Digital Distraction: Part 33

Kaiba had to admit he had been suprised. He had expected to arrive at the castle and immediately have someone try and capture him. Instead he had been led to see Edmund Harper, who had been in his office, trying to fix make some last minute preparations for the ‘final round’ of the beta test.

Harper had been honestly shocked when he had presented his data and gotten rather offended that he would dare accuse him of wrecking Kaiba Corp’s systems and stealing their data.

Then he had taken a proper look at the information Kaiba had brought with him and the focus of his anger had changed. Instead of snarling at Kaiba for making false accusations, he had phoned his second in command, the vice president of the company and the one who had gotten him in contact with SharpShade, to see if she knew anything about it.

Harper’s business partner, a Egyptian looking woman in  rather expensive looking white dress and sandals entered the room accompanied by six men in robes whose hoods covered their faces.

“Mina?” Harper demanded, furious, “What’s going on?”

“It’s Menhit, actually Edmund, and I am sorry but...” Kaiba tuned it out. He didn’t really need to pay attention. It was perfectly obvious what was going on. Harper was being deposed by some mad woman with a small army of robed idiots. This was Yugi’s territory, not his.

Something about the two mooks at the back of the small group caught his attention. They seemed to be silently debating something amongst them as their boss continued, the smaller of the two hissing for the taller to be quiet.

“...and yes, I did know about what happened to Kaiba’s company.” Seto tuned back in in time to pay attention to her gloating, “It was my idea to ruin his systems and embed Dimension’s tags in the code.”

“Why?” Harper demanded, confused, even as Kaiba scowled at her, determined to make her pay for daring to almost ruin years of work. If it hadn’t been for those backups...

“Because, Edmund, you’ve been really useful in attracting all these powerful Duellists to the island for us, but you were never going to get Kaiba here by yourself, not when he has others to send for him and he has a company to run.”

She turned to Kaiba, a huge smirk on her features as she continued, “Of course we did consider kidnapping your brother, but we already had one hostage to deal with and quite frankly it was easier to mess with your company’s computers then deal with your security forces.”

That she had even contemplated laying a hand on his brother was unsurprising but unforgivable. He scowled at her, but didn’t say a word, well aware that it was generally better to let the lunatics get their monologue out of their system early so you didn’t have to listen to it later.

“Of course we did expect you to be on the boat with the others, like your little spy.” Kaiba didn’t frown but it was a close thing. “Not that she’s poking her nose into our business any longer. I’m very sorry,” Her tone indicated that she wasn’t sorry at all, “But Miss Ironhide won’t be returning to work any time soon.”

That was it. The smaller of the two mooks that Kaiba had noted earlier ripped her hood off to reveal Ombre was stood there and she looked furious.

“What did you do to Kari?” She demanded as her powers answered her call, flaring up around her in a fire of burning gold and freezing purple.

“Men.” Menhit snarled, gesturing to the other three men. The taller of the two mooks at the back played a card from his hand, summoning the Flame Swordsman who held off one of the goons as Ombre’s magic pinned another. A third took a swing for the traitor, only for him to duck under the blow, his hood falling to reveal Joey, and counter attacked.

Kaiba had no intention of getting grabbed by these morons and knew he would never live it down if the mutt rescued him. He couldn’t access his deck with his DimDisk locked down, just like everyone else’s, but he didn’t need to. He slipped into a offensive stance and within thirty seconds he had taken out one of the mooks.

Between his martial arts, the mutt’s street brawling style and Ombre’s magic it doesn’t take them more than about five minutes to take down the other four goons. Joey let out an irritated snarl as he realised that Menhit had escaped in the brawl.

“I’m going to rip that witch apart when I find her.” Ombre growled, stalking towards the door.

“Ironhide, wait.” Kaiba snapped at her, just as angry about Menhit’s escape as the rest of them.

“You heard her.” Ombre snapped, “They have Kari.”

“Yes and you have no idea where, storming round in a foul mood will just endanger her further. Sit down, shut up and let me think.” Kaiba bit back at her, well aware of how much he owed his captured employee.

“Kaiba...” Ombre opened her mouth, but shockingly it was Joey who blocked her path to the obnoxious CEO.

“Ombre, no. I hate to say this, I really, really do, but he’s right. First they took Yuge, now we know they have Kari and if they have Kari, they’ve got Tristan too.” Joey was obviously trying to control his temper in order to calm her down. “We need a plan.”

“What do you mean ‘they took Yuge’ and ‘they have Kari’?” Harper demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

“You’ve been made redundant.” Kaiba snorted, glancing over at him, “Menhit’s running this operation now. You’re just a pawn she’s discarded.”

“Well she’s going to regret that.” Harper snarled back, furious that he had been played so badly, “This is my island. My system. My rules. I know all of the backdoors.” He smirked at them, “She wants to play dirty, I can play dirtier.”

Ombre paused to consider him for a moment, then nodded. “I want my DimDisk reactivated and I want to know what she’s done to my sister.”

“Easily done.” Harper promised. “Give me twenty minutes in the admin room and I’ll have full control over the island again. If your friends are anywhere on the island, I’ll be able to find them.” He promised.

“Good.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 21

When Yami nodded and moved to the spot indicated, Harper spoke up, his voice carrying around the now silent dining hall. “Activate ‘Stageshow Protocol’ Include players Edmund Harper and Yugi Mutou.”

The crowd let out an appreciative noise as the VirtualNet hubs hummed into action and the floor beneath them converted from the plain white tiles to a cobblestone surface, the walls seeming turn into stone bricks, with torches giving off light.

Yami couldn’t help but be impressed and both sadness and anger flickered through him as it occurred to him that Yugi would have loved to see the VirtualNet in action. If, of course, Dimension Software’s sponsors hadn’t kidnapped him.

“I’m just here to summon an opponent or two for you,” Harper explained to Yami, “And give you a demonstration of what to do and what can happen.”

Yami nodded warily, waiting for him to make his move.

“Your deck goes in the holster, here.” He demonstrated, his stack of cards obviously not Duel Monsters cards unlike the ones Yami slipped into his DimDisk. “Then to fight the opponents within the game, we’ve set it up to allow you to summon your Duel Monsters as your ‘protectors.’ You can have five on the field at any given time and you can have five magic or trap cards set, ready to cast at any point.”

With that he drew five cards and set two cards before sliding two cards into the monster slots. Two men appeared in full suits of armour, wielding swords. Yami took a step back and glanced at Harper, who nodded to him, “Use it like a Duel Disk.”

Yami nodded, drawing five cards and setting one face down before summoning out his Queen’s Knight to attack one of the men.

One of them shattered, but the other, without direction from Harper, tapped a face down card, which glowed brightly for a moment, turned into a gemstone, which equipped itself to his sword, causing it to gain a flaming aura. Then it tapped the second card which caused a set of angelic wings to appear, just before the first guard reappeared. The second guard attacked his Queen’s Knight, which shattered just like the first guard, and Yami’s health decreased by four hundred points.

The first guard then attacked and there were more than a few horrified sounds as it looked like the guard had run Yami through. Then Yami let out a pained howl as the guard pulled his sword back out again and the Pharaoh fell to his knees, clutching his chest.

“I know that must have hurt.” Harper apologised, as Yami got up, glowering at the Guard that had struck him, completely unharmed. “We’ve yet to implement safeties on our VirtualNet so I’m afraid that any attack will feel very real, even if it doesn’t leave any lasting physical damage.” He glanced at Yami, whose health had decreased by another eight hundred points. “Care to call it a day?”

“No.” Yami replied with a shake of his head, “Is it my move again?”

“Once a battle starts, when the enemy creatures have all attacked, it’s the player’s turn again.” Harper nodded, intrigued as to what Yami had planned.

Yami drew, then his scowl turned to a smirk as he played Monster Reborn, which created the same wing effect as the card the guard had activated. Once Queen’s Knight was back on the field, Yami sacrificed it for Dark Magician Girl, activated his face down Sage’s Stone to summon out his Dark Magician and the pair of mages took down the Guards with no sweat.

“And once the enemy creatures are defeated, the battle ends and you can go back to the adventure part of the game.” Harper looked torn between amusement and disappointment as the virtual surroundings disappeared. “You guide books have the plot and the rest of what you need to know about the game in them. We’ll be disembarking in about an hour.”

With that he left, leaving Yami to rejoin his friends, a frown crossing his features when he realised that his health points had yet to recover.

“You okay?” Joey asked Yami.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve had worse from the Duel Disk system.” Yami shrugged, grabbing up his game guide. “But I think I need to know more about this game system.”

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.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 5

Yami was still thinking about the ‘if’ when they boarded Kaiba’s private jet to head back across to Japan. It was a pretty big ‘if’ considering everything that had happened and that Kaiba had a business to run, Kari had a job she was supposed to be doing and Yugi, Yami and Joey had to win enough prize money to be able to afford to come back next September as the conversion rate between Galleons and Yen was horrendous.

It was that ‘if’ that finally brought the invitations back to mind. Yugi, who by this point was managing to at least stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time, was confused when the Pharaoh face palmed for no good reason.

“Yami?” He asked, tilting his head curiously, “What’s wrong? Did you leave something in the castle?”

“No.” Yami rummaged through his carryon luggage, having packed the invites on auto-pilot, and passed them to Yugi. The teen’s eyes widened for a moment, then Yugi seemed to freeze, close his eyes just long enough to take a deep breath and then shoved them back at Yami. “You’re the Yugi they want to see, not me.”

“You’re Yugi Mutou.” Yami reminded him, “Not me. If I’m going to compete, I’m going to have to do it under my own name if we both want to take part from now on.”

“I...” Yugi hesitated. He enjoyed helping Yami during the tournaments but Yami had still been the one in control during all of them and it had always been Yami who had fought during the finals. While he had helped against Pegasus, he had practically died during that battle, leaving Yami to win alone. And Marik had held him hostage, using his pain and fear to distract the Pharaoh from his most important game to date. Though he wanted to compete he wasn’t sure he should. He would only get in Yami’s way. Especially as he was at the moment.

“You compete in my place.” Yugi said finally, breaking the silence that had fallen as the rest of their friends tried to ignore the minor disagreement going on in their midst. “For now at least, until I’m better and I’ve gotten my head on straight again.”

“And what happens when you’re better?” Yami asked, “When I start competing under my name?”

“People mix us up all the time.” Yugi shrugged, “We just say that I was shy and you were using my name since people confused you with me on the Duellist registration forms and we never bothered to fix it.”

Yami paused and considered the option for a moment, then nodded, “That could work.” He allowed, “Though people are going to wonder where I came from.”

“Dare you to tell the first person who asks the truth.” Joey challenged, poking his head over the back of his chair to look at the pair of them.

“Yeah right.” Kari’s derogatory snort could just about be heard over the sound of her tapping on her keyboard, trying to catch up with some missed work while on the flight. “Can you imagine the uproar if the truth got out.”

“Only if anyone believed it.” Yami chuckled as Yugi leant against him and started dozing again, taking advantage of the quiet to catch a short nap. “They’d be more likely to think we’re all quite mad.”

“We are mad.” Kari chuckled, “We always have been. It’s the price of being a decent duellist. Haven’t you noticed? Most of the best ones have mental quirks.”

“Hey!” Joey protested before launching into a debate with Kari that dragged her away from her work and steadily got louder until Kaiba told them all to shut up unless they wanted to be walking home. Since they were over the pacific at the time, silence swiftly descended. Yami took advantage of the lull in conversation to look over the invites properly.

There were six invites in the pile from various companies. Industrial Illusions, Schroder Corp, Black Star, which was Duke’s company, and Kaiba Corp, who had in fact sent Yami one as well, but the Pharaoh had missed it in his distraction, were all put aside without much thought. It was pretty much a given that they would compete in those and bar a ‘yes I’ll be there’ note, they didn’t require much attention.

It was the invite for Dimension Software that caught his eye. He had heard about them before. Yugi had several of their video games. He had not been aware that they were ready to make the leap into holographic technology.

“Hey Kari?” He asked as he considered the invite, frowning slightly when he saw that it was only in just over a week’s time and would be held over two days on an island in the middle of nowhere.

“Huh?” The English teen asked as she looked up from her work briefly.

“What do you know about Dimension Software?”