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.”

Digital Distraction: Part 30

“One phone, two earrings, one ring and a hair band later,” Joey grouched as he picked up a hair scrunchy at the next junction, “And we still...”

“Shush.” Ombre hissed as she dragged Joey back, pressing them both against the wall, just out of sight as she heard quiet voices from further down the stone halls.

“I can’t believe it’s this easy.” One voice, a young female one, was saying. “I mean we were led to believe that this would be difficult, gathering all these strong Duellists, but Harper’s done most of the work for us.”

“Stupid git doesn’t even know he’s helping us.” A second voice, an older, male voice laughed. “Far as he’s concerned there really is a hacking issue.”

“Well he’d be right.” The woman sniggered, “He just isn’t aware it’s from inside the castle.” There was a few taps and something that almost sounded like someone drawing with chalk, then the woman spoke again, “What’s that? Eight or nine?”

“Eight sigils.” Her companion sounded frustrated, “Another five to do. You really need to keep tabs on these things. One too many, or one too few and everything could go wrong.”

Ombre and Joey grinned at each other at that news.

“Hurry up.” The woman complained, “We’ve got to circle the entire castle with this blasted things before they want to activate the ritual.”

“I wouldn’t worry.” The man passed their hiding place, but didn’t see them, They’re not planning on starting until everyone is in the castle, well everyone we’re sacrificing of course. We have our First Sacrifice. Yugi won’t be going anywhere, not after getting hit with enough sedative to knock out an elephant. Even if he does, somehow, wake up in time we still have his brother, he won’t fight us while we have him. Not to mention we have the girlfriend now too. She’s in the dungeons.”

“I still think we’re wasting too much time and effort on one sacrifice.” The woman grouched as she followed him, pausing in the gap as she thought she heard a low growl. “Hey.” She called to her companion, “Wait up.”

“I don’t have time to wait up.” The man grumbled, “Come on. They might wait till we get back, but they won’t wait long.”

“But I thought...” The woman let out a huff and darted after her companion. “Fine, fine, I’m coming.”

“Why I oughta...” Joey growled moving to go after them.

“Yes, actually, I think you should.” Ombre nodded, with an irritated but thoughtful expression, “Let’s wreck that sigil first though.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 27

Joey nodded and pocketed the earring. Kari had commented on the fact Tea had had her ears pierced during the school year, telling the teen that her earrings looked really pretty. Tea had apparently dropped one of them to give her friends a clue as to which way they were heading. He glanced around one last time, making sure there was nothing else he needed to pick up, then gestured for Ombre to follow him and darted up the tunnel.

“Keep up!”

It felt an awful lot like Duelist Kingdom all over again as he started the landing preparations to touch down on DimSoft island.

He wasn’t foolish. He knew that he was walking into a potential trap. The virus that had hit Kaiba Corp’s system hadn’t been very difficult to hack once he had managed to isolate it. It had been simplistic in its design, almost too much so. There was no way, if they hadn’t been trying to lure him in, that the virus should have led him back to its creators as easily as it had.

Still they were threatening his company and that was something he would not allow. He was convinced he knew why. Their VirtualNet system had the potential to overthrow his Duel Disk System, but only if people could be convinced that his tried and tested system couldn’t be trusted. No one would want to spend hundreds of thousands of Yen or worse, English pounds, on virtual tech that would probably break down within a year if Kaiba Corp could provide the same sort of service reliably with not even a fraction of the cost.

But after the Duel Disk System had gone down for three days while they tried desperately to recover or replace the information that had been wiped, people were looking for other options, ‘just in case.’ They had done that to him, to his company, to his staff who had worked themselves to the bone to try and get everything up and running again.

If it hadn’t been for Ironhide and the backups she had made, it would have taken them much longer, but she had saved them weeks, even months of work by copying everything she had had access to into her backup system. Or rather a backup system he hadn’t even known existed until this point.

He planned on looking into that once he had dealt with Dimension, or rather with SharpShade, who he rather more suspected were the driving force behind the break in, the virus and his horrendous stock prices. The fact that it was a ‘N.O.A.’ security system made him wonder if his half brother, the Gozabora Kaiba’s true son, had survived the decimation of his virtual world somehow.

According to Ironhide it stood for Networked Office Armour security system and had been a part of the system before she had joined the company, but he had asked around. Ironhide was the only department head, temporary or otherwise, who used it. He wasn’t sorry she did, but he needed to know more about it, in case something like this happened again. He couldn’t really afford the three days it had taken to get into it after the breech, nor could he risk trust a system that could have been created by an adopted sibling who had once tried to kill him.

Still for now it had saved his company and allowed him to get everything settled enough to let him come here to deal with the threat personally.

At least this time his brother wasn’t in danger. Just before he had left the grounds of the mansion, he had made sure his brother was securely in the panic room. Mokuba had objected, worried for his brother’s safety and about the amount of work he had to do at Kaiba Corp. Kaiba had managed to talk him round by helping him get set up so he could work right where he was without any trouble.

It was one load off of his mind as the helicopter touched down and a group of suited men gathered to meet him. Despite having no intention of actually testing their game, he had Ironhide playing and reporting to him for that, he was pleased to see one of the men had what amounted to a Duel Disk without the projectors and half the processing power. He wanted to reverse engineer it later and find out exactly how much of their programming was actually his programming.

“Mr Kaiba.” One of the men smiled at him as he slipped on the DimDisk and inserted his deck, “Welcome to the island. I’m afraid you’re a bit behind the others. They all started about an hour ago.”

“I was expecting Harper.” Kaiba responded, not bothering with the pleasantries. “Where is he?”

“I’m afraid Mr Harper is busy at the moment, he was expecting you a couple of hours ago and now the game has started he has details to take care of.” The man informed him, “However if you head for the castle, he will be formally addressing everyone this evening.”

“The castle?” Kaiba questioned, looking at the fortress on the mount in the centre of the island. It looked like some stereotypical evil fortress from some generic fantasy game, just as every evil fortress in a Dimension Software game had. It was reassuring actually. That on some level he was dealing with the same level of inability to design that he had seen from Dimension the entire time. It told him that it was SharpShade who was the problem and if he could deal with them, Dimension would go back to being the hopeless incompetents he was used to dealing with.

“That’s right.” The mook nodded, “If you head there now, Mr Harper will probably be ready to see you by the time you get there.”

Kaiba nodded. If he had had his way he would have landed in the castle courtyard or as close as damnit, but the forest surrounding the castle was too thick and if he had tried that landing in the tiny central courtyard he would have crashed. Still it wasn’t that far to the castle and unlike the last one he had infiltrated he would be able to walk in the front door. He stalked off, heading towards the castle and looking forward to dealing with the issues and going back to his job.

“I hope you enjoy your game, Mr Kaiba.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distration Part 26

“Yami?! Tea!?” Joey bellowed, scanning the beach for signs of his friends. He and Ombre had headed that way the moment that they had been dropped off.

The bad guys had been rather thorough in splitting them up. Tea, Ombre and Tristan hadn’t been on the guest list but those who had had been set at different points on the map. Yami had been on this beach, he had been dropped off at the Temple Point while Kari’s start point had been Waterfall Point. They were at completely different ends of the game map.

Which was probably why Kari and Tristan weren’t here yet. At least that was what he hoped as he searched the beach for clues as to where his friends had vanished to.

Ombre was on edge as they headed towards the caves that Yami had mentioned to Kari. She half wished that Yami hadn’t insisted that she and Kari split up. It had been logical, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Especially when there was no sign of the Pharaoh or her light.

“Yami!” Joey bellowed again, making Ombre grimace, wishing he wasn’t giving their location away to any bad guys that might have been in the area. “Tea!”

There was no reply but Ombre didn’t need one as they entered the cave. There were footprints in the sandy floor that led in, but there none leading back out. “Joey.” She murmured, pointing them out.

The teen nodded, worried now for his friends as he followed Ombre warily into the cave system. They followed the footprints further in, until they reached a large empty cavern. As Ombre noted the increase in the number of footprints around, Joey searched around for clues.

“There was a fight here.” Ombre said, scanning the floor and noting the scuff marks where it looked like people had been knocked backwards or sent flying.

“Ombre.” Joey’s tense tone made the spirit of the Orb frown as she joined him over to one side of the cavern, where it looked like someone had hit the floor, hard. “Look.” He said as he scooped something out from under a rock.

She took it from him, scowling at she recognised the wand in his hand. The gold stemmed focus could only belong to Yugi or Yami. It wasn’t hard to guess that it had fallen from Yami’s pocket, or out of his hand at some point, probably when the bad guys had jumped them.

“Crap.” Ombre breathed, scanning their surroundings again. There was another exit to the cavern, one that headed further into the cave system that apparently ran underneath the island. The footprints led in that direction, there were several pairs of almost identical treads, alongside a much different set of prints that staggered as they headed into the tunnel at the back.

Where the prints looked like their owner had staggered, Ombre found Tea’s phone pressed into the sandy floor.

“Guess we know which way they went.” Joey grimaced as she scooped the phone up.

“I don’t think we’ve ever run into bad guys with uniforms before. At least not ones that even included shoes.” Ombre snorted, trying not to be worried that there was only one pair of unusual shoes amongst the footprints, suggesting that they had carried Yami. There was no way that he would have allowed that if he had been conscious, meaning that they had knocked him out somehow.

“First time for everything.” Joey snorted, “Shall we?” He gestured into the tunnel.

Ombre hesitated, glancing back towards the entrance. “Kari and Tristan are heading this way...” She pulled Kari’s phone out of her pocket, having borrowed it from her light. “No signal.”

“I’m going on.” Joey informed her, “If you want to go back and phone Kari, you can catch up but...”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Ombre shook her head, snatching a pen out of her bag and a piece of paper and leaving a note for her lighter half and her chaperone and leaving it by the entrance before following Joey. The teen, who was racing further into the cave system, was miles ahead of her when he let out a frustrated curse.

Ombre barely noticed the fact the floor went from a sandy surface to a solid stone as she caught up to him. The tunnel split into three, heading off in different directions and there weren’t any signs of which way the goons had taken their friends.

Joey swore and kicked the wall, only to start swearing harder and lean against the wall so he could cradle his foot.

“I swear if you break your toes, I’ll have no sympathy.” Ombre grouched at him, trying to see if she could work out which way they had gone. She had hoped to see a trail of sand or something that could guide them. Unfortunately there was sand leading down all three corridors, but not enough to leave foot prints.

They were about ready to pick one at random when Joey spotted something glinting on the floor just inside one of the tunnels. He bent down to pick it up and grinned slightly. “Remind me to tell Tea she’s awesome.”

“Why?” Ombre asked, coming over to look at what he was holding. “Oh you had better look after that carefully.”

Joey nodded and pocketed the earring. Kari had commented on the fact Tea had had her ears pierced during the school year, telling the teen that her earrings looked really pretty. Tea had apparently dropped one of them to give her friends a clue as to which way they were heading.