Previously on TLA;
After attempting to hack KaibaCorp to search for traces of unknown cards to indicate Yliaster's assassin, Yusei's plans were waylaid by news that Rebecca's grandfather had passed away. Along with Duke, she departed to America to settle the affair.
Retiring for the night, he discovered that the cerebral inhibitor used to mitigate his seizures had been stolen. This forced him to rely upon his hosts for help, with grim instructions to destroy his body and any trace of his presence if he failed to reawaken.
Yusei leaned into the ice pack with a sigh of relief. Out of everything in his body, it was always his eyes that ended up hurting the most. High-pressure seizures and too much time around screens would do that but he used glasses when he had eye strain and had the most beautiful mind of his generation (and Din) working on the other part.
"No." He growled. "I'm not on drugs, don't want any, won't share any, I'm not possessed," Dragging a twisted bundle of tissue from his nose, he dropped it into the bin by his feet with a sour grunt. "Overworked, stressed, burnt out, or having nightmares."
For a moment, his companion was understandably silent. "I think we both know you're lying on the last half," They slowly admitted. "But I'll take your word on the rest."
Blocking his free nostril, Yusei gave a sour snort and shot the other wad of tissue to join the first without having to open his eyes or remove the ice pack. He felt so proud about that that he indulged a brief smirk. "Ow." No smirking while his facial muscles were still pulled from the screaming pain.
Striding to the end of the living area, Mai cupped both hands around her mouth. "Any luck?"
Something crashed in the distance. "Not yet!" Tristan called.
What had he needed to crash around to look for something the size of a biscuit? Mai turned to the other set of stairs and tried not to think about it. "Sweetie?" Another eruption sounded in the distance.
"Nothing." That was just Joey - he could create enough disaster sounds for an action movie by making breakfast.
"I'm telling you," Yusei glared from beneath the medical veil. "You won't find it."
"Maybe you dropped it somewhere outside?" Mai was growing impatient under the stress. "Put it in your pocket without realising?"
"I…" Catching himself in time, Yusei took a long, deep breath. "No. I left it on the bedside table." He glanced to one side. "I trust we can rely on your discretion?"
"I'll keep this incident to myself." Gerald the receptionist shoved a medical kit into his knapsack and closed the cover. An instant later, there was no sign that he was anything other than a professional greeter. "This incident. I understand that Professor Hawkins meant a great deal to everyone but you may not neglect your duties." Staff to staff, he was giving a professional courtesy in not calling the police there and then.
"I understand." Yusei could barely think after a seizure this bad. Although he tried to avoid them whenever possible, he'd been through enough to know that restless sleep beforehand always made them feel worse.
"Here," Holding out a packet, Gerald waited for him to take it. "Benzodiazepines. Take a couple when you feel ready. They should mitigate another seizure but you'll have to go to a hospital if it happens again."
"Thanks." Yusei kept the packet to one side. "I'll have some when the room stops spinning."
Gerald grunted and left for the elevator.
"I called him up when your nose started bleeding." That had been the first real alarm. Disassociated nightmares would explain the thrashing and the screaming but horror films and medical dramas had been her fallback for the blood.
"Don't worry," He eased to a less painful position. "This isn't the worst I've been through."
"What's the worst?" Mai asked.
"Probably the teeth." He admitted. Even though mouthguards kept the worst of the damage at bay, the extreme pressure made eating solids impossible for the first day. "I'm sorry." He peeled the ice pack from his face, wincing at the light. "None of this is fair to you. But Yliaster have orchestrated terrible events on a scale we can barely imagine - getting into my room and taking my cerebral inhibitor is probably the easiest they have done."
Beneath his calm demeanour, Yusei was seething in rage. Yliaster had done more damage to the timeline than he had expected. There was no way that this was a coincidence. Not after… Rebecca's grandfather might have been senile yet his death coming early could have massive ramifications that there was no way of predicting.
Mai was as shaken by the guest as she had been to see Rebecca break down. A sketchy upbringing had made her painfully familiar with the seizures junkies went through and she'd seen enough horror films to recognise possession. What Yusei had been through in the last few hours had put them all to shame. He'd screamed, cried, bitten most of the way through the gumshield, and thrashed so extremely that both Tristan and Joey had thrown themselves atop in to try and restrain the movements as blood poured from his nose. After nearly five hours (where all three men ended up looking like the aftermath of a week-long frat boy party), the patient had coughed the last of the vomit from his throat and drily quipped about their appearances. Something about causing a din.
Tristan and Joey had spared five minutes to take a shower before tearing apart the private penthouse while Mai and Yusei had been relocated to the main area where he received the most discrete medical care that Industrial Illusions could provide.
"No," She swallowed. "I meant, what's the worst Yliaster has done?"
Yusei looked at her carefully. "They've killed more people than I'll ever know. Twisted timelines to gain what they needed and erased them as easily. My parents died because Yliaster thought their deaths could benefit the timeline. They came after my family because they thought we were too dangerous to run free. They've come for the King of Games because killing us weakens history enough to remove Duel Monsters. And that's only the events we know about."
Mai's breath was shallow. "And Professor Hawkins?" Please, not him too.
Yusei looked away. "I don't know." There were too many variables in play. "Maybe he knew something. Maybe," He tried to look back but couldn't. "Maybe our plan 'worked' - Yliaster saw I was here. Then murdered Professor Hawkins so that Rebecca wouldn't be here to help me, stole the cerebral inhibitor, and left me to die."
Ninety years of biological, technological, and medical advancements separated the pair yet Mai knew from that expression that anything she suggested would be futile. "How long?"
"A few months." He shrugged. "Maybe less. If I have a seizure and hurt myself in the wrong way…" Hit the back of his head on the coffee table and it would be lights out for good.
Wiping down his face, Yusei pulled a band from his pocket and began smoothing down his hair. "What are you doing?" Mai kept both arms tight against herself.
"I need some time to think." Shrugging on a jacket, he headed towards the corridor before the elevator.
Like many great thinkers in history, from the philosophers of ancient Greece to painters of the contemporary period, Yusei found a quiet establishment to gather his thoughts and muse in peace. One where he could socialise with like-minded people and enjoy a refreshing drink. In short, he went to a quiet bar to mull over his options.
Yusei twirled a pen between his fingers as he contemplated. It was something Phantom had done when she was showcasing the technology in her armour. It should probably have been the first symptom of her autism - he'd asked for a brief explanation, and she'd rambled for hours in excruciating detail.
She said twirling the pen helped her think. Yusei was good at thinking, which was part of the problem. What he needed to do was consider the ramifications of what he'd been planning and trying to twirl a pen through his fingers was a viable distraction.
Except that he had little practice and it kept shooting from his hand in any direction it chose.
"Here," Bending down, the new guest grabbed the pen from where it had clattered to the floor. "You dropped this."
Warily eyeing the intruder, Yusei poured a measure from the expensive bottle of sake on the counter. "How did you find me?" Bending an elbow, he knocked back the shot in a smooth movement.
"Are you kidding?" Joey warily took an adjacent seat. "You're on my turf now. I've got friends and enemies all over, looking to make me owe them one." Yusei pondered the implications.
"You tracked my phone."
"I tracked your phone." Joey agreed. Not Yusei's actual phone, a spare handset that he had been given under his guise as a bodyguard. "It said you were somewhere around here."
Yusei contemplated the odds that Joey knew how to track a phone by himself. It was less likely than Din voluntarily taking a shower. "Rebecca showed you how," He said softly. "Didn't she?"
Joey clenched a fist against the counter. "Yeah." He said thickly. The American girl was wise enough to not trust Yusei and smart enough to know he'd try to slip away at least once. A relaxing code challenge later and any member of her family could launch the tracker to the handset he'd been provided. "Her and that laptop scare me."
Yusei grunted and waved for another sake cup.
"Please, take your friend and go." The bartender slammed down the second cup. "He's been sharing his bottle with other customers."
"And paying you for their drinks," Yusei smoothly slid another note across the counter. "You can gift the booze to your friends." With a disgruntled sigh, the barkeep stomped into the back room.
"You know that's my money you're spending?" Joey interrogated.
"Of course." Yusei smiled. "I wouldn't buy strangers drinks with my money."
They shared a grim laugh at that.
"So," Joey watched as the new cup was filled. "What are you planning?"
"I'm going to break into KaibaCorp, download any error logs that have similarities to anything like during our Duel, and use them to track down Yliaster." He smiled over the rim of his sake cup as if he'd asked Joey for a stroll in the park.
Joey looked at him in a new light. Yesterday, Yusei had been a legacy to the King of Games, a time-travelling genius, a friend and generous spirit to anyone who met him. Today, "You're completely crazy." Utterly insane. Joey tipped the sake down his neck and hoped it was somehow his twentieth and causing him to hallucinate. "Rebecca is the only person in the world who ever managed to hack into their systems and that was after a hostile takeover made them weak enough for her to do it."
"Nope," Yusei smiled even wider. "KaibaCorp still had great security during that Paradius thing - Rebecca is just that good."
"Then why don't you do it, Mr Genius?" Joey mocked.
It was odd - he looked more like Jack yet acted more like Crow. Still, Yusei liked him regardless. "Because I barely know how your computers work," He admitted. "With time, maybe. But I've got a couple of good days in me, one bad, and then we're right back here again."
"Look, man, I feel for you," Joey inverted his cup onto the counter. If the conversation was serious, he'd need a clear head. "But running headfirst into the best security money can buy isn't going to do you any good. I mean, you'd need three years and a bajillion dollars to have a"
"Five hours," Yusei cut across his protest. "And less than a thousand." He might as well have grown a second head from the look Joey was giving him.
"You can't be serious."
"My math might be off," He admitted. "I'll need to look up some prices and watch some videos but I think it'll work."
"Watch some…" Joey glanced at his parked cup. As much as he wanted a strong drink, he wanted to avoid becoming his father more. "You can't copy some film and skydive in!"
"I'm not planning on it." He was calm now. This was familiar territory, from his earliest days. "There's something that you don't know about me, Joey."
"What's that?" That tattoo on his face glimmered as Yusei turned to look him directly in the eye.
"I'm the best criminal you'll ever meet." Not as good as Crow but good enough to do what needed to be done.
"Best security. On the planet." Joey tried to keep him grounded. "They have guns. In Japan." Firearms were so ludicrously difficult to gain access to (even illegally) in the country that it would end up being the first to create projected particle weaponry. Yusei knew this from history as clearly as he knew he was safe by several decades.
"That's only a problem if they shoot me." Nobody had ever out-crazed Joey. Humility was suddenly an incredibly important trait he wanted to foster.
"And what's the big plan?" He couldn't keep from being sarcastic. "Just roll up and walk in off the street?"
Yusei pondered it for a second. "Pretty much, yeah."
"Completely crazy," Joey repeated. "What, you want me to buy a laser lockpick? A ninja suit?"
Yusei reached into his pocket and wordlessly produced a napkin for him to take. Joey read down the list of disturbingly normal items. Yusei might as well have handed him a shopping list.
"What's this one?" He pointed to the single name he couldn't figure out. Yusei told him. He still couldn't figure it out. "What's it used for?"
Yusei told him.
Joey didn't believe him.
Tristan circled the ensemble, glancing up and down. "Is this really going to work?" Shadow Games and training exercises were easy enough to deal with and a delinquent childhood made him no stranger to the odd shoplifting. What Yusei was proposing was outside the boundaries of anything they'd ever attempted and he was dressed like a rejected poptart.
"Unless KaibaCorp is twenty years ahead of the curve, yes." Yusei replied.
"You look ridiculous." Joey tried not to break into laughter.
"I've seen worse," Mai smirked. "Usually when you try dressing yourself." This was the first shopping trip she'd been involved with that ended with a fashion catastrophe and she was unusually pleased.
"I'm not dressed for fashion." Yusei growled.
"WHAT?" Joey cocked an ear dramatically. "WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Mai smacked him.
"And you're sure about this?" She knew every underhanded not-cheating cheat in the book but couldn't figure out this one. What she did know was the air of a player about to gamble everything on a single draw.
"Yliaster came after family," He snapped. Even the thick hood couldn't mask the rage in his voice. "That crosses a line."
"You know that you're going into the one place in the country where we can't help you?" Tristan reminded him. "Once you're inside, you're on your own."
"And you're doing it dressed like a sci-fi reject." Joey was laughing less now. Five hours, a thousand dollars, and exactly one item that had given him any difficulty in sourcing. Even Mai had needed nearly nine phone calls to track one down.
"Fits my day job." The van slowed to a halt. "I'll see you guys for lunch. Don't hang around to get caught." Pulling open the door, he stumbled out. "Tritstan?" The soldier tossed him what he needed.
"Don't get caught." And he pulled the doors shut before Yusei could reply.
Facing the loading bay across the road, Yusei shouldered his equipment. There was nobody on the bays at this time of night and the guardpost wouldn't be physically manned since the internal doors were feet-thick steel capable of withstanding a speeding concrete mixer. Which explained why Yusei was able to jam a cattle prod near the top of a metal shutter and short the motor into opening it a few feet without anyone being the wiser.
Rolling under the barrier, he tugged his luggage under before the shutter could reset and cut them off.
Step one completed, he was now locked in the loading bay with plenty of cameras pointed his way and no access to any of the doors. Trapped like a mouse in a laboratory maze. Adjusting his outfit, he smirked towards the cameras. As far as they were concerned, he was eclipsed by a shining white orb. Woven around him was every infrared transmitter he could harvest from a charity store worth of remote controls, tied to a packet of batteries from the kitchen cupboard. Slipping to the vault door, he encountered the next unavoidable barrier - personnel access control management.
Every employee in the building provided a biometric identifier they could use to gain access to relevant areas. Some went with retinal scans. Others opted for fingerprint recognition. It was unbeatable. Luckily, Yusei had spent the evening crafting a master key.
When he'd said to Joey that he needed to watch some videos, it hadn't been for research. Breaking into places (as a thought experiment) was a handy pastime that meant he could bill his nightly hours to security and try to thwart Din's next attempt at breaking into the library. He could blind the cameras easily enough but he needed a fingerprint that could open all the doors. And if someone in a high enough office such as, say, the CEO, ever blocked a camera close enough to the lens to capture the lines and grooves of a fingerprint, Yusei could print a copy and scale it down to size. Of course, even a primitive scanner would detect the paper as a fraud. It would require sophisticated biochemistry to fool.
A drop of electrolyte-rich sports drink and a gummy bear to simulate a sweaty thumb later, the door gently peeled open to the tiny photocopy as Yusei blinked in amazement. Truthfully, everything typically went wrong by now and guards were usually swarming from every direction. Hoisting his cargo into place, he slid past the thick metal wedge and tried not to imagine it closing on him.
Inside was a long hallway that branched off to different areas. Due to the bustling nature of the docks, it would be inefficient to have more doors this close to the modern portcullis he entered through. Instead, the corridors were lined with ultrasonic motion sensors that were turned on during the quiet hours between shipping. Everyone had seen them at one point or another - plain white boxes mounted in the corners. Some people even noticed the tiny lights that flickered out if they stopped moving.
Yusei could dimly see them through the loose fabric of the bed sheet draped over him. Light and sound operated on different wavelengths so any cameras would still be blinded to the mesh of infrared transmitters he was wearing even as the ultrasonic sensors were harmlessly absorbed by the sheet. Any guard who went investigating the white blob on their monitors would encounter a silently creeping pale form and get the fright of their lives.
Pausing beside a directory listing, he scanned for the banal name he needed and swore softly. The decoy thumbprint could have called him an elevator to take him directly where he needed but all access would be manually monitored at this time of night and no amount of low-tech deception would overcome a squad of guards swarming the cubicle. He'd have to take the stairs while maintaining his cover.
Eight floors - eight disgustingly sweaty floors - later, he reached his destination: a networked server farm. From this one room, he could access any part of the KaibaCorp infrastructure in the world.
Uttering a hopeless prayer, he rolled up the sheet to press the sticky print against the reader. It was getting earlier in the day now and his disguise would only hold as long as the owner of the thumbprint didn't enter the building in person.
Stepping into the small alcove that separated the server room from the corridor, he eyed out the next round of security to bypass. Wow. An actual laser tripwire protecting the door. No, two. The second one was recessed right where anyone not looking for it would have stepped over the first. They would normally have been disabled by on-site security but the right authorisation had disabled the perimeter alarms and a solid leap would bypass the circuits.
And now he entered the single flaw in the system he couldn't overcome - the heat of the human body. Doors ran on one system, sensors were independently controlled by a security guard to prevent this exact situation - a user with access entering when they shouldn't be.
It was also the reason Joey had been laughing at him.
Heat sensors could be fooled with a pane of glass or a decent spray of carbon dioxide to overload the circuit. Yusei had opted to avoid them altogether with an insulated fire proximity suit.
Similar to the equipment worn by firefighters, this model was designed for aircraft rescue and came with an aluminised hood. It could reflect hundreds of degrees of heat and store enough breathing apparatus for an hour of heavy exertion. All of this meant that Yusei had been sweating like a fat man in a sauna while the sensors around the building didn't detect even a blip of heat. Putting his best foot forward, he hurried deep into the labyrinth of data.
Yuse found the small access panel he was looking for buried in the heart of the server room. Since it was destined more for hardware security than intruder prevention, the lock could be popped right out with a screwdriver and leave Yusei with access to the terminal inside.
When he got back home, the third thing Yusei planned to do was remind Akiza how she mocked him as a nerd for reading a book on the history of computer vulnerabilities. Second would be getting a full night's sleep, first and fourth would be telling her how much he loved her. For now, he needed to execute a small variation of a shatter attack.
Tucked away in the corner of the login screen was a charming little question mark to open the help screen. The help screen was technically an index of articles to guide the user through any possible situations they might have. It also allowed them to browse for a custom directory address on the local system but, given a long enough file path, was liable to overload the buffer.
It took Yusei a few minutes of blind searching to find one to his liking. Fifteen directories deep and with a name long enough to scroll off-screen should be good. Of course, a crashed program was useless to him - it was the reboot that he was after. The help index was a core component of the operating system and was registered as such. When the system reloaded, it would trace the faulty program and automatically boot him into that user.
[Welcome Administrator]
'And hello to you too,' He silently thought to himself. There was a chance that KaibaCorp was already experimenting with verbal commands and he couldn't risk giving himself away by speaking aloud. 'Now, where would they put error logs?'
He was skimming through the unfamiliar architecture and trying to ignore the sickening feeling in his stomach. Adrenaline, that's all it was. Adrenaline and the exertion of breaking into a building wearing an insulated suit. Except his instincts were nagging at him that he missed something and Yusei had been volunteered for too many experiments by Din to not know that human instincts processed information the conscious often discarded.
Glancing around, he tried to hone in on what was disturbing him. Servers bleeped, hummed, and flashed. The keyboard was a clunky mechanical affair, like the ones so popular during this period. Cables lifted up into the ceiling for easy… 'Shit'.
A tiny wire was pressed up against the hinge of the cabinet the maintenance computer was stored in. Plenty of wires were inside the metal container and few people would have paid much attention to any one in particular. Except this was the one stray line in a technician's otherwise wet dream of perfectly controlled cables and disappeared through a drilled hole in the bottom of the cabinet.
This was not in the plan. Even Crow would have missed the seventh backup. Seriously, the future KaibaCorp stopped at five. 'Time to go.'
Leaving the metal panel swinging in the wind, he sprinted in the direction of the door and slammed through it, ignoring the scrunched blanket on the floor. There was no point in finesse now, he'd be lucky to escape from the building in one piece.
Yusei was suddenly gripped with a fear that his last conscious thought in life would be that he should have listened to Joey Wheeler - that was all the motivation he needed to survive.
Taking the corner at a dead sprint, he knew that the elevators would be locked down tight and guards already cordoning off the stairs he had come up. That left the loud option which would bring sirens down on the building.
The nearest emergency exit was at the end of the hallway and he was booting the door open without even a break in stride.
Ugly ceiling, pounding headache, complete disorientation. Vaunted intellect be damned, there was no frame of reference for a door kicking back.
Someone was talking as he collected himself. The voice sounded distant, muffled by the heavy hood Yusei was wearing. At least it had also deflected some of the impact from hitting the floor. "Alert the fire department that an employee triggered the alarm by accident. Allow them a walkthrough of the public spaces and a check of the cameras if they insist."
For a moment, Yusei felt safe. They thought he was an idiot employee working the night shift. Mumbling vaguely, he stretched up a hand for assistance.
Being good wasn't enough. Being efficient wasn't enough. Only the best were allowed to work at KaibaCorp and the training they received made them even better. Besides subduing him in record time, the guards used no more power than was necessary and had the intruder in a cell before he could even figure out which way they had turned down a corridor. All without so much as a single unwarranted bruise.
"Jacket, shoes, trousers." A thick box was slammed by his feet to drop the clothes into. Shoes were an unusual addition to the list for most companies but they were aware that anyone stupid enough to try stealing from KaibaCorp was also desperate enough to take their own life if caught. Laces could do the job in seconds if he kept them. "Hands out, palms together." Wordlessly complying, the prisoner measured his chances of escape as somewhere south of 'slim' and directly adjacent to 'none' as plastic restraints secured his wrists.
"You will be held here until such a time that a legal representative of the Kaiba Corporation can review your activity and decide upon the charges to be pressed." Two questions occupied his thoughts as the script was duly delivered. Why was this giant wearing sunglasses indoors and how did his hair get so pointy at the sides? It was like staring at two tiny horns. "At that time, you will be delivered to the local authorities for formal processing. This procedure will take place within the next twelve hours. If you have any medical needs, make them known now." A few seconds pause went by as he wordlessly passed the container across to his colleague. "If you have anything to say, a guard will be stationed at either end of the corridor. Any attempt to escape will be responded to with appropriate force."
A transparent divide slid over the front of the compartment before he could even weigh his options for escape. It was a form of reinforced plastic which would shatter into useless clumps, even if he could break it. And then the guards outside would simply punch him so hard he'd see stars for a week. For primitive technology, it was extremely effective. Twelve hours – and counting – wasn't enough time for him to escape on his own and it wasn't as if he could call Tristan or Joey to pull strings. Plus, he was fairly sure they would make matters worse.
A crazy thought came to mind. If it worked, he would be walked right out the front door with an escort. "E2 to E3." Of course, if it backfired, there was a good chance he wouldn't leave in anything but a body bag – and that was the best-case scenario. "E7 to E6. E3 to E4." All he had to do was hope news of his intrusion made it to the right person.
My horsey takes your pointy thing. Checkmate, I win a review!