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 24

They had already started disembarking from the boat when Dani finally finished working on her latest updates and setting them to update on a schedule for the next few days just in case something happened.

She wasn’t too worried. She was due to start at the ‘temple point’ starting position along with three others and if she was reading the map in the guide book right, it was the closest starting point to the docks. She had plenty of time to gather up her things and head out.

She could hear the sounds of people moving around in the corridor, rushing to get off the boat and start playing. She could understand why. If SharpShade Inc. wasn’t involved she would have been ecstatic to be testing out the VirtualNet. However, knowing that the ShadowSwords were involved left her wondering why the hell she had agreed to Pegasus’s request for help in the first place.

On an intellectual level she knew why and it wasn’t because of anything as simple as a desire to prevent other people getting sacrificed. It was partly because of that, but mostly it was because Pegasus had promised her backup and a rather large sum of money towards her expenses. She still felt like she was a complete and utter moron for agreeing to do it though.

As the voices outside faded away she packed her laptop away in her shoulder bag and shrugged on her jacket. Finally she attached her DimDIsk to her arm, enjoying the reduced weight. Even though she didn’t generally compete in tournaments, she still had one of Kaiba Corp’s Duel Disks and often used it to play against her university course mates. She had mentioned a couple of time on the blog that the Duel Disk was more than a little bit heavy. She wasn’t sure that the lighter DimDisk was the answer though.

The VirtualNet system looked impressive, she couldn’t deny that, but she had little hope of a city allowing someone to install the projectors all over town. They were an eyesore and they would, most likely be expensive. Still she wanted to see what the new tech could do in a game.

A knock on the door made her jump, causing her to drop her bag. She flinched as the expensive piece of equipment within hit the floor hard. “I’ll be out in a minute.” She called, picking up the bag and checking the contents.

She let out a frustrated huff as she noticed a crack in her laptop’s casing, but she didn’t get a chance to see if the machine was broken or not. The door slammed open and three men entered the room.

“Umm, hi?” Dani asked, backing up rapidly, glancing around for a way out.

“It’s been a while, Green.” One of the men told her, causing her to look at him, startled. Her face paled as she realised she recognised the man in front of her as one of the men who had held her captive the last time she had run into the ShadowSwords. “You honestly thought we wouldn’t be waiting for you when you got here? Especially after you got Pegasus to add you to the rosta specifically?”

“Honestly?” Dani asked, edging around the room and trying to lure the men further in. It worked on two of them, who moved towards her. The one who knew her stayed in the doorway. “I wasn’t planning on coming, I got bribed into it. And I didn’t expect enough of you to have survived the last few years to remember me, considering the way you off each other at your little Gatherings.” She explained, before grabbing the chair and chucking it at the man by the door.

He yelped and jumped away, allowing Dani a chance to dart out of the room. The men followed, nearly catching her as she raced up the corridor. She managed to gain some ground on them when she grabbed the arm of one of the crew members and used him as a post in order to turn sharply and escape down a corridor.

She was almost to the exit, not that she had anywhere to go after that considering that it led out onto the bad guy’s island, when something heavy came out of nowhere and slammed into her stomach, sending her tumbling to the ground, winded.

As she coughed and gasped, she glanced around, trying to work out what the hell had hit her. It wasn’t hard to work out. One of the other mooks she had seen on the boat was stood by the door with a rather sturdy looking pole.

“Pick her up.” The man from her room gloated as she was dragged to her feet and her laptop and her phone were pulled from her bag.

“No, please!” Dani struggled, watching as her machines were carried over to the edge of the walkway that led out over the ocean and onto the docks below. “No. No. No!” She watched, horrified as the goon holding her stuff dropped the equipment into the water. “You son of a bimph!”

Dani’s cursing was suddenly muffled by the rag that was shoved in her mouth. She tried to spit it out but another cloth, wrapped around her head kept it firmly in place as she was dragged away from the exit, kicking and screaming, fury obvious.

“She’s a feisty one.” The one holding her laughed as she tried to scratch and bite, his amusement fading fast when she elbowed him in the nuts, pulling the cloth way from her head and spitting out the rag as she darted out of the exit and into the nearby forest.

“Should we go after her?” One of the men asked, watching her rather than his colleague who was curled up in a ball on the ground, trying not to throw up.

“No, she’s wearing her DimDisk. It’ll lead us right to her.”

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...”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 6

“DimSoft?” Kari sounded surprised, “Why?”

“Invite.” He passed it back so she could see it.

“Huh. I didn’t think they were ready for something like this.” Kari answered him, sounding thoughtful, “I know they were badgering my Head of Department for help at Christmas, but I thought he told them where to go.”

“Dimension are a bunch of hacks.” Kaiba snorted as Kari passed the invite back, “Who are sponsored by SharpShade Incorporated. They only got the rights to use Duel Monsters in their games from Industrial Illusions because Pegasus has ties with SharpShade and they put SharpShade’s logo on all their packaging alongside their own. Anything they’ve built that isn’t just a re-hash of my company’s stuff will probably explode at some point.”

“Is that jealousy I hear?” Joey taunted, “Because they’ve figured out the holotech too?”

“Not even slightly, Mutt.” Kaiba snapped, causing Yami to blink, unused to Kaiba letting his irritation show so quickly, “Holotech is old news. Anyone who can reverse engineer a duel disk already has and is probably working on a way to improve it.” You could hear the smirk as Kaiba continued, “Unfortunately for them, my company will always be better at it than they are.”

“So Dimension’s new game they want to beta...” Yami prodded.

“Probably some rip off of my Spirit Hearts virtual reality games.” Kaiba sounded bored at that, “Just using the projection system that they’ve supposedly come up with that doesn’t require projectors.”

“Umm.” Joey butted in, sounding confused, “Not for nothing, but I thought you couldn’t have holographs without the projectors.”

“You can’t.” Kari agreed, “Which means there’s probably a trick to it.”

“There is.” Yami agreed, reading the invite further, “The island is going to be laced with DimSoft’s VirtualNet system. It’s apparently the VirtualNet that will be providing the holograms, rather than projectors the players have to carry around.”

“The VirtualNet system wasn’t anywhere near ready the last time I had anything to do with DimSoft’s virtual technicians.” Kari informed the Pharaoh, “So they must have had a massive breakthrough in both the programming and 3d departments to be ready for a massive competition now.”

“Whatever it is, I’m not going.” Yami shrugged, finding himself amused when he could practically feel his friends staring.

“Are you feeling alright?” Joey asked, “They have some cool new toys and they’re inviting you to play with them.”

“No, they’re inviting Yugi to play with them.” Yami countered, “And it’s too soon for him to be recovered in time. I’m not going to take advantage of Yugi’s illness in order to vanish off to some island in the middle of the ocean. It’s not fair on him. If we were still sharing a body it wouldn’t have mattered, because Yugi would be there anyway, but it’s not fair if I go and enjoy it and he can’t.”

None of the others really knew what to say to that. Yami had a point. It wouldn’t be fair to Yugi. Kari couldn’t help but wonder though, if Yami would have found another excuse to not go if Yugi had been whole and well. The Pharaoh had always been protective of his lighter half and she could well imagine that this latest scare would only make it worse.

They arrived into Domino International Airport rather late and all of them were glad to get to their assorted homes and beds. Yugi and Yami, who had tried to explain the situation to their grandfather via letters, found themselves once again explaining everything, this time to his face.

The questioning continued until Yugi started to list sideways and Yami had to prop him up, at which point Solomon sent Yugi to bed and got a promise from Yami for more answers once Yugi was settled. It was long gone midnight before Solomon finally ran out of questions and when Yami awoke the next morning, it was to find he had overslept and Joey had already started helping the elderly man in the shop.

While the Joey and the Mutous settled back into life at the shop, Kari was in the middle of a disaster at work. The Head of Virtual Design and Development had quit the moment the Kaibas had walked into the building, stating that he had been offered better money elsewhere just that morning and that he was taking some of his team with him.

The remaining members of the staff in that department had no experience in leading a team and the closest that anyone could come was Kari’s experiences during her time in education. Not only that but she was the longest lasting member of the team with just over two years with the company. This meant that, for the time being, Kari was in charge of the team while Kaiba scrambled to hire people back or get new employees.