Chapter Text
Another successful test of his latest Immersive Gaming Technology, or I.G.T for short. There were a few kinks in the hardware that he wanted to work out and some bugs in the new game that he planned to release alongside his I.G.T, but otherwise, he was satisfied with the progress so far. Yugi better fix his game soon because Kaiba could feel that he was close to perfecting I.G.T and he wasn't going to let anyone slow him down. Especially not Yugi Muto.
As he began to regain consciousness, Kaiba became acutely aware of how stiff all his muscles were from lying in the same position for what must've been hours. Although the inside of the machine was padded and tilted back for comfort, it could only do so much. Mokuba, who had also been play testing, should be waking up too by now. Kaiba decided that he should get up and help his little brother out of the I.G.T as the pods weren't designed with someone of Mokuba's stature in mind.
Kaiba stepped out of the machine, or that's what he tried to do before falling out and landing flat on his face. Shakily pushing himself onto his knees, he caught sight of his hands. They were much more tan and smaller than he remembered. In fact, for some strange reason, he felt entirely smaller than usual.
"Seto...?"
This couldn't be right. That was his own voice saying his own name, the only difference being the quiver in the voice that he hadn't heard since he was a child. Looking up, Kaiba was shocked to see someone who looked exactly like him, looming over with a terrified expression, eyes wide and the corner of his lips pulled down. Finding out why he felt odd in his own body could wait. If this bastard thought he could just take Kaiba's image without consequences, he was sorely mistaken.
"You have some nerve taking my appearance. I hope you're ready to face the consequences." Kaiba couldn't help but feel his throat as soon as the words left his mouth. The threat held far less weight than he had intended. Disgustingly, it could have only been described as bratty.
At that, the fake Kaiba began to visibly panic. "Seto, it's me! Mokuba! I swear I had nothing to do with this, I just woke up like this. I think we swapped bodies!"
Swapped!?
Slowly, Kaiba pushed himself to his feet and bent his neck back to look up at his own distraught face again. It finally hit him, his body felt so strange because it wasn't his body, it was Mokuba's!
It was disconcerting to watch himself (Mokuba) get down on his hands and knees to be at eye level. "What are we going to do, big bro!" pleaded Mokuba.
Logically, Kaiba knew that it was Mokuba who was speaking but seeing his own body looking so helpless was repulsive. Kaiba quietly folded his arms, turning to face away from Mokuba to hide his expression and put on an air that he was more collected than he was in reality.
A mind swap shouldn't be technically possible. The I.G.T worked by projecting the game into one's mind, that's why it was essential that a player was unconscious as 'seeing' two different realities would be extremely disorientating. So then why was he in Mokuba's body? There was no way he had made such a huge blunder in his design. That left only one other option.
"Muto!"
They left the Play Testing room, making they're way through KC headquarters towards their games development department. Kaiba, whose long legs normally carried him effortlessly, was now speed walking to keep up with Mokuba's strides. He never considered that Mokuba would have to almost run to keep up with his brisk pace. It didn't take long before they stood before an office door with a plaque reading "Yugi Muto".
Without knocking, Kaiba flung the door open causing a loud crash as the door swung into the wall, surely causing damage to both. The small man who had been working behind a large curved monitor let out shriek and ducked his head. Behind his computer desk was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city of Domino. A deep orange splattered the left wall of the room as the sun set. It was very clearly past normal office hours.
Marching right up to the desk, Kaiba slammed his palm down. The pile of energy drink cans that had been neatly stacked up on the desk clattered to the floor, rolling off in several directions. As though ready to duck back behind the monitor at any moment, Yugi peeked his head out. He looked terrible. Exhaustion marred his face, dark eye bags stood apart from his pale skin. His rumpled shirt and messy hair told a story of days spent doing overtime. "Hey guys," Yugi greeted with a weary smile, "what did I do to earn a surprise visit from the Kaiba brothers?"
Skipping past all formality, Kaiba got straight to the point. "Cut the crap, Yugi. What the hell did you do?"
Yugi, who had been expectedly looking at who he thought was the older Kaiba brother, was caught off guard when it was seemingly Mokuba who was first to start berating him. "What did I do?" he asked, genuinely confused.
Behind him, Mokuba piped up, "Just answer the question or my big brother will make you sorry that you ever tried to mess with us."
"Erm, am I missing something here? Are you guys feeling ok?" Yugi sat up, switching from placating to earnest concern. "You're acting kinda weird."
Kaiba grit his teeth in frustration, offended that he even had to explain what Yugi must have already known. "We were play testing your game and ended up like this, in the wrong bodies. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you right now and end any chance of future employment."
"Wait!" shouted Yugi, waving his hands in front of him. "Think reasonably about it for a second, Kaiba. Why would my game cause this? Sure, Monster Conquest was designed to run on the I.G.T but it's a regular game otherwise! It's the I.G.T that handles inputs from the brain directly, so technically, it would be the I.G.T that would be the biggest failure point…" Yugi finished lamely.
Kaiba wanted hit back, wanted to accuse Yugi of hiding malicious code in his game but hesitated. He had known Yugi for years, and in all that time, he had never known Yugi to use underhanded tactics. Yet he had never doubted his own work either, assured in his capabilities as a competent CEO and inventor. He wasn't getting any closer to figuring out how they had swapped bodies, let alone the issue of switching back. Kaiba grabbed the side of head, feeling his frustration manifest as a pounding headache. Surprisingly, it was the feeling of Mokuba's mop of unruly hair in his hand that helped him regain his nerves, bringing him back to the days when he'd pat Mokuba on the head to show how proud he was of his little brother. When had he stopped doing that?
Sensing that Kaiba was no longer on the verge of firing him, Yugi carefully questioned him to dig for more clues. "Did you ever notice anything off while you were playing? Is this the first time this has happened?"
He ran back through his memories but couldn't think of anything that could have tipped him off that something wasn't right. This had been the first time he play tested with someone else as he wanted to make sure multiplayer worked but otherwise—
"Seto! Remember when I first joined in? I was having issues moving around. You did something on the admin console to fix it."
He remembered now too. He had accessed the I.G.T's settings to manually adjust the machine's sensitivity to brain waves. Was it possible that the machine was able to capture one's entire mind and potentially deposit it in different bodies? He certainly never put any safeguards against such an possibility.
Kaiba was sighing before he realised it. Not from annoyance but resignation. "We'll have to re-enter the game and see if I can do anything from the admin console. Come on Mokuba."
He turned on his heel, ready to make a swift exit, quickly rectify this issue and begin working on preventing a reoccurrence when Yugi got up to stop him. "Kaiba, you shouldn't do this by yourself. Let me come just in case something happens."
Kaiba shirked off the hand grabbing his sleeve. "Don't make me laugh. You're the last person I need help from."
Then Mokuba came over to gently put a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe we should let him come. You know, just in case." How unnerving it was, to have his little brother looking down on him like that instead of the other way around, like a petulant child in need of coaxing from a parent.
"Ugh, fine," he relented. He mustered as fearsome a look as he could in this body, "but stay out of my way." With that, they exited the office together with hopes that this would all be a straightforward fix.