Digital Distraction: Part 35

It was unsurprisingly dim lit beyond the curtain. The same sort of holographic torches as in the dining hall were spread unevenly around the room and didn’t light the room particularly well. She could see well enough get a grip on the layout though.

The huge throne was what caught her attention though and she froze when she realised that there was a huge man in heavy looking black armour and a helmet that covered his face, on the giant obsidian throne. She hadn’t seen him on the security cameras and she knew that no one could have followed her in.

When he didn’t seem to react to her presence, she figured he had to be a hologram whose programming hadn’t been fully activated yet and risked entering the room further, taking in the painting on the floor that looked like it was a magic circle of some variety.

She made her way over and recognised it, on closer inspection, as the magic circle the ShadowSwords had thrown her into when they had planned on sacrificing her to the Shadows four years ago, leaving her confused. Pegasus had told her that they planned on sacrificing every player coming to the beta test, but the circle here wasn’t big enough for that.

Either Pegasus had fed her false information or there was something going on here that she didn’t know about.

She risked turning her back on the hologram on the throne to see if there was some way that she could disturb the seal on the floor, to put paid, at least, to this part of their plans.

It wasn’t hard to come up with an idea. She pulled her purse out of her bag and fumbled around for a coin. She tried scratching at the paint and was pleased when the paint started to chip away.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” Dani had just enough time to let out a startled squeak and start turning around before an arm coated in black armour wrapped around her chest and she was dragged away from the circle.

“Let me go!” She struggled and kicked out, trying to break free from what was obviously not a hologram as she was dragged to a heavy metal door in the wall opposite the generically evil looking dark throne. “Let me...ack!” She yelped as she was slammed against the wall and held there by the throat by a gloved hand, the metal of it cutting into her neck as his hand pressed firmly, partially cutting off her airways and distracting her enough to allow the man to unlock the door with his other hand as she focused more on trying to get his hand away from her neck than she did on what he was up to.

The door opened before she could free herself and the armoured knight quite literally chucked her inside. She hit the granite floor with a pained yelp as the door slammed closed and locked behind her, leaving her trapped in a almost lightless room that, from what she could tell only had one way out.

“Well shit.” She grumbled as she backed away from the metal door, her eyes still adjusting to the fact that the only light was the dim stream coming in under the door. Suddenly her foot hit something on the floor that let out a weak whimper. She knelt down to feel for the cause of the sound, only for her hands to find a person shaped form, with their hands bound behind their back and their ankles tied together.

“Yami?” She asked, swiftly untying him, blindfold and all and helping him sit when it became obvious he couldn’t on his own, reaching in her backpack for a bottle of water when he tried to reply only for his voice to crack. “Here, drink this.”

Dani had to pull the bottle away when he tried to down the whole lot in one sitting, wincing he let out a piteous moan. “I know. I know.” Dani tried to reassure him, “But if you drink too much at once you could drown yourself and then your brother would kill me.”

“Ya...Yami?” The teen asked after another few mouthfuls. Dani frowned slightly, she couldn’t make out who she was talking to properly but it didn’t sound like the Yugi she had been talking to on the boat.

“Which Yugi are you?” She couldn’t help but ask, confusion obvious in her tone. She felt the body leant against her flinch and hastened to add, “It doesn’t matter, but if you’re the one who was kidnapped, I thought you were Yami.”

“N...No.” The teenager replied still tripping over his words as his voice croaked again. “Yami...uses my name...has done for years.” Yugi chugged down the last of the bottle. “A...Any more?”

“Water?” Dani asked, when she felt Yugi nod, she pulled a sandwich out of her bag. “Eat first, you’ve got to be...” She was pleased and highly amused when Yugi snatched the sandwich from her hands, his eyes long adjusted to the darkness after being blindfolded for two days. “There’s more in the bag.” She told him, as he scoffed it rapidly.

“Thank you.” Yugi said between mouthfuls, sounding grateful even as he took the other sandwich from her.

“You’re welcome, Yugi.” Dani informed him, “Do you think you’ll be able to walk soon?”

“My legs are sore and stiff but I can try.” Yugi replied honestly.

“Okay, you fill up while I check the door.” She nudged the bag closer to him, “Just remember to drink slowly.” She reminded him as she pulled a set of hairpins out of the bag and edged over towards the door, feeling it for the keyhole.

“Who are you?” Yugi asked as she searched the door blind.

“My name’s Danielle, my friends call me Dani, my reader call me D.M.G.” She told him, grinning when she found the keyhole, “And we are getting the hell out of here.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 20

Joey was confused as he watched Yami pounce on the buffet breakfast table with a ravenous hunger that was very different from anything he had seen from the Pharaoh before. Yami was never this hungry, especially when things went wrong. Normally when he was stressed Yami just didn’t eat, not unless someone forced him to so it was weird to watch the Pharaoh stack his plate up high and slump down at the table next to him with a huge glass of orange juice.

“Yugi?” He asked as Yami guzzled down the glass. “You feeling alright?”

“I...” Yami bolted down a couple of sausages, then paused and blinked at him, “I don’t know.” He admitted, pausing to consider himself properly, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this hungry or thirsty before.”

“Did you eat at all yesterday?” Kari asked as she settled at the table with a much more reasonable sized breakfast.

Yami nodded as he chowed down on his bacon and eggs. “Grandpa made me eat before I left the shop.”

Kari and Ombre looked at each other, a thought occurring to them both at the same time. Back when the spirits had lived within their Items all their energy and power had come from the items and their other selves. Kari’s theory was that most of it still did because all the hikaris still ate like they were still supporting their other selves, tired when their darker selves did and when the lights were ill or fading, the darks lost some of their power.

Without Yugi carrying the Puzzle he and Yami couldn’t talk telepathically however they were still the same soul. Dani, the reporter from last night, had warned that the people holding Yugi tended to neglect to feed their prisoners. If Yugi wasn’t getting anything to eat or drink, then he had no energy to feed Yami so the Pharaoh had to get his energy from somewhere else. Obviously his new body translated the energy requirement to eating enough to feed the entire Gryffindor table.

“I’ll make some sandwiches up for later.” Tea decided. “I mean I know we all brought food this time and Dimension say they’re going to provide some food but...” She gestured to the plates of both Yami and Joey.

“Good idea.” Kari agreed, noting that halfway across the room, D.M.G. was wrapping up several sandwiches and shoving them in her backpack, obviously planning for later too.

She had just finished her breakfast and helped Tea make up some sandwiches to carry around with her when a smartly dressed man in a black suit, ridiculously slicked back hair and a wide, smug, grin as he looked over the people nearby.

“Welcome everyone.” The man said, gesturing round to them all, “I am Edmund Harper, C.E.O. of Dimension Software. All of you here have been carefully selected from countries across the globe in order to test out our new VirtualNet system. Since you’re all from different places, I must request that you speak English while you’re on the island in order to allow for ease of communication.” There were a few discontented murmurs, but generally everyone agreed with that easily.

“Now we’re only a couple of miles out from the island, I’m going to give you each a DimDisk.” The CEO gestured to a group of men by the door who wheeled in a rather large box. To each of the people in the room they handed a piece of equipment that looked rather like a trimmed down Duel Disk.

Kari turned it over in her hands, considering the piece of equipment as Harper continued, “In a few minutes we’ll register your DimDisks to you so we can tell what player is where and how each of you are doing.” Joey grimaced slightly. It made sense but would mean that they would have to take their disks off in order to sneak around and try and find Yugi. “Each DimDisk starts off with eight thousand health points.” He continued, “When you run out of health, your DimDisk will lock down, preventing you from continuing your journey and knocking you out of the game.” His men handed round manuals to each of them, “When this happens you will need to report to the castle in the middle of the island which happens to be the main base of the ‘Dark Master’ who is the final boss of this demo game, in order to regain access to your Deck which will be locked within the DimDisk upon your defeat. This means if any of you actually make it through to the final round, those who have been knocked out of the demo will get to see exactly what they would have been facing.”

Which sounded good in theory but meant that the defeated Duellists would be rounding themselves up for the bad guys without even thinking about it purely because they would want access to their deck again.

“You might notice that your DimDisks are much lighter than the Kaiba Corp Duel Disk.” Harper sounded excitable, as if he had looked forward to this for a long time, “This is because they require much less processing power within them. All the hard work is done by the VirtualNet. All you have to do is play your cards and make your moves. The DimDisk will recognise the cards you play and the VirtualNet will do all the processing for you and project the results of your moves.”

He scanned the crowd of players and grinned as his eyes rested on Yami, “Ah, Yugi Mutou, would you help me with a demonstration?”

Yami’s eyes narrowed but he nodded and got up, strapping on the DimDisk as he stepped up to join the CEO.

“Right, give us one second.” Harper said as one of his men, carrying a laptop and a handheld scanner, “We just need to register your disk...” Yami allowed them to turn his arm so they could scan the barcode on the bottom of it. He then waited semi-patiently while they tapped his name into the computer, linking his details to the disk on his arm.

The screen on the top of the DimDisk, which was where the circular top of a Duel Disk would have showed his lifepoints, flickered to life, showing a set of eight boxes, a green health bar with 8000/8000 underneath it, and his name or rather Yugi’s name.

“Right, Yugi.” Harper grinned at him, “What you and the other players didn’t know until this moment is that this entire room has been laced with the VirtualNet system.” DimSoft’s leader pointed to the black half-spheres on the ceiling, “Those aren’t security cameras. Those are the VirtualNet hubs for this room.”

Yami nodded, unable to help but wonder if the ones on the island would look like that or whether they would be camouflaged better.

Harper gestured to his men who scurried aside, clearing a section of floor. “If you would be so kind, Yugi, I wish to demonstrate the battle system.” He said as he slipped his own DimDisk on. “And don’t worry, your health will be restored at the end of this little demonstration.”

Camp NaNo April 2014: Digital Distraction: Part 3

It was eighteen hours before Yami came around after he finally got off to sleep, assisted by a Dreamless Sleep Potion that the nurse slipped into his pumpkin juice. It was another six before Madam Pomfrey started trying to kick him out of the hospital wing, just as she had to the others.

It took her another day and a half to manage it and even then he only left because Yugi finally came around. Yami had been in the middle of yet another discussion about why he didn’t need to go outside and how he would get plenty of fresh air AFTER his light had awoken, when he had felt Yugi’s mind begin to stir and has irritated Madam Pomfrey by ignoring her completely in order to dart to Yugi’s side.

The Pharaoh tried not to mentally wince as pain spiked across the link. There was only a certain amount of pain they could keep from each other and even as Yugi’s groggy, wounded mind scrambled to try and hold back as much of the pain as it could, Yami sat down on the bed next to him, taking Yugi’s hand in his and murmuring, “It’s okay, you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

“Yami?” Yugi’s voice had a pained edge to it, eyes half opened, pain dimmed amethyst looking up at him, a worried, confused expression taking over as Yugi asked, “What happened? Where are we?”

“You need to try and remember, Yugi.” Yami replied, watching his light carefully as Yugi tried to remember what had happened, concerned that Yugi’s confusion was because of the memories that had been lost during the fight.

Yugi frowned, trying to sit up and needing Yami’s help to do so. He gazed at the bed as he tried to pull his thoughts into a coherent pattern. Yami smiled slightly when he felt something in Yugi’s mind ‘click’ and the teen gasped slightly as he stared at his dark half.

“Voldemort!” Yugi yelped, clutching Yami’s arm, “What happened to...?”

“He’s gone.” Yami reassured him, “For now at least.”

“And the others? Are they alright?” Yugi worried at him, glancing around the infirmary and pausing when his gaze fell on Harry, concern obvious.

“Everyone’s okay, or are going to be.” Yami reassured him, glancing over at Harry with a slight grimace, “Harry burnt his magic out somehow. They’re not sure how...”

“Quirrell,” Yugi muttered, turning his eyes towards the bedcovers, “I don’t know what Harry did or how he did it, but his touch seemed to burn Quirrell. He saved us both. That’s probably what did it.” Yugi looked up at Yami, worried, “It will come back, won’t it?”

“Madam Pomfrey doesn’t seem too worried.” Yami shrugged, not sure himself but willing to trust the expert on this. “So I would have thought so.”

“That’s good.” Yugi relaxed at that, flopping back onto the bed, exhaustion beginning to drag him under again.

“Don’t worry about the others.” Yami reassured him, helping him get comfortable, “They’re fine and I’ll look after them. You need to rest and recover.”

“You need to take care of yourself too.” Yugi grasped the Pharaoh’s arm, “Go and eat. I’ll be okay.”

“But...” Yami trailed off at the stubborn look that Yugi gave him. “Yugi...”

“I’ll be fine, Yami, I promise. You’ve seen to that.” Yami started at that, realising that Yugi could sense what he had done to help him, “Go and rest. Please?”

“That’s cheating.” The Pharaoh grumbled, unable to resist the look Yugi gave him in combination with the ‘please.’

“You just haven’t learnt the rules.” Yugi chuckled as he snuggled into his pillow, “Slow learner.”

“Hey...” Yami’s protest was half hearted and pointless as Yugi had already returned to his slumber. He sighed, shaking his head in amusement as he stood up and looked around for the nurse.

Madam Pomfrey was not hard to find and she seemed pleased when Yami said he was going to head down to the great hall for dinner. She had been worried about the amount of food he had been eating over the last couple of days, or rather the lack thereof, and knowing that he was heading down to join his other friends reassured her. She was sure that they would be able to bully him into eating where she had not.

She was quite right, the moment Yami joined his friends they plonked a plate full of food in front of him and told him he wasn’t allowed to leave the table until everything on it was gone.

He was just finishing his meal when the post owls arrived with a rather large stack of post for Yugi. Yami, who had had permission to open Yugi’s post for months, ripped open the envelopes to find a whole bunch of tournament invites that had been forwarded to them by their Grandfather.  

He put them aside for now, unsure what to do about them when they were for ‘Yugi Mutou’ and he could no longer go by that name, but Yugi would be in no fit state to compete for the first few weeks of the holidays. He decided to deal with it when Yugi was more awake and able to help him make a decision on the matter.