C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 17

“The ‘other Yugi’ is Yami.” Yami explained, half lying in order to avoid having to answer questions that she would never believe the real answers to, “He’s my brother. He doesn’t tend to get out much because he’s shy and people mistake him for me all the time so he’s given up arguing it. He’s been ill recently so he was home alone when they kidnapped him.”

“How long ago was he taken?” Dani asked, thinking about what she knew of the ShadowSwords and how they treated their captives.

“Last night.” The Pharaoh paced the room again, not liking to be reminded of how long ago it had been since he had last seen the other half of his soul.

“Then he’ll probably be hungry and thirsty by now, but he’ll be okay.” Dani reassured him.

“How can you know?” Yami’s gaze was sharp and wary, as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not.

“Because I’ve been their guest before.” She informed them, “They tend to neglect to feed their prisoners or offer them something to drink, but once they’re locked up they tend to leave them to their own devices. Yami’ll be okay until they need him for something.”  

She could see the relief settle in the group at her words. She wasn’t entirely sure of the truth of them. She remembered her own captivity well, she had been held prisoner for almost a week before the ritual had very almost taken her life. In that time she had gone hungry and had only been offered water thrice, but she had at least been left alone in her cell.

However her capture hadn’t exactly been gentle. She had been battered and bruised when she had escaped from the cave system in Sennen Cove. She didn’t doubt that Yugi’s brother would be in much the same state.

“If you find him while you’re investigating...” Yami started.

“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know straight away.” Dani promised, “Now, if you don’t mind, there’s nothing else we can do tonight and I need some sleep.”

With that dismissal, Yami and his friends headed back to their rooms with a lot to think about. Yami knew he should be more concerned about the insane cult that wanted to sacrifice everyone who was on the boat, but his hands were tied. Interfering with their plans could cost Yugi his life and Yami refused to take that risk.

Later, once he knew Yugi was safe and sound, he was going to ruin the ritual they had planned and tear the idiots who had decided that stealing Yugi away from his home was a good idea, into tiny little pieces. Slowly. And he would enjoy every moment of it. And if Yugi was hurt, their end would be beyond painful. He would make sure of that.

In the meantime he had to hold his temper and wait for further instructions. He hated it. Absolutely hated it but there was nothing he could do.

“Yami...” Joey started, causing the Pharaoh to turn to look at him, “I know they’re watching you, but we could start trying to hunt these guys down, see if we can at least find out where they’re holding this ritual thing?”

Yami grimaced. He didn’t want his friends getting themselves into trouble, but they were already there. Everyone on the boat was in danger if they couldn’t stop the ritual that was taking place on the island during their stay. “Do it.” He nodded finally as he reached his door, “But be careful, I don’t want to have to be the one to tell Yugi you guys got hurt.”

“You got it.” Joey grinned, pounding his hand with his first, “And don’t worry, it’s our turn to save the day for a change, you focus on getting Yuge back.”

“Right.” Yami nodded, grinning back, “I’ll leave the hard work in your hands then.”

“Eh, it’ll be a piece of cake for a real man.” Joey postured, causing the girls to roll their eyes, Tristan to slap him upside the head and Yami to shake his head in amusement. “Hey!”

“Before we split up we have three phones between us,” Kari pointed out, “So we need to work out who’s with who. Really we need at least one phone per group.”

“I’ll go with Joey.” Tristan said before anyone else could say anything. “If he’s chasing the cult members, he’s going to need the backup.”

“I’ll go with Yami.” Tea spoke up next, “And Kari and Ombre can work together.”

“Two per team.” Kari nodded in agreement, “That way we have even numbers.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Yami shook his head, knowing what he was about suggest was likely to get him shouted at, “The teams aren’t balanced. Tea and I will make up one team, Tristan and Kari another and Joey and...”

“What?!” Yami winced against the noise they were making and ushered them into his room so they didn’t wake up the other players on the boat.

“If you’re all quite done?” Yami snapped at them once the door was shut and he had had as much of the noise as he could tolerate. “With the teams you’d decided on we had all of our muscle in one group and all the mages in another.”

“I have magic.” Joey protested.

“And you’re not exactly built like a brick outhouse.” Kari sniped at the Pharaoh.

“I don’t need to be.” Yami shot back, “I’m the distraction, remember? There’s nothing I can do about anything without getting Yugi killed, so I can’t do anything until he’s free. That means it’s going to be mostly up to you lot and neither Kari or Ombre have self defence training. Not only that but yes you have magic,” He turned to Joey, “but you have barely any training and it’s not in Shadow magic, which is what we’re up against.” He looked at Ombre, “I know you want to stick close to Kari, but I’m asking you to help Joey, please?”

The room went still. There were words that Yami didn’t use unless they were aimed at Yugi. ‘Please’ was one of them. It wasn’t that the Pharaoh meant to be rude, they just didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. So for him to say it now underlined how frustrated and worried he really was by the situation.

“Sure.” Ombre nodded, realising now how badly Yami was affected by all of this. She knew he was slipping, she had been on the receiving end of his temper enough times to know that. However knowing it and actually understanding it were two different things. “I’ll cover him. Don’t worry.” Yami nodded, grateful to her, before she turned to Tristan, “But if you let them harm one hair on Kari’s head...”

“Dead meat sandwich. Got it.” Tristan nodded.

“Good.” Yami let out a slow, calming breath, “Now we should all try and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a nightmare.”

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 11

“For now.” Yami snapped at her. “We don’t know what these guys want, not really, or what they will try to get it.”

“We’ll get him back, Yami.” Joey promised the Pharaoh, “When’s that DimSoft thing again?”

“The boat leaves tomorrow night.” Yami continued pacing the room, going back and forth until Tristan was sure he was going to wear a groove into the floor. “But I told them I wasn’t going.”

“Obviously they didn’t take no for an answer.” Tristan scowled. “Who else got an invite?”

“Kari, Kaiba, beyond that...” Yami shrugged, not liking the fact he had such little information about Yugi’s kidnappers or the situation he was walking into.

“I have an invite.” Joey added to the list.

“So we know four guests at least.” Yami grouched.

“Well we’ll pull what we did at Duellist Kingdom.” Tea promised, “So you guys won’t be going alone.”

“That’s right.” Tristan pounded his hand with his fist, “And when we get there, we’re gunna find out where they’re holding Yugi and get him back.”

“And then I’ll make them regret ever laying a hand on him.” Yami agreed, his tone dark and vicious, causing the others to glance at each other nervously. They remembered how Yami had been when he had first awoken, little more than a bundle of psychotic, vengeful energy hiding within their friend. His voice now was a little too reminiscent of those days for their peace of mind.

“One step at a time, Yami.” Joey settled for saying, well aware that if they could get Yugi back, he would temper Yami’s mood and stop him from going too far where none of them could, “We have to get on the boat first.”

“Someone needs to tell Kari.” Yami growled out, still pacing, “Warn her. Ryou too. If it’s the Items they want, anyone who holds one is going to be a target.”

“I’ll do it.” Tea promised, watching the Pharaoh carefully, half expecting him to go do something insane. She wasn’t quite sure what that something was, or whether she should just let him get on with it, but she was expecting him to do something.

“Good.” Yami’s nod was short, sharp and dismissive. Tea tried not to get annoyed by it. It was only natural for Yami to be angry, but she wished he wouldn’t take it out on them. “Joey, Tristan, help me downstairs.”

It was an order and though it grated slightly, neither teen said anything. Instead they did as much as they could to help Yami clean up before Ojiisan got home. When he did his first reaction, thankfully, was to check on the safety of his grandsons rather than call the police.

Unfortunately they then had to tell him about what had happened. Solomon, after sitting and steadying his heart, started helping them clean up, leaving Tea to make the phone calls as they worked.

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 10

Yami had been on edge for the latter half of the movie and he couldn’t understand why. It had thoroughly ruined the film for him. It was a shame because until then he had been enjoying the thriller.

He hurried home, his friends only just behind him, still discussing the movie and the plot twist at the end. He didn’t know why but he had a horrible feeling something had happened to Yugi. He knew he was being unreasonable. Yugi was at home. Their home. It was much safer than their school. There were no Philosopher’s Stones hidden there for a start.

His ominous feeling was proved right when he got to the shop to find the front window had been smashed and the store was in disarray.

He barged his way through the door, panic rising as he took in the devastation and realised that there was a trail of mess and mayhem that lead upstairs.

“Yugi?!” Joey beat him to the stairs but not by much and Yami’s call echoed up the stairs as the pair darted up them. Upstairs wasn’t in much better a condition. Tables and chairs were overturned, ornaments were broken, cards and game pieces scattered everywhere. Worst of all the safe was open and the money within had been scatted everywhere. Not that Yami paid attention to it for more than a brief glance, “YUGI!”

There was no answer, furthering Yami’s panic as he darted down the corridor and into the attic conversion that was Yugi’s room.

There was no one there. The bed looked like it had been vacated hastily and it was quite obvious that there had been a fight. Yami didn’t magic to see that Yugi had not gone down quietly. The bookcase was damaged. Three of the shelves were broken where something or someone had hit them at speed. The desk was a mess, all the books and cards stacked on it had been swept onto the floor and the desk chair was on its side, halfway across the room.

“Yami!” Joey called from the kitchen, “Yami!”

The Pharaoh darted down the corridor and into the kitchen to find Joey was clenching a letter in his right hand, his fist closed so tight the paper was crumpled as he turned to look at his friend. “You need to read this.” He said, shoving the message in Yami’s face.

The Pharaoh took it, scanned the contents, let out a furious sounding growl and shoved the paper at Tristan as his magic started slipping his control, causing a dark purple aura to surround him and start blazing up like flames. Joey backed away quickly from the chill that they radiated as Tristan read out the note.

“Yugi. We have your brother. If you want to see Yami alive again, you will come to the DimSoft demo. We will give further instructions once you are there. Bring the Puzzle. If you call the cops or try anything funny we’ll kill him.” Tristan’s tone grew angrier the longer it went on, but Tea frowned and asked one simple question.

“If we want to see Yami alive again?”

“They think they have me. They must have mistaken him for me and taken Yugi instead.” Yami snarled, his magic still flaring like mad, its radius expanding, causing his friends to have to back up further still, “If they’ve harmed him, I will make their lives a living hell. And their afterlives too.”

“Yami, if you can’t use that magic to locate Yugi you need to put it away. We can’t help if you send us to the Shadow Realm.” Joey pointed out, still backing away from the swirling darkness surrounding his friend.

The Pharaoh considered the darkness around him. There was a lot he could do with it. The bond to Yugi was broken when his other self wasn’t wearing the Puzzle, but the golden trinket had been used to find his friends before. This should be no harder, especially if he was using more than just the Puzzle itself.

“Show me where Yugi is.” He demanded of the item and the darkness swirling around him.

There was a moment where nothing happened and then the Shadows formed an illusion, showing Yugi was led on a rather uncomfortable looking floor, unconscious, blindfolded and with this knees and ankles tied together. It wasn’t hard to guess, considering the angles of his arms, that his wrists had been either bound or shackled behind his back too. Yami let out a low growl when he took note of the bruise rising on Yugi’s left cheek.

The group couldn’t get any details from the room as to the location of their friend, but they could see that Yugi was alive at least and they got a brief glimpse of the ocean out of the porthole in the wall of the tiny room.

The illusion faded away, causing Yami to let out a frustrated sound but let the magic fade away and started pacing the room.

“Well,” Tristan sighed explosively “That didn’t help.”

“Yes it did.” Tea pointed out, “We don’t know where he is, but at least we know he’s okay.”