Chapter 7: A Glass of Whiskey
Date posted: 1/29/08
ISF: Well, it has been a long time since I updated this story. Two-ish, long, terrible years of a cliffhanger? Ooh.
Well, I've gotten my life in (somewhat) order, and I have a basic understanding of where I'm going, even though it's but the faintest, broadest shadow, and I have always regretted not finishing this thing, so here goes, eh?
O o O o O
It was late, or rather, so late that it was early. Yugi yawned, and stared blearily at his alarm clock. Four-thirty...as if anyone in their right mind would be ringing the doorbell at this time…
He seemed to have been the only one who had heard the door ring. His parents were away on a vacation and Grandpa…Yugi's door was cracked, and he could hear his grandfather's deep snores, always followed after a long silence by a slight cough and a gasp. Grandpa really needed to go see a doctor about that.
The doorbell rang again, and an insistent knocking seemed to imploringly call for somebody. Alright, alright…
He clicked on the light and swung his legs over the bed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the Millennium Puzzle glint ominously, its surface looking almost oily in the lamp's dim light. For a split second, Yugi's stomach felt like it was sinking, and he wondered whether or not he should put it on…just in case, after all. They was nothing wrong about being prepared against Rare Hunters or any other villains of the like. He had the vague feeling of something ominous, and he didn't like it. Of course, there hadn't been any trouble lately. Things had been pretty quiet, but…. The doorbell buzzed impatiently, and Yugi shook his head. He could feel Yami's soul, always present, in the Puzzle, resting, but never sleeping, and it comforted him. He wouldn't be far away, regardless of Yugi wearing the Puzzle or not. Besides, Yugi laughed a little uncertainly to himself, enemies trying to steal his puzzle or cards don't just go around knocking at the doors of their targets.
He walked to the door and opened it. His jaw dropped—he couldn't help it, really, seeing Tea Gardner of all people in a skimpy, lacy nightie, shivering slightly and with the slightly tousled hair of a woman from Yugi's most inappropriate dreams. Sarah and Mary were mere afterthoughts following a string of embarrassing thought. Yugi looked down quickly, and suddenly felt a deep, hot flush spreading across his face.
This really was the worse night of all to be wearing Kuriboh pajamas.
O o O o O
"S-S-sorry for c-coming over s-so late…" Tea's teeth clattered together as she tried to curl a blanket around her tighter and drink from a mug of hot chocolate at the same (the clattering from her being cold, of course, not from multi-tasking). "W-we didn't k-know were to go and—", she sneezed, spilling half of the cocoa onto herself, and made a miserable, sick little noise.
"It's your own fault for getting sick," Mary said shortly. She was shivering slightly as well, and hadn't been very keen on walking six blocks with bare feet on cold concrete. "You don't go wandering around half a city wearing a skanky thing like that, and half of the men we walked by catcalled at you. I dunno why you'd even wear that to bed, as if you even got a boyfriend or anything, it's not like anyone—"
"If you don't shut up, Bozo," said Sarah. She did not finish her threat, finding her tea to be much more interesting than her sister. Out of the three girls, she seemed to be the only on completely unaffected by the cold night-time walk.
"Or what, Ugly-face, you gonna tell Dad about it if we ever get home? Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh," Mary waggled her tongue annoyingly at her sister. "And why don't you ever drink anything except tea?"
"It makes for healthy drinking, you know. I'm as healthy as a horse and with none of the cavities and gingivitis that you have, thanks."
"But the thing I don't get, Tea, is why anybody would come to your house looking for you three," Yugi loudly said over Mary and Sarah's bickering. "Why would anybody go after you? I mean, you have a connection with me, and somebody could possibly be trying to get me through you, but…"
"So somebody wants to capture Tea to use as bait? Excellent! Where can I find this guy?"
"How many times do I have to tell you, idiot?" Sarah said irritably. "No one was looking for Tea, they had pictures of us. As in, you and me, no one else."
"That's stupid!" said Mary, who really seemed to have taken well to the idea of selling Tea's freedom to the highest bidder. "Anyways, how is it possible that somebody here could have gotten our pictures?"
"See this?" Sarah waved the pictures in Mary's face. "You see it? They're right in front of you, why do you keep on denying the completely obvious, huh?"
"But I don't get it, we're from another universe, hello. You can't just get pictures of people from different dimensions or whatever."
"But the pictures are right here. RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES."
"But we're from another dimension, I don't see—"
"PICTURES. HERE."
"You can't just—"
"RIGHT HERE. IN MY HAND."
"We're—"
From the living room, they all heard the game store's door swing shut—Yugi had neglected to lock it after letting in the three girls—with such force that it shattered. Heavy, angry footsteps made their way through the store and headed towards the living room. All four of the people looked up at the doorway in shock.
"K-Kai—"
Seto Kaiba, clad in business suit, was hovering over the frightened spectators, a furious glint of the most frightening anger Yugi had ever seen him exhibit.
"YOU!" He roared at Yugi, his index finger accusing the boy of some dreadfully hideous crime. His face was twisted in fury, and his face was pale, so pale that it looked almost as white and perfectly porcelain as cold, white milk.
"Kaiba, what in the world are you doing here so early in the—"
"It was you! You had to have had something to do with it, you and your new freak show friends that just decide to pop up and completely destroy half of Kaiba Corp's latest product!"
"What are you talking…?"
"Somebody had managed to hack into the company main database," Kaiba said. His voice was at room level, but judging from his cold, no, ice-hot tone, his wrath had not even completely begun. "Yes! A multi-billion dollar corporation database, protected by only the best defenses! By the time the hacker was stopped, half of the latest project on the latest duel disk design was corrupted. HALF OF IT!!" He screamed, his face distorted completely into one of a pseudo-humanoid demon from hell. "Kaiba Corp has lost thirty million dollars it invested into that project, the blueprints of the final and prototype models are gone, production was planning to start next week and-I-know-IT-HAD-SOMETHING-TO-DO-WITH-YOU!" he ground out the last few words between his perfect, beautiful, snarling teeth. "You and your latest additions to the gang of idiots will have HELL to pay for this!"
A long spanse of silence filled the void, and then Sarah let out a long, slow, nasally laugh.
"What? Are you going to sue us for it?" She said dryly. "You saw us appear out of thin air, Kaiba, or however it is you pronounce it. I—neither of us—have a dime or a yen to our name. We don't even exist in legal terms here, I bet."
"I can make you and your idiot of a sister exist," ("hey!" sniffed Mary) Kaiba snarled. "And you do, you DO. Nobody, much less two of most idiotic cretins I've seen in a long time, pop out of nonexistence! I refuse to accept it!"
"Well, that's a bit stupid," said Mary conversationally. "Aren't things broken up into itty bitty bits of things and sent somewhere else by television?"
There was a slight pause. Sarah turned to Mary. "Did you, by any chance, happen to get that form Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?"
"Well…yeah," she said. Sarah snorted.
"You know, if you had even bothered to take your eyes off of Johnny Depp for four seconds, you would have learned that television uses electromagnetic WAVES, not 'itty bitty bits of things' as you call it. Radio waves are not matter of any kind…however, it has been shown that visible light exhibits dual properties of being both waves and small particles, but I don't think…oh, well, whatever. Kaiba," she turned, frowning slightly, "just had someone try to hack his company's main computer system the same night that some people break into Tea's house with pictures of us. Mary and I have got something to do with it."
"…which is what I've just been saying, you complete ignorant," growled Kaiba angrily.
But beneath his angry exterior, the cogs of Kaiba's brilliant brain began to stir, and he thought about the implications of that. Somebody who would have the ability and available technology to be able to break through the defenses and even manage to do some damage to a company's database would also, theoretically, also have enough money to be in control of people (something that Kaiba was definitely familiar with firsthand), or rather, would have access to money, or even the illusion of money at worst. You could always get somebody, somewhere, to do dirty work for you as long as you could carry yourself properly. But of course…no, no. It was highly unlikely that an idiot like that would…yes...there was still a definite possibility of it, none the less. Best to keep that open, for now.
And then, just as suddenly as he had stormed in like a hurricane, he slapped a roll of bills on the table for compensation of the shattered door, and whisked his way back to his limousine, cold façade neatly back in place. In his limo, with the driver hidden behind the screen, Kaiba's headache quickly came back and a wave of exhaustion fell over him. He rubbed his temples. What he really wanted now was a glass of whisky.
O o O o O
