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 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 Distraction Part 12

“You should be at the shop with the others, planning.” Kari grumbled as she worked, still trying to re-code the last few files on the system, glad for the N.O.A. virtual security network that she had backed up most of her department’s files onto. It had taken a couple of days to get back into it and the virtual avatar for the system had been making snide comments about the head of the company (which was probably why the other Department Heads hadn’t used it) but it had saved her months and months of work and allowed them to bring the system back up just this morning.

“I’m not leaving you unattended.” Ombre disagreed from her place on the sofa bed Kari had had installed behind the office door, where she was playing on an old handheld console to keep herself occupied. “And even if I would, Kaiba’s made it clear that I’m supposed to be your bodyguard. He’s paying me, remember? He seems to be worried about your safety.”

“He only loves me because I saved his hide.” Kari smirked slightly as she finished her program and compiled it, hoping to run it and check that it worked. “Without the N.O.A. backups, we would have lost everything and they were my idea. He wasn’t even aware it was in his system until I showed him. I do wonder why I couldn’t get the avatar working around him though.”

“Art of public demonstration, remember?” Ombre asked, “It’ll go right every time until you try and show someone. You go on about it often enough when you and Hermione are talking about school and presentations. You even prepare for it when you’re dealing with your boss.”

“Point.” Kari allowed, frowning slightly as the program refused to compile. “Damn it, where am I missing something?” She grumbled, turning her gaze back to the screen, “Are we all packed for tonight?”

Ombre nodded, then remembered that her hikari wasn’t really paying attention to her and spoke up, “Yes. I didn’t think Kaiba would let you go after all of this.”

“I think it’s just so he has an inside eye on what his competitors are up to.” Kari shrugged, still scowling at the screen, “If this VirtualNet thing works like they say it does, then Kaiba Corp could be in huge trouble and considering the hit we just took...”

Ombre sighed. Kari was right. The company was in huge trouble because they had had to shut down the worldwide duelling network for a couple of days. Stock prices had dropped, investors bailed and now with the rumours of a virtual system that didn’t rely on holographic projectors that were carried around by the Duellist using them, they were in even more trouble.

Not that she cared. The only difference it made to her was in how hard it meant her hikari was pushing herself. Kari was ridiculously loyal to the company, and the Kaiba brothers who ran it, and she was pretty certain she had had more sleep than her lighter self over the last three days.

She came around to look at the code on screen and frowned. She didn’t understand most of what Kari called ‘C++’ but she did remember enough of what she had read in the books Kari still had from her courses, to know something rather important.

“You do realise that code is gobbledygook, right?” Ombre asked, causing Kari to glare at her. “No, seriously. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

“You can’t read code.” Kari pointed out, “So...”

“Kari.” Ombre’s sharp tone made her pull up short, “Stop, rub your eyes and look properly. You’re so ‘code blind’ you’re writing yourself in circles.”

Kari paused, took a deep breath and did as Ombre had suggested. Once she had she flinched. “Oh...oh wow. No wonder it wouldn’t compile.”

“I think it might be time for you to go home and sleep.” Ombre suggested, trying to pull Kari away from the computer.

“I don’t need sleep. I just need more coffee.” Kari tried.

“I...” Ombre let out an exasperated noise and threw her hands up, “That’s it. If you don’t leave with me, willingly, I’m going to get Kaiba to send you home.”

“I’m fine.” Kari objected, “I just...” She trailed off when Ombre glowered at her, “Haven’t slept in about thirty-something hours...”

“Then go home.” Kari started at the sound of a male voice in her doorway. She looked over to find Seto Kaiba was stood in the doorway to her office and didn’t look amused. “Sleep is an inefficient waste of time, but working on a lack of sleep is even worse because it forces you to redo work. Give me the files you’re working on then go home. I don’t expect to see you until after the DimSoft beta.”

“But sir...” Kari tried.

“Home. Ironhide. Now.” Kaiba growled at her.

“Yes, sir.” Kari sighed, copying her program onto a disc and passing it to her boss on the way out, feeling a bit dejected.

“Ironhide...” She paused halfway down the corridor at the sound of Kaiba’s call, “Good work.”

There was a moment where Kari didn’t know how to respond, then she smiled back over her shoulder, “Thank you, Kaiba-Sacho.”

C.N. April2014: Digital Distraction Part 7

She ended up working late into the night, phoning up and apologising to Ombre somewhere around six in the evening to tell her that she wouldn’t be back to the flat, which she rented from the company, before ten or eleven o’clock tonight. When Ombre asked if she had eaten and she gave a vague answer, the spirit of the Orb made her promise to talk to security and said that she would see her later.

When Kari caught herself beginning to doze, having not slept properly thanks to the jet lag, she darted off for coffee while a program rendered out a short 3d animation for her to present as finished and ready to be added in the next Duel Disk update, to the boss in the morning.

She had only just reached the floor’s break room and started the coffee machine off to make a fresh pot when she felt magic swirling in her office, shortly followed by the fire alarms going off and the sprinkler systems kicking in.

Kari swore as she darted back to the room she had temporarily been assigned to grab her bag and work out if she could recover the work she had been doing only to find Ombre was there with two carrier bags of takeaway in her hands, there was a guy unconscious behind her door and the sprinkler systems had taken care of whatever fire had been there.

Thankfully Ombre had cast a shield spell that seemed to be directing the water away from the computer. Kari was relieved to see the magic hadn’t caused the system to short out and it was still merrily rendering away.

“What happened?” Kari asked as she took in the scene, well aware security would be here any moment and finding herself relieved when she could pass through the barrier covering her computer, allowing her to cover it with her rain coat instead.

“I came in with dinner for you and found some prats messing with your computer.” Ombre shrugged, letting the barrier go once the Kari had ensured the safety of the computer. “That prat,” She pointed to the guy who was led behind the door, “Got hit by the door on my way in and my magic took care of him.”

“Messing around with my computer?” Kari asked with a frown as she hid the rendering program and tried to open up the menu, only find the rendering program was hiding errors that had popped up left right and centre and a swirling purple vortex on screen that looked like it was sucking in files. Kari cursed and yanked the network cable out of the back of her computer, trying to sever the connection to the rest of the Kaiba Corp network before darting to the nearest water shielded computer and checking it, only to find it was doing the same thing.

“Kari?” Ombre asked, confused as Kari checked one more computer before pulling her company phone out of her pocket and dialling swiftly.

“Make sure that guy doesn’t get away.” Kari grimaced as she waited for someone to pick up, “We’ve been hacked.”

Ombre shot off back to Kari’s office as Kari started talking to someone in what could have been ancient Greek for all she knew about it, but involved shutting down the network of computers within the company and getting the damn sprinkler system shut off. The sprinkler system shut off before she could get there and she arrived to find a couple members of the security team were already trying to wake up the man to find out what had happened.

Amusingly, the guards seemed to assume she was her light to start with, giving her the same respect they would have given any department head right up until Kari re-entered the room. At which point they seemed to get very confused, decide that Ombre was another intruder and tried to hold her for questioning too, despite Kari vouching for her.

It wasn’t until Kaiba and Mokuba entered the room, one looking highly pissed off and the other curious and irritable, and the elder Kaiba brother told the members of the security team that they were to sit down and shut up because apparently a girl with no training could do their jobs better than they could.

They didn’t seem to take that very well, especially when Kaiba told Ombre that he expected her in the following day to continue guarding his new head of department until he could be certain something like this wouldn’t happen again. However they were swiftly distracted when Ombre lift the spell she had been using to keep the intruder sedated and his first reaction to waking up was to attempt to attack Kari, who he had mistaken for Ombre.

The security guards pounced on him before he could lay a hand on her and Kaiba sent Kari and Ombre home after getting details from both of them about what had happened. Kari was willing to leave. Though she didn’t believe that her boss was still like the horror stories, she wanted no part in questioning the man.