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.”

Sixteen's Story: Part 1

I have no idea what I should be writing, but I found this notebook in the corner of my cell and if I don’t do something I’m going to go nuts, so here we go...

My name is Mutou Yugi. This shouldn’t surprise you. The last three people who wrote in here were called Mutou Yugi too. Hopefully I’ll be the last because when Yami comes for me, the Pharaoh won’t stand a chance.

There’s another Mutou Yugi in here with me but he’s sleeping so I don’t want to disturb him. The Pharaoh introduced him as ‘Fifteen’ but he told me his name once our captor had gone. The other Yugi’s been here a lot longer than I have and the Pharaoh’s been draining him of light for far too long.

I suppose I should explain my situation a bit better, though you could probably skip back to the other Yugis’ explanations. ‘Eight’ tells it a lot better than I could but I’ll try.

To make a long story short, I’ve been kidnapped.

I was with Yami, the other half of my soul, getting ready for our trip to the museum to regain his memories, when someone snuck into my Soul Room. He looked like Yami, so at first I didn’t question it. I mean Yami comes and goes from the Soul Rooms all the time, it’s no big deal. I mean it’s not like just anyone can walk into a Soul Room without the Millennium Key, right?

It wasn’t until I tried to start a conversation with him that I realised something was wrong. Something about him seemed off, his aura was wrong and I couldn’t properly sense what he was thinking or feeling. So I made the mistake of getting closer, concern clouding common sense.

The moment I touched him I knew this wasn’t Yami, or at least not my Yami. He was twisted, his heart was sick and he carried Light within him. My Yami didn’t. I was my Yami’s light and he my Dark. We balanced each other out.

He was fast, fast enough that even before I could call for Yami aloud he had cast something that left me reeling. I couldn’t think straight, nor would my body respond to any call I would try and make. I didn’t need to think too hard to call for Yami over the link though. Yami was there in a heartbeat, able to tell something was wrong, just from my desperate plea.

I’m not quite sure what happened between my Yami and the fake one who introduced himself as ‘the Pharaoh.’ I know the Pharaoh challenged my Yami to a Shadow Game, but every time I tried to resist whatever he had done to my mind it just got worse. Before too long it was almost impossible to count to five, yet alone focus on what the pair of them were saying.

In hindsight I played right into the Pharaoh’s hands. With my mind fading fast, Yami was distracted and didn’t catch the trick phrasing to the terms of the Shadow Game. Because of that it didn’t matter that Yami won, the Pharaoh got what he wanted anyway.

He dragged me into the Shadows the moment the game was over. It hurt, a lot, but there was a benefit to it. It snapped whatever was suppressing my mind and spirit as the Shadows tore at it, trying to get at the light underneath. I didn’t get a chance to appreciate it though. Before I could recover properly, we’d shifted again, reappearing in what I thought was the inside of my Puzzle.

At least until the Pharaoh shoved me into a room and slammed the door shut, sealing it behind me and leaving me trapped with another Yugi.

I wish I could say I was calm and level headed about the whole situation, but that would be a lie. I screamed, I shouted, I tried to break the door down, I even tried a few of the tricks that Yami had taught me.

The door didn’t budge. I was well and truly trapped.

It wasn’t until I gave up and slumped against a wall, staring at the door and wishing I could open it with as much ease as I could the doors in my Puzzle, that the other Yugi spoke up.

The other Yugi was oddly dressed and he kind of looked like he was supposed to be a wizard from some fantasy game. That wasn’t what caught my attention the most though. He was tired, I could see that right away, and he looked really ill. However when I worried at him, he just shrugged it off as something I couldn’t help him with and started to explain what was going on. Who the Pharaoh was and why he’d kidnapped me.

We didn’t get far into the other Yugi’s explanation before agony coursed through me as the bond to my Yami was ripped viciously away.

And that was the last thing I knew for a while.