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.
“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.”
