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.”

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 32

Dani felt guilty as she followed the goons though through the service entrance to the castle and hid in the kitchen. Tristan and Kari had made for an excellent distraction to allow her to get away, that didn’t mean that she didn’t feel horrible for letting them get caught.

Still with the bad guys distracted by their latest batch of incoming players, it was easy for her to slip into the rest of the castle and search for the information she had been sent to get. She was running out of time. The players were piling in, eager to get their DimDisks reset so they could continue their game session. Once they were all here, Dani didn’t doubt that the ritual would begin and everyone here would die.

She needed to get to the admin room. Once there she could unlock everyone’s DimDisks and at least give them the ability to defend themselves while she downloaded all the information that Pegasus had requested she get.

She didn’t know what else she could do. She didn’t have magic, there were people on the island who did though, she just wasn’t sure she could rely on them. Not when the backup Pegasus had promised her was helpless to do anything because his brother was being held hostage somewhere on the island.

She figured the brother had to be here, in the castle. She was hoping to find the security room while she was looking for clues. They had to have security cameras around here. If only to ensure they could be aware of who shanked who during their Gathering. If her luck held up, though, they would be at two completely different ends of the castle.

She started off by heading down the stairs at the back of the room. The huge stone staircase, with its heavy looking wooden railings, led down into the store room. It had huge wooden racks and cupboards that looked like they could easily hold enough food to feed the horde they had invited to the island. Most of them were empty though, just confirming Dani’s suspicion that they weren’t planning on feeding their guests.

Towards the back of the room there was a heavy metal door with a barred window, hidden away behind the last huge rack, where she wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been investigating a noise that she could hear from the back of the room.

She couldn’t see anyone beyond, but she could see more doors, just like the locked metal one she was peeking through. She couldn’t find the keys for the metal door and honestly she didn’t think she had time to play ‘Hunt the Keys.’ Whoever, or whatever, it was down there was probably safer than up here with the bad guys.

Instead she headed back towards the kitchen, hiding behind one of the stacks as a secret entrance slid open and two of the robed figures from earlier, their hoods up, hiding their faces, entered the store room using a secret entrance. She watched them go, unsure if they deliberately left the secret door open wide or not, and then followed them upstairs, being careful not to be spotted as they went through the kitchen and into a dining hall.

She waited a few minutes, until the sounds of talking on the other side vanished, and then slipped through the unlocked door. The difference in style was startling. While the store room and the kitchen had looked old in style, they had had all the modern mod cons, the dining hall had a huge, heavy wooden table with thirty to forty uncomfortable looking wooden chairs around it and one, cushioned, spiky looking chair in a dark wood that had probably been stained black.

It was a room that was meant to make an impression, with its narrow windows that barely let any light through and the solid vision torches on the walls that gave off just enough light to pass as real torches but not enough to light the gloom in the middle of the room.

Dani was nervous as she tried to decide which of the four doors to go through. The one behind her she could rule out instantly, that one would only lead back to the kitchens and either the store rooms or the back door.

She had no idea which door led to what besides that. She had no inside information, no understanding of how the castle was laid out and she wasn’t a super spy. Realistically her best bet was to just keep trying doors until she struck gold.

She was just about to try the rightmost door when the leftmost door opened, revealing a room full of computers, a robed goon whose hood was down, revealing him to be a young man of about twenty with a strange henna tattoo down one side of his face.

She got lucky. Something started alarming on the consoles within, causing the mook to turn to face them. Dani took advantage of the disruption to dart into the room and slam the door shut behind her.

The mook wheeled around at the sound of the door shutting but Dani was ready, driving a fist into his chin as hard as she could. He staggered backwards, slamming into the console that was beeping, taking a moment to recover. Dani used that time to make another swing at him.

He ducked, driving his knee into her stomach and winding her, causing her to curl up in a ball and collapse to the floor, coughing and wheezing.

“Who the hell are you?” He demanded as he poked her with his foot, glowering down.

Dani grabbed his foot and rolled over, making him lose his balance and slam head first into the door. The mook crumpled into a heap, leaving Dani to push herself up, leaning on the desk chair which looked about as medieval as the rest of the computer banks in the room, i.e. not at all.

This had to be the admin room she had hoped to find and, luckily, it did seem to have all the security cameras in place. For once, it seemed, the ShadowSwords had been organised and kept all their technology together, out of sight of the players. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, as she sat in the desk chair and tried to work out what was alarming, if it had been the ShadowSwords who had been organised or whether DimSoft had been trying to keep the castle’s atmosphere in as many places as they could.

She finally managed to find out what was causing the ruckus when she noticed that one of the security cameras had picked up movement in somewhere that looked like a dungeon. Tristan was busy trying to break into a cell.

“Right...” Her hands flew across the computer bank as she worked, inserting a portable hard drive into the system to copy the data over to even as she cut off the alarm to give him more time and tried to see if there was a way to override the locks in the building automatically, “Time to go to work.”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 13

The flight had been long, the hostesses rude until they had seen that she had actually been booked into first class and wasn’t just trying to sneak in, the airplane food had been expensive and she was really just looking forward to a good rest before the demo started.

She still wasn’t sure if she had gotten an invite on her own merits. Though the letter she had gotten with her invitation had requested her attendance as both a reporter and a gamer, she had not received one until after her talk with Pegasus. She had a sneaking suspicion that the CEO of Industrial Illusions had bribed them to let her in.

She had been one of the last to arrive at the docks and had been surprised to find she recognised the greater majority of the people there. Almost all of them were World Class Duellists. The only one who wasn’t looked like Kari Ironhide and was fussing at the Duellist in question.

Unable to resist finding out who else had been invited to this shindig, she made her way over. Kari recognised her and though she didn’t look in the mood to deal with her, when Dani said hi, she at least made the effort.

“D.M.G.” Kari nodded to her, putting on a smile she obviously didn’t feel, looking as tired as Dani felt. “You were invited?”

“Yeah, free advertising for them I suppose.” Dani replied, trying not to feel insulted at the surprise in the English Duellist’s tone, “I figured I’d make the rounds, find out who’s here so I can report on everything properly.”

“If I were you,” The woman with Kari who looked like an older version of the Duellist warned, “I’d steer clear of Yugi.”

“Thanks for the warning, Miss...?” Dani asked, frowning slightly at the warning considering she had never had a problem with getting an interview from Yugi up until now and didn’t see why she would.

“Ironhide. Ombre Ironhide. I’m Kari’s sister.” Ombre replied shortly and a little sharply.

“Are you taking part in the beta?” Dani prodded for information, curious about the sister she had never heard of before.

“I’ll be around.” Ombre replied cryptically but not very helpfully. “But perhaps your attention would be better off focused on the invited guests? I bet you’re champing at the bit for an interview from someone.”

“Ombre.” Kari’s tone was sharp as she glowered at her sister, “Be nice, Dani’s one of the few, rare, nice reporters...normally.”

“Nice?” Ombre laughs, “Have you read what she’s written recently?”

“I’m taking the hint.” Dani winced, suddenly remembering that Kari worked for the company that she had been slagging off for the last couple of days. “It was nice seeing you again, Kari.”

She slipped off back into the crowd, avoiding Kaiba like the plague when she saw him, not particularly wanting to get yelled at when she felt like crap. As she made the rounds, taking comments from each Duellist as she passed, she noticed a pattern. There wasn’t a single one who looked completely with it.

All of them were feeling a bit run down for some reason or another when she asked after their health. None of them had slept properly in the last couple of nights and when she finally got to Yugi Mutou, the King of Games, she could see why Ombre had warned her off.

Everyone on the Duelling Circuit knew about there being two Yugi Mutous. At least everyone who either followed the circuit closely or could sense the Shadows as she could. The ‘nice’ Yugi tended to only be around before or after tournaments, or when there was a large gap between rounds. While the Yugi who was out at the moment, the ‘scary’ Yugi, tended to be the one who Duelled opponents into submission. The one who when the chips were down kicked ass and took names. The one who, supposedly, had saved the world multiple times if you believed the rumours.

Four years ago she wouldn’t have. She hadn’t believed in the magic behind the game that had become so madly popular around the world. Now however, she knew about it in great detail, had run into it firsthand. She had barely escaped her last run in with magic alive. And now she was heading back into a dangerous situation where she would be in way over her head.

She was tempted to talk to Yugi about it. A lot of people were convinced he was a magician or sorcerer or something similar. Especially with all the rumours that followed him about magic and mayhem.  It was possible that he would know how to counter act whatever the ShadowSwords, the people Pegasus had sent her to investigate, were up to.

One look at him told her that was a bad idea though. He looked like he was in a foul mood, one that promised pain to anyone who dared cross him. Now was probably an incredibly bad time to ask him about magic. If he was a sorcerer, then he would probably turn her into a toad. If he wasn’t, he would decide she was a lunatic and never give her an interview ever again.

No. This was her task, she would just have to get on with it and hope that they weren’t playing with magic yet. Pegasus had promised her that there would be help on the way if she did get in over her head, but she wasn’t sure how far she could rely on him. After all the CEO of Industrial Illusions was a business man. She could easily believe that if it would be best for his company he would leave her to hang,

She was glad to see the boat dock. She was looking forward to getting a night’s sleep before she got started on her great adventure. The queue seemed to line up automatically and file onto the boat with none of the excitement she would normally expect from a group of avid gamers going to demo some new technology. It was weird and it worried her.

It wasn’t a luxury cruise ship. She hadn’t expected one considering that Dimension Software were a relatively small company in comparison to some of the companies that they were competing against. They had stretched to relatively comfortable rooms though and when she looked at the itinery on her bedside table, the menu looked like someone had dropped a lot of money into it.

She couldn’t help but wonder how much of this was being paid for out of the coffers of Dimension, and how much of this was being paid for by SharpShade, the ‘offical’ company that the ShadowSwords were using as their cover to earn money to continue their less than legal activites.

She still didn’t know exactly what they were up to. Pegasus had said that they were still using Industrial Illusions resources to get what they wanted because he hadn’t managed to flush them out of his company after he had stopped working with them and that they had used those resources to find information about powerful duellists worldwide. She had a horrible feeling that she knew what they wanted them for.

She was pretty damn certain that when it all went down, her backup wouldn’t have time to arrive, but there was nothing she could do about it. Pegasus refused to send anyone in ‘just in case’ in case it all went wrong and everyone died.

“Okay,” Dani told herself as she flopped back onto her bed, “I just have to work out their plan, stop them and save a boat full of Duellists, no pressure...”