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.

Clanverse: Dimensional Difficuties: Part 1

BETWEEN PHILOSOPHER'S STONE AND CHAMBER OF SECRETS

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He’d specifically waited until nightfall to slip in through the open window of the upstairs flat above the Kame Game Shop and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light inside.  It wasn’t hard to spot his target though, not when the spiky haired teenager was sprawled on the sofa, fast asleep and illuminated by the television, safe in the supposed knowledge that he was perfectly safe in his own home.

He silently stalked over to the teen, frowning slightly at the sight of the Millennium Puzzle hanging around the target’s neck considering that it belonged to the teen he’d seen leave the game shop a couple of hours ago, surrounded by his friends, but didn’t think much of it, after all, if the King of Games had chosen to surrender his deck to his sibling, then it was possible that he had left the Puzzle in the care of his sibling temporarily too.

He reached for the catch of the chain carefully, but the moment his fingers brushed the metal the teenager started awake and attempted to bolt away, only prevented from doing so because he seized the kid’s hair and pulled him to the ground, wincing slightly at the loss of surprise and the pained cry the kid had loosed as his head slammed into the table, stunning the teen long enough for him to pin the brat to the ground.

The teen expelled a lot of air in a pained cry as his assailant drove a knee into his stomach and before he could take any back in one hand was at his throat and pushing down hard as the man straddled the teen, pinning him down while the other hand took out a piece of the Puzzle and tossed it aside before pulling a vial from a pouch at his belt and uncorking it, sneering at the teen as he did so.

The brat’s mouth shut quickly though it didn’t help as the hand at his throat shifted so that it was pinching his nostrils shut. Without any way to take in air, it didn’t take long for the teen to open his mouth to gasp for breath and the contents of the vial were poured in before the brat could do anything.

The kid tried to spit the liquid out, but he was too slow as the hand pinching his nose shifted to cover his mouth too and the other pushed up on his jaw, preventing him from opening his mouth.

“Swallow it, brat.” The man sniggered as the kid tried to fight his own body’s instincts to swallow so he could breathe and pull his attacker’s hands away, “You’ll get air afterwards...”

The brat wouldn’t stop fighting, struggling against his captor even as his body betrayed him and swallowed the liquid. The man’s hands moved away from the teen’s face, an amused look on his features at the thought that the kid had thought a five foot one teen who was built like a stick insect could have possibly hoped to move the weight of the six foot three, heavily set man.

The man felt the teen go limp under him and watched as the teen’s eyes began to roll back in his head. The drug was working... He started to pick himself up. The kid was no threat now...

Then something unexpected happened.

In an incredibly fast motion that took him by surprise, the brat seized something that had rolled under the table when he had fallen, something long and golden and...

He didn’t quite catch what the kid whispered when he pointed the wand at him, but it loosed a blast of air that forced him off of the teenager and slammed him into a wall.

Immediately the teenager rolled onto his hands and knees and scrambled to his feet, staggering towards the Puzzle piece, but before he could reach it a second attacker’s voice spoke and the kid’s wand went flying into the hands of the second person.

Then the first was on the teen, having knocked aside the table in his rush to get to the teen and slamming the brat’s head against the wall hard, stunning the teen long enough to be able to lift the chain over his head and toss the rest of the Puzzle aside, the impact with the ground causing it to lose even more pieces.

Before the kid could pull himself together the second attacker spoke again and the brat’s world went dark as the spell hit his face and his eyes dulled from a bright amethyst to a pale lilac.

This, if anything, caused the teen to struggle harder, and he would have escaped the first assailant’s grip entirely, except for the fact that the man’s hands shifted, seizing the kid’s throat and squeezing tightly.

“L...Let... me... go...” The teen gasped as he struggled, grabbing both of the man’s wrists and trying to pull his hands away so he could breathe again, only for the man’s grip to tighten on his neck to the point where only a strange whistling sound could escape the teen’s throat.

The second attacker pulled the first off of the teen, scolding him for almost killing the bait, but the first had done his job well enough as the brat collapsed to the ground, coughing, trying to take in air, the adrenaline rush fading under the effects of the liquid he’d been force fed. Before too much longer the teen was too weak to escape.

The kid struggled weakly for a moment as his wrists were bound tightly behind his back, then with a final shudder he went completely limp, unconscious.

The two assailants escaped the way they’d come, taking their prisoner with them and leaving behind a note addressed to the King of Games.