Queer As Tachi – Chapter 74
The day after the full moon, Yugi took a moment out of his morning to return Kaiba’s phone call from the day before, now that he didn’t have anything so horribly distracting standing in the way. Yami listened from inside, curious to know whether Kaiba was going to do as all of Yugi’s friends warned and go back on the offer he had made the day of the earthquake. On the contrary; Kaiba was crisp and eager as he spoke of getting back to the idea of consulting on the console adaptation of Legendary Heroes, or at least as eager as Kaiba could sound. He set a meeting for a couple of days hence, declaring that it would be an official consultation and thus he would pay Yugi for his time. They had nothing more than a verbal agreement to the deal so far, but Kaiba said they could confirm the details and sign any contracts about consulting fees and numbers of meetings when Yugi came in to do the first game test. The fact that Yugi had helped save his life after the earthquake was collateral enough for Kaiba, the debt had to be paid one way or another. The fee he suggested per meeting was more than generous, as Yugi saw it, so he agreed and promised to be there for the game test.
A few days later Yugi showed up at the KaibaCorp offices dressed as he usually was in jeans and a black sleeveless shirt, since his only business-worthy shirt had been destroyed in order to render first aid to Kaiba. He was allowed, this time, since he expected to be spending most of the meeting playing a video game. The receptionist asked him to have a seat to wait until the company president was finished with his current meeting, so Yugi perched himself in a chair and looked around. He could tell that the offices had been damaged and rebuilt, though the configuration hadn’t changed – the paint on the walls was obviously fresh, the receptionist’s desk was a little different than the old one which had been destroyed, and the doors to Kaiba’s office had different handles. As he gazed toward the doors, Yugi could hear a hint of a raised voice from beyond them, and a moment later one swung violently open to release some suit-and-tie minion looking rather shaken and displeased. Kaiba appeared in the doorway right behind him to see him out, a nasty glare on his face. Whatever meeting it was appeared to have ended badly. Kaiba glanced across the hallway to the chairs by the reception desk and seemed to huff in relief to see that Yugi was on time and already waiting for him. He turned to the receptionist and said bluntly, “I just fired Toyama. See that his security clearance is revoked. Yugi.” He gave a cool nod and turned to go back into the office, indicating that Yugi should follow.
Yugi hopped up and meandered after him, straining with curiosity about the salaryman who had just gotten fired but keeping his mouth shut. It wasn’t his business. Kaiba went to his desk and sat down heavily in his new cushy leather chair, immediately pulling out a paper and sliding it across the desk even before Yugi had joined him. Yugi picked it up and looked at it, wondering, “What’s this?”
“A contract stipulating the terms of our agreement,” Kaiba replied gruffly. “Mainly the set fee we agreed upon for your services, and my right to terminate the agreement at any point with no warning. I don’t expect to have to drag you down here more than a couple of times, but the contract is open-ended for as long as I require your assistance with the game test.” He eyed Yugi warily across the desk and folded his hands. “I’m not going to waste your time or my money unnecessarily, but if I still need an objective game test toward the end stages of the project, I expect you to comply.”
“That’s more than fair,” Yugi said evenly. “I don’t see anything in here that I should be worried about, so okay. You’ve got a deal.”
“Try not to go spreading too much of it around your little group of geek friends,” Kaiba said in annoyance, as Yugi took up a pen and signed the contract. “I’m sure you’d all love to gloat over me needing to ask for your help on anything, but this is a serious trade secret. Duke Devlin still has ties to Industrial Illusions, and I’d rather they didn’t get wind of this before I decide to release it.”
Yugi made a face at him, and then glanced over the contract again. “But there’s no confidentiality agreement in here.”
“I’m just saying,” Kaiba muttered. “Have a sense of tact, would you? I know you’re going to go home and tell Katsuya and Devlin and everybody about it, just don’t go overboard. I’d like to keep information about Legendary Heroes out of the hands of anyone in the business community.”
“All right,” Yugi agreed. “I do feel like I owe you, so I’ll be good about it. If you don’t want me telling people anything, I won’t.”
Kaiba glared at him. “There’s only one thing I’d rather you didn’t tell people, but it has nothing to do with Legendary Heroes,” he said in a low, threatening tone.
“And I haven’t told anyone a thing,” Yugi said firmly. “That’s your private business.”
“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.” Kaiba slid open one of the drawers on his desk and plucked out a laminated badge, which he slid across the desk even as he rose from his chair. “This is a security pass appropriate to your level of involvement with the company. After today, I expect you’ll head straight to the development department instead of coming here to see me, so this will let you in. Now.” He brushed down his purple coat and swept from behind the desk. “Follow me.”
Yugi studied the generic security badge for a moment before clipping it to his belt loop and tagging along after Kaiba, awkwardly conscious of his lack of height in the taller man’s wake. Kaiba went to the executive elevators and brought them down to the floor housing the development department, which was noisy and active at this time of the afternoon. The appearance of the president sent several workers into even more of a frenzy, hunching over their keyboards and sketch pads to make them look like they were on top of things. A handful of research programmers came over to greet their boss, having already expected this meeting and eager to get right to work. Kaiba strode into the middle of them and stared them all down. “You’ve all heard of Yugi Muto,” he said smugly. “He’s my new consultant on Legendary Heroes. First thing’s first – set up the console for a game test. I want him to have a completely unbiased view of it, so I don’t want to hear a word out of anyone. Just set up the system.”
The underlings hustled to obey immediately, leading the way to a corner of the development department where a big flat-screen monitor was hooked up to a Playstation waiting to display the freshly-burned copy of the game. Kaiba stood back and folded his arms over his chest while Yugi sat down in the comfy chair provided for him and took up the game controller. “Is there anything at all I’m supposed to know before I start?” he asked over his shoulder. “Like, which button does what, or what the final goal of the game is?”
“It’s just like the virtual game,” Kaiba said stiffly. “Make your way through the world on the quest. If you don’t remember how it went, the characters should give you hints along the way.”
“Okay. But what deck am I using?” Yugi sat back as one of the programmers stuck the CD into the console and let it load. “This isn’t the virtual game, there’s no card reader to stick my deck into.”
“There’s a pre-constructed base deck for the player to start with,” Kaiba answered. “I’m sure it’s nowhere near as special as your own, but you’ll just have to deal with it.”
Nodding, Yugi faced the screen and settled down to play, figuring as with other games he had enjoyed in the past, there would be some kind of tutorial level and a menu mode where he could figure out which button signified which action, and how the game itself would play. Kaiba watched silently from behind him, while the other programmers fidgeted and wavered between hanging around to see how it would go or wandering off to do other work. Yugi expected to have to play through a few levels to really get a feel for the game, but realized after just partway through the first level why Kaiba was so frustrated that he needed to swallow his pride and ask his greatest rival for help – the game sucked. It was clunky, hard to play, and the first level was incredibly boring. The pre-made deck was weak, and it was hard to use the cards as he was used to them. Only by sheer luck did he make it through the first level without actually dying, though his on-screen character had been severely damaged and he tried searching around for ways to boost his life points. There weren’t many. Plus, the camera angles were frustrating, the linear structure was constraining, and the game generally lacked the punch of its virtual counterpart. Yugi did his best to play through, but he got a short way into the second level before simply tossing aside the controller and swiveling his chair to look at Kaiba. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can do right now. I…I hate to say it, Kaiba, but…this isn’t a very good game.”
Kaiba stared down at him, his blue eyes narrowing. “You’ve barely started the game, and you’ve already come to that conclusion?”
“I just can’t play any more of this,” Yugi griped. “I can’t put my finger on what exactly is wrong with it, but it’s just not fun. I can’t move the camera, it keeps zooming in all weird when I get in a battle. And the card system is awful. It works in the virtual game, but for some reason it just isn’t working here. I think…I think it suffers from an identity crisis,” he surmised. “It doesn’t know whether it wants to be an RPG or a card-battle game.”
“It’s Duel Monsters,” Kaiba snorted. “Therefore, it’s a card-battle game.”
“But Legendary Heroes itself isn’t,” Yugi pointed out. “You’ve got stuff from all different sources in here, but they’re not working together to make a decent game. It’s all over the place. And where did you find the voice actors for the cut scenes?” he added with a roll of his eyes. “I hope that’s just some of your employees filling in for now until you get a better version developed.”
It wasn’t, so Kaiba just looked away uncomfortably. “Voice acting can be fixed,” he grumbled, “I just want to know about the gameplay.”
“It’s not very smooth,” Yugi said, gentling his tone and choosing his words carefully. He figured Kaiba wasn’t paying him to badmouth the game, but it was the truth. “Something’s missing, and I’m not sure what. I don’t quite know yet what kinds of suggestions I might be able to make to change or add to the game to make it better, but right now, it’s bad.” He perked up, then, with a curious look. “You don’t happen to have a version of the virtual Legendary Heroes somewhere in the building, do you? Maybe if I went in and played that for a bit, for comparison, it would jog my brain.”
Kaiba’s brow twitched. “Of course there’s a virtual pod with the game on the premises,” he growled. “I still have the prototypes for game-testing, and the final version of the game that’s being used in the theme parks.”
“Perfect!” Yugi gave him a brave smile. “If you’d let me look around inside that one for a bit, maybe I’ll be able to tell you in clearer words what I don’t like about the console game.”
Though doubtful, Kaiba could see the logic of such an idea, and stoically led the way down a few levels to a testing laboratory where the virtual pod prototypes were housed. Like the game itself, they were the final version of the pods as seen at Kaibaland, with all the bells and whistles. Along the way, Kaiba decided that he would enter the game along with Yugi, so the two of them took two pods and slapped their decks down into the card reader to begin. The heads of the testing department stood watch over the controls while the two young men closed their eyes and fell into the virtual world, appearing on the monitoring screens and to each other as armor-clad warriors. Yugi grinned up at Kaiba, thinking he looked supremely impressive in the virtual armor, but before he could give a compliment, Kaiba grumbled at him. “So what is it you wanted to see? Hurry up, we haven’t got all day.”
“Well, part of it is the experience,” Yugi mused, looking around them. They had entered the game at a random point corresponding to the same level Yugi had been playing when he gave up, in a grassy clearing in the middle of the forest. Yugi checked his deck to make sure his favorite cards were close at hand, and then started walking in the direction he assumed would bring him either to battles or hints. “I mean, I know nothing can replicate the excitement of being inside this virtual world, but a good game should at least try to live up to it. Better graphics wouldn’t hurt, especially if you can interact with the environment like you can in this place. Like…there was an RPG I played once that did just the littlest thing with the graphics and sound, but it made me feel like I could really be there. No matter where your character stepped, on the grass, on rock, on sand, in the water, the sound was correct. Your feet splashed in the water and crunched on the sand, and even kicked up dust when you ran. I didn’t notice it until halfway through the game, it was just there.” He shook his head and chose a deliberate path forward, while Kaiba followed a step behind. “And some background music couldn’t hurt. You don’t have any here, but this is a realistic world. On a console, most RPGs have music.”
“So you’re saying I should make Legendary Heroes more of a role-playing game than a card game?” Kaiba said sullenly.
“Well…isn’t it, though?” Yugi glanced at him over his armored shoulder. “You’re playing a character, going on a quest. That’s the basic description of a role-playing game. The fact that your weapon is a card rather than a sword or magic doesn’t change that.”
Kaiba scowled to himself. “But that would change the essence of the game. It wouldn’t be Duel Monsters anymore.”
“It isn’t Duel Monsters now,” Yugi pointed out. He gestured with a gloved hand to the trees they were passing under. “If you wanted Duel Monsters, you already have arenas and duel disks to play it as if it were real. But you wrote a whole quest story and set it in this world, with this forest, and the desert, the city of Sim-Lao…that’s different. But you know what? That’s okay.” He smiled up at Kaiba. “You don’t have to make a Duel Monsters game, it can have its own identity. You can make it a role-playing game if you want, that just happens to borrow from Duel Monsters.” He looked around, but the trees boded no threat of attack anywhere nearby. He didn’t know if they were playing the game or just inside the virtual world, with the testers on the outside controlling whether any monsters crossed their path. “I’ve played enough video games to know what styles are popular, and I’m pretty sure Legendary Heroes belongs in the RPG genre. You just have to decide that you’re going to do that, and then fix up the game so it’s as good as any other RPG out there. That might be a tall order – after all, there’s Final Fantasy, it sets a high standard. And there are so many RPGs, you have to do something really cool to stand out in the crowd and not be just another stupid fantasy game. That’s where the card battle system would come in.”
The more Yugi babbled on about video games and the more Kaiba listened, the more his mood eased. He was starting to see where Yugi was coming from. “I admit I don’t know those kinds of details about video games,” he muttered. “I only know my market research of the different consoles and what genres were doing well monetarily. I did see this ‘Final Fantasy’ you mention, it seems rather popular.”
“Oh, it is,” Yugi agreed, nodding. “It’s the Big One. If you’re going to set your sights on competing against it, you have to make Legendary Heroes unique. A role-playing game with its own game engine and battle system, with really good graphics. I mean, these are cool,” he added, indicating the armor he was clinking around in, “but your programmers really simplified the outfits in the console game. You should make it just as beautiful, make people want to be these characters. Oh!” He raised a finger in epiphany. “I really liked that this virtual version has such a huge range of characters to choose from, but on the console, there was just the one. Is there any kind of multi-player mode, or a chance to meet up with those other characters and form parties?”
Kaiba blinked, taken aback. “Uh…no,” he said. “I didn’t have time to develop multi-player, I thought that was only worth having in the virtual world.”
“Oh, no way,” Yugi exclaimed. “These days, with all the consoles going online, you have to have some kind of multi-player mode to keep it exciting. It’s no fun if there’s no incentive to replay the game, then it’s not worth the price.”
“I see.” Kaiba glanced around them also, keeping an eye on the thickets beneath the trees. “I did go through the trouble to create those extra characters, it would be a waste of my time not to use them.”
“One of the things I always liked about Legendary Heroes was being able to play it with my friends,” Yugi explained. “Teaming up in battles is a lot of fun, and gives you all kinds of alternative ways to go through the game. And it’s a staple of RPGs. You should definitely add the option, and maybe make things like the extra modes in the virtual game into mini-games, where you can get extra points or cards or something by playing them.” He paused and looked keenly up at Kaiba. “Do you get any bonuses in higher levels for defeating monsters? Like, cards to add to your deck, or money to buy cards?”
“There is the gladiator arena mini-game, in the desert town,” Kaiba noted. “I kept that.”
“Okay, that’s good.” Yugi folded his arms and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “But there should be more. If the Duel Monsters aspect is what makes Legendary Heroes unique, then it has to be just as interesting as the real game, too. The ability to upgrade your deck, trade cards, find rare ones, and so on. Make it so there are more options for finishing the game.”
“Options?” Kaiba eyed him. “Like what?”
“Oh, it’s hard to explain…” Yugi made a thoughtful face. “Can you contact your people on the outside and have them load any scene in the game for us?”
“Yes…” Kaiba raised his red duel disk and pressed the life point counter, which indented like a toggle switch. “We want a different chapter.”
A voice came out of nowhere, echoing like a loudspeaker. “Yes, sir. Which chapter do you want to load?”
Kaiba looked to Yugi, who suggested, “How about the end of the labyrinth, where you have to face Gate Guardian?”
Nodding, the CEO pressed the switch again. “The boss battle at the end of the labyrinth.”
“Yes, sir. Just one moment.”
The virtual world flickered briefly and then suddenly went dark, as they were transported to the labyrinth cave dimly lit by torches. Yugi looked around, recognizing it, but before he could say anything, an enormous monster thundered out of the darkness and barred their way from advancing out of the labyrinth into the tunnel beyond. There were few sights more impressive than a fifteen-foot-tall Gate Guardian with torchlight reflecting off the smooth surfaces of its metal-like legs and arms. Yugi nodded to himself in satisfaction. “All right. Hear me out on this one. When we were in the game to rescue you that one time, Joey and I defeated Gate Guardian by fusing my Summoned Skull with his Red Eyes to form Black Skull Dragon. But there are different ways and different strategies any player could use to defeat this monster, depending on their deck. Right?”
“Of course,” Kaiba sniffed, bored. “Get on with it.”
“Right. Well. Here, if I was playing by myself, I could use, say…” He thumbed through his deck and pulled out a couple of cards, summoning two monsters. Dark Magician and Buster Blader stood together before him, each alone not enough to tackle the Guardian. “Knowing me, I’d already have Dark Magician helping me through the labyrinth, so I’d come out here, summon Buster Blader, and then use Polymerization…” He did so, and now Dark Paladin brandished a huge sword at the opposing monster. Yugi didn’t attack, he just left the Paladin standing as his example while he turned to his comrade. “Assuming I might have a couple of dragons in my graveyard, Dark Paladin could more than take down Gate Guardian. Or, perhaps you and I could play as a team, and all you’d have to do is summon one Blue Eyes to the field and we’d have the points to take him.”
Though unsure where this was going, Kaiba decided to play along and pulled out one of his dragons, setting it to attack and watching Dark Paladin’s attack points raise. Yugi gestured to it as he continued. “Or, you could even take on Gate Guardian by yourself with the Blue Eyes Ultimate. You see? There are a lot of ways you could defeat this boss – if you were a regular duelist in a regular duel and someone summoned it. You would have to determine based on your deck, which strategy to use.”
Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “Your point being…?”
Yugi sighed as if it should be obvious. “But in your console game, your character only has a weak deck with a limited number of cards! If you don’t have the option of constructing your own deck the way you want it, you may only have one strategy to defeat Gate Guardian, and if you happened to use one of the cards you needed earlier in the game, you’d get to this point and you’d be screwed!” He brandished the duel disk. “You give the player the ability to put his own deck in the virtual pod and duel with it. You have to have something similar for the console version, or duelists won’t want to play it. And if duelists don’t want to play because it’s not enough like Duel Monsters, but regular RPG gamers don’t want to play because it’s got too much Duel Monsters in it, then you’re making it impossible for anyone to want to play it.”
Kaiba stared at him, light dawning at last. A boring or bad game that no one from any genre wanted to play meant no one would buy it, and money would be lost. Not to mention, he hated to see anything that he had put so much personal investment into tank, it was like a personal insult. “You have a point,” he said seriously. “But how do I balance the two and not make it boring for either side?”
“Well, I like that there’s a quest,” Yugi began. “I really think making it an RPG with card-based battles is the way to go. But you have to make sure it’s a good quest, that will take time, and is made better if the player puts more into it. Building your own deck, going on side-quests that give you bonuses, it should all tie in so that you have options when it comes to facing the boss battles. Like this.” He pointed commandingly at his monster. “Dark Paladin, use your special effect to negate the Polymerization spell that binds Gate Guardian together!”
Dark Paladin raised his massive sword and gave a shout, at which a swell of light surrounded Gate Guardian. With a rumble and a groan, the three gods which formed the monster split apart, each standing side by side now with a fairly high attack each. Thanks to the Blue Eyes, though, Dark Paladin’s attack was higher than each. Yugi drew one more card from his deck and held it up. “Now, use Diffusion Wave-Motion to destroy all three!”
Kaiba stood back out of the way and watched with just a twitch of his eyebrow in interest as the black-armored Paladin gave a huge swipe of his sword, blasting through Sanga, Kazejin, and Suijin all at once. The boss was gone, and a save point appeared just beyond it in the cave. Yugi nodded firmly to himself, and then looked to his companion. “The Mythic Dragon at the end of the game is just like that. You and I defeated it a certain way, but when it was summoned in Noa’s virtual world, Joey and I had to use a different strategy to defeat it because you weren’t there with your Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon. So, unless your plan for the quest is to have the main character acquire three Blue Eyes and a Black Luster Soldier, there have to be different ways to fix up your deck and make it unique to you. Otherwise, every last gamer who buys Legendary Heroes is going to have his own video-game version of your deck.”
The mere thought made Kaiba frown in revulsion. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Yugi turned to face him, now that the battle was over and their monsters disappeared from the field. “These days, a good RPG has to have a certain element of open-endedness,” he explained. “There may be a story to follow, and everyone gets the same cut scenes and bosses, but how you get from one to the next should be variable. You should be able to battle with a team, and choose your partners based on who has a deck that works the best with yours. And there should be all kinds of special bonuses and features that you get for playing more and doing different side-quests. It makes people want to play the game over again, instead of just putting it aside once you finish the game and letting it collect dust. And it also opens it up for a sequel,” he added with a sly wink.
A wry smirk began to fill Kaiba’s face. “I can’t argue with that, I suppose.”
“I think I’ve seen enough to get my brainstorm on a roll,” Yugi decided, looking around the dank cave. “We can get out of the game and go back to talk about it, but I think I have some ideas. If you want to hear them,” he said with some hesitation.
“It’s why I hired you.” Kaiba pressed his duel disk again. “All right, were done here. Give us an exit and shut the game down.”
In place of the save point, a door shimmered into being. Together, Kaiba and Yugi strode up to the door in their impressive armor and passed through it, turning into normal young men in their mundane clothes again as they awoke in the pods and let themselves out. Kaiba brought Yugi back up to the development department, where they went to the game still sitting on pause so Yugi could play through some more and speak his thoughts aloud as he had them. “Okay, here…I know I can totally take out these insects with a Pest Spray magic card, or an Insect Barrier card, but I don’t have those in my deck. I have nothing in my deck to help me, I have to just summon a monster to hack through them and watch my life points go down in between. Yeah, that there? That shouldn’t happen.”
“That’s a glitch.”
“I know. But even so. Gah, this stupid camera! How can I see what’s attacking me if I can’t turn it around? Okay, I think I know what the problem is here.” Yugi set down the controller again and raised a finger to lecture. “It’s a card battle game but it’s set up like a hack-and-slash.”
“A what…?”
“Where you just mash buttons to hack at monsters. But you don’t have a sword, so what’s the deal? You ought to make it a turn-based battle game, just like a real duel would be. I don’t particularly like turn-based battles, but in this instance, I think it can work. In fact, I think it’s the only way it’ll work. The game has to work both as a role-playing game and a duel, since Duel Monsters is such an integral part of it, so having turn-based battles makes sense. It’s still an RPG, it just has a different style of battle. The virtual game is great,” he thought to add, “but its battle style doesn’t adapt well to the console. That’s the problem right there.”
Intrigued, Kaiba just waved for one of his underlings to turn the game off while he faced Yugi. “I don’t know about turn-based battles. The only RPGs I did research into were of the platform variety. Do you have one you can use as an example?”
Yugi had to think about it. “Um…well, there’s Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Wild Arms…actually, most of them are turn-based these days…”
Kaiba pointed ferociously at one of his programmers. “Somebody get me a copy of one of these role-play games right now. I want to see this for myself.” He turned to Yugi again. “And we’ll play it in my office, I have a system up there as well. I want you to tell me exactly how you think this will work with Duel Monsters.”
“Okay,” Yugi shrugged, amazed to see Kaiba go so quickly from scowly and doubtful to energized. It just so happened one of the programmers actually had a copy of a Suikoden game at his desk, for he was a fan, so he handed it over and watched helplessly as the company president carted it away, along with Yugi, to his office on the penthouse level. There, he demanded his secretary hold all calls and cancel a meeting with the IT department so he could hole up there and do some research. Yugi sat down in front of the entertainment center in Kaiba’s office and played far enough into the game for the battle system to be introduced, and fought a few monsters with his party of four to show a fascinated Kaiba just how turn-based strategy worked. “Yeah, now that I’m looking at it, I’m even more sure,” Yugi said confidently. “Instead of commanding attacks and magic spells, you use your turn to set up your cards and then see how the monster is going to respond. And just like that one attacked in between your turns, you can spring traps between turns, just like a duel.”
Kaiba stood behind him with arms folded, but with a look of intrigue rather than a frown on his face. “And I assume as you progress through this game, your characters get better weapons and armor…”
“And experience points,” Yugi said, pointing at the numbers in the corner of the screen. “In an RPG, you get points for battling monsters and level up, and each time you level up, you get stronger. I don’t know how that would translate to Legendary Heroes, but…maybe it would give you the ability to unlock and use more rare cards.”
Kaiba turned and began pacing swiftly, thinking out loud. “The heart of Duel Monsters is customization. Therefore, the draw of Legendary Heroes should be the ability to customize your character’s deck, by winning, finding, or earning rare cards and combos.”
“Yeah, that’s it!” Yugi encouraged, pushing himself away from the game. He itched to play it, though, it was one of the sequels he didn’t have. “That way, by the time you make it to the Mythic Dragon, you have your own strategy in place to fight it and win. Maybe you could even change the basic quest a little so that it takes longer, so there’s more time for the player to go looking for those cards and bonuses. Add in some side-quests.”
Kaiba paused in his pacing and looked back at him. “The world isn’t big enough to make room for that right now.”
“So make the world bigger,” Yugi shrugged. “You have all those characters in the virtual game. Give them backstories, places they come from. You’ve already built an amazing world, it shouldn’t be that hard to make it bigger.”
A thoughtful look crossed Kaiba’s face, darkening his eyes for a moment. “I hadn’t counted on putting this much investment into the game. I thought I was already finished with it.”
“You want a good game, don’t you?” Yugi reasoned. “Right now, as the game stands, it’s not. The virtual game is a lot more fun, but if people try to play this console version first, as an introduction, they’re not going to be interested in trying out the virtual game. They’ll assume it’s just as bad.”
Kaiba frowned. “It’s not that bad…”
Yugi nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”
Huffing an indignant sigh, Kaiba went to his desk and pulled something up on his computer. After scowling at it for a moment, he nodded toward Yugi. “This is the walk-through I wrote up for the programmers, so they could match the console game to the virtual one. Tell me if it makes sense.”
Yugi joined him at the computer and read through it, mostly skimming since the details were of no consequence – he remembered them from playing. “It seems short,” he commented after a bit. “I could probably play through this in a day.”
“Is that good?”
“Well, no. Most good RPGs take a while to complete – at least thirty or forty hours, more if you want to invest the time in completing side quests and finding more secret treasures.” He turned to give Kaiba a questioning look. “Do you still have access to every Duel Monsters card in existence?”
Kaiba gave him a stoic look in return. “My license with Industrial Illusions allows me to keep a database of every card ever created for the game, and I’m free to use any or all of them in my projects.”
“That’s awesome,” Yugi gushed. “Then there’s really no reason for you not to put all kinds of ultra-rare secrets for people to unlock and add to their decks, so they can build them any way they want. You can even structure the game so that certain cards are essential for the player to find in order to finish the game – like the Niwatori we had to win in order to cross the desert – but other cards can just be trophies to find, or unlockable features, special things that might help you complete the quest more easily or in a different way without ruining the game if you decided not to go find the secrets. Sure, it’ll take a lot of work to plan it,” he shrugged, “but at least you don’t have to rebuild the game from the ground up. You already have the graphics and sound for all of the cards just from the duel disk database alone. You can start with the structure you already have and build on it. Make the world bigger, make the quest longer, add in to the character backgrounds, and put all of Duel Monsters into it.”
Kaiba nodded, catching on quickly to his suggestions and running with them in his mind. He had some new features built into his refurbished office, like a marker board hiding behind a paneled shelf in the wall, so he opened it out and started making notes to himself about changing the structure of his game. Yugi shut off the game console and came over to give a few more hints, and pretty soon the two of them were head-to-head in discussion of storylines, characters, and turn-based battle strategies. They even used the Duel Monsters database and a connection between Kaiba’s laptop and his duel disk to bring up holographic images of monsters and discuss how to integrate them into the game graphically. Kaiba had been utterly inspired now that he cared enough to take five seconds to listen to Yugi instead of ignore and berate him, and the ideas were coming out of his intelligent brain almost faster than his writing could keep up with it. Yugi sat near enough to interject whenever he got an idea, but most of it was just watching in awe as Kaiba descended into rare form, concepts and designs spilling out of his pen with an almost magical quality. He had always thought of Kaiba as a genius but somewhat lacking in the imagination department, given his knee-jerk reaction to anything involving the pharaoh and the shadow games, but he could see now that beneath the gruff exterior lay a fertile mind that knew how to dream. He still lacked artistic talents, though, which meant that among the scrawled notes and arrows pointing from one line to the next were a handful of crude stick figures, both his and Yugi’s, making futile attempts to visually convey something that they could see in their minds but not describe in words. As long as it was enough to jog his memory later when he went back over the notes, Kaiba figured. He had cast off his coat and was sitting now on the corner of his desk with his computer swiveled to serve him, his sleeves pushed up and his hair disheveled from having run his hands through it a few times due to temporary writer’s block. Yugi stood before the marker board looking over the notes, dictating a few for Kaiba to type, when the office door opened and Kaiba’s secretary peeked her head cautiously in. “Mr. Kaiba, sir?” she wondered.
He looked up sharply. “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing, sir…I just want to let you know that I’m on my way out.”
“Out?” Kaiba frowned and then turned to find the clock on the other wall. It was well past five. “It’s that time already?” he said incredulously.
“Yes, sir,” the secretary said with a little smile. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go? Most of the company employees will be leaving as well, though I know you sometimes stay late…”
Kaiba sat up and stretched, tilting his head to crack his stiff neck. “I’m not nearly finished here. I don’t suppose you have the number of a good take-out place nearby?”
The secretary beamed. “There are a few menus in my desk, sir. Would you like me to order you some dinner?”
“If you would,” Kaiba replied with a curt nod. “Yugi…”
“What? Me too?”
The CEO eyed him. “Unless you have more important places to be.”
“Oh, no…I worked the morning at the shop. I’m free. That’d be nice,” he added to the secretary. “I’m a big fan of curry.”
“I’ll put in an order and have it brought up,” she consented, leaving them to their work.
Yugi blinked in amazement, first at the marker board full of notes, and then at Kaiba, who had already gone back to typing at breakneck speed. They had spent hours going over ideas and dreaming up expansions for Legendary Heroes and lost all track of the time. Yugi wasn’t sure what more he could offer, since Kaiba appeared to be off on his own pace as some fresh idea poured itself out of his brain and through his flying fingers, but he wasn’t one to turn down free dinner at KaibaCorp’s expense. The secretary had the takeout order brought straight to Kaiba’s office so he and Yugi didn’t have to stop what they were doing for a minute, though the arrival of the food gave them a chance to sit and discuss the ideas rather than jot new ones down. They sat for a while longer, nibbling curry and fleshing out the notes Kaiba was entering into his computer in between checking the Duel Monsters database for rare cards that held more worth than others. Eventually, between mental exhaustion and sheer hunger, their brainstorm fizzled out and they just settled back to finish their dinner, poking at the last bits in the bottom of the takeout boxes. Yugi sat on the couch while Kaiba perched on the edge of his desk, resting an elbow on his knee while he fiddled with a box that used to be full of rice. Yugi sighed contentedly. “That was really good. Thanks, Kaiba. I can’t believe how much time we spent on Legendary Heroes today. Do you think you have enough to go on?”
Kaiba darted a brief glance to the scribbles crowding every corner of the marker board, as well as a notepad Yugi had been using to make pathetic sketches. “This should be more than enough, for now,” he replied. “It’s going to be a massive undertaking, but this game is important to me and I refuse to settle for crap in any way. I won’t release a console version unless I can personally say it’s the best game I could have created.” His eyes darted back to Yugi, a hint of his usual dourness in them. “And now that we’ve had this meeting, I can see your point. The game is crap. It’s not worth releasing.”
“It’s a sketchy start, that’s all,” Yugi assured him. “It needs some work, but I think it can be really awesome.”
Kaiba’s gaze kept wandering to his notes on the wall. “Several of the major software companies want to develop the game, after seeing the virtual world version,” he murmured, “but I intend to develop it myself and only partner with one of the console makers for release. This is KaibaCorp’s chance to break into the video game market, it would be pointless to do it with a product that’s anything less than perfect.”
Yugi chuckled. “I’m sure you didn’t intend for our meeting today to end up giving you tons more work to do, but I think it’s for the best. Legendary Heroes can be really great, but it’ll need work to get it there. And as much as I’m good at playing games and talking about them, I’m not a programmer or anything. I can’t do any of that myself.”
“I never intended you to.” Kaiba stared sourly down into his takeout box for a moment. “Give me three days. I’ll schedule another consulting appointment with you so you can see what I can come up with in that time. Assuming my programmers can keep up with me. Then I’ll know whether it’s possible to complete this game, or if I should pass it off to a different software designer.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Yugi said wryly. “Nobody else understands Duel Monsters like you do. And this is your project, your dream! You shouldn’t ever just hand off your dream to somebody else because you don’t have the time to pursue it.”
Kaiba blinked at him and then fell silent, not wanting to let the conversation descend into something cute and mushy. They finished their respective dinners, and then Yugi set his empty takeout box down with the others on the table between him and Kaiba. Seeing as they had finally thoroughly exhausted every Legendary Heroes-related topic and were more or less sick of it, he figured it was a good time to try some small talk, before Kaiba could declare the extended meeting over and send him home. He was really curious about something, and judging by the time that had passed since the earthquake, it was probably safe to ask about. “How’s your arm?” he began as casually as he could. “It looks like you’re back to normal, as fast as you type…”
“It’s fine,” Kaiba curtly answered.
“That’s good.” Yugi cocked his head in interest. “So…have you seen Alastair since then?”
Kaiba kept his eyes studiously focused on his empty takeout box. “It’s none of your business.”
“I know, it’s just…” Yugi heaved a little sigh. “It was a big surprise to see him here, out of nowhere, and find out he was the one who helped rescue us. I never expected to see him again, even if we did run into Valon last winter at the world tournament. I’m glad he was here to help us, no matter what brought him to town.”
Kaiba refused to encourage the discussion, keeping his head down. Yugi wasn’t finished, though. “I’m kind of curious how he’s doing. We didn’t really get much time to talk, what with all the chaos.”
“Last I heard from him, he was fine,” Kaiba muttered.
“So what does he do, now?”
Much as he didn’t want to share things about Alastair, Kaiba was stuck. “He’s an international courier,” he answered as shortly as he could.
“Ah,” Yugi nodded. “So that’s why he was visiting.” He smiled, then, inwardly amused at how embarrassed his comrade seemed to be. “I know it’s really none of my business, Kaiba, but I’m happy for you, even if it’s nothing but a little fling. He seems nice. And I’m glad you sort of took my advice, after all.”
Seeing as Yugi wasn’t going to shut up about it unless he gave him just enough information, Kaiba sighed and set the empty box aside. “I’m not in any kind of relationship, if that’s what you’re trying to get me to say,” he grumbled. “Alastair and I only get together whenever he happens to be in town, which is very rare.” He averted his eyes. “Though I have a strange feeling he may make himself a more permanent fixture in the near future.” Another sigh. “I haven’t really heard from him since he left, just an email to ask if my arm had healed. He hasn’t been back since.”
Yugi nodded his understanding. “Well, you take what you can get,” he assured airily. “It’s better than nothing, I suppose. And don’t worry,” he added with a chuckle, “I won’t tell anyone. I was really surprised you told Mokuba straight out, though. I think we all were.”
Kaiba stared at the floor. “I was tired of sneaking around behind his back,” he said quietly. “He deserved to know. He doesn’t disapprove of Alastair, so…”
“He doesn’t? Oh, good. That’s really good.”
“It’s getting late,” the CEO said abruptly, pushing himself to his feet. “I ought to get home before Mokuba starts worrying that I’m going to be working late again.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Yugi helped clean up the takeout boxes and dumped them all in the trash, quietly pleased with himself for getting Kaiba to open up just that tiny bit about his connection to Alastair. He may not see it as a relationship, but simply getting together with him was more than Yugi ever expected Kaiba to do with anyone, much less another man, and certainly much less than a former rival. He left the office first and waited for Kaiba to lock it behind them, his coat over his arm. “Well,” Yugi said to him, “I’d have to say it was a really productive meeting. Thanks for dinner, too.”
Kaiba turned swiftly and gave him a haughty look. “Do you need a ride home?”
Yugi’s eyebrows raised. “Uh…I guess…I was just going to take a bus, but…”
“I don’t have a driver today,” Kaiba went on, breezing past him on his way to the executive elevator. “I brought the car myself.”
“Well, as long as you’re offering,” Yugi grinned. He tagged along, fascinated by the opulence of the KaibaCorp building all the way down to the garage level. It was mostly empty at this time of day, but the one car parked in the president’s reserved spot clearly belonged to him: a sleek red sports car with tinted windows. It made Yugi gape all over again. “Whoa…that’s yours?” he cried.
“I bought it in an emergency,” Kaiba sniffed as he strode briskly for the car, raising the remote to disable the security system before they got to it. “I liked the handling so much I decided to keep it.”
“Nice,” Yugi breathed, walking all the way around the car to get a good look at it before heading to the passenger door. Smugly pleased with himself, Kaiba slid in behind the wheel and in mere moments they were speeding off, darting out of the KaibaCorp corporate garage and zooming through downtown Domino. It wasn’t a very long journey by that means, but it was still pretty sweet, Yugi had to admit as he sat back and watched the city fly by. Kaiba handled it with ease, saying nothing and keeping his eyes on the road, one hand lazily on the top of the wheel to guide it. They glided to a perfect stop outside Kame game shop, at which point Yugi said one last thank you and goodbye, while Kaiba reminded him of their next meeting. “I’ll be there,” Yugi vowed. “I’m excited about the game, now, you couldn’t keep me away if you wanted to.”
“Good.” The slightest smile lit Kaiba’s blue eyes as he laid a hand on the gearshift. “I’ll see you in three days, then.”
Yugi agreed and pushed the door shut, waiting on the curb until the sports car had peeled out of sight. Then, grinning to himself, he went in through the game shop and promised his grandfather that he would tell him all about the extraordinary and overlong meeting after closing.