It had been well over a year since the Big Five had tried to trap Kaiba in his own virtual reality game, and since then, the virtual pods that had been used were more-or-less decommissioned. Not scrapped entirely-- there was still so much potential there! Kaiba still loved virtual reality and making the player feel literally transported into a game’s world! Just... maybe not something that could be so easily hacked by five old idiots. Some night when he’d been unable to sleep, staring at the pods, a new thought had emerged: If he could transport his consciousness into a game world, what about transferring it somewhere else? Somewhere in the real world, even, like an astral projection! At times he wondered if he was crossing over from inventor to mad scientist.
There had been no success with that. Until yesterday... if you could call it success.
All of a sudden, whenever he turned the virtual pod on, it would light up in a blinding flash, and anything inside disappeared. Vanished, without a trace. He’d spent hours ‘disappearing’ a bunch of random objects, mostly apples and lemons that he grabbed from the mansion’s pantry. Were they going somewhere? Attaching a tracking device on one lemon hadn’t done any good, he still couldn’t locate where it went. Could he make them reappear? Had he invented some kind of teleporter by mistake, or a death ray?
Tonight, he’d returned to the lab, excited to run more tests! ... But when he pulled the ‘on’ lever, nothing happened. Was the phenomenon gone? That would be a shame. Kaiba approached the machine, opening the hatch-- and got a split-second warning of the machine whirring to life, before he was engulfed by blinding light. “Ah-- aaaAHH--!”
It almost felt like some force was pulling him forward! Tthe next thing Kaiba knew, he was falling. Landing on his front on the floor and rolling forward until his head hit a wall. Ow--! What just happened!? ... Kaiba huffed and rubbed his head, but managed to push himself onto his feet. Looked like he was in one piece, that’s good. And still in his lab! At least, it looked like it...? Huh. It didn’t quite look how he remembered. Maybe he’d been launched into another part of it? That must be it, he just had to walk back to--
-- Kaiba’s eyes locked onto... himself, and his whole form froze.
“What the...?” He blinked a few times, but the other Kaiba didn’t disappear. But he had to be seeing things, right? This can’t be real!
