seen him being highly affected by...Kaiba talking?!

Secure himself. Did that involve handcuffs, pinning him to bedposts? Because Gods, if he talked like that then he could get Yuugi to do whatever the hell he wante--

Oh for the love of every God that existed what the fuck was he saying. No, no, bad. He needed to secure himself with the damn seatbelt get your fucking brain out of the gutter holy shit!

"Aye aye, Captain." Yuugi chirped, trying not to think about how smooth his voice was. Whiskey was smooth, right? Or what kind of manly thing touched your skin like that and made you shiver?

Nnnngh.

Nnnnnghghghghghghghghghgh.

That...

...What the fuck is wrong with Yuugi? This time Kaiba does try to catch sight of him in the reflection of the dome as he does his flight prechecks. Because a normal person does not simply say "Aye aye, Captain" to Seto Fucking Kaiba.

"What's your problem?" he asks, and this time, his tone trends more towards normal. Enjoy the mic crackle, Yuugi. You did this.

Oh good, normality. Not Seto Kaiba speaking with his sexy fucking voice and breaking his brain (and dick) in the process.

As he buckled himself in, he scratched his cheek.

"Aha...was just making a joke? Sorry."

Because he was talking about the quip, right? Not about the part where he was squirming in his seat at the sound of Seto Kaiba's soft voice and his fucking

ASMR

BULLSHIT

"Hmmmmmm."

Dubious, doubtful noise. Try that for ASMR. But Kaiba's busy trying to take off from the top of his own building now, so he'll ignore Yuugi for the moment. And Yuugi can panic as he feels the engines power up and practically vibrate through the frame of the whole jet, maybe. That'd be because he's not capable of anything but a vertical takeoff from the top of the KaibaCorp building.

It's not exactly subtle, either, but it's likely surprising when they start to ascend straight up, and the landing gear loses contact with the ground. Then, it's up to Kaiba to hold his controls steady, which he does, surprisingly!

...But he is definitely drunk so when he shifts to horizontal propulsion after they've achieved decent height, he gives the afterburners just a little too much juice, enough to jolt even him against his seat as they shoot across the sky.

Oops.

This was a punishment for something. For what, Yuugi didn't know.

All he knew was that he was moving and clinging to his chair and his soul was ready to fly out of his body at the sheer power behind Kaiba's...

...

Thrust...ers.

Dammit brain, now was not the time to think about that! Especially when a single eject could kill him!

Thankfully Kaiba's "thrusters" are quickly removed from his control as he sets the autopilot. The speed evens out, as does the flight path, and he lets out a slow exhale, before relaxing in his seat.

"See. That was fine," he answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're fine."

Yuugi exhaled, and...tried not to look like he was ready to ooze out of the seat.

He was ready, though.

Ready to turn into a puddle and melt into nothing as the autopilot urged him into the nearest trash can. Would he even survive this trip?

"Yep..." He mumbled. "Perfectly fine..."

"...Do you get airsick? Don't you dare throw up in my jet."

Kaiba seems pretty irritated at the thought that Yuugi might vomit in the jet, this is his BABY!

...That is, it was a very expensive jet, and he had no interest in having to get it professionally cleaned!!! NOTHING ELSE!!!

"If I got airsick, Battle City would have gone much differently," he said, "just... went a bit fast for a minute, that's all."

He was okay.

Very okay.

Just thinking about being in an enclosed space with Seto Kaiba, his ridiculous driving, and now the autopilot for an undisclosed amount of time.

"That's true. It's not as if the blimp was a smoother flight."

To be fair, the autopilot is doing a lot better than Kaiba would be at this time, not that he'd admit that. But it's a short flight in the Jet anyway, so they might as well talk to each other.

"Tell me 'bout your game," he says, and he almost sounds sober. But he's really not.

"My game..."

Something else to think about... good. He needed that. Especially with the circumstances, the ASMR voice, Kaiba's sobriety...

...

Everything.

"Oh! It's uhhh. It's a strategy game that's built on a spherical grid; imagine two or more players summoning monsters and battling it out for supremacy.

There are different modes where the players can be as complex and simple as they like; you can either focus on the simple act of conquest, you can manage the granular details of every area and unit, or somewhere in between. I wanted to make it where it was accessible to everyone's play style. The primary prototype works on the more complex variant, which can be scaled back as development needs allow. I know feature creep is a problem in game development, so I wanted to solve that problem by making the most 'complete' system first."

"Strategy, huh..."

Kaiba uses the cockpit dome to his advantage, glancing at Yuugi in curiosity as he explains the general rules. Just from the simple explanation, it sounds intriguing. More than that, it seems well thought out, enough that he's surprised Yuugi's holding the idea even now.

"Too bad you don't have the files with you now. My space station's good for...that kind of thing."

Thinking. Tinkering. Working things out, really. Even though, y'know. He also used the supercomputer to solve the Millennium Puzzle in hours. They don't have to talk about that.

"I have them," Yuugi said. "I, uh. Always take my latest version with me... and barring that, I back up the latest commits on the KCHub Repository database."

KC servers were safer than any other; the repository was an industry standard. Even companies like Schroeder Corp used them in their games division.

They had to pay a premium, of course. Individual devs like Yuugi had access to the repository for free.

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