Title: Hellhound
Description: A mysterious agent for hire called 'the Hellhound' roams the streets of Domino City, stealing and killing for cash. What happens when this dangerous thief is caught on the prowl by Seto Kaiba? What if the Hellhound is also someone a lot closer to him than he first thinks?
Rating: M
Pairing: Joey x Kaiba
Author's comments: Second chapter! Granted, this one was written before the first one even went online, but still. I'm proud I got it done promptly.
A simple 'fetch' mission, as it was labeled by the Hellhound. I'd chosen that word for it, well, because of my codename. Because no matter how hard I try to shake the dog names, and mannerisms, they still come. Each time, I curse Duke and Kaiba for forcing me into that dog suit and constantly calling me 'mutt.' Whether I like it or not, I think I've grown attached to the comparison. After all, of all the ultra cool, badass names I could have picked for my illegal, agent alter-ego, I chose Hellhound.
The streets were starting to pick up with the really nasty, grungy people, which meant it was definitely midnight, if not later. I had nothing to worry about, though. I didn't have to be at my target house until two or three. That was the best time to sneak in. So, that meant I had a few hours to kill. Wandering the streets, I glanced into the clubs and bars, bored. None of them seemed interesting, and I was always careful with places like those. Although this was the area of town where people didn't give a flying shit if you were legal or not, there were also a lot of creeps around.
Eventually, I passed all the clubs by, deeming them boring and typical. I guess it was probably a good thing, as I was tempted to check my watch and saw that it was almost two. Perfect. With a grin on my face, I spun on my heel and began to head down the street. As soon as I reached the edge of the bad neighborhood, I kept to the shadows of alleyways, trying to avoid all people whenever possible. After all, the Hellhound has to stay elusive, or he's not a mystery anymore.
As I neared my target, I pulled the few sheets of paper out of my deep coat pocket. They were the floor plans for the place I was hitting. Honestly, it was a huge place, and I was glad I had the plans. After all, I'd never actually been in it, before. It took me a total of ten minutes before I was standing down the street from the mansion that was my target. I sighed, knowing this one would be a tough one. However, when someone told the Hellhound to 'fetch', then 'fetch' he did. Slowly, and keeping to the shadows, I made my way around the block to the side of the mansion. From the distance I stood at, I could see the high fences, and the cameras. I grimaced. Typical that such a place would have such great security. However, nothing could keep me out for long.
Slowly, taking a deep breath, I approached the imposing mansion, avoiding the bright gaze of streetlights, headlights, and any other lights I saw. The darkness wrapped around me as snugly as my coat as I stalked along the street next to the house, looking closely at where all of the cameras sat. Eventually, I discovered one spot. One. tiny. spot. that would offer me a blind spot to get in. The only question was how? The opening between the bars in the gate were nowhere near big enough to allow me to pass. Not without major amounts of squeezing. My wardrobe, while practical for a thief and hit man, was nowhere near as good for a Houdini. With a little bit of thought and creativity, however… well, actually it was just logic, I discovered that if I removed my jacket, I could just barely slip through the bars. So, leaving my coat on the sidewalk, I sucked in a lungful of breath and slid between the bars. I almost got stuck at one point, but after a moment of wiggling, I tumbled through the gate and onto the grass. I then turned back to the metal bars, and immediately pulled my beloved trench coat in behind me.
Throwing my coat back over my shoulders, I checked to make sure nothing had fallen out of the pockets. When my fingers touched the floor plans, still buried in my pocket, I relaxed a little and headed up the hill toward the mansion. It loomed over me as I neared it and my eyebrows raised. It never looked this big from the street.
A shadow on the ground startled me and I looked up suddenly, staring face to face with the creator of the shadow. I almost shouted in surprise. There, right before my nose, sat an imposing Blue Eyes, White Dragon statue, crouched slightly as if ready to pounce on its prey. I stood in front of it a few moments, my heart pounding. However, then I slowly came back to reality and had to restrain the chuckle that wanted to come out. Of course the statue would be there. What, exactly, did I expect from who I was stealing from?
At this point, I'd like to stop my storytelling and point out that I was not, in any way, stealing from Kaiba for personal reasons. I'll say that truthfully, right now. I wasn't stealing from him because I disliked him, or anything. It was just my job. I'd been told my target was the collection of artifacts recently placed in the Kaiba mansion. That was it. No vendetta, no hate, no bad dog, no nothing. Just my job.
I was awfully interested in the artifacts, however. More of that Egyptian shit he and Yugi are so into, for some reason. I mean, I understand God Cards. Sure. What I don't get is why when every new artifact in Egypt is discovered, Seto Kaiba finds it necessary to show off his fortune by buying it for his collection. He'd only started the collection a few months back, but still. I found it odd. Why not collect something a little more exciting than ancient Egyptian artifacts. Stuff the Egyptians worshipped thousands of years ago? After all, they did worship them thousands of years ago.
Either way, my job was to take his collection. The whole damn thing, which, unfortunately, would be a challenging job. However, I could do it. The Hellhound had never failed before, so why would he even think it possible, now? Cautiously, I tiptoed toward the house. I knew about the rest of the security in the house. It was all listed down on my plans. The windows had alarms, but only on the first floor, so I immediately began looking for a tree I could use. Eventually, I located one with firm branches that would probably hold until I was through the window. So, I carefully took the branches in my hands and pulled myself up into the branches.
The tree was, indeed, solid, and extended toward a tall window. I shimmied along the branch, my breath catching as I almost lost my balance once. In the back of my head, I chuckled, noting that the Hellhound had made much more glamorous entrances to other buildings before, by air vent, roof, and so on. A window was nowhere near my usual standard. However, since this was just a typical 'fetch' mission, I didn't mind much. Slowly, I peeked in the window, and was satisfied as I was it was just a spare bedroom, without anyone sleeping inside. Thank goodness. Carefully as always, I undid the latch on the window and pushed it up. It was well maintained and barely made a noise. I slid inside, my body immediately becoming tense, and my pulse rushing as my boots touched the expensive carpet.
I always tensed up during missions, and it took me a minute to calm down and remind myself that I had never been caught, and didn't intend on it now. The great Hellhound, also known as Joey Wheeler, never let a mission slip between his fingers! I inched forward to the door. The hall was dark and silent, and I pulled my head back into the room, extracting my floor plans and checking them.
"Man, this place is huge…" I whispered to myself as I checked over the three sheets. Three pages, three floors, plus a basement, which I didn't have a map of. Supposedly, some secret computer stuff. Honestly, that sounded more exciting to check out than the Egyptian collection. However, my client wanted Egypt, so he was going to get Egypt. I looked quickly for Kaiba's collection.
I found it on the third floor, which was one floor up from where I was. I poked my head back out, satisfied that the house was silent enough to hazard a little bit of adventuring. I slipped into the hallway and padded down it as silently as possible, which was almost completely inaudible. I tensed as I heard a noise from behind one of the doors I passed. A shifting among blankets. From the Blue Eyes painted on the wall, as if emerging from the door, I guessed it was Kaiba's room, and within it, he was asleep. Taking a deep breath, I continued, glad I knew where he was now, in case things happened to get messy.
It took me a good five minutes to locate the staircase up to the third floor. The stairs looked a bit older than the rest of the mansion, and as I placed a foot on the first step, it threatened to creak, and so I removed my weight from it quickly. Thinking quick, I saw the banister had rungs in it, and so, grabbing the railing, I placed a foot on the slanted board. This didn't creak or groan when I placed my weight on it, and so I began to shimmy up the staircase, as if the banister were a sideways ladder. It wasn't as badass as I would have liked it to be, but it certainly worked. Eventually, I found myself on the third floor, and with a quick glance at my trusty floor plans again, I located the door to Kaiba's collection room.
As I entered, my jaw dropped at the sight.
The room was huge, although none of the artifacts themselves were large. They all had separate pedestals, and I grinned, estimating they'd all fit nicely into a bag. However, there were the glass cases to figure out, first. Each artifact was encased in a glass box with a dial on the base of it, which was also attached to the pedestal. The whole thing looked like a rather crude invention, but upon closer inspection, was actually a formidable lock.
The dial itself was set with a bunch of coded images. I guessed crudely that they were fashioned after the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the artifacts. It was built like the dial on a padlock, but I had a strange feeling that letting the dial click into the wrong symbol would trip the alarm. So, instead of testing the theory, I began to peer around the room to try and ascertain some sort of clue. If I tried to smash the glass, after all, I'd definitely be caught. However, if I lingered too long, I'd run out of time to get all the artifacts out safely and be away from the mansion before it was noticed they were gone. I eventually decided not to take the chance and I wandered the room a bit, half exploring, half looking for clues.
I quickly found one in the shape of a stone tablet. It looked a lot like the one that had been in the museum that time, when Ishizu and Marik and everything showed up, right around Duel City. However, this one couldn't possibly be the same, and I decided for myself that it was probably a replica. After all, it wasn't even as big as the legit one. However, the symbols at the bottom of the tablet interested me. I figured that they were just regular hieroglyphs, but upon a closer look, I saw a familiar dial shape. My eyebrows rose. This must have been where Kaiba got his idea for the locks from. Slowly, I took a good look at the hieroglyphs, and noticed a pattern among three of them. A bird, a sun, and a triangle shape. They had a certain number of dots next to them as well. Turning back to the lock on the artifact, surely enough, there were the three hieroglyphs and dots in between each of them. Three between each symbol.
The first one was the bird, and it had two dots after it, so I carefully turned the dial until it rested on the second dot past the bird. While I waited for the alarm to sound, instead I heard a lock inside the podium relax and click free. I grinned and set to the second symbol. One dot before the triangle shape. Again, the dial clicked into place and a lock clicked open. One more. The third symbol was a bit confusing. A dot, then the sun, then another dot. I frowned slightly, taking a close look at it. It could be either dot, on either side, and I was stumped for a few moments. However, then it clicked. If the sun was in the middle, then maybe… Cautiously, I slid the dial back to the sun, letting it rest pointing directly at the symbol. With a joyous click, the final lock slid open and the glass case opened. I grinned and extended my hand to take my prize.
"I always knew my sources were good, but never this good." The voice stopped me cold. I knew it all too well. "I'm glad I stayed awake, just in case the Hellhound did decide to 'fetch' something from my home." Slowly, I turned my gaze to see out of the corner of my eye the one person I dreaded. There, leaning cockily in the doorway, with a handgun in his hand, stood Seto Kaiba. "Hellhound, your luck has run out. Give yourself up, or I'll be forced to take you out with force." The brunette said calmly as he leveled the gun. I stood still, keeping my back to Kaiba. Slowly, I raised my hands, my mind racing. Then, it arrived on a sickening thought.
If Kaiba saw me, he would recognize me.
He had always hated my guts, and to find out now that Joey Wheeler was the fabled Hellhound of Domino City would probably drive him to exact vengeance. He'd call the cops, have me arrested, and tossed in jail. Even worse, he'd probably tell everyone who I was, and maybe even go as far as to trying to get me life in prison, or even the death penalty. After all, it was common knowledge that the Hellhound did hits, too. Those missions were known as 'sick'em's. Now, I began to shake nervously and took a deep breath before ducking behind the pedestal directly on my left.
Kaiba's reflexes were insanely fast and I held in the yelp as a bullet ricocheted off the floor where I'd been standing a moment before. I yanked my own gun from my belt and peeked around the corner, aiming at the brunette, while simultaneously trying to avoid being shot. I managed it, but missed him and gritted my teeth. I could hear him chuckle coldly and begin to approach. I knew that gun was trained on my hiding place. I took a deep breath as his footsteps grew closer, tucked, and rolled, trying to get to a pedestal a little farther away. My gun tumbled from my grasp as I heard another shot ring out, but didn't feel it. I landed my clumsy roll behind the stone tablet, and immediately, pain shot up my right leg. I hissed and grabbed it, yanking back the pants leg. A bullet had cut into my leg. It hadn't stuck in the skin, but the blood flowed freely down my leg. I could hear the footsteps approaching, and groaned. I was trapped. I was doomed. I was royally, royally fucked.
"Now, Mr. Hellhound. I do believe we have some business we need to clear up." came Kaiba's malevolent voice as he rounded the stone tablet and knelt next to me. I winced and turned my head away, but he grabbed my throat and pointed his gun at my chin, forcing it up and in his direction. Immediately, his grip on my throat lessened and I saw the cold sapphire eyes widen.
"…Joey?"