365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Info Redacted

5/2/19

"I'm pretty sure I found it, but... all the specifics are redacted," Yusei stated later, gesturing for Judai and Carly to come over from where they were brainstorming and look at the laptop, "The winner, card names, art, all of it is missing - the only thing there is the date and the fact the cards were sent into orbit."

"Wait, really?" Carly asked curiously, turning the screen towards her so she could read over it quickly, "Whoa, you're right! That's totally not suspicious at all."

"Why would it be redacted?" Judai wondered, frowning to himself as he tried to figure out a possible reason. This was straight from Kaiba Corp.'s database, so this was all the info available about it that existed (though there was probably a physical copy somewhere as well); there really shouldn't have been a reason for his personal information to be removed entirely.

Luckily for him though, his lovely gear-head seemed to be cranking through the issue, judging by how deep in thought he looked.

"...Judai, what other documents would Kaiba Corp. have on you?" Yusei asked after a minute or two, though he continued to stare at the laptop with narrowed eyes.

"Uh, I dunno," Judai blinked, trying to recall his limited interactions with the company, "Probably... Oh! Duh, Duel Academy!"

"Give me the year you applied, I want to check something," Yusei replied, quickly looking up student info for the year Judai told him. He paused partway down the list, and a quick glance at the names told him immediately that something fishy was happening.

"It's not there," Carly murmured, pointing at the screen with a finger, "It should be right there, but it's not."

"It definitely used to be, I can tell you that much," Judai sighed, moving so he could lean on Yusei from behind the chair, "Check the next two years too, just in case."

Yusei did so, and sure enough, his info was just gone.

"You sure they didn't cover this too when uh... you got my ID?" Judai asked, raising an eyebrow down at Yusei with a small grin.

"I'm one-hundred percent sure," Yusei answered, scrolling through and checking a couple other things. Judai's friends all still had their info there, so that was still normal, but everything and anything about Judai that could've been listed within their profiles was gone. He already knew that none of the world-threatening stuff had been documented, but this was on a completely different level.

"What reason would someone have had to do this?" Carly wondered out loud, tapping her pencil against her notebook as she thought, "We've got a small list of people that would have the motivation to, and even then, they're all here in this time..." Suddenly she gasped, looking up at them and asking, "Can you check when these were all updated? They had to have been different before, right?"

"I can," Yusei replied, his eyes lighting up in realization, "Depending on the year, we might be able to figure out something." He quickly started working on getting the update logs, which he had to dig through for a few minutes to finally find what they were looking for - when he finally did though, pausing so they could read through, Judai immediately recognized the date, sucking a breath in through his teeth.

"You know it?" Yusei asked, looking up at him with interest.

"That's- That's only two days after I jumped," Judai stated, looking at the screen with wide eyes as he quickly pieced the answer together as to why all his info was redacted, "Only one person knew I was jumping - it had to have been Yugi. He must've thought of it after I'd already left and talked to Kaiba about it."

Yugi had agreed to file him as a missing person after he'd left, which was the only thing they'd really thought about at the time; clearly they'd overlooked something important, though lucky for Judai, Yugi was a smart cookie and had covered his ass for him even though he'd already jumped and wouldn't be aware.

Carly whistled at that, giving him an wide grin and saying, "Well, looks like you really gotta thank him for that. He just made our job a lot easier!"

"Isn't Seto Kaiba notorious for not letting anyone tell him what to do?" Yusei wondered, tilting his head curiously, "Then again, this is Yugi we're talking about."

Judai grinned mischievously as the question had brought up a lot of memories of Yugi telling him stories about the man in question, replying, "He blackmails him. Of course, it's implied blackmail, this is Yugi we're talking about, but he did it a lot whenever he needed Kaiba to do something. And trust me, he has so much dirt on Kaiba it's insane."

"...Yugi blackmailed Kaiba," Carly repeated incredulously, staring at him for a few moments to confirm that he was serious before bursting into laughter, "O-oh man, that's gold! Pure gold!"

"I know, right?!" Judai laughed as well, "I got to listen to a couple phone-calls between them 'cause Yugi would put it on speakerphone, and every time he'd wear the most shit-eating grin as he proceeded to manipulate the entire conversation to be in his favor."

Yusei glowered at him, a look of resigned understanding washing over his face, "So that's who you learned it from."

"From the best!~" Judai sang happily, ruffling Yusei's hair as he stoically pouted at him - it was cute how Yusei attempted to keep his own smile from forming, though he ended up failing eventually.